Lonely Ranchers, Solitary Students, and Angry Governors: Personal Vulnerability and Community Conflict in Yaqui Emotion Talk

Western Folklore, Winter 2009 by Erickson, Kirstin C

ABSTRACT

This article explores emotion discourses in a northern Mexican community. For Yaqui Indians, extreme emotional states are considered perilous: "anger" and "sadness" threaten community and jeopardize the self. The folklore of emotion - verbal acts and cautionary tales - reveals Yaqui emotion-talk to be an intersubjective, deeply significant commentary on humanness itself.

KEYWORDS: folk belief, Indian, Yaqui, emotion, cautionary tales

In the spring of 2002, I returned to Potam, the desert town in which I had lived for fourteen months in the late 1990s while conducting ethnographic research on narrative and identity formation among the Yaquis, a Mexican indigenous tribe. Located in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, Potam is one of eight towns originally founded on Yaqui aboriginal territory in the early 1600s at the behest of Jesuit missionaries determined to consolidate and Christianize the indigenous inhabitants on the northwestern cusp of New Spain. Today, Potam remains one of more than a dozen culturally vibrant, yet economically challenged, Yaqui communities, and home to Yaqui families still farming and ranching along the banks of the Yaqui River. On a bright May morning, I balanced myself on the best of the wobbly wooden chairs beneath Julia's palm-thatched kitchen ramada, swatting flies and trying to keep cool as I soaked up the news about events and happenings that had impacted acquaintances since my previous visit.1

One of the first stories Julia recounted was about her cousin Dora, who had recently been abandoned by her husband. Ernesto, an agricultural engineer, had moved out of the family compound and was currently living with a woman in Vicam Pueblo. "He hardly ever returns to visit his sons," Julia scolded, "and have you seen her? She is really suffering." I had not yet seen Dora, but that night, Julia's sister elaborated, "She has lost a lot of weight because she is sad. It's been months since she's seen him." Even Benito, now in his late teens, exclaimed that his cousin Dora had become "so thin, so thin. We're worried about her; she is too sad." Throughout my visit, friends and members of Dora's family called my attention to her condition, to the sadness in her eyes and how her body had diminished in appearance, the bony silhouette of a once sturdy figure.

Their talk reminded me of a story that my key consultant Alejandra had shared in 1997 about a Yaqui widow whose excessive mourning and unrelenting sadness had caused her intestines to dry up and her body to waste away, resulting in her premature death and the orphaning of her young children. In more general terms, the family's worries about Dora's condition brought to the surface my own distinct memories of fieldwork with the Yaquis and the intensity of their focus on the emotions of anger, sadness, and loneliness.

Potam is one of nearly two-dozen indigenous communities that constitute the backbone of today's Yaqui Reserve, sometimes referred to as the Zona Ind�gena (Indigenous Zone). The reserve, encompassing less than half of the Yaquis' aboriginal territory, was granted to the Yaqui people by presidential decree in 1937 (Hu-DeHart 1984; Lutes 1987; Spicer 1980), only after they had endured decades of political repression, displacement from their land by military-supported Mexican settlers, and, for thousands of Yaquis, exile and forced labor in the henequen fields of the Yucat�n peninsula (Hu-DeHart 1984; PadillaRamos 1995). This history of conflict and struggle remains a significant factor in the narrative construction of Yaqui ethnic identity (Erickson 2008). As one of Mexico's indigenous minorities who have fought to retain their land and have chosen to maintain their indigenous identity and their religious traditions, the Yaquis find themselves culturally marginalized within the broader Mexican society. As small-scale farmers, ranchers, and fishermen, the Yaquis find it difficult to compete in the highly mechanized world of Sonoran agribusiness. The Yaqui Reserve lacks infrastructure, unemployment is pervasive, and those who venture to nearby cities face the subtle racism of ethnic stereotyping. Not surprisingly, many Yaquis (who strongly identify with their land and cultural traditions) prefer to stay in their home pueblos and villages. There, they can depend on a network of family and ritual kin; when necessary, they can rely upon the economic safety net generated through the Yaqui ceremonial complex and its accompanying system of reciprocity and mutual obligation.

Yaquis with whom I have worked portray emotional states as being inseparable from mental stability, physical well-being, and community accord. Everyday narratives reveal (and at the same time construct) a striking concern with emotionality as Yaqui women and men closely monitor the emotional health of family members, ritual kin, and neighbors. Most Yaqui villages and towns are small, face-to-face communities in which people are well aware of one another's family histories, personal successes, failed relationships, and daily habits. So it may not be surprising that even in larger pueblos such as Potam (with a population of over 5,000) talk about emotion figures, to some degree, is the constitution of local knowledge; emotional well-being is often foregrounded as an important component of the stability of both self and community. States of anger and sadness are considered especially risky: anger catalyzes social discord, while sadness (tristeza) - caused by loss or loneliness and often characterized by withdrawal or pensiveness - endangers the self. Discourses about social conflict are peppered with references to "anger," and cautionary tales are employed to expose the vulnerabilities precipitated by solitude. Such discourses circulate widely, serving to warn those who exhibit dangerous emotions. Sad or lonely people are carefully observed for signs of deepening and perilous tristeza; they are cared for and distracted, in order that the effects of an emotional spike might be fleeting, or at least contained. In this article, I explore those everyday Yaqui comments and stories that trace political conflict and individual illness to underlying, potentially hazardous emotions. I argue that such talk, and the emotional troubleshooting that typically follows, expose Yaqui concepts of the self, embodiment, and relationality, demonstrating an intersubjectivity that is considered foundational to both community and individual well-being.