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FIESTA FINANCE IN MESOAMERICA AND THE
JOHN MONAGHAN
Vanderbilt University
The particular ethnographic cases through which the phenomenon of the gift was first defined,
coupled with the evolutionary paradigm in which it was embedded, have limited our under-
standing ofthe nature and dynamics of gift exchange. By charting the emergence of a gift exchange
system in the Mixtec-speaking town of Santiago Nuyoo over the last 135 years, this article discusses
distinctive features of Mesoamerican gifting and suggests a perspective that makes gift exchange
a useful category for historical analysis. It also examines the role of exchange in the transformation
of the Nuyoo system of fiesta sponsorship.
Introduction
A serious rethinking of the gift has been under way in anthropology. We now
understand that general claims about the gift often involve the elevation of
regional ethnographic cases to the status of universals (Parry 1986; 1989;
Thomas 1991: 15-16). It is increasingly difficult to speak about the phenome-
non of the gift without qualifying it in some way; for instance, as 'competitive
gift exchange' (Gregory 1982), 'the Indian gift' (Parry 1986) or 'reproductive
gift exchange' (Gell 1992). Indeed, anthropologists working in Mesoamerica
have been reluctant to use the term 'gift' exchange, preferring terms such as
'no-interest loans', probably because Mesoamerican forms of reciprocity seem
to lack the complex social, moral, aesthetic and symbolic connexions that Mauss
theorized and are richly documented in studies of Melanesia. This article exam-
ines the exchanges made during fiestas in the Mixtec-speaking town of Santiago
Nuyoo in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, and suggests that it is the use
of reciprocal exchange to finance fiestas that makes gift exchange in
Mesoamerica distinct from the kinds reported elsewhere.
It has also become clear that our general definitions of the gift are closely tied
to how we understand exchange systems to function and change. Along with so
many other concepts in economic anthropology, the notion of the gift first
developed in the context of efforts to define the differences between capitalist
and pre-capitalist societies (Appadurai 1986; Carrier 1992; Piot 1991; Thomas
1991: 9-14; Weiner 1992: 17; see also Braudel 1982: 223-49). Mauss discussed
the gift as a stage in an evolutionary sequence leading to modern forms of
contract. According to him, the gift originally developed out of the total ex-
change of services between groups (which itself had evolved out of sacrifice)
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500 JOHN MONAGHAN
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JOHN MONAGHAN 501
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502 JOHN MONAGHAN
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JOHN MONAGHAN 503
region today say the quota consisted of 360 tortillas, six to twelve gourds of
beans (a gourd is equivalent to about a litre) and a variable quantity of cash, salt,
chili, pasta and liquor. In the past, the money would be used to buy liquor or, if
the mayordomo had enough cash, a steer to be butchered and served to the
guests. It appears that the exact size of the quota could vary, and the mayordomos
and deputies would come together well before the fiesta to determine the
amount of goods they would need. Although it occurred in the 1930s, one older
man told me that on his first religious cargo he had to buy a steer, since this was
an important saint. He first calculated the amount of money he needed and
filled a gourd with corn kernels, one kernel for each centavo. Following a
custom that no doubt dated from the nineteenth century, he then invited a
number of deputies to his house. They sat on the floor, and he went around the
room placing a kernel in front of each man until the gourd was empty. Then
each man looked at the pile in front of him and knew what his quota would be
for the fiesta. The number of tortillas was fixed at sixty per man and the amount
of beans was one gourd.
One important feature of the Nuyoo cofrad'as of the early 1800s is that all the
members pooled their resources to accumulate the goods needed to celebrate
the saint. The mayordomo's household may have contributed more than any of
the others, but not significantly more (cf Nutini 1988: 283). It is therefore best
to think of the mayordomo in the cofradia system as first among equals, especially
with regards to the financing of fiestas.
This organization has undergone some radical changes over the past 175 years
and it is not immediately obvious how Nuyooteco arrangements for financing
fiestas today developed from those I have outlined for the first half of the
nineteenth century. To understand why these changes occurred, and to identifyr
the ldnds of decisions people made that led to the development of the contem-
porary gift exchange system, some broader political and economic
developments during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries must first be dis-
cussed. My point of departure will be the collective enterprises stewarded by
cofradias to generate a surplus for fiesta expenditures.
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504 JOHN MONAGHAN
The records kept in the chests show that the cofrad(as began to undergo some
important alterations in the 1860s and 1870s. This was a period of political
upheaval in the Mixteca and in Mexico more generally. The country suffered
the War of the Reform, and then the French Intervention, when European
forces took control. The unrest severely disrupted the Oaxaca economy, and
major skirmishes occurred in the Tlaxiaco region (Martinez Gracida 1986: 785;
Mendez Aquino 1985: 197-201). In addition, there were several revolts by
Oaxaque-nos against the Federal government, some of which began in the Mix-
teca (Berry 1981: 200-1). During this period, Nuyoo and its neighbours,
Yucuhiti and Yosotato, were looted and burned (Monaghan 1990b). This state of
unrest, with armed bands criss-crossing the region and looting rural towns,
made the accumulation of foodstuffs for fiestas difficult at best.
The building of the new church in Nuyoo began at this time. An architect
from outside the community supervised the project, with Nuyootecos perform-
ing the heavy labour. Construction began in the mid-1870s, and was still not
completed in 1915. To meet the costs of buying the materials and paying wages
for outside workers, officials in the 1870s and 1880s sold most of the animals in
the communal herds and spent a large portion of the cash held by the cofradiias.7
So far as fiestas were concerned, this was a loss of an inexpensive source of
meat, the most important food distributed. It is a tradition that guests receive
meat during the fiesta meals. One can imagine that after the sale of the commu-
nal herd, meals with meat would have become difficult to arrange. Instead of
simply taking an animal from the community herd, or paying for it at below the
market rate, the religious officials had the difficult task of raising money to
purchase steers in the market.
The 1870s, particularly the last years of the decade, were thus difficult times.
Food was scarce, the construction of the church consumed an increasing pro-
portion of communal labour, and the assets of the cofrad(as, which were an
important source of cash and food for fiesta sponsorship,8 had all but disappeared.
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JOHN MONAGHAN 505
Chance and Taylor (1985) observe that at the end of the colonial period and the
beginning of independence, corporate assets throughout Mesoamerica were
eroded, and this in turn led to individual sponsorship of cargos. In Nuyoo the
household did eventually assume responsibility for fiesta (and other cargo) ex-
penses. But in the 1870s Nuyooteco households controlled little private wealth,
and certainly not enough to sponsor elaborate fiestas. There were no private
herds of animals in the community, and the income from cash cropping would
not become significant until coffee began to replace the banana as the main cash
crop in the late 1930s. Although corporate resources were no longer sufficient
to meet expenses, shifting the burden to individual sponsors was not initially a
solution to the problem. How then, did Nuyootecos respond?
Their answer involved spreading the costs of fiesta sponsorship beyond the
five original members of the cofradi'a to between six and ten sponsors, by the
simple process of increasing the number of deputies (Brandes 1981: 212-13
describes a similar process for Tzintzuntzan after 1942; see also Ingham 1986:
95; Martfnez Ruvalcaba 1987: 61-7). In other words, rather than having five
officers in the cofradia, as in the first half of the nineteenth century, by the
second half of the century Nuyooteco cofradias had six to ten officers, so that
instead of preserving the feasting complex by shifting to individual sponsorship,
Nuyootecos went the other way and preserved it by making it even more of a
collective undertaking.
One can see from figure 1 that this process first began in the 1860s, when the
number of deputies began to exceed four for the first time.9 It accelerated in the
late 1870s, precisely when Nuyootecos began building the church. The number
of deputies levelled off in the 1890s to between seven and eight. This corre-
sponds to the period when church construction began to wind down, and the
Diaz regime normalized the political and economic situation in the countryside.
60
40
50-
(1) 40 . . * +
40 ci? 4+ *
30
> 30-+
Oz - - , _, __ _ ,
10-
1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950
Year
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506 JOHN MONAGHAN
This was also the period when the communal cattle herd began to increase
again (although it never reached more than a quarter of its earlier size) and
when more resources were presumably available for fiesta sponsorship.
This situation again changed with the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). The
cattle herd disappeared during this period, when roving bands of soldiers rav-
aged the countryside. According to older people, food was hard to find and it
became very difficult for parents to feed their children, much as it had been
forty years earlier. And just as in the 1870s, the number of deputies increased
exponentially. This increase is made more dramatic by the fact that the total
population of Nuyoo declined during the war years (see fig. 1).
The effects of the Mexican Revolution on the Mixteca were disastrous. lTade
dried up, markets were held only infrequently and agricultural production
plummeted. A nadir was reached in 1917, when Federal troops sacked Tlaxiaco
and the separatist forces fled the region. But the unrest continued well beyond
the official end of the Revolution in 1920, since the earlier loosening of state
control allowed hostile communities to attack one another and private armies
continued to operate freely in the region. This continued until the 1930s, when
the state was able to exert some control for the first time since the end of the
Diaz government. If it is true that hard times precipitated increases in the
number of deputies in Nuyoo cofradias, then this long period of unrest after the
Revolution, which made travel and trade very difficult and took prime agricul-
tural land out of production, explains the steady growth in the numbers of
deputies through the mid-1930s.
Nuyootecos, then, met the burden of increased fiesta costs and the loss of
corporate property by spreading the responsibility for fiesta sponsorship among
ever-increasing numbers of households. We can see this in the old man's ac-
count of using corn kernels to calculate the quotas of his deputies. At the time,
in the 1930s, he had about forty deputies, each contributing a fixed amount of
tortillas and cash, instead of the four or five deputies a mayordomo would have
had two generations before.
There was another significant change that made the old man's experience as
mayordomo different from that of officials before him. During the period be-
tween 1870 and 1920 (I have not been able to determine exactly when) the
deputy role became uncoupled from the civil-religious hierarchy, so that it was
no longer considered a service position (cf Brandes 1981: 214, 222-3). It may
have been that the loss of cattle left the deputies with little to do, and the
amassing of tortillas, beans and a few centavos were not regarded as so difficult
that someone could be excused from serving in another office as well. There is
also evidence that the amount of food contributed by individual deputies de-
creased. As I noted, older people in the region define the standard quota as 360
tortillas, and some recall having heard that this amount was the traditional
contribution of the deputy to the fiesta. However, none of them ever actually
saw deputies contribute 360 tortillas. The most they had seen was 60 tortillas, or
occasionally 120. This reduction in the contribution may have been part of the
process of spreading the burden of fiesta sponsorship among more households.
If I am correct about the reduction of individual deputy contributions to the
cofradaia, then this development, along with the removal of the deputy position
from the civil-religious hierarchy, would have had an important effect on the
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JOHN MONAGHAN 507
relationship of the deputies to both the fiesta and to the mayordomo. Recall that
when deputies were service positions they had many responsibilities. The depu-
ties were in charge of organizing rituals, ensuring that the mayordomo made the
proper fiesta distributions, and overseeing the mayordomia accounts. The mayor-
domo may have been the central administrator of the cofradia, but the deputies
were essential to its functioning. When the deputy position was removed from
the civil-religious hierarchy, however, the deputies lost their responsibility for
the outcome of the cargo. The deputies were no longer held accountable by
local government for the results of the fiesta, and became passive participants
instead of individuals with a personal stake in the event. The mayordomo house-
hold alone began to organize the rituals, make the proper distributions, and
ensure accounts were in order.
A similar process took place in financing the fiesta. We saw that in the first
half of the nineteenth century each deputy provided a quota of food and money
for the fiesta. The mayordomo's quota may have been larger than any of the
others, but it was not substantially larger. With the deputies no longer a cargo
position, their financial responsibility for the fiesta declined. As noted, the size
of their individual contributions grew smaller. By the 1930s, deputies were
individually contributing only 2-3 per cent. of total fiesta costs, instead of the
15-20 per cent. contributed before.
But what is significant about the uncoupling of the deputy position from the
civil-religious hierarchy is that it was no longer a civil-religious obligation for
the deputies to aid the mayordomo. In the first half of the nineteenth century,
community elders and the top officers of the hierarchy nominated the deputies,
just as they nominated the town police and other officials. Yet by the late 1800s
or early 1900s the authorities stopped appointing deputies. The mayordomo,
however, remained an appointed position responsible for the fiesta, and now
assumed the additional task of recruiting deputies.
When the deputy position first ceased being a service position, it was probably
not difficult for the couple serving as mayordomo to find from among their
household's network of kin, ritual kin and neighbours, six or eight deputies to
help finance the fiesta. However, as time went on, and sponsors needed ever
more deputies to help, the nature of the task changed. How was the mayordomo
to attract several dozen deputies, when these same people had their own civil-
religious hierarchy service to perform, and many of them probably also had
fiestas to sponsor? The answer turned on the development of several recruit-
ment strategies. One strategy was to use the money in the mayordomo chest. The
cofradta officers had a year to work with this money, after which they made an
interest payment of 60-100 per cent. Often mayordomos try to earn enough to
meet the payment by lending the money at interest. There are usually many
people who would like to borrow the money, and the mayordomo can make
serving as a deputy an informal condition for receiving a loan. Another strategy
was to ply men with liquor or pulque and then ask them for their help, since,
when people drink, they often agree to things that they might think twice about
when sober, and many feel obliged to help once someone has treated them. The
most effective way of recruiting deputies, however, was to enter an agreement
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508 JOHN MONAGHAN
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JOHN MONAGHAN 509
responsibility for the fiesta, but was left greatly in debt by it. How Nuyootecos
arranged to lighten the burden of the mayordomo so that the position did not
leave households destitute marks another major change in fiesta organization.
Older people say that it was not uncommon for goods to remain after a fiesta.
When the ritual was over, the mayordomo would gather the deputies around a
mat in the centre of the house. Then he would count the number of leftover
tortillas, litres of beans, sticks of firewood and so forth for all to see, and divide
them among the deputies, reserving a share equal to that of a deputy for him-
self Distributing surpluses to the deputies made eminent sense when
participants contributed equal amounts for the financing of the fiesta. As one
man put it, not to have redistributed the surplus would have been 'like stealing'.
I first learned about dividing fiesta surpluses among deputies in 1985, from
the late NRanluu Maria Sarabia.11 We had been talking about the fiesta her grand-
son was to sponsor. The conversation shifted to the nature of fiestas in her
youth, in the 1940s. She spoke about the distribution of surpluses among the
deputies, and I asked her whether, if a deputy contributed sixty tortillas and
received fifteen as part of the distribution of fiesta surpluses, the mayordomo
would owe the deputy only forty-five tortillas. Before she could answer, her
grandson replied: 'Of course. Since the mayordomo was returning part of what
they had given, then it would be that much less that the mayordomo would owe'.
Nanluu Marfa however, to her grandson's and my surprise, said that this was
wrong. What happened was that the mayordomo continued to owe the deputies
what they had given the mayordomo, even though the mayordomo had given them
a share of the goods that remained after the fiesta ended. The grandson pro-
tested that this did not seem fair. 'Yes, it wasn't fair', she said, 'and that is why
people agreed [in 1947] the mayordomo should be able to keep what is left over
after the fiesta, since he supplies the bulk of the things for the celebration'.
By the 1940s and 1950s, then, people had begun to think that the deputies,
with their responsibilities so diluted, should not receive any surplus from the
fiesta. This had only made sense when each deputy contributed an amount
equal to that contributed by the mayordomo; it no longer made sense when the
deputy only contributed 2 per cent. of the fiesta costs and received this back as
gift credits.
This development is of interest because it shows that, in Nuyoo at least,
mayordomt'as are genetically related to cofradias. Although the historical connexion
between them has been recognized (Chance 1990: 32), the former emerged out
of the latter through a series of decisions people made about how to finance
fiestas in a situation in which corporate assets had been eroded and households
were becoming property-holding units. At first, this involved increasing the
number of households responsible for the fiesta so that the burden of sponsor-
ship might be spread more widely. But the increase in the number of deputies
also meant that the position could no longer be considered a cargo. Deputies
then had to be recruited by other means. Of several different strategies, the
most widely used were the creation of reciprocal contracts with relatives, ritual
kin and neighbours. This, along with the steady accumulation of property by
individual households, led to a gradual shift of the burden of sponsorship to the
single household.
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510 JOHN MONAGHAN
Note that at this point the groups formed through saa sa'a exchanges are
formally similar to rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAS),12 in which
'partners agree to make regular contributions to a fund which is given, in whole
or in part, to each contributor in rotation' (Ardener 1964: 201; Geertz 1962).
Each Nuyooteco participant in effect takes a turn at the centre of the group,
receiving the individual contributions of money, tortillas and other food items
when it is his or her turn to sponsor a fiesta (Monaghan 1990a).
ROSCAS in Latin America have tended to be seen as urban phenomena occur-
ring, for the most part, among migrants and others who lack access to formal
financial institutions.13 Yet the need to save to finance lumpy expenditures
exists among rural people with fiestas to sponsor as well as among urbanites
buying refrigerators or cars. Moreover, the advantages of the ROSCA - that it
allows a group to use its savings more effectively, and that almost everyone can
reduce the waiting time needed to finance an expenditure since even the last
person to receive the fund loses no time - are readily apparent to Nuyootecos
(Monaghan 1990a; see Ardener 1964; Besley et al. 1993; Callier 1990).
The financial advantages of configuring reciprocal contracts in this way ac-
cords with Nuyootecos' historical disregard for Maussian fields of obligation
when accounting for participation in saa sa'a. For example, a man who spon-
sored a fiesta in 1943 told me that the first individual he asked to serve as
deputy replied: 'You should be looking for people who are like you, who have
not yet suffered [that is, young men who had not yet served in the civil-religious
hierarchy], not like me, a person who has suffered a lot. Why do you want to
impose more work on me?'
There are, however, features of the Nuyooteco saa sa'a complex that make it
distinct from a ROSCA. For example, ROSCAS are normally closed groups. In saa
sa'a, participation is open-ended, since at each fiesta new individuals effectively
join by making new reciprocal contracts to sponsors, and old participants drop
out by returning what they owe. The set of participants in any one fiesta is thus
never the same in the next. Moreover, if ROSCAS thrive because they keep the
utility costs of savings low, then even though the Nuyooteco saa sa'a complex
must be viewed as a solution to the practical problems of accumulating re-
sources to celebrate a fiesta, one should not go too far in accounting for the
participation of everyone in terms of financial utility. The utility costs of savings
in the Nuyoo case can be quite high, since one must travel to others' fiestas in
order to participate. This may involve long journeys, and require one to spend
nights away. Some people complain about the time they lose making exchanges.
In this respect, saa sa'a begins to seem like gift exchange. Although it is true that
in the past people were not reluctant to express unwillingness to give or receive
items in saa sa'a, Nuyootecos today describe the exchange of items in terms and
grammatical forms that suggest that the item, once given, connects participants
by an obligation to return. There is also a Maussian link between the items
exchanged and the persons who transact them. Specifically, Nuyootecos speak
of the sa'a items as objectifying the labour of those who produced them.14 It
may be that the typological ambiguity of saa sa'a has to do with the different
discourses associated with the two kinds of exchange (discourses of financial
intermediation for the ROSCA [Callier 1990: 274], and of solidarity and social
symbolism for gift exchange) and with the more general problems caused by
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JOHN MONAGHAN 511
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512 JOHN MONAGHAN
contributing to the fiestas of persons to whom they owe nothing. In this way
they begin to prepare to sponsor another fiesta. The switch from paying off
debts to accumulating credits occurs by the end of the third year, when the
members of the sponsoring household begin to plan their next fiesta.
The increase in the number of fiestas celebrated in the community, coupled
with the spacing of gift-giving and repayment over several years, has resulted in
a situation where people are constantly in search of partners and, consequently,
almost everyone in Nuyoo is making reciprocal contracts all the time. In terms
of the saa sa'a complex as a whole, this has meant that while the ratio of credits
to debts changes depending on where one stands in the fiesta sponsorship cycle,
individual cycles of fiesta sponsorship overlap so that a huge amount of goods
constantly circulates through saa sa'a (Monaghan 1990b).
This is significant because what has happened in Nuyoo over the past century
is that these contracts have become so interconnected and dense that saa sa'a
functions automatically, coordinating action in a way that has consequences
beyond the intentions of any of the individual actors. This systemic dimension
distinguishes the current saa sa'a complex from anything that existed earlier in
Nuyoo, and from the formal reciprocities and everyday give-and-take that can
probably be found in any society. Moreover, the systemic properties of saa sa'a
have allowed Nuyootecos to use exchange to communicate the complexities
and nuances of their relationships with one another, a development that has
made saa sa'a look more and more like gift exchange.
The most recent change in fiesta financing has been the slow disappearance of
the custom of contracting exchange partnerships. The increasingly systemic
nature of saa sa'a has made this development possible. Although people con-
tinue to make contracts to exchange specified types and amounts of goods in
advance, the need for this has been reduced. Because so many people are ac-
tively seeking exchange partners and such large quantities of goods circulate,
people are confident that many partners will attend their fiestas on their own
accord, bringing with them sufficient food items and money.
The relative infrequency of sa'a contracts today is part of a gradual shift in
what saa sa'a exchanges mean to Nuyootecos. In the earlier period, we saw that
the deputy's participation changed from being a communal service imposed by
the town government to one based on the mayordomo's ability to recruit others.
Now participation is much less formal and much more voluntaristic. On the
one hand, the mayordono no longer has to appeal to people's self-interest for aid
in the fiesta, get them drunk, make loans and sometimes suffer embarrassing
rebuffs. To attract the required number of partners, sponsors instead rely on
their personal reputations as trustworthy individuals who will return presta-
tions, on their ties with other households, and on participants' wish to 'bank'
items before sponsoring their owni fiestas. On the other hand, partners can
choose when and where to make gifts and, through the size and quality of their
gifts, signal to the sponsors important aspects of their relationship (see Monaghan
1995: 90-3). One old man put it this way: 'Before we didn't have any friends
(amigu) come to see us (i.e., to participate in fiestas). It was just deputies. Now
people are not obliged to come, they come out of good will (kurnani)'. This does
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JOHN MONAGHAN 513
not mean that the formal contracting of gifts has completely stopped. It contin-
ues, but mainly among older people. Even here, however, it reflects badly on
the sponsors if they have to ask many of their guests to attend. As another man
explained, it is like saying, 'I can't find anyone who thinks I am a friend, or who
deems me honorable enough to trust me with their goods'.
Conclusion
The present configuration of saa sa'a first developed as the result of a series of
local decisions about how to sponsor fiestas. These decisions were taken in
response to the loss of corporate property, a loss linked to the privatization of
land and the growing importance of cash crops in the village (Monaghan 1995:
259-84). But while the origins of the present saa sa'a system must be seen in
terms of strategies of financing lumpy expenditures, the exchanges have become
invested over time with new and complex meanings. Nuyootecos now speak of
saa sa'a transactions as freely given 'aid' to 'friends'. Similarly, account books are
no longer kept solely to record credits and debts but are saved, even after debts
are paid, to review who supported one in the past, and whom one is obliged to
support in the future (see Monaghan 1995: 92). Saa sa'a is like a new technol-
ogy, such as the answering machine - a machine now used not only for the
purposes for which it was first designed (recording calls) but also to communi-
cate nuanced social messages (for instance, it can be left on to screen calls, and
a caller's importance is signalled if their call is picked up).
Today, communal holdings play only a small role in Nuyooteco economic
arrangements, with households owning land, animals and other assets, and ac-
tivities are premissed much less on kin-like, corporate ties of collective
obligation. Rather, the means of achieving individual goals and organizing col-
lective activities are the networks of friendship which households maintain with
one another. The increasing use of saa sa'a to finance fiestas, coupled with the
properties of the system as it developed, have allowed Nuyootecos to make
reciprocal morality a consistent feature of the way they experience one another.
Saa sa'a has thus served as a vehicle through which Nuyootecos have been able
to stress 'friendship' relationships and constitute their community in a new way.
But 'finance' continues to drive participation in saa sa'a, and can be seen at
work in some of the features which Nuyooteco saa sa'a shares with other gift
exchange systems. For example, even though the circulation of gifts in Nuyoo
displays an 'alternating disequilibrium' (Strathern 1971), only a small percent-
age of people actually increment their gifts to make their partners indebted to
them, with most preferring simply to repay the exact amount they owe.16 This
suggests that the materiality of the gift (that is, its specific uses in the fiesta)
continues to have significance, despite Nuyooteco statements that saa sa'a is 'aid'
to a friend in need (see Gell 1992: 145-6). This is not to say that Nuyooteco gift
exchange is unrelated to matters of prestige or alliance. But an understanding of
contemporary Nuyooteco gifting, as well as its historical dynamics over the last
century and a haIf must start with its utility in solving the practical problem of
how to sponsor a fiesta.
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514 JOHN MONAGHAN
NOTES
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JOHN MONAGHAN 515
partner returned more than he or she was given. In other words, only 22 per cent. remained
connected by debt after the initial exchange.
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516 JOHN MONAGHAN
R&sum6
Les cas ethnographiques particuliers qui ont servi a d6finir le don et le paradigme 6volu-
tionniste dans lequel nos definitions se sont inscrites ont limit6 notre compr6hension de la
nature et de la dynamique du don et de l'6change. Cet article, qui retrace I'6mergence d'un
systdme d'6change et de don au cours des 135 ann6es qui viennent de s'6couler a Santiago
Nuyoo, une ville de langue Mixtec, ouvre la discussion sur les traits caracteristiques du don
en Am6rique Centrale et sugg6re une nouvelle perspective permettant de traiter le don
comme une cat6gorie pertinente pour l'analyse historique. De plus, il examine le r6lejou6
par l'6change dans la transformation du systeme de financement et de parrainage des festivals
religieux Nuyoo.
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