James M. Acheson, “Limited Good or Limited Goods? Response to Economic Opportunity in a Tarascan Pueblo,” American Anthropologist 74, no. 5 (Oct. 1972), 1152-1169.

Notes

• 1152 – James M. Acheson – University of Maine
• “This article describes the differential response to new economic opportunities in Cuanajo, a Tarascan Indian community in Michoacan, Mexico. It is argued here that blocks to development are primarily economic in nature, not cultural or cognitive (e.g., ‘limited good’) as has been asserted by others working in the area. When real opportunities became available, some individuals responded to them. Such positive forces lead us to reevaluate some basic premises concerning development which have been suggested in the areal literature.”
• “One of the major themes that runs through the anthropological literature on Middle American concerns the inability of Highland Indian communities to develop economically. Nowhere has this been more true than in the Tarascan area of West Central Mexico where several anthropologists of note have written extensively on the problem. One of the major hypotheses found in the work of Belshaw, Foster, and Van Zantwijk is that Tarascan pueblos will experience positive economic change, if at all, only if agencies from outside these communities contribute capital, education, expert advice, etc. Left on their own, Tarascan communities are ostensible unable to increase per capita income.”
• “While the ideas of these authors are not identical by any means, there are several themes which appear repeatedly in their work. Interpersonal relationships in Tarascan pueblos are said to be marked by suspicion, vindictiveness, spite, envy, malicious gossip, and lack of cooperation. Such traits . . . stifle innovation and entrepreneurship (Foster 1967).”
• 1152-1153 – “Foster ascribes his inability to change primarily to the cognitive orientation of the people of the Tarascan area, which he sums up with the concept of ‘limited good.’ ‘Tzintzuntzenos probably are among the least change-prone people to be found in a country as modern as Mexico. A large part of this inability and reluctance to change is due, as we have seen, to personality and social factors: village culture and society, reflecting a cognitive orientation that views all good things in life as finite . . .’ (Foster 1967).”
• 1153 – “The overall picture given by these authors is that the Tarascan area is a region of small, static Indian communities blocked from economic change by internal structural and cultural features. And indeed, this picture is not totally inaccurate, for most Tarascan pueblos are poor and have exhibited little capacity either for short term innovation or for long term economic development.”
• “The basic argument of this article is that there are factors operating in all Tarascan communities which block some individuals and other factors which strongly motivate other men to raise per capita income.”
• 1154 – “A molino (corn grinding mill) is an indivisible unit costing some 15,000 pesos; and once the complete unit is purchased, there is little more than can be invested profitably at the current level of demand. . . . Business is so slow for the six existing that, by common agreement, the mills work only every other day, so that there are only three working on any given day. Despite this attempt at cost cutting, a seventh man who purchased a mill went out of business within months. He could not earn enough to pay for his machinery despite the fact that he was using unpaid family labor.”
• “The business involving the most people in Cuanajo is agriculture. A few individuals who have inherited a large amount of land earn a good living. However, most people have such a small amount of land that they must supplement their incomes by working at least part of the year at some other occupation. Agricultural earnings stay low because traditional backward technology remains in use. Moreover, a farmer can rarely put more land in production. Land is very expensive, a minimum of 3000 pesos per hectaria, and is seldom put up for sale.”
• 1161 – “The presence of superior economic opportunities is the single most important factor involved in developmental change. Conversely, lack of positive economic change chan be primarily traced to the absence of these opportunities. On the individual level, this means that the primary reasons that most individuals do not act to raise per capita income is that no opportunities exist.”
• “The first men who took advantage of new opportunities in Cuanajo were poor, landless young men who badly needed income due to rising consumption aspirations. Such men typically had enough exposure to the outside world to equate prestige with wealth.”
• 1165 – “This critical quesiton is: are we dealing with ‘limited good,’ a cognitive veil through which the people of Tzintzuntzan and all of peasantry view the world; or statements about ‘limited goods,’ an accurate summation of the limited economic opportunities peasants usually face? I suggest it is the latter. If this is true, then we are not dealing with an all pervasive, permanent law dominating peasant cognition, but merely with a mundane appraisal of current business opportunities.”
• 1166 – “The idea that Tarascan communities can develop on their own is discredited. But this is exactly what happened in Cuanajo. There is no agency working in Cuanajo at present and the only outside agency ever to work there was a government cultural mission which lasted only one year and had little permanent impact on the economic position of the community.”
• “What is being questioned is the idea that such communities can advance only via directed programs. In this regard, the idea that peasant and tribal peoples can develop without ‘foreign aid’ has been suggested by anthropologists working in other parts of the world (e.e., Salisbury 1970).”
• “If Cuanajo can be classified with the other communities in the area, then our analysis of responsiveness in this community has demonstrated the need to modify some of the basic premises about development prospects in the area. In this paper, I have attempted to extract and criticize the most important of these basic premises and to develop a set of hypotheses which allow us to better account for the phenomena of economic change — or lack of change — in the Tarascan area, and hopefully in Mesoamerica as a whole.”