ANCIENT GAMES: BASEBALL, MODERNIZATION, AND IDENTITY

Transcription

ANCIENT GAMES: BASEBALL, MODERNIZATION, AND IDENTITY
IN OAXACA, MÉXICO
_______________
A Thesis
Presented to the
Faculty of
San Diego State University
_______________
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
in
Latin American Studies
_______________
by
David James Wysocki
Summer 2011
iii
Copyright © 2011
by
David James Wysocki
All Rights Reserved
iv
DEDICATION
This thesis is dedicated to those that work to think from scratch and understand the
value of meaning and complexity within us.
v
ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS
Ancient Games: Baseball, Modernization, and Identity in Oaxaca,
México
by
David James Wysocki
Master of Arts in Latin American Studies
San Diego State University, 2011
From the mid-nineteenth century to 1910, Oaxaca, México went through many
changes in order to bring stability and grow its stagnated economy. This effort was realized
through modernization projects by President Porfirio Díaz, a Oaxacan, that encouraged the
building of infrastructure to boost foreign investment while bandwagoning foreign culture.
Perceived as civilized and ultra-modern, baseball was adopted by Oaxacan elites to counterbalance the embarrassment they had of their own indigenous population considered
backwards. Baseball served primarily an exclusionary function but during the Revolution
mass participation began to be seen as a way to reform and socialize the Indian masses. The
professional game that emerged in México was powerful but didn’t reach Oaxaca until the
1990s, the local team owned by one of México’s great business moguls. The game abounds
with modern and consumerist symbolism but remains tied to Mesoamerican spirituality and
mysticism. The stadium itself serves as an international spectacle of baseball exoticisms yet
represents a negotiation with the rooted local. Baseball has not been simply an elitist
introduction, however, and some of the game’s bottom-up producers have created origin
myths that tie baseball to an ancient Oaxacan ballgame, working to create identity and
community as they had in other places in México. While Oaxaca is not represented highly in
national or international baseball tournaments, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec has boasted some
of the country’s best players. The still powerful link between baseball, capitalism, and
modernity have partly pushed politicians and businessmen to promote participation of the
game to improve the health and family life of Oaxacans, as during the Revolution, but also to
help the region appear nationally relevant against other baseball producing regions of the
country that are more affluent and industrial. The game has thus represented the negotiations
of identity and definition of modernity over time in the state at multiple levels.
In this thesis I attempt to elucidate the varying ways baseball has been, and is, used to
express positions of power and identity between rich and poor, indigenous and nonindigenous, and Oaxacan and Mexican, among more. Sometimes these delineations are not
so clear. Out of this research emerges extreme complexity and competition over the
definition of modernity and identity. By dredging through historical archives, conducting
interviews, scouring for financial data, pondering heady sociological theory, and observing
baseball first-hand, I attempt to write an open-ended thesis on the game’s historical
production as raw and well represented as possible in the limited time and space this research
provides. Sports studies often function as a way to magnify the ambitions and feelings of
those in a society and this thesis aims to contribute by outlining these politics further.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
ABSTRACT...............................................................................................................................v
LIST OF TABLES................................................................................................................. viii
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................. ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.......................................................................................................x
CHAPTER
1
INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1
1.1 About Oaxaca.....................................................................................................2
1.2 Methodology ......................................................................................................5
1.3 Literary Review: The Sociology and Politics of Sport ......................................6
1.4 Literary Review: Baseball in México ..............................................................13
1.5 Thesis Organization .........................................................................................18
2
PISTOLEROS AND PELOTEROS: OAXACA THROUGH
MODERNIZATION ....................................................................................................20
2.1 Nineteenth Century México and the Science of Modernization......................21
2.2 Porfirian Mining and Railroads .......................................................................25
2.3 Cosmopolitan Oaxaca and the Emerald City ...................................................30
2.4 Profile in Modernity: Charles Hamilton ..........................................................35
2.5 Modern Sport and the Arrival of Baseball.......................................................40
2.6 Uneven Development and Political Responses................................................48
2.7 Conclusion .......................................................................................................56
3
TODOS SOMOS GUERREROS: SEX, ECONOMY, AND POLITICS IN
THE PROFESSIONAL GAME...................................................................................59
3.1 History of the Mexican League........................................................................59
3.2 The Arrival of the Guerreros............................................................................64
3.3 Los Guerreros “En Vivo”.................................................................................66
3.4 The Stadium: Oaxaca’s International Space ....................................................67
3.5 The Flavor of the Game ...................................................................................72
3.6 Music and the “Spectacle” ...............................................................................75
vii
3.7 Who’s Who? The Guerreros Fans ....................................................................79
3.8 The Other Product: Players and the Body........................................................86
3.9 Conclusion .......................................................................................................92
4
PLAYING THE FIELD: COMPETITING MODERNITIES AND SHIFTING
BORDERS IN OAXACA’S OTHER LEAGUES.......................................................94
4.1 Amateur Leagues and Grassroots Organization ..............................................95
4.2 National Recognition: The Stars and Rebel Leagues of the Isthmus.............100
4.3 Ligas Pequeñas...............................................................................................108
4.4 Oaxaca’s New Modern Project ......................................................................112
4.5 Financial Barriers to Baseball........................................................................121
4.6 Conclusion .....................................................................................................130
5
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................134
BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................140
Archival Sources..................................................................................................140
Interviews, Emails, and Fieldwork ......................................................................140
Books, Journals, and Other Published Work .......................................................140
Papers, Theses, and Dissertations ........................................................................146
Non-Print and Informal Publications ...................................................................147
Organizations and Reference Sites ......................................................................148
viii
LIST OF TABLES
PAGE
Table 4.1. Municipalities with Baseball Fields by Income in the Oaxaca Valley .................124
Table 4.2. Municipalities with Baseball Fields by Income in the Isthmus ............................125
Table 4.3. Services and Occupations: With and Without Baseball Fields in the Oaxaca
Valley.........................................................................................................................127
ix
LIST OF FIGURES
PAGE
Figure 1.1. Map of México highlighting the State of Oaxaca ...................................................3
Figure 2.1. Mexico and the State of Oaxaca.. ..........................................................................27
Figure 2.2. The valley of Oaxaca.............................................................................................31
Figure 2.3. Charles A. Hamilton playing tennis.. ....................................................................41
Figure 3.1. Eduardo Vasconselos stadium in Oaxaca City, Oaxaca.. ......................................71
Figure 4.1. Zapotec in headdress, throwing a pitch. ..............................................................117
x
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people contributed to this project and, like most projects, it should be
considered a collective effort. I would like to thank Dr. Ramona Perez, Dr. Thomas
Passananti, and Dr. James Gerber for their advice, guidance, and motivation through this
tough process. At times they felt more like family than instructors and allowed this research
to retain its personality. I would also like to thank Dr. John Crocitti for his honesty and effort
outside of his own institution. Also thank you to Ryan Gwynne for his friendship and effort
to help me navigate Oaxaca. He continued to make himself available to help my research
when he didn’t have to and in some ways worked as a Oaxaca correspondent for me.
Of course, family and friends played a major role in the successful completion of this
thesis. Working two jobs, playing in a band, and humped over at my laptop many hours
every day, my girlfriend Elisa Quiros, my mom Melinda, my dad David Sr., and my siblings
Garrett, Erica, and Nichole have supported me and provided healthy and unconditional
support. Some of the best distraction came from friends and colleagues (especially Tristin
Beckman, Cynthia Rodriguez, Ashley Smallwood, Rafael Vanegas, Alaina Gallegos, and
more) and I would like to thank them for the drinks and laughter in periods of both great
frustration and great excitement.
I would like to especially thank my participants in Oaxaca who were patient, caring,
and almost always excited to help me learn about their culture, history, and lives and who
invited me as part of a group to weddings and community celebrations. Most of this group I
would like to thank Miguel, Martin, Rodolfo, Omar Hernandez, and Andres for their honesty
and enthusiasm in interviews and archives. Lastly, I would like to thank those who impacted
my experience in Oaxaca through informal conversation, translations, and companionship
such as Ryan, Ana Goins-Ramirez, Alaina, Christina Buckler, Jessica Bates, and Walter,
among countless others.
1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This thesis is an historical, anthropological, and economic examination of baseball
participation in the Mexican southern state of Oaxaca. A mentor once related to me that all
meaningful historical work emerges from asking good questions, and questions abounded
when I arrived in the Oaxaca Valley in the summer of 2010. As a part of a field methods
course in anthropology under the direction of Dr. Ramona Perez, I intended to go to Oaxaca
and work with fellow students in a project to revamp and digitize archives for a couple of
Valley communities while performing exploratory research in my free time. What I found
was personally striking; a long history of baseball participation among many local
communities in the Valley and a professional baseball team in a city with no soccer
equivalent. Indeed, for the state that is most often considered among the most ‘indigenous’ or
‘undeveloped’ in México, baseball, generally seen played with fervor in the north or the
Yucatán Peninsula, participation to this extent was intriguing.
The polemic Octavio Paz once wrote that “Americans have not looked for México in
México; they have looked for their obsessions, enthusiasms, phobias, hopes, interests—and
these are what they have found.”1 I grew up an avid baseball fan and worked for four years as
a baseball analyst and writer. It was in reflection of my youth when I was a baseball player
and musician that I began to notice the ways in which people so often had dialogue and
negotiated power through cultural expression. Somehow, the popular conception of art forms
has allowed sport to be separated from politics, either institutional or every day. They are
often considered innocuous as the simple pastimes of children. Yet, if it was so unimportant
and distant, one must wonder why governments try so hard to control its production and why
people feel so attached to players, teams, and the actual sport. It is through the practices of
culture that often one can find the missing voices, popular responses and hidden projects of
1
Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude: And Other Writings (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 358.
2
power. My exposure to baseball in Oaxaca revealed a set of practices I assumed was unique
in the country, especially coming from a region so promoted as traditional and unchanging.
This experience spawned the project I am now presenting.
A few major questions emerged that consumed me throughout the various phases of
the project and that guided this research. How did baseball, a long glowing symbol of
American modernity, come to Oaxaca, the country’s most southern state and one commonly
assumed to be the most ‘traditional’? Who brought it and for what purpose? Has this
narrative changed over time and what does participation mean to those actively taking part,
historically and in the present? Why has it been so readily adopted by local people either
through their own participation or through support of a local team?
1.1 ABOUT OAXACA
It is difficult to place an exact figure on indigenous peoples because the idea of the
indigenous is itself developed by those not part of those groups.2 Indeed, indigeneity has
been measured over time using many methods including language, history, blood lineage,
phenotype, and language, among more. However, there are useful estimates available. Using
language and culture as a marker, anthropologist Kristin Norget claims that nearly 70 percent
of the state’s inhabitants are indigenous, holding 18 percent of the nation’s total indigenous
population and constituting the largest proportion of indigenous peoples of any state in
México.3 The United Nations Development Programme, using language alone as the
indicator, gives 44.9 percent of Oaxaca’s population credit as indigenous, a number
representing 16 percent of the nation’s total.4 Despite the discrepancies, the numbers make
clear that Oaxaca is highly indigenous. If we look deeper, however, Oaxaca is a
geographically diverse state both ethnically and physically, featuring sixteen different
2
United Nations Development Programme, Informe sobre Desarrollo Humano de los Pueblos Indígenas
en México (México: Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo, 2010), 25-26.
3
Kristin Norget, Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2006), 28-30
4
en México, 25-26, 37. This publication uses figures taken from the Consejo Nacional de Población (CONAPO),
a Mexican government statistical body.
3
ethnicities, along with towering mountains, pristine beaches, and tropical slopes.5 It is also
just one state removed from Central America (see Figure 1.1). It is in part due to its varied
geography that its relationship with Spanish conquerors was very different from much of the
rest of México. Many of the political arrangements with the Spanish were made through
negotiation rather than conquest. Even today, many indigenous elements mark the unique
system of politics in Oaxaca through their use of a political practice termed usos y
costumbres (traditional customs). In this system, elections are held publicly, candidates
cannot represent a particular party, and a vote is taken por mano, or by hand, in a community
meeting. Many communities have only recently allowed women to have a vote.
Figure 1.1. Map of México highlighting the State of Oaxaca. Source: Mexico Bus
Schedules. “Oaxaca State of Mexico Map.”
http://www.Méxicobusschedules.com/maps/states/Oaxaca_México_Map.gif
(accessed May 16, 2011).
The unique political circumstances in the state are in part attributed to Bourbon
reforms in the eighteenth century that helped create regional identity around local Church
dioceses. Constant political efforts by the country to de-centralize also left interpretation of
5
Francie R. Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca:The View from the South México,
1867-1911(University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 6-7.
4
laws the responsibility of many of the varied municipalities.6 México contains 2,456
municipalities nation-wide, Oaxaca claiming a stunning 570 of that total, more than double
that of any other state.7 While México is said to contain inside of it “many Mexicos” Oaxaca
stands out because of its ethnic diversity, geographic and topographic variation, and sheer
number of municipalities. Charles Gibson referred to “hundreds of colonial documents” to
assert that borders and ethnic demarcation were powerful even in pre-conquest times as well
as during colonization. Spanish officials and others claim indigenous settlements were often
widely separated in the state.8 Considering the great ethnic diversity among indigenous
people, we can see Oaxaca is a state of great complexity.
However, academia has not always recognized this complexity and has even
perpetuated some long held stereotypes of Oaxacan society. Francie Chassen-López believes
that a “Black Legend” of Oaxaca exists where peasants have been colored as “immunized”
from modernization projects, rejecting them altogether because of either a romanticized
version of what the Indian is believed to be or because peasants are largely still seen as
backward and unchanging. Even elites of the state have been stereotyped as “reactionary.”9
However, she acknowledges that the use of usos y costumbres represents a constant fight
from an indigenous “world view” that negates many of the modernist structures that were
incorporated in other parts of México.10
This paper attempts to avoid terminal limits placed on agents and accepts a discourse
of complexity. It is intended to be the beginning of a discussion, not necessarily the final
word. The Oaxacan state largely has a reputation for its indigeneity and traditionalism
because of federal and state level tourism promotion of its indigenous heritage as evidenced
6
James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central
México, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 57; William
H. Beezley, Mexican National Identity: Memory, Innuendo, and Popular Culture (Tucson: The University of
Arizona Press, 2008), 22.
7
Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), “Catálogo de Claves de Entidades Federativas,
Municipios, y Localidades,” http://mapserver.inegi.org.mx/mgn2k/?c=646&s=est (accessed May 12, 2011).
8
Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of México.
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964), 23-24; Norget, Days of Death, Days of Life, 96-98.
9
Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 5.
10
Ibid., 6-7.
5
through arts and crafts, Guelaguetza and the Day of the Dead celebrations and the regional
market systems. My research and experience largely understands Oaxaca as, in fact highly
connected with places outside of itself and extremely modern by most definable aspects of
the term. While the region is not considered heavily industrialized, it is highly politically
aware beyond the municipality. An example of this political sense manifests through protests
that often include protesters inhabiting public spaces such as the prized zocaló for weeks at a
time. The most recent protest occurred during the summer of 2010 over the gubernatorial
elections. At the same time, endless markets sell goods from the romantically traditional,
such as tejidos, pottery, and chapulines, to the latest crazes, including music CDs, Chuck
Taylor All-Stars shoes, and pirated movies still playing in US theatres. The same
contradiction occurs on the outskirts of the city where burros graze sports fields while
downtown bars are packed for US pro sports matches and karaoke. Many campesinos in the
field often wear huaraches and toil at exhausted soil in the fields all day, but have children
who wear contemporary styles and brand clothing. My experience demonstrated the depth of
this globalized phenomenon when I met some young adults who knew obscure bands from
my hometown that not even I knew prior to hearing of them in Oaxaca. Bi-national youth
gangs often walk dirt roads and punk rockers graffiti walls with indigenous imagery. Finally,
Oaxaca is filled with international capital acquired through remittances from the incredibly
high rates of migration to the US.11 In these ways, Oaxaca carries a “clashing” of economic
systems, a “dual economy” that is painted by complexity, and is in few ways isolated.12 This
thesis largely presents these politics of modernity and complexity in Oaxaca and how they
have been negotiated and defined through local participation in baseball.
1.2 METHODOLOGY
Among the main sources for this thesis were newspapers. Many days were spent at
the Oaxaca City archives in the Church of Santo Domingo, where I rifled through documents
for hours on end. Additionally, more contemporary new sources were largely found on the
11
12
David J. Wysocki, field notes, Oaxaca, México, June 13-July 21.
Mohammed Sadli, “Reflections on Boeke’s Theories of Dualistic Economies,” in The Economy of
Indonesia: Selected Readings, ed. Bruce Glassbuner (Jakarta: Equinox Publishing, 1971), 99-100.
6
Internet, a convenient tool for the emerging researcher. Many of the pre-1940 news sources
were largely considered elite, for reasons that will be elucidated in chapter two, while the
later sources are more of a mixed bag and hail from many cities and demographics. Many
American sources, such as mining and engineering journals and the New York Times, were
also used to cover US expansion and politics in the region during the Porfiriato and the
Revolution.
This thesis also relies heavily on formal and informal interviews, some of the full
names of participants are not given and two of the names has been changed. Among the
participants include a personal trainer, a psychologist who works with indigenous peoples, a
migrant and son of a ballplayer, two former ballplayers, and an executive with the Guerreros,
Oaxaca City’s professional baseball organization. Other informal interviews took place daily
and were captured in a detailed field notebook, which I rely on heavily for my analysis of the
professional ballgame in chapter three. As an exploratory project, I found little information
useless and, in fact, much I had believed useless initially contributed heavily to the final
analysis. Indeed, participant observation was a key element to the data collection of this
paper. Additionally, published oral histories from community web sites were used sparingly
to detail phenomena.
While working in municipal archives I was also able to gather some data on the
political importance of sport in the region and the various politics involved in their
introduction. I rely heavily on some basic economic and baseball statistics gathered from
government web sources, non-profit organizations, and other respected statistical databases.
In one portion of the thesis I also analyze a produce a pricing survey conducted on the
Internet and through informants in Oaxaca City. Lastly, I communicated with several
officials in local museums in Oaxaca City to help navigate the beginnings of the sport in the
city. Of course, this thesis would be largely empty without a healthy use of sociological
theory of sport and Mexican baseball.
1.3 LITERARY REVIEW: THE SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS
OF SPORT
The study of sport is a subject only recently treaded with great popularity, either
because of academic “chauvinism” or an underlying “Puritan” approach that perceived sport
7
as insignificant leisure or entertainment in the opinion of sports sociologist John
Hargreaves.13 However, in the 1970s, likely due to the fact that these fields of grass, turf, and
mud were the only real sites of confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union
at the height of the Cold War, sports burst onto the academic radar. A simultaneous current
running in academia was described by a group of historians, headed by William Beezley,
who surveyed students to discover what they found relevant in the period. Influenced by the
counter-culture movement and other political events, many students believed that the
traditional economic and political discourse had become “bottled” and “narrowly
professional” in efforts to find an objective and scientific method. Students interpreted their
world differently, now less interested in “how a country died” but rather were captivated by
emotional everyday human experiences such as love, fights, and overall struggle.14 In the
effort to tap into this swelling sentiment, the authors recommend historical examinations of
music, sports, art, and the environment as well as regional studies of Africa and Latin
America, which were gaining in popularity around the US, where issues on race and
revolution proved relevant.15
Patsy Neal (1972) is among the early students of sports sociology since its surge as a
popular study. She imagined sport as a “man’s search for perfection,” or progression that
allowed him to take chances without risking actual physical harm. She perceived sport as a
venue for humankind to test his or her primal will, becoming “complete” and self-realized
through competition and hard work. Sport then represents man’s risk-taking, creativity,
discipline, and caring among many more characteristics that ultimately help create man as a
“total being.”16 Essentially, man looks for sport more as his surroundings become upended
and he seeks a new meaning of the self. Sport’s competition and intangibles, possibly like
13
John Hargreaves, “Sport, Culture, and Ideology,” in Sports, Culture, and Ideology ed. Jennifer
Hargreaves (London: Routledge, 1982), 30-32.
14
William H. Beezley, Ronald D. Tallman, and Thomas H. Hariksen, “History for the 70's: An Approach
to Contemporary History.” The History Teacher 6 (November 1972): 9.
15
Ibid., 10-12; Donald Bray, “A New Latin Americanist Pedagogy,” Latin American Perspectives 31
(January 2004): 10-13.
16
Patsy Neal, Sport and Identity (Philadelphia: Dorrance & Company, 1972), 19-21.
8
science, allow man to realize this meaning.17 Additionally, sport allows freedom to the
participant and an escape to a previously unreachable place in society. Rules and structure of
sports can “internalize” in athletes and this makes them susceptible to social control.
However, the participant generally retains ultimate control even though participation forces
an athlete to follow the sport’s rules with the threat of punishment if they are broken.18
Richard Gruneau and Brian Petrie reflect modern sports’ politics and social inequality
in Sport and Social Order (1975). Gruneau outlined the Marxist approach, which is narrowly
materialistic, seeing sport as inextricably bonded within a framework of classist hierarchy
with great differences between its participants’ wealth and power. Sport producers are seen
as commodities in a process of capitalist production where the structure of sport promotes
free-market ideology. Gruneau argues that the only way to establish a truly equal sports
model or structure, or simply eliminate its capitalist elements, is to eliminate competition and
make sports producers its controllers in a democratic establishment.19 Contrastingly, in his
opinion the rational functionalist view of sport is that sport itself aims for efficiency in its
division of labor and that sport is not a segregating practice, but rather is integrating because
it reflects the values of the whole society. According to Gruneau this approach acknowledges
incentive, and upward mobility based on these incentives, effectively establishing
socioeconomic fluidity within a society and further integrating its people. This approach also
recognizes the ability of a society to rally around ideas faster.20 Gruneau ultimately believes
that sports promote inequality because we are forced to accept that all sports are built on
unequal ground, or buried inside hierarchical systems of undemocratic rules and unequal
wealth. Even within the measuring of the performance of the individual we feel a need to
place a ranking on sports’ producers. Therefore, Gruneau seems to take the side of the
17
Ibid., 22-25.
18
Ibid., 33-38, 175.
19
Richard Gruneau, “Sport, Social Differentiation, and Social Inequality,” in Sport and Social Order:
Contributions to the Sociology of Sport, eds. Donald Ball and John Loy. (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company, 1975), 136-137.
20
Ibid., 142.
9
Marxist approach but accepts a discourse that describes sport as a mirror of a society’s
cultural traditions.21
Petrie’s piece on the political aspects of sport displays the ways sport can be fused
with national politics. He emphasizes three basic “dimensions” or manipulations of
contemporary sport: its use by politicians, its use by a community to build collective identity,
and its relevance in the debate between political “radicals” and conservatives. He argues that
most often these relationships are disgruntled and dangerous. For example, he stresses that
allying with sport and placing on it nationalist legitimacy can be politically suicidal when
your team loses. Petrie places heavy emphasis on sport as a relevant political and social study
because it is part of a “social reality” and “anchored” to the political and economic system,
outlining and underlying all the major ideologies of those in power.22 All levels of society
can use sport, however, as a way to grab power, and all levels can be exploited. Elites have
often used sport as proof of “positive socialization” of a society and this is displayed partially
when fans use sport to leech out aggression that may have been previously directed more so
at the existing power structure. Sport in this sense can be a simple distraction from the
everyday problems that plague a society, a view he claims is held by radicals who see sport
often as simply an “opiate.”23
Petrie advises us to primarily emphasize the use of sport as a tool for the spread and
reinforcement of political ideologies that are coming from a new economic organization,
which has also overlapped with the political.24 Of course, because modern sport has
encouraged mass participation of the fan base, politicians also approach spectators as they
would any special interest group (like those based on religion or ethnicity). The appearances
at sporting events and associations politicians make with sport give the fan base direct
confrontation with the political figure.25 Politicians make these appearances because they
21
Ibid., 128-129.
22
Ibid., 190.
23
Brian Petrie, “Sport and Politics,” in Sport and Social Order: Contributions to the Sociology of Sport,
eds. Donald Ball and John Loy, (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1975), 191-192.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid., 193.
10
recognize the nationalistic potential in an audience that is already “captive,” and can fuse
symbols like national anthems and military performances into the game in its downtime.26
These fusions can also hurt the politician, however, because the politician is at mercy of the
crowd’s opinion and emotion, which can lead to collective antagonism.27 Petrie claims also
that athletes come to change their values as they are conditioned to obey the authority of
coaches and become politically conservative. Athletes in general, in fact, may be more
vulnerable to this type of conditioning because at some level they choose this acquiescence.28
John Hargreaves’ work in Sport, Culture, and Ideology (1982) focuses on Marxistfunctionalist debates. To Hargreaves, sport is a powerful meaning-making expression that
can not only help one discern a society’s complex social order through symbols, but also can
be used by subalterns to “attack” existing systems.29 Hargreaves sees the functionalist
viewpoint as emerging from a nineteenth century recreation movement that stressed
rationality and sport functioned essentially as a tension-release in a safe environment. Indeed,
this viewpoint seems to stress integration because it relieves stress among different groups of
participants as well. However, Hargreaves sees this view as ignorant to power relationships
of work and politics from which, he argues, sport cannot be distanced.30 He briefly recounts
the interactionist philosophy by suggesting a model of sports as simply symbolic warfare in
times of rapid change between fan-bases or players that help one project threatening
emotions onto others through team competition.31 Additionally, modern sports promote elitist
and imperialist traits of selfishness, egotism, and societal dissection coupled with mythical
lies of equality that attempt to overshadow a society’s real problems, like that of race. While
Hargreaves sees the Marxist viewpoint as superior to functionalism because of its recognition
of the struggle between cultural, economic, and political power, it is also shortsighted
because it fails to recognize the freedom within sport that allows its continued enjoyment or
26
Ibid., 199.
27
Ibid., 207.
28
Ibid., 222-223.
29
Hargreaves, “Sport, Culture, and Ideology,” 33.
30
Ibid., 39.
31
Ibid., 40.
11
criticism. Thus, people are able to move in and out of these supposed models of production
and sport itself is never represented uniformly anywhere. Marxism, then, is incompatible in
cultural studies because of its failure to recognize human complexity.32 Hargreaves advises
us to look at sports as a reciprocal negotiation of power between different groups of people.
For him, there is no linear or all-powerful agent imposing ideology or practice and subaltern
groups have, in fact, resisted and gained power by appropriating or manipulating sports and
culture.33
Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning (1986) have contributed significantly to our
conception of modern sport in their work The Quest for Excitement. They argue that a
political calm that has followed contemporary industrial societies has created a demand for
excitement.34 Moreover, contemporary sport acts in a quasi-religious manner because it has
become central to identity creation with the rise of secularism. Indeed, “in-group” and “outgroup” is reinforced heavily as contemporary sports teams are put together pinning place
against place through team associations, and work as one of the only ways diverse and
changing contemporary cities can find collective identity.35 They believe sport to be a
mechanism of control and find relation to official seriousness in sport and a mass civilizing
project by those populations who participate heavily.36
Martin Barry Vinokur (1988) wonders how sports can be described both as a mirror
of society and an escape from society at the same time, seemingly opposing the ‘floating’
conviction of some of the previous authors.37 He argues that sport is as much a part of
national character as is any kind of institution, be it religious, political or economic, and that
it can be used to integrate nations. He doubts that sports can create nations or be used to
32
Ibid., 41.
33
Ibid., 51.
34
Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning, Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 63-90.
35
Ibid., 220-223.
36
Ibid., 231.
37
Martin Barry Vinokur, More than a Game: Sports and Politics (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 6.
12
effectively prevent uprisings.38 Additionally, he believes that participants of sport have
already chosen, by participating, to try and maintain a certain social order, so the subaltern
power often associated with sport is severely limited.39 For Vinokur, there are three “levels”
of sports organization: physical education, recreation, and championship sport, the last of
which is most important as a political tool.40 Physical education is government-instituted in
the Western world and has attempted to ingrain capitalistic individualism in its participants.
Socialist and developing nations use sport differently. These countries use sport to maintain
social and political order and produce champions for international competition, which can be
used to improve international relations or help spread national pride and legitimacy.41 Nearly
all countries, however, try and promote leadership, health (some for the defense of the
homeland), and entertainment for distraction.42
Pierre Bourdieu (1991) later added in his article “Sport and Social Class” some
elements of modern sport that make it autonomous from other types of study and certainly
relevant. Modern sports are an appropriation of popular games, and then are re-taken back by
the popular class, generally through professionalization. The sport itself represents a field of
struggles in which each participant competes over what the definition of sport will be
(popular v. elite). However, it is also a struggle over the “legitimate” use of the body.43 Real
constraints exist for those entering sport. One important constraint is economic, and this
helps define what sport one will enter. The other is the relationship to the body one has
embedded in one’s “habitus,” where the working classes often search for sports that are
characterized by heavy exertion and physical pain.44 Like art, sport remains for the elite a
38
Ibid., 1-4, 135-136.
39
Ibid., 134.
40
Ibid., 7, 136.
41
Ibid., 10, 14-15.
42
Ibid., 10.
43
Pierre Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” in Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives
in Cultural Studies, ed. Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1991), 361.
44
Ibid., 370-371.
13
“technique of sociability” and as a way to distance themselves from the struggles of the poor
by severely limiting and controlling the way one moves in the sport’s practice.45
In 1994, William Morgan wrote a response for Gruneau, largely influenced by Michel
Foucault and Bourdieu, presenting the popular conception of sport as a hegemonic institution
or process. Despite obvious ties to a form of social control directly linked with politics and
social order, sport is uniquely able to hide under a guise of weakness or harmlessness. In a
sense, rules created inside a game are believed to create an alternate reality, but actually, it
moves people deeper into existing realities.46 Although sport works to reinforce hegemonic
control in this perspective, he believes one cannot ignore the varying “languages” and
approaches to sports sociology that make the study of sport complex and perhaps
autonomous from other types of sociological studies.47
1.4 LITERARY REVIEW: BASEBALL IN MÉXICO
Perceived political and economic stability among modernization campaigns at the end
of the nineteenth century was called the “Porfirian persuasion” by William Beezley in his
famous work Judas at the Jockey Club (1987).48 This persuasion was best displayed in sport,
from which the Mexican adoption of baseball came and the bullfight hidden. Baseball was
developed further to distance itself from “savage” pastimes with the hosting of tournaments,
making México internationally and regionally significant, and the creation of professional
leagues. Baseball has since been one of México’s adopted, but embraced, pastimes.49 It was a
Mexican elite’s weapon that was bandwagoned and used against its own “backwards”
people.50
45
Ibid., 372.
46
William J. Morgan, Leftist Theories of Sport: A Critique and Reconstruction (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1994), 63.
47
Ibid., 116.
48
William H. Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club: And Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 13.
49
50
Ibid., 24-26.
John Mason Hart. Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002).
14
Baseball, however, has not been solely promoted by elites, as was displayed by
Gilbert Joseph (1988) in his article on baseball in the Yucatán Peninsula. The game was
originally brought over by either Cuban or Mexican students in the US, but it was
encouraged by local henequen elites at the end of the nineteenth century as a subtle way to
modernize the Maya labor force, improving their health and morality while introducing them
to a modern structure like uniforms.51 It was also a way for industrial bosses and politicians
to control disgruntled workers through integration and teamwork exercises; but the workers
took the game and formed their own leagues, controlling its production.52 Yucatán was the
only place in México where baseball production was controlled or accepted by the masses,
according to Joseph. Everywhere else it remained a manipulative elitist tool until recently.53
The appeal for the masses laid in its ability to distract or control one’s own destiny in a time
of rapid modern and industrial change and also bonuses could provide real opportunities to
advance up the socio-economic ladder.54
Baseball had created vast communication networks all over the peninsula unlike
anything before, and socialist governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto aimed to exploit these
networks and revive the Maya Caste War with the socialist revolution in the 1920s.55 Carrillo
Puerto admired the game because of its ability to ingrain attitudes of collectivity and sacrifice
and its “grassroots” organization made it especially politically valuable.56 The baseball clubs
became deeply fused with community building and political organizing, even being used as
schools, in what were called Ligas de Resistencia. For many Maya descendents, the game
was more “spiritual” for them than even religion.57 Joseph’s work is relevant because it is
one of the few done on baseball in Southern México, and its subjects and participants are
51
Gilbert M. Joseph, “Forging the Regional Pastime: Baseball and Class in Yucatán,” in Sport and Society
in Latin America: Diffusion, Dependency, and the Rise of Mass Culture ed. by Joseph L. Arbena (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1988), 33-35.
52
Ibid., 36.
53
Ibid., 42.
54
Ibid., 38.
55
Ibid., 45-46.
56
Ibid., 48-49.
57
Ibid., 50.
15
largely indigenous peoples like those in Oaxaca. In the Yucatán, baseball seemed to create
more communication networks than the state relied upon in a spit of dense jungle and remote
communities.
Alan Klein (1997), an anthropologist, detailed a bi-national professional baseball
team in Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas called the “Tecos” in his work
Baseball on the Border. Klein details the transnational nature of the sport and origin myths
that arose from the Mexican side to place their own stamp on the game. Through the Tecos,
however, Klein shows that the game’s definition ultimately relies on varied regional
interpretations that supersede those linked to the country. When the cities had a different
team on each side of the border, they were bitter rivals. However, when a bi-national team
was created the fans shared a “single identity.”58 The biggest contribution, however, may be
Klein’s analysis of sexuality in the Mexican game, citing a culture of home runs and an
obsession with physical power. He cites macho behavior throughout the sport in México
through historical regional relationships with the United States.59
In an interesting display of nationalism, Michael and Mary Oleksak in 1991
documented Jorge Pasquel, an influential owner in the Mexican League during the World
War II and post-war era, as nationalistic but a competitor for international ballplayers. His
investment in baseball convinced quality Latino ballplayers to join his league over Major
League Baseball (MLB) and actually offered salaries high enough to convince many MLB
whites to play in México as well. He provoked and antagonized MLB officials who
responded by levying bans on American players who joined the Mexican league. The
Oleksaks describe each international player acquired by the Mexican League as representing
“Villista-like” gains against the resented US.60 Indeed, Richard McKelvey’s Mexican Raiders
58
Alan M. Klein, Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1997), 64.
59
60
Ibid., 151-169.
Michael M. Oleksak and Mary Adams Oleksak, Beisbol: Latin Americans and the Grand Old Game
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Masters Press, 1991), 51.
16
in the Major Leagues follows a similar story detailing the Pasquels’ work and showing the
growing nationalist rhetoric in the politics of professional baseball.61
David LaFrance (2002) later described how Mexican baseball found ways to battle
poor labor conditions in the 1980s. Players in the Mexican professional leagues were seen by
owners as easily replaceable and cheap entertainment. The specialization of baseball skill had
historically given players little leverage to mount resistance to labor abuses and low wages
that plagued many of the country’s workers in the period.62 Tired of exploitation, unionbusting, and lack of enforcement of the Constitution that guaranteed them labor rights,
Mexican ball players created a rival league, becoming the first professional athletes to
organize in the country’s history. They provided, even in ultimate failure, inspiration for
future labor movements in México.63
José Almillo (2003) documented immigrants baseball in Southern California. During
World War II, Mexican migrants used baseball clubs to create ethnic community and
improve their organization skills in a nativist and economically exploitative environment. It
was a way to show others of their capable strength and unification on social issues.64
Baseball leagues were supported by company managers, however, who viewed participation
as a way to expedite production, birth loyalty to the company, and distract workers from
creating organized labor movements while simultaneously promoting “baseball
consciousness” that modernized and de-feminized backwards Mexicans. In this period “play
reformers” took baseball as a crusade to promote organization and structure among children,
especially Latinos who could be turned into obedient laborers.65 However, baseball also
represented a chance for Mexicans to move up the social ladder by becoming coaches and
61
Richard G. McKelvey, Mexican Raiders in the Major Leagues: The Pasquel Brothers vs. Organized
Baseball, 1946 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2006).
62
David G. LaFrance, “Baseball, the State, and Professional Baseball in México in the 1980s,” in Sport in
Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. Joseph L. Arbena and David G. LaFrance (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly
Resources, Inc., 2002), 92.
63
Ibid., 93, 109.
64
José M. Alamillo, “Peloteros in Paradise: Mexican Americans in Baseball and Oppositional Politics in
Southern California, 1930-1950,” The Western Historical Quarterly 34 (2003): 192.
65
Ibid., 193-194.
17
often the game gave players a financial alternative to agricultural work.66 Games and
tournaments allowed players’ and spectators’ families to reconnect and worked to celebrate
Mexican solidarity.67 These baseball clubs and games birthed Mexican labor unions like the
United Cannery Agricultural Packing and Allied Workers of America. They also provided
lessons in fundraising and collectivity.68 The open competition against white ballclubs further
allowed Mexicans to contest racial superiority and masculinize the Mexican who was often
seen as feminine.69 Here, the players used baseball as not only a symbolic resistance, but in
fact, to organize and accumulate power.
Richard Santillan in 2008 writes of the prevalence of Mexican baseball teams in the
United States Midwest during the 1920s through the postwar period that provided social
mobility and the creation of community in a distant land. Leagues formed by immigrants and
Mexican American citizens gave a physical meeting space at baseball games for the creation
of a transnational identity based on race, religion, occupation and common migratory
experiences. Games would be used to engage in social and political discussion among fans in
a place where their citizenship didn’t exist, or was not always readily accepted. Indeed, many
community members viewed baseball, which promoted leadership and survival skills, as a
vital learning experience for their children and these skills helped in organizational efforts in
fights for social justice. The game also promoted integration and community building by
fielding teams that mixed ages. Interestingly, the reason baseball was chosen as the cultural
expression of the community was based on the game’s popularity in both México and the US
and team names took after places in México, reflecting imagined and real connections with
the homeland. Santillan’s argument is that baseball tied together the Mexican American
community by blending Mexican culture and civil rights in America.70
66
Ibid., 197-198.
67
Ibid., 200.
68
Ibid., 199, 207-208.
69
Ibid., 204-205.
70
Richard Santillan, “Mexican Baseball Teams in the Midwest, 1916-1965: The Politics of Cultural
Survival and Civil Rights,” in Sports and the Racial Divide: African American and Latino Experience in an Era
of Change, ed. Michael E. Lomax (Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 146-155.
18
1.5 THESIS ORGANIZATION
This thesis is organized somewhat chronologically. Chapter two begins to address the
questions of how and who introduced baseball to Oaxaca. It outlines the liberal project
undertaken in the region from the infamous Benito Juárez to Porfirio Díaz and beyond,
explaining their goals for the development of México, and Oaxaca, and the science that
informed them. This chapter roughly covers the boom of investment during Díaz’s regime,
the move to remake the aesthetic qualities of the capital city and provide leisurely escapes to
help promote foreign investment desperately needed after decades of in-fighting,
imperialism, and corruption. Here baseball was imported to fulfill an exclusionary purpose,
as were many of the modernization imports of the Porfiriato, and was considered among the
most civilized of sports, meant to keep busy the city’s cosmopolitan elite. However, the
Revolution brought a new conception of the Indian and the Mexican nation and baseball
began to be seen for its socializing qualities. While indigenous peoples were excluded from
many of the Porfirian projects, they have found many ways to resist and demand access,
making them not truly sub-altern. Baseball, however, for these groups would remain a
vestige of elitism and most wouldn’t realize find access until roughly the 1950s.
Chapter three covers the professionalism in the game now, addressing the question of
how baseball’s significance has modified over time and how it became significant to local
populations. Oaxaca has changed significantly from its Porfirian roots, yet capital still tends
to define the participants and aficionados at the games. However, unlike the game that was
imported in the late nineteenth century, the professional game now features many Oaxacan
elements and the league in which they play has a rich history of confrontation with the US.
Instead of being completely exclusionary, the team has attempted to channel indigenous
symbols to gain legitimacy and increase its potential market around the Valley. The stadium
itself has become a shrine of modernity and cosmopolitanism, trapping international and
local as well as traditional and modern symbols and rituals. Ultimately, the crowds choose
what to keep and what to dispose.
Chapter four tackles baseball from its largely unspoken, but important, history,
providing the voice of Oaxacans to this research. Using some oral histories, baseball
produced from the bottom-up is analyzed and compared to contemporary amateur and semiprofessional projects in the state. The game has evolved significantly since the Porfiriato and
19
no one group has complete control over its production. The government continues to promote
baseball as a way to socialize its population and modernize Oaxaca’s image. It is actively
engaging in projects to help create a championship sport to compete with northern rivals.
However, the process has not been easy because of the rivals in the north and also, perhaps,
their rivals within the state. A new economic organization in the neo-Porfiriato has created
opportunity for cultural producers to rise as alternative caregivers in the state; largely this has
been attempted through a baseball academy. In the end I demonstrate how economic realities
have made all official projects limited in the long term. However, baseball remains a
significant source of identity creation for many local populations.
20
CHAPTER 2
PISTOLEROS AND PELOTEROS: OAXACA
THROUGH MODERNIZATION
In 1907 AG Spaulding claimed that baseball was first played by Abner Doubleday in
Cooperstown, New York in 1839, the current residence of the Major League Baseball (MLB)
Hall of Fame.71 However, historical tracing since has disputed this claim and added depth to
the sport’s evolution, placing its antecedents back as far as 5,000 years ago in Egypt.72
Through Southern Europe, ball games moved into England by the fifteenth century, where
popular and mostly non-gendered games such as rounders, stoolball, and trapball evolved and
became baseball’s direct ancestors. Indeed, these games were played by the working class at
days of festivals or feasts, but were said by elites to promote “godlessness.”73 The meaning
of games changed as they were increasingly played in British schools, disconnected from
their original social relevance and transforming them into organized bodily exercises, or “an
art for art’s sake.”74 Slowly elites subdued the brutishness of these games and imposed a set
of rules that required an “orderlied discipline” that had never existed.75 Like other institutions
of social control, this redefined “modern” sport occupied the time of children and later
developed into technique for the rich to distance themselves from the vulgarities around
them.76 It was this spirit of the modern sport that changed México’s relationship with sport
forever and deeply influenced baseball’s demographics around the country.
71
Tony Collins, John Martin, and Wray Vamplew. Encyclopedia of Traditional British Rural Sports
(London: Routledge, 2005), 41-42.
72
Sálon de la Fama del Beisbol Profesional de México, “Historia del Beisbol: Antecedentes,”
http://www.salondelafama.com.mx/salondelafama/beisbol/beisbol_antecedentes.asp (accessed February 5,
2011).
73
Collins, Encyclopedia of Traditional British Rural Sports, 232-233, 251-253, 271.
74
Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” 359-360.
75
Elias and Dunning, Quest for Excitement, 151.
76
Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” 365.
21
This chapter aims to trace baseball’s first importation into México and, more
specifically, Oaxaca. Through historical analysis of the region’s political, social, and
economic environments during the first years of the game’s participation, I hope to provide
answers to some key questions of this project. In this chapter I hope to elucidate why the
game was imported and by whom. Further, what conditions existed that made Oaxaca a
prime landing spot for the sport?
2.1 NINETEENTH CENTURY MÉXICO AND THE SCIENCE
OF MODERNIZATION
Emerging from decades of political strife and infighting through the War of the
Reform, Mexican liberal politics from the mid-nineteenth century carried a positivist tinge, a
sociological philosophy that guided many Western governments. Oaxaca, the former
cochineal capital of the nation, was placed in a rare position of national prominence,
producing presidents Benito Juárez and Porfirio Díaz who powered the state’s “dual legacy”
of liberalism on the Mexican nation from 1858 to 1910.77 During this period Oaxaca would
be a major focus of the tenures of both former state governors and aggressive liberal policies
of modernization were imposed to help turn around what was long believed an
underdeveloped state, promoting stability, order, and, consequently, affluence.
Since independence in 1821 México had suffered through incredible instability
including three invasions of conquest from the Spanish, Americans, and the French,
respectively, and caudillo-led uprisings that constantly disrupted the national political
landscape and left much of the nation war-torn, distant, and divided. Essential sources of
income from colonial times were disrupted in constant chaos such as the destruction and
abandonment of productive mines, the capital flight of prominent Peninsulares and Criollos,
an unstable currency, and the reduction of the role of the Church that functioned as the
region’s most reliable moneylender. The combination of these factors sustained a more than
77
22
half century-long recession, perhaps into the late 1880s.78 The lack of durable infrastructure,
especially in the mountainous and southern states like Oaxaca, resulted in capital and coastal
cities being developed unevenly compared to those of the countryside.79 Problems were often
blamed on the state’s mass indigenous population and liberal leaders, frustrated after 300
years of “authoritarian Spanish corporatism” and conservative stagnation that allowed the
survival of the “communal traditions of Mesoamerica,” became drunk over pragmatic
Enlightenment ideals and a modernity defined by its individual, anti-clerical, and scientific
qualities.80 The result was an embrace of a trendy “positive” science that provided easier
answers to quell the state’s complicated ills.
From the industrial experience of Western Europe, positivism was introduced and
popularized by two of the world’s most respected nineteenth century scientists: August
Comte and Herbert Spencer. Comte (1798-1857), the father of sociology, believed that the
human mind was evolving in a linear fashion, leaving humans inescapably subject to the
scientific laws of nature as he defined them. He argued that in humanity’s primitive stages,
people wasted their minds obsessing over the meaning of life and things that could become.
Because ideas “govern the world,” these “theological” and “metaphysical” stages
encouraged “intellectual anarchy” of the mind through wild thinking, a path that would
undoubtedly lead humanity into political chaos and revolution for eternity. The positive state
is humanity’s final resting place; a point where man can overcome nature through
understanding it and taking from it the gift of predictability. From here, humanity, having
ditched its reliance on clericalism and embraced the rational, would no longer need to toy
with the unknown and useless applications of non-scientific information. The philosophy
reserves itself to never possessing “absolute knowledge,” however, reasoning and
observation can reveal natural laws that are timeless and can guide humanity into a peaceful,
78
Victor Bulmer Thomas, John H. Coatsworth, and Roberto Cortés Conde, eds, The Colonial Era and the
Short Nineteenth Century, vol. 1 of The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America (Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 345-353, 442; Paul Garner, Porfirio Díaz (Harlo, England and New
York: Longman, 2001), 22.
79
Bulmer Thomas, Coatsworth, and Cortés Conde, The Colonial Era and the Short Nineteenth Century,
80
488.
23
enlightened, and acquiescent existence. This state of mind would be, in other words, the
“salvation” of human race, supplanting the doping of theological philosophy.81
Spencer (1820-1903) applied the ideas of Comte to the emerging discussions around
the nature of Charles Darwin’s evolution itself, an idea that left positivism with a particularly
racist tone in Oaxaca with its adoption and application by Mexican intellectuals of the period.
His ideas of “social evolution,” later known as “social Darwinism,” described societies as if
hermetically sealed, groups of people falling into near dichotomous categories such as
“militant” or “industrial” using superficial empiricism. The militant society was marked by
its impetuousness and was generally governed by a militant and tyrannical despot. The
industrial society, on the other hand, is typified by thriving democracy that is not empty of
official checks and balances. Spencer believed the society must integrate all types of
societies, eventually breeding out more primitive forms of settlement and governance to
civilized cooperation. This would give direction to, and eventually end, the “wandering
group” by “increasing coherence.”82
Mexican intellectuals such as Gabino Barreda, Porfirio Parra, José Limantour, and
other cientificos, intellectuals which acted as trusted aides to Díaz, applied these writings
candidly to Mexican society. México’s “salvation” would come from re-imposing affects of
European society in México including building styles, fashion, and even preference in art.
While Comte imagined positivism as working with a rising proletariat power in Europe, these
intellectuals believed positivism would meld with a Mexican middle class that was hoped to
be strengthening from the land reforms of Ley Lerdo in 1856, which was to take church lands
and distribute them among peasant farmers.83 Indeed, Parra reiterated the benefits of studying
natural laws and facts frequently in letters to Porfirio Díaz as the bond between the
cientificos and the presidency was strengthened.84
81
August Comte, “The Positive Philosophy,” in The Age of Porfirio Diaz: Selected Readings, ed. Carlos
B. Gil (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977), 45-48.
82
Herbert Spencer, “Societies as Organisms,” in The Age of Porfirio Diaz: Selected Readings, ed. Carlos
B. Gil (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977), 49-51.
83
84
Comte, “The Positive Philosophy,” 45.
Porfirio Parra, “The General Character of the Positive Method,” in The Age of Porfirio Diaz: Selected
Readings, ed. Carlos B. Gil (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977), 52-54.
24
Later, historian Francisco Bulnes took a particularly harsh tone through his positive
application. Bulnes created a hierarchy of the world’s human races, categorized primarily by
diet. For Bulnes, history had shown us that the “race of wheat” had crushed repeatedly the
races of corn and rice. However, the “race of corn” still could conquer the “race of rice”
because the latter was the weakest.85 Bulnes believed that what made some races weaker was
that they knew only how to die, ignorant of the world and not possessing the strength or will
to kill. He said, “More specifically, it is the lot of the barbarous or savage men to die like
flies,” the skill and art of killing reserved for the elite who were highly trained and
progressive, providing an early justification for unequal treatment of the lower classes.86
Indeed, the civilized were disciplined and could artfully control their bodily movements and
weapons, making them nature’s crowned dominant class. The strength of the affluent and the
weakness and unpredictability of the naïve popular classes provided justification for an
authoritarian leader, more specifically Díaz.87
Feeling themselves as equals to those of Europe and the United States, the Oaxacan
elite known as the vallistocracia, were embarrassed of their own indigenous population.88
Foreign travelers cited with amazement the savagery of campesinos that did not wear shoes
or eat with forks. They modified new technologies to resemble what they knew from the past,
perpetuating the image of the Mexican as fearful and an obstruction to progress.89 Liberals
approached these issues differently, but nearly all accepted that there was indeed an “Indian
Problem,” so to speak. Juárez, a Zapotec from a mountain range that now carries his name,
was president of México from 1858 to 1864 and then again from 1867 to 1872. Like
intellectuals of the period, he believed the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca to be backwards and
too primitive to carry forward the liberal project, a precursor of what would be considered
85
The “race of wheat” refers to the diet of people of European descent. The races of corn and rice refer to
Amer-Indians and Asians, respectively, in their most exoticized forms.
86
Francisco Bulnes, “The Three Human Races,” in The Age of Porfirio Diaz: Selected Readings, ed.
Carlos B. Gil (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977), 39-41.
87
Ibid., 39-41.
88
Benjamin T. Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements: The Politics of State Formation in
Postrevolutionary Oaxaca (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 29.
89
Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club, 71.
25
Kipling’s “white man’s burden.”90 He interestingly perceived himself not as an Indian, but as
a liberal.91 Like assimilation efforts in the US through Indian boarding schools during the
same period, Juárez hoped to hollow out indigeneity through socialization.92 Juárez’s
realization that the Mexican nation must be formed and built on the backs of the assimilated
masses was, however, disrupted by the rigid and hardened policies of Díaz who took a
stricter version of positivism with him into the presidency.93
Díaz followed some of the policies of Juárez except instead of sticking by the law to
bring order, Díaz brought the stick, the threat of brute force from his personal police: the
rurales. Knowing México needed an influx of foreign capital, Díaz instituted policies of
order and progress that would provide enough stability to attract foreign investment and
international “civilized” trade. As opposed to the Indian who feared and resented because he
was perceived as religious, lazy, and mercurial, the diligence and inherent characteristics of
the European workingman could eliminate the Indian roadblock to progress and modernity in
the opinion of Díaz and his allies.94 For Díaz it was clear, then, that he would work to replace
his resident population with a more foreign population, with much the same idea as a product
import. The new populations of Europeans would displace the Indian who existed relatively
further into the unforgiving Oaxacan periphery. In this way, Oaxaca’s capitalist
modernization project was often one of blatant exclusion.95
2.2 PORFIRIAN MINING AND RAILROADS
While his predecessors were often timid to invite in foreign investment following the
US-Mexican War, the Gadsden Purchase, and the French imperial occupation of the midnineteenth century, Díaz was willing to offer attractive packages to lure investors back into
90
91
Patrick J. McNamara, Sons of the Sierra: Juárez, Díaz, and the People of Ixtlán, Oaxaca, 1855-1920
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 31.
92
Eve Darian-Smith, New Capitalists: Law, Politics, and Identity Surrounding Casino Gaming on Native
American Land (Belmont, California: Thompson Wadsworth, 2004), 22.
93
94
Ibid.
95
Ibid., 339.
26
México. For Díaz, “the political future of the country depends entirely on the development of
the economy.”96 This is not to say the president did not have reservations of widespread US
expansion in México. Indeed, he worked hard to influence politics in Central America and
noted to British and French governments his concern of growing US influence at México’s
southern border.97 But Mexicans and Díaz were most afraid it seems of another US invasion.
According to Friedrich Katz, four different strategies were employed to curb the power of
their northern neighbors while simultaneously growing from within. First, Díaz would
“bandwagon” American investors who would in turn discourage war to protect their own
investments. Secondly, the government would “balance” US investments with European ones
to make sure the US could not completely dominate the economic arena. While never halting
US investment, Díaz found ways to balance US interests with European ones. Finally, he
aimed to bolster the domestic military and offer military bases to countries such as Japan
with a larger counter-balance as to discourage further illegal US occupation.98
While funding even for the Díaz era was hard to come by, and projects were
frequently planned and abandoned, much was accomplished in short time thanks to Díaz’s
land and tax concessions to foreigners.99 In fact, the first useful road connecting Oaxaca City
and México City wasn’t built until the mid-nineteenth century, ironically, by French imperial
forces on their warpath to the Valley of Oaxaca.100 However, the landscape quickly changed
on Díaz’s watch. Before 1876, when Díaz took office, a paltry 640 kilometers of railroad
track was laid in México and none of it was in Oaxaca. However, by the start of the Mexican
Revolution in 1910, when Díaz departed, there was over 19,000 kilometers of track with
Oaxaca boasting 1,829 kilometers of the total.101 Non-transport communications also
96
Friedrich Katz, “International Wars, Mexico, and U.S. Hegemony,” in Cycles of Conflict, Centuries of
Change: Crisis, Reform, and Revolution in Mexico, eds. Elisa Servin, Leticia Reina, and John Tutino, (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2007), 188.
97
David R. Mares, Violent Peace: Militarized Interstate Bargaining in Latin America (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2001), 60-61.
98
Katz, “International Wars, Mexico, and U.S. Hegemony,” 187-190; Stephen M. Walt, Taming American
Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005), 24-25.
99
Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 49-51.
100
Ibid., 47.
101
Ibid., 45-48.
27
improved vastly in the state, by 1900 wielding “one of the best telegraph networks in the
country.”102 New urban centers arose around railroads and promoted the development of crop
commercialization and new haciendas in the Central Valleys and the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec; export commodities which necessitated the building of new sea ports.103 Just
before the outbreak of the Revolution in 1910, railroads continued to be the most important
issue in Oaxaca for foreign capitalists. At times, the US government even considered their
construction a vital part of US national security, especially in the Isthmus where a railroad
could connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans bringing New Orleans 1,400 miles closer to
thriving San Francisco.104 Figure 2.1 shows transportation routes of importance.
Figure 2.1. Mexico and the State of Oaxaca. Source: Arthur Murphy and Alex
Stepick, Social Inequality in Oaxaca: A History of Resistance and Change
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 11.
102
Ibid., 74.
103
Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements, 25-26 ; Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary
Oaxaca, 45.
104
Paul Wooten, “Oaxaca,” Mining World, January 22, 1910, 224-228. For more information on the
Tehuantepec National Railway see Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 61-63.
28
The Oaxacan boom in railroads piqued the attention of foreign capitalists who longed
believed the region to be a “land of tomorrow” if stability and infrastructure ever reached it.
Mining journals claimed Oaxaca to be the richest in metals of any region in México, while
one American miner found no comparison to its potential value in regions in the US.105 These
ideas came from, in part, an official statewide and nationwide marketing effort in which
pamphlets in English and French were distributed throughout the state and abroad by both
locals and foreign interests already cemented in Oaxaca.106One of the most famous was by
Matías Romero, one of Díaz’s closest allies, who worked as Mexican Minister in Washington
and published a book in 1886 outlining the state’s great potential for investment.107 Romero
even negotiated a free-trade agreement with the US through former US President Ulysses S.
Grant (1869-1877) that would allow the duty-free trade of machinery for fruits, minerals, and
other export crops that flourished in Oaxaca during the period. The failed plan was
duplicitous as Grant and Romero had also started a company and received concessions from
Díaz to build railroads in Oaxaca in 1883 before Grant’s company went bankrupt. The
proposed free-trade agreement, perhaps the first “NAFTA,” was voted down in the US
Congress.108
The commitment to transportation and communications paid off economically for
modernizing liberals throughout México. The mining boom in Oaxaca, in fact, was
presumably spawned by the coinciding completion of the Díaz-subsidized Mexican Southern
Railway, which connected Oaxaca City and México City, and a reform to the Código de
Minería, which allowed for private land ownership by foreigners in mining operations, in
105
Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 191-192. John Hays Hammond claimed
Oaxaca to be more diverse and rich in metals. RW Ford believed Oaxaca to have no American counterpart.
106
Consul Wm. W. Canada, Veracruz, “Mexican Business Notes,” Daily Consular and Trade Reports,
February 19, 1912. Governor Benito Juárez Mara was the first governor to produce an official investor
pamphlet for foreigners in 1912.
107
108
Garner, Porfirio Díaz, 202.
Marvin D. Bernstein, “Mexican Mines and U.S. Capital,” in The Age of Porfirio Diaz: Selected
Readings, ed. Carlos B. Gil (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977), 95-97; Chassen-López,
From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 52-54. NAFTA is an acronym for the current North American Free
Trade Agreement that was agreed upon by the US, México, and Canada in 1994.
29
addition to other reforms that made doing business easier for aliens.109 In 1888, $5 million
was invested in Mexican mining. By 1892 that total escalated to $55 million. At this time,
most investment was still in the northern states of México; however, Oaxacan promoters
pressed harder to sell the promise of land-owning and export-agriculture, especially the
potential of coffee which had been thriving in much of the nearby Central American states,
such as neighboring Guatemala.110 Indeed, new haciendas were created often near rail lines,
commonly cutting out new land from jungle.111 Miners would find great ease in their
operations with specialized rails linking their camps, avoiding the tumultuous dirt roads and
unpredictable weather known in the region.112
Movements at the end of the nineteenth century changed Oaxaca forever as
immigrants from Europe and the US piled in to take advantage of the Porfirian give-aways,
with migrants most often deciding to stay in the capital city. These avecindados, as they were
called, quickly blended into the existing vallistocracia. As noted above, many of these new
settlers lived in the state capital if near the Central Valley or bought haciendas in other
regions. Some even lived along rail lines and sold food staples like maize and beans in the
capital.113 Engineers, or team managers like Charles A. Hamilton, formed the majority of
new immigrants, but often branched out to start their own companies. Indeed, fluidity was
great among the new mushrooming Oaxacan population as opportunities grew. A sound
example is John Body, who came as a manager for the Tehuantepec National Railway project
and eventually came to own a dozen mines. While many mines had already been claimed by
109
Charles A. Hamilton and Eric Jervaise, Fotografías Panorámicas de la Ciudad de Oaxaca, ed.
Sebastián van Doesburg, Laetitia Dufrancatel, and Laura González Flores (Oaxaca de Juárez: Fundación
Alfredo Harp Helú, 2009), 11; Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 52, 56. The Código de
Minería was a new national mining reform law.
110
Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 53, 190; Robert G. Williams, States and
Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of National Governments in Central America (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 113-122.
111
Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements, 25-26.
112
Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 35, 192-193. Sugar was grown in more fertile
parts of the Valleys in Oaxaca like Zimatlán and Etla. Other Valleys grew maize, beans, agave, chili, and
squash.
113
Claudia Ivette Palacios Arango. “Santa Gertrudis, Zimatlán, Oax.” Infiernitum Ciber Café: Temas
Oaxaqueños. Summer 2009. http://www.infiernitum.com/temas/hi-HisStagertrudis.htm (accessed March 3,
2011).
30
local families for decades, especially the antiguas, the Porfirian government recognized and
gave concessions to those with capital or technical expertise, like engineers, generally those
being foreign.114
It was not long before mining became the undisputed golden child of the newly
dynamic Oaxacan export economy. The most significant mining zones were located in the
Sierra Juárez, Tlacolula, and the Taviche district in addition to parts of the Valley such as
Zimatlán, Etla, and Nochixtlan (see Figure 2.2 for a map of the Central Valley). Etla and
Zimatlán were known to be among the most valuable mines in Oaxaca since colonialism,
while Taviche was newer.115 Prominent minerals extracted included silver, gold, onyx,
copper, lead, carbon, and iron.116 In the southern regions of Oaxaca, where metals were less
apparent, battles over mining in salt flats raged for decades.117 Big investors like the
Guggenheims, the most important mining investors in México in the period, sunk millions
into Oaxacan mines, often creating on-site smelting companies. In fact, Guggenex, one of the
family’s mining corporations, bought the ever-productive Escadura mine in Taviche in 1902
for roughly $2 million.118
2.3 COSMOPOLITAN OAXACA AND THE EMERALD CITY
In a very manner as the gold rush in San Francisco, California, trade around mining
flourished. This new trade was dominated by Spanish and French merchants, creating import
and export companies and general stores near mining camps and along rail lines.119 This new
aspect of the economy brought cosmopolitanism as general stores began to specialize in
foreign goods for the home, such as religious and musical items. One such store was the
114
Julio César Cabrera Ramirez, Los minerales estratégicos de Oaxaca en el contexto del mercado
mundial (Tesis de Licenciatura, May 2005), 146, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en
Antropología Social. http://www.ciesas-golfo.edu.mx/istmo/docs/borradores/acabrera.html (accessed May 2,
2011).
115
116
Ibid., 196-197, 201; Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements, 25.
117
Cabrera Ramirez, Los minerales estratégicos de Oaxaca en el contexto del mercado mundial, 140.
118
Bernstein, “Mexican Mines and U.S. Capital,” 96-97.
119
31
Figure 2.2. The valley of Oaxaca. Source: Arthur Murphy and Alex Stepick, Social
Inequality in Oaxaca: A History of Resistance and Change (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1991), 12.
American “Díaz Hermanos” in Ocotlán. Similarly, a French version called “México City”
opened in the capital and sold imports from Germany, England, France, and the US. Even the
French A. Philippe & Co. came to own hardware stores to provide equipment for miners and
32
the urban centers that grew around their camps.120 Of all of the migrant groups in Oaxaca, the
British and Americans brought the most with them from home, including their families.121
The golden age of mining in the state raged from 1897 until 1907. While many of the
immigrants were Spanish, French, English, Italian, and German, the Americans dominated
mining operations in this period to tune of 80 percent of all mining and railroad investments
by the close of the Porfiriato (1876-1910), and likewise seemed to culturally gain in
importance relative to the others.122 The Porfirian plan was rarely obscure. Addressing
Oaxacans in 1883, Díaz said:
We should hope that the day is not far away when an extensive immigration of the
sons of commerce from more civilized countries arrives in our state…Those
citizens will provide us with the first step in the life of true progress, acquiring the
good work habits and tastes that characterize the people of Europe.123
From the beginning of the Porfiriato to 1910, over a billion foreign dollars were dropped into
Mexico, one New York Times correspondent estimating the figure at near 66 percent of all
Mexican investments at the period’s close.124 While many were apprehensive to allow the
flooding of foreign investment, economic results were tangible. Díaz had amazingly balanced
the national budget for the first time, brought trade surplus, and was able to improve
México’s credit rating to “enviable” levels.125
These cosmopolitan spaces, especially in Oaxaca City, were some of the most active
for bonding between the existing vallistocracia and new foreign capitalists. Unlike other
parts of México where foreign competition often brought resentment, these two factions,
120
Olga García Montes, “Oaxaca: economía, sociedad y poder: Siglo XIX.” Grupo de investigación
eumednet de la Universidad de Málaga y Fundación Universitaria Andaluza Inca Garcilaso.
http://www.eumed.net/eve/resum/06-04/omg.htm (accessed April 12, 2011).
121
Ramirez, Los minerales estratégicos de Oaxaca en el contexto del mercado mundial, 140.
122
Bernstein, “Mexican Mines and U.S. Capital,” 95.
123
Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald City: Politics, Culture, and Alternative
Modernernities in Oaxaca City, Mexico, 1877-1920” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2002), 50.
124
Mark Wasserman, “Foreign Investment in Mexico, 1876-1910: A Case Study of the Role of Regional
Elites,” The Americas 36 (July 1979), 3; Jonathon Kandell, La Capital: The Biography of Mexico City (New
York: Random House, 1988), 392. The 66 percent figure may be exaggerated by Kandell.
125
Kandell, La Capital, 354.
33
even landed colonial families, merged nearly seamlessly.126 The intensity and international
cooperation in México during the period was unique, and Oaxacan projects frequently were
headed by investment groups including men of multiple nationalities.127 Traditional elites
allowed foreigners to dominate certain economic realms in México because it accomplished
many tasks. On the one hand foreign investment meant an efficient path to modernization
backed by the government, while, on the other hand, the infusion of more capital often meant
reinforcement of their own power and incomes through bribes and property sales.128 One
newspaper described the zocaló in the capital as a mélange of European languages where
only one existed previously. While one could rarely comprehend the exchanges, it mattered
little because their sheer presence in the city left one feeling as if Oaxaca was on track for
elegance, glory, and progress.129 Further, bonding between the ancien regime and capitalists
was literally consummated through strategic intermarriage, a practice common throughout
México.130
What all elites generally did have in common was ample access to the presidency,
holding close relationships and loyalty with Díaz himself that helped guarantee healthy
concessions for the proprietor. These relationships kept Díaz directly involved in the affairs
of local business and assured foreign capitalists, such as the Guggenheims, that their
investments would be protected.131 For Díaz, these relationships were important in dealing
with foreign capital. He was ambivalent to let in too much foreign money, especially when
these foreigners controlled vital pieces of information surrounding production, geology, and
communications of the state that they were developing. By befriending Díaz, then, elites of
126
García Montes, “Oaxaca: economía, sociedad y poder: Siglo XIX.”
127
Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements, 29.
128
Wasserman, “Foreign Investment in Mexico, 1876-1910,” 3.
129
Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald City,” 51.
130
Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements, 29; Eric Van Young, The Other Rebellion: Popular
Violence, Ideology, and the Struggle for Mexican Independence, 1810-1821 (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2001), 147, 168.
131
34
this period especially came to dominate local politics and held a rare direct line to the
presidency.132
The personal involvement in Oaxacan industrialization from the presidency made the
state economically relevant again after the virtual death of the once powerful cochineal trade
during colonialism, but it also meant that Díaz was very hands-on in the local political
scene.133 In Oaxaca, Díaz constructed a system of governance that placed choice regional
strongmen, called jefe politicos, in positions that allowed them to carry out his interests and
to supersede all political elections and municipal political exercises.134 Indeed, democracy
would be a small sacrifice for the long-term development of the Oaxacan economy, showing
the deep pragmatism embedded into Porfirian modernization projects.135 Politics were a
closed-door negotiation between Díaz and the vallistocracia through Díaz’s imposed
governors and jefaturas.136 The small concentration of power among elites in the city and the
exploitation of cheap, generally highly indigenous, labor in the countryside has led some to
believe the Oaxacan environment at the end of the nineteenth century to have been similar to
that of colonialism.137
Attracting new foreign capital into Oaxaca, however, was a more active process than
distributing pamphlets and “schmoozing” through elitist networks. Oaxaca would also have
to prove it was capable and ready to be modern in order to keep money and interest in the
country. The Porfiriato bought the “Emerald City” a new facelift, its exoticized and
exaggerated colonial past celebrated but its wrinkles tactically smoothed out. Oaxaca through
this change became not only a “modern” city, but a cosmopolitan one beyond the general
store, offering worldly leisure and international eateries. Electric lighting, plumbing, and
drainage would be paramount to augmenting the grandeur of the capital city as the rich
132
133
Garner, Porfrio Díaz, 202-204.
134
135
136
Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements, 32-33; Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald
City,” 43.
137
35
worked hard to “screen out” anything related to the poor and “backward” past that had
defined México, believing the economic progress of Díaz’s regime would clean it all
away.138 Díaz, in fact, often worked as an intermediary between lower level politicians and
foreign companies that had capabilities to install it, assuring the progress of these projects.139
Other aesthetic endeavors aimed to improve the Oaxacan reputation in the period in
regional showcases of the development of not just the city, but also the mining operations
and railroad projects already underway. Among the major showcases of the potential of
México was found in 1901 when mining interests flocked in droves to attend the American
Institute of Mining Engineers convention in México City. Here 165 people were trucked
around to mining camps while being dined, serenaded, and invited to dance balls while many
of the country’s most influential men gave speeches. Most of the participants left with
brochures to distribute to their important friends at home.140 While many worked to showcase
Oaxaca, among the most active was Charles Alexander Hamilton.
2.4 PROFILE IN MODERNITY: CHARLES HAMILTON
Hamilton was born in Ireland in 1853 and immigrated to the United States, spending
much of his youth in San Francisco, California as an engineering apprentice.141 Biographical
information on Hamilton is in short supply but he is significant as an example of the life of a
foreign capitalist in Oaxaca in the period. While some believe he came down for mining, a
Charles Hamilton seems to first appear in Oaxacan capitalist ventures in 1899 as treasurer of
the Oaxaca Coffee Culture Company. The company sought to promote the cultivation and
exportation of coffee, exotic fruits, and rubber and claimed to have owned or access to 2,500
acres in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, each acre purchased for just five dollars allowing the
company to function in the green full-time.142 It is certain Hamilton had arrived in the
138
139
Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements.
140
141
Hamilton and Jervaise, Fotografías Panorámicas de la Ciudad de Oaxaca, 9.
142
“Oaxaca Coffee Culture Company,” U.S. Investor and Promoter of American Enterprises, April 1,
1899. The company was incorporated in 1897 in Illinois, but the article describes the officers, including
Hamilton, as hailing from St. Louis.
36
Oaxaca Valley by 1902 where he formed a group headed by David M. Goodrich to purchase
the famous Escadura and the undeveloped San Juan mines in Taviche in the district of
Ocotlán from Juan Baigts, a French immigrant and prominent foreign miner.143 The payment
for the two properties was to be $450,000 for Escadura and $10,000 for San Juan, the latter a
property for which Baigts had little use. Hamilton would work as a manager of all mining
operations for the investment group headed by Goodrich.144 As part of the agreement
between Hamilton and his associates, Hamilton would be given the San Juan mine as a
commission for organizing the purchase of the touted Escadura site, his new company, the
Cia. Minera de San Juan de Taviche, officially in charge.145
Under just four years of Hamilton the San Juan mine became among the most
profitable in the country, yielding over one million pesos and punching out 200 tons of
quality ore every month.146 With his newfound profits and growing address book that
included capitalists, such as Max Friend and Adams Huntington, Hamilton started multiple
companies around the state in mining and other industries such as Compañía Minera San
Carlos, Providencia San Carlos Mining Co., El Rosario Syndicate Ldt., and Baldomero
Mining Co. in Oaxaca between 1904 and 1907.147 He became deeply involved in railroads
and eventually lobbied successfully for a rail link from Taviche to Oaxaca City through San
Pablo Huixtepec after the Mexican Southern Railroad project swallowed up the city’s tram
lines. No doubt these lines were desperately needed as the main mode of transporting fresh
ore remained ox-cart on dirt roads, making delivery only possible in dry months.148 Later, he
143
“Special Correspondance: Mexico,” Mining and Scientific Press, February 19, 1910, 300-301; “Late
News from the World’s Mining Camps: Mexico,” Mining World, February 12, 1910, 401-402; Chassen-López,
From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 196-197. Escadura is also listed as “Escuadra.” This paper will cite it as
“Escadura.”
144
“Late News from the World’s Mining Camps,” Mining World, February 12, 1910.
145
Ibid.; “Special Correspondance,” Mining and Scientific Press, February 19, 1910.
146
Ibid.
147
Enrique Canudas Sandoval, Las Venas de Plata en la Historia de México: Síntesis de Historia
Económica Siglo XIX (Mexico, D.F.: Utopia, 2005), 578; Cabrera Ramirez, Los minerales estratégicos de
Oaxaca en el contexto del mercado mundial, 145.
148
Wooten, “Oaxaca,” Mining World, January 22, 1910. “Special Correspondance,” Mining and Scientific
Press, February 19, 1910.
37
even opened the Oaxaca Refining Smelting & Company where he was said to have brought
in the most modern smelter in all of Oaxaca.149
Like many of the unforeseen ills of investing in turn of the century México, all was
not fairy tale for the ambitious engineer. Unfortunately, Hamilton’s group failed to complete
the last payment for the Escadura and Baigts used his influence with Porfirian elites like Don
Eutemio Cervantes to bring the dispute to court and seize control of both operations.150 With
his political and social clout rising, Hamilton made efforts to achieve amparo, or a legal stay,
and re-open the case with Baigts to reclaim his prized San Juan mine in 1909, traveling to the
United States and swaying the infamous judge L.R. Wilfley to represent his claims. Wilfley
arrived in Oaxaca with a letter from President William Taft prompting local newspapers to
call Wilfley corrupt.151 Indeed, it appeared Hamilton believed that his commission should
have been legally separated from the Escadura sale and mining journals of the period claim
that the case itself made many Americans pull out of investments in the state, believing the
law to be unjust.152 In January of 1910, Judge Calderón granted a stay, Hamilton leading a
crowd of local celebrities such as such as José Vasconselos, Federico Sandoval, Manuel
Flores Castro, and Hamilton’s sons, Harloe and Charles Jr., to jubilantly and theatrically
recover the property.153 However, Baigts’ pull with Díaz, and the Díaz tactic to rule in favor
of European interests to restrict power of US capital, lead the president to intervene and
“force” a decision in his favor.154
149
150
Isidro Fabela, “Historia Diplomática de la Revolución de México" (presentation from Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México),
http://www.mexicodiplomatico.org/lecturas/historia_diplomatica_revolucion_mexicana_Isidro_Fabela.pdf
151
Ibid.; “Special Correspondance,” Mining and Scientific Press, February 19, 1910; Hamilton and
Jervaise, Fotografías Panorámicas de la Ciudad de Oaxaca, 13.
152
“Special Correspondance,” Mining and Scientific Press, February 19, 1910.
153
Hamilton and Jervaise, Fotografías Panorámicas de la Ciudad de Oaxaca, 13.
154
“Special Correspondance,” Mining and Scientific Press, February 19, 1910; Chassen-López, From
Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 196-197. For the Wilfley purchase see Consul Wm. W. Canada, Veracruz,
“Mexican Business Notes,” Daily Consular and Trade Reports, February 19, 1912, 748; Katz, “International
Wars, Mexico, and U.S. Hegemony,” 188-189.
38
Hamilton’s early success had allowed his investments to spread wide in the Valley,
and for this reason he became one of the region’s most active promoters, leading tours
around the Valley to capitalize on still eager and optimistic entrepreneurs.155 Taking
advantage of the Porfirian metropolitan redevelopment projects, which eliminated cantinas,
prostitution, and informal vending while promoting high culture and European influenced
architecture in many of the capital’s new museums and monuments, Hamilton bought the
new and rare Kodak “Panoram” camera to capture Oaxacan modernity in order to sell it. His
now famous photos twinkled with Porfirian symbols of progress and modernity by capturing
this new regional development of mines, buildings, bridges, and other such infrastructure.156
He also captured travels by prominent foreigners in the region, adorned with lavish parties
and fine dining, such as James Creelman before his infamous interview with Díaz that proved
an impetus for the Mexican Revolution.157
Despite the fighting around México, Oaxaca was not ground-zero for much violence
during the Revolution, leading many to believe the good fortune could continue in the state.
In 1912, Hamilton even purchased the Santa Gertrudis hacienda, famous as the hideout for
Benito Juárez’s wife during the War of the Reform according to oral histories. Hamilton used
the property as a personal showplace for visitors, becoming the first parcel of its kind to be
exclusively owned by American interests in Oaxaca.158 Here he grew sugar cane, corn, and
beans on the backs of resident laborers who were paid in staple foods and were forced to buy
from an on-site company store.159 This was the model for foreign businessmen just as it had
been the model for centuries in the region, revealing Hamilton’s own assimilation into the
resident vallistocracia. Later Hamilton would try unsuccessfully to build a railroad for
155
156
Hamilton and Jervaise, Fotografías Panorámicas de la Ciudad de Oaxaca, 10, 21.
157
Ibid., 16. Creelman was a journalist who came to México to interview Díaz on his modernization
projects. Díaz seized the opportunity to announce he was not, in fact, going to run for re-election, claiming
México was ready for democracy.
158
Consul Wm. W. Canada, Veracruz, “Mexican Business Notes,” Daily Consular and Trade Reports,
February 19, 1912, 748; Jenny Ramírez Hamilton, “Hacienda de Santa Gertrudis,” Infiernitum Ciber Café:
Temas Oaxaqueños, January 27, 2007, http://www.infiernitum.com/temas/lt-hdastagertrudis.htm (accessed
March 3, 2011).
159
Arango, “Santa Gertrudis, Zimatlán, Oax.”
39
agricultural exports that would link Acapulco and Oaxaca City and a line into
Tehuantepec.160
While Charles Hamilton would fade away from the records with the postRevolutionary decline of mining, his family continued to dominate social life of the city even
after his death in Taviche in 1929.161 Harloe Hamilton, his son, inherited the Santa Gertrudis
hacienda and was arrested for murder in a squabble on the property during the Mexican
Revolution in 1916.162 His family was known to be associated with politicians that were not
supportive of Venustiano Carranza, president of the time, and after appealing to the US State
Department he was released.163 However, the family continued to dominate the local scene,
his wife a welcomed celebrity guest at the inauguration of Oaxaca City’s first Monte de
Piedad, an official welfare program that gave pawn loans to whomever needed it.164 Later,
the family would also go on to open the first Ford and Chevrolet agencies in the state.165
However, the family also worked its way into modern sport. Indeed, Harloe Hamilton
reigned as president of the Asociación Estatal de “Base Ball” through much of the 1930s and
baseball was to play a large role in the modernization process in the state.166
160
“Railway Construction,” Railway Age Gazette, March 6, 1914, 492; Chassen-López, From Liberal to
Revolutionary Oaxaca, 59.
161
Nevada Nugget Hunters, “Prominent Men You Should Know,”
http://nevadanuggethunters.myfreeforum.org/index.php?component=content&topicid=429&postdays=0&postor
der=asc&start=0 (accessed April 3, 2011). Originally printed in Mining Journal, April 15, 1929.
162
“One Arrested Held for Murder of Which He Says He Is Innocent,” New York Times, June 23, 1916,
under “Americans Put in Prison,” http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archivefree/pdf?res=F10D12F63A5B17738DDDAA0A94DE405B868DF1D3 (accessed January 12, 2011).
163
Ibid.; “Hamilton Held in Oaxacan Cell,” New York Times, June 29, 1916,
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50A12F73A5B17738DDDA00A94DE405B868DF1D3
(accessed January 13, 2011).
164
Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca, “Historia del Monte de Piedad de Oaxaca,”
http://www.montedepiedad.gob.mx/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=39&Ite
mid=58 (accessed March 3, 2011). Many celebrities and local elites attended the inauguration of the Monte de
Piedad.
165
Arturo Fuentes Calvo, “Mecánico, aprendizaje con caballos de fuerza,” Diario Despertar, July 15,
2099, http://www.diariodespertar.com.mx/agenda/13621-Mecnico-aprendizaje-con-caballos-fuerza.html
(accessed April 7, 2011).
166
“Renuncio El Presidente,” Oaxaca Nuevo, Nov. 3, 1939, 2; found in Archivos Santo Domingo, Oaxaca
City, Oaxaca, Mexico.
40
2.5 MODERN SPORT AND THE ARRIVAL OF BASEBALL
The importation of foreign corporations and modern sport were as much a part of the
Díaz modernization project as electric lighting or bridge building. Indeed, sport represented
equal opportunity through level competition, specialization, rationality and quantification,
while encouraging its athletes to reach for records, representing, then, a congregation of
secular and capitalistic characteristics.167 Bulnes, a renowned Porfirian cientitfico, even tied
sport participation to military practice saying that civilized nations should train militaries
based on the regiments of modern athletes.168 Further, the vallistocracia took to modern
sport, which was rising in popularity in the United States and Europe, to “reinforce” its
authority and social position in leisurely aspects of daily living as well.169 Indeed, they
created sporting and social clubs that dually engaged in promoting the fine arts (Figure
2.3).170 The flagship sport of the Oaxaca social club was none other than the great American
pastime, baseball.
The origin of Mexican baseball is largely unknown, the initial site of its importation
the center of many debates. Among the wildest claims is that Abner Doubleday, once
believed to have played the first baseball game in the US, brought the sport to México as a
soldier in the US-Mexican War in 1848, one soldier even using Antonio López de Santa
Anna’s leg as a baseball bat.171 However, it seems likely that baseball first appeared in
México City in the late 1880s or early 1890s.172 William Beezley claims that miners in
Oaxaca had learned the game from American mining and railroad engineers by 1900 and the
game appears in Oaxaca City newspapers by 1907 where the “gente decente” would support
167
William H. Beezley, “Sports: Introduction,” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 4 (1985): 1.
168
Bulnes, “The Three Human Races,” in The Age of Porfirio Diaz: Selected Readings, ed. Carlos B. Gil
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977), 41.
169
170
Ibid.; Rodys, Ricardo, of the Casea de la Ciudad, Oaxaca City, Oaxaca, Email with author, March 14,
2011.
171
William H. Beezley, “The Rise of Baseball in Mexico and the First Valenzuela,” Studies in Latin
American Popular Culture 4 (1985): 6.
172
Ibid.
41
Figure 2.3. Charles A. Hamilton playing tennis. Source:
Ricardo Rodys, Casa de la Ciudad, Oaxaca City, Oaxaca.
large crowds.173 Unlike other modern sports in the period, elites in Oaxaca City felt baseball
to be “the most complete and pure of sports.”174 Unlike soccer and bullfights, which were
considered brutish, baseball was among the modern sports that had civilizing qualities and
was to represent the changing face of Oaxaca’s international vallistocracia through the bond
173
Ibid., 9; Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald City,” 64.
174
42
with North American capitalists.175 Indeed, as in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, many
Oaxacans may have also preferred baseball because it allowed many locals to gain control
over the sport that represented their own domination with the heavy US investment in the
region.176 Further, there is little doubt that positivists found baseball as a perfect tool for
socialization at times while also using it as a tool to promote exclusion at others.177
Some liberals no doubt bought into the thinking that baseball participation assumes a
participant’s acceptance and submission to the rules and order of modern capitalism.178
Indeed, historian Joseph Arbena believes that elite-controlled Latin American societies in
middle of the nineteenth century willingly imported American culture to help prepare its
people for impending modernization through mass capitalization.179 Government officials,
such as Felipe Carrillo Puerto in the Yucatán Peninsula, embraced baseball for its ability
improve health and the morality of henequen workers, while providing them a useful outlet
for their pent up frustrations.180 Indeed, Albert Spaulding, former professional ballplayer and
creator of AG Spaulding Sporting Goods, believed that baseball should “follow the flag” and
help business and political, and perhaps military, pursuits by working as a cultural broker to
México.181 Additionally, the US cornered the market in baseball equipment and its promotion
opened luxury markets.182 Further, Spaulding believed that baseball specifically embodied
contagious American attributes of discipline, morality, and opportunity.183 The American
economy was stout in the late nineteenth century and while fans of cricket had preceded
those of baseball with mid-eighteenth century mining operations, these enthusiasts quickly
175
Ibid.; Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club, 13-16, 19.
176
Joseph L. Arbena and David G. LaFrance, “Introduction” in Sport in Latin America and the Caribbean,
edited by Joseph L. Arbena and David G. LaFrance (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2002), xiii.
177
Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club, 13-16, 19.
178
Richard Schultz, “El Rey de Deportes: A History of Baseball in Northwestern Mexico” (Master’s
thesis, University of California, San Diego, 2004), 6.
179
Ibid., 4.3
180
Joseph, “Forging the Regional Pastime,” 33-36.
181
Alan M. Klein, Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1991), 15.
182
Schultz, “El Rey de Deportes,” 9.
183
Ibid., 27.
43
took to baseball that was a similar game but represented an attractive and excitingly fresh and
emerging American modernity.184
J.A. Mangan called modern sport an “ecstasy as potent as any religion, escapism as
real as any cinema, an enjoyment as intense as any carnival. It is the tool of governments, the
toy of oligarchs and the passion of peoples.”185 He asserts that modern sport spread into Latin
America from uneven power relations, exported by American businessmen who wanted Latin
Americans to learn “Puritan” ideals and thus become better business partners. Mangan
asserts that the US came to dominate Latin America through sport and was cited as evidence
of US moral superiority. In fact, for Mangan, cultural domination almost always moved hand
in hand with economic or political domination, especially in an era of free market
exaggerations of inequalities, the first direct mention of economic free market polarization.186
While baseball seemed to cement US economic influence, especially in places like
Oaxaca City where baseball was likely imported en masse by American companies, and
carried a sort of desire by local elites to mimic American culture, there was a two or three
way flow influence occurring. Because of its embrace by locals, baseball also cannot be
considered imperial imposition in Oaxaca. Indeed, Arbena further sees the diffusion of
culture affecting the north as much as the south. Globalization has brought hybridity of the
baseball workforce that parallels a blending of economies and, through negotiation, Oaxacan
participants chose what elements of the sport to keep, and what to reject.187 Indeed, the first
recorded games in 1907 pinning Mexican and American teams against each other were won
handedly by the Mexican clubs in Oaxaca.188 William Beezley states that Porfirian sport, as
modernities. Baseball games were sites of heavy gambling, a practice that blended Mexican
machismo and capitalistic risk-taking.189 Matches were held on Sundays and didn’t adopt the
184
Beezley, “The Rise of Baseball in Mexico and the First Valenzuela,” 6-7.
185
J.A. Mangan and Lamartine P. DaCosta, “Prologue: Emulation, Adaptation and Serendipity,” in Sport
in Latin American Society: Past and Present, ed. J.A. Mangan and Lamartine P. DaCosta (London: Frank Cass,
2002), 1.
186
Ibid., 10-11.
187
Ibid., 53.
188
189
Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club, 21- 27.
44
Puritanical “blue laws” embedded in the US version of the game in the period.190 At the same
time, baseball’s quick popularity and survival through multiple economic crises and the
Mexican Revolution represent a deep Porfirian “persuasion” in Oaxaca, as people
participated through the formation of the elitist Jockey Club in México City in 1881, was not
only a vestige of mimicry, but also was to compete with and rival foreign continued to
participate voluntarily revealing their potential optimism in baseball’s symbolism . For
Beezley, the popularity represented the great influence new immigrants had on Mexican
culture.191 However, as the above examples suggest, Oaxacans had a significant hand in how
the game was actually produced and participated.
The first Mexican baseball association was formed in part by American H. Remsen
Whitehouse, secretary of the American legation. It was made up of thirty players and had
individual teams that were run by Americans.192 Games would be played against other trades,
industries, social clubs, schools, and even public service sectors. However, in the first decade
of the twentieth century, prices for games were steep at $3.50 (seven pesos) per ticket, which
was triple the cost of a bullfight and was cost prohibitive for the poor.193 The game had
gained so much notoriety that in 1906 Charles Comiskey brought his World Series champion
team, the Chicago White Sox, into México City for the winter where his clubs pounded on
the green Mexican clubs, causing much frustration and resentment among fans.194 In Oaxaca,
there were no barnstorming professionals, but the games generally followed a similar pattern,
where championship tournaments were deeply important to aficionados in the city that could
afford to watch. In fact, a conflict over the rightful winner of a championship in November of
1939 led to the resignation of Harloe Hamilton from his post as president of the Asociación
190
Beezley, “The Rise of Baseball in Mexico and the First Valenzuela,” 9.
191
Ibid., 3.
192
Ibid., 8-9.
193
Ibid., 10.
194
Ibid., 10.
45
Estatal de “Base Ball.” An unsettled tournament drove some impassioned fans to riot,
forcing the state to intervene with lawyers to decide on a winner.195
Games in Oaxaca featured teams in the twentieth century’s first decade like Sur,
Ocotlán, Filadelfia, and los Gillo which gave way to teams like Turu Mining Company,
Aguilas de la Mixteca, Escuela Agricola de Soledad de Etla, Aguiluchos, and Policia in the
1930s and 1940s.196 Tournaments and stadiums, such as campo deportivo “Venustiano
Carranza,” were frequently dedicated to local elites and politicians, while elite newspapers
like Oaxaca Nuevo frequently included editorial sections with pitching and hitting tips
alongside advertisements for American appliances, radios, and cars from General Electric
and Ford as well as Hollywood celebrity updates and news on the latest developments in
medicines.197 Newspapers excitedly updated ciudadanos of places in the Oaxaca Valley
where baseball was “discovered,” such as with the Leones de Ocotlán in 1941where players
were found to be surprisingly competitive.198 Baseball as an elitist nook continually
dominated in Oaxaca City despite the growing numbers of lower-class participants like those
found around old mining areas. Elite sports clubs persisted throughout the 1940s and beyond,
continuing its bond with social clubs like Social Xico which held mixers with the Club
Deportivo at the ritzy Casino Macedonio in the late 1930s.199 Indeed, social clubs and
baseball deeply suggest the depth of “comfort” that the Oaxacan elite had in their newly
cosmopolitan Oaxacan culture.200
Beginning in the 1920s, however, the post-Revolutionary period began to think of the
Indian differently, and thus baseball’s function changed. Oaxacan writer, and founder of the
195
“Renuncio El Presidente,” Oaxaca Nuevo, November 3, 1939; “El Campeonato de Base Ball,” Oaxaca
Nuevo, November 11, 1939, 2; “El Base Ball Tendrá un Vigorosa Resurgimiento en esta Ciudad,” Oaxaca
Nuevo, November 25, 1939, 1.
196
Overmyer-Velázquez, “Visions of the Emerald City,” 63-64; “Base Ball para el Día de Hoy,” Oaxaca
Nuevo, Jul. 6, 1941; “Beisbol y Futbol para Hoy,” Oaxaca Nuevo, July 13, 1941; Oaxaca Nuevo, September 7,
1937; “Calentandose,” Oaxaca Nuevo, July 19, 1941. Los Gillow was named after Oaxaca City’s archbishop of
the period.
197
Ibid.
198
“En la Ciudad de Ocotlán Encuentra Adeptos el Base Ball,” Oaxaca Nuevo, November 23, 1939.
199
Oaxaca Nuevo, Nov. 5, 1939.
200
46
Ministry of Education (SEP), José Vasconselos bent the positivist and social Darwinist
conceptions of the rural poor to create a program of hybridity or mestizaje that would allow
México to enjoy the benefits of both the Indian and Spanish races. In a new effort to
modernize, Mexican Indians were elevated, and simultaneously limited, as possessing
inherent qualities such as egalitarianism, virtuousness, bravery, and resiliency; ironically to
cover up the racist pseudo sciences that had dominated for so long before.201 If an
indigenous person did not comply with the compromised federal version of what it was to be
Indian, they would be punished or shunned as in the Porfiriato. Still, the goal of mestizaje
was to slowly breed out the indigeneity of the Indian to create a new Mexican nation based
on a singular ethnicity. Indeed, this mestizo “Cosmic Race,” the “apotheosis” of humanity,
involved racial, spiritual, and cultural assimilation, and, although racially determined,
inspired “an elitist, non-Indian construct” of nationhood in indigenismo, deeply influencing
assimilation policies around Latin America.202
Indigenismo gained steam under the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas from 1934 to
1940.203 Under indigenismo, the mass indigenous presence was recognized in México and
instead of instituting polarizing policies such as “pan o palo” that frequently left the poor
with “the stick,” the new policy saw indigenous and poor mestizos as educationally malleable
and potentially useful. Cardenistas firmly believed that through education and “federal
paternalism” Indians could be de-ethnicized and Mexicanized through incorporation into the
Mexican state. This integrative approach was instituted on the ground through nationalist and
socialist programs of the SEP that promoted hygiene, Spanish literacy, temperance, and
secularization to quell “religious fanaticism.”204 In 1940, 30 percent of the state spoke no
201
Alexander S. Dawson, “From Models for the Nation to Model Citizens: Indigenismo and the
‘Revindication’ of the Mexican Indian, 1920-40,” Journal of Latin American Studies 30 (1998): 284-285.
202
Stephen E. Lewis, The Ambivalent Revolution: Forging State and Nation in Chiapas, 1910-1945
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 45-46; Richard Graham, ed., The Idea of Race in Latin
America, 1870-1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 4, 82; Winthrop R. Wright, Café con Leche:
Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990); Néstor GarcíaCanclini, Transforming Modernity: Popular Culture in Mexico, trans. Lidia Lozano (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1993), 43.
203
204
Lewis, The Ambivalent Revolution, xii, 119.
Ibid., xii-xiii, 119-120; Jocelyn Olcott, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Durham
and London: Duke University Press, 2005), 32-36.
47
Spanish and only 20 percent was literate.205 In the same census, less than half a percent of
Oaxacans had completed formal education.206 Indeed, a performative learning may have
seemed like a creative way to “whiten” Oaxacans considering school had historically failed
those in the countryside who needed to work long hours and who carried a deep mistrust of
central authority.
It was during this period that records show physical education emerging as an
important national program where sports competition, just as with science, could allow man
to reach his full potential.207 Parades filled the colonial Oaxacan streets featuring baseball
players militaristically marching and representing clubs in full uniform.208 Other parades put
muscle training and body building on display, celebrated for ingraining “undoubtedly habits
of discipline” and strengthened will. Indeed, newspapers described Oaxacans as known for
their “organic degeneration” caused by poor diets and hygiene and sport could help improve
and reform the “ethnic” Oaxacan race.209 While sports in the Porfiriato may have been
practiced to dissect the vallistocracia from those in the capital’s periphery, sport as an
integrative practice in the post-Revolutionary period was to work as many modern sports
were intended: truly as a “civilizing process” with mass participation.210 Simultaneously,
Americans continued to promote baseball as possessing these inherently contagious
characteristics. American League commissioner Ban Johnson once swore that participation
of the game could educate Mexicans out of savagery.211 After the Mexican Revolution,
baseball and women’s softball were revitalized although they had never completely stopped.
205
Octavio Delgadillo García, “Radio Broadcasting and Popular Culture: Forming the Nation in Oaxaca,
Mexico, 1920-1940”( master’s thesis, San Diego State University, 2007), 34.
206
Delgadillo García, “Radio Broadcasting and Popular Culture,” 39.
207
Neal, Sport and Identity, 33-38.
208
Oaxaca Nuevo, Nov. 19, 1939; “El Club Deportivo de ‘Tecomavaca’ Teot. se Prepara Entusiastamente
a Celebrar el Primer Año de su Aniversario,” Oaxaca Nuevo, Aug. 5, 1941.
209
Oaxaca Nuevo, Nov. 19, 1939.
210
Elias and Dunning, Quest for Excitement, 213, 227-231.
211
48
In 1921, Mexican officials honored Johnson by hosting its biggest championship in his
name.212
2.6 UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT AND POLITICAL RESPONSES
While some of the highly indigenous popular classes rejected modernization, burning
federal schools and hoping for the restoration of the power of the Catholic Church, most in
Oaxaca supported much of the Díaz program such as those aspects involving improved
public lighting and other services.213 The problem, however, was that many of these services
never reached peripheral areas and these exclusionary tactics left scores destitute in the
already impoverished countryside. During the Porfiriato, population in México had nearly
doubled from 8.7 million to roughly 15 million. While the gross national product (GNP) rose
350 percent under Díaz, more than 80 percent of Mexicans were in the agrarian sector and
nearly half of these workers “transformed” into “peons” as the concentration of land
ownership became more unequal. Indeed, purchasing power for rural peoples in 1910 had
dropped to pre-1800 levels.214 Among the few recognitions of the Indian in Oaxaca under
Díaz outlined the Indian phenotype. This resulted in later administrations creating beauty
contests like “La India Bonita.” The winner was considered young and beautiful, represented
progress, and, combined with a fulfillment of common indigenous stereotypes like style of
dress, was one of the first attempts at promoting regional tourism.215
As in many parts of México, the Porfiriato’s modernization also translated into stolen
ejidal and private lands, especially in the Isthmus where communal jungle was plowed for
new coffee plantations or prospective rail routes.216 Export-led agricultural enterprises cut
jobs in the countryside and reduced the amount of food that was produced domestically. In
212
Ibid.
213
Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements, 41; Dawson, “From Models for the Nation to Model
Citizens,” 305; Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 330-331.
214
215
Delgadillo García, “Radio Broadcasting and Popular Culture,” 31. Indigenous was identified from the
Porfiriato by phenotype according to Rick A. López and Deborah Poole. “La India Bonita” contest measured
girls by their indigenous look, dress, and language.
216
49
combination with communal land loss, some were literally led to starvation.217 While new
capitalist operations augmented a small wage earning class, labor conditions in the state were
among the worst in all of the country; some hacendados coerced prisoners and vagabonds
into work and treated their hired hands like slaves.218 Indeed, oral histories from Hamilton’s
Santa Gertrudis even depict life on the hacienda as exploitative and suggest enganche may
have been practiced. This exploitative system placed laborers into perpetual debt with low
wages and workers were forced to purchase and rent all goods, including tools for everyday
work, from an on-site company store run by the hacendado.219 While urban elites distanced
themselves from the poor as much as possible and participated in leisurely escapes like
bicycle riding and baseball, the poor, who attempted to access the benefits in capital cities,
were isolated in urban peripheries where environmental hazards raged.220 Even for those
fortunate to find work in the city life was extreme as urban workers frequently logged 84 to
117 hours a week with little hope of meeting basic necessities.221
Elites apologized for inequality in their society by blaming the highly indigenous
poor for their own cultural and biological retardations believed inherent. Indians were an
obvious roadblock for progress and local elites encouraged foreigners to remember, “If they
love, it is from habit; if they get dead drunk, it is from need; if they quarrel, it is from moral
instability; if they work, they do it out of fear.”222 This “class racism,” tabbed by Pierre
Bourdieu as the practice of labeling expressions or qualities as ignorant or rude while
ignoring the social conditions from which one emerges, was not a difficult transition for
Americans and Europeans who already believed indigenous Mexicans to be “stone-aged.”
217
García Montes, “Oaxaca: economía, sociedad y poder: Siglo XIX”; Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club,
77, 87.
218
Hamilton and Jervaise, Fotografías Panorámicas de la Ciudad de Oaxaca, 11; Smith, Pistoleros and
Popular Movements, 25-26.
219
Lewis, The Ambivalent Revolution, 9-10; Jenny Ramirez Hamilton, “Hacienda de Santa Gertrudis,” ;
Palacios Arango, “Santa Gertrudis, Zimatlán, Oax.”
220
William H. Beezley and Colin M. MacLachlan, Mexicans in Revolution, 1910-1946 (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 2, 5.
221
222
David M. Pletcher, “American Railroad Promoters,” in The Age of Porfirio Diaz, ed. by Carlos B. Gil
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977), 93.
50
This was especially true for Americans who were in the finishing stages of terminating their
own “Indian Problem” at home.223 Mexican elites told their American counter-parts that
Indians were incapable of developing a sense of capital accumulation, or even fair pay,
because the Mexican Indian comes from temperate climates where covering the most bare of
necessities was personally satisfying for them. Indeed, from this mindset, if a Mexican peon
did earn more than what was necessary then he would waste his money on alcohol and
become a work liability. These facts made the treatment of poor Mexican workers, especially
those in the countryside and with Indian blood, more than justified and even preferred in
many circles.224
While cientificos and indigenistas believed to varying degrees that a reformation or
breeding out of the Indian was possible through capitalism and introduction of new
technologies, official mandates in Oaxaca to act on these beliefs often bordered on the
bizarre. Among the most famous examples was a legally mandated public dress code for
Indians, banning straw hats and white linen clothing, which led to the “War of the Pants.”225
Foreigners often criticized campesinos for wearing huaraches, refusing to eat with utensils,
mutilating new technologies to resemble ones they had known, avoiding diets of wheat and
being lazy with little regard for family.
It was, however, rural practicality and collective memories of change, stemming from
the colonial experience that deeply influenced indigenous politics and lifestyles. Indeed, for
many rural Mexicans of the period, change in the past had only brought worse conditions, a
perception which fuels indigenous “balance mechanisms,” or a conservative strategy in
which predictability and stability prove as among one’s most valuable assets.226 For example,
Mexican workers may have disregarded efficiency in work time, drawing calls of laziness
from a Euro-centric or American perspectives, but acquiring surplus capital was not
historically useful. History had told farmers, often paid more in commodities or credit, not
223
Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club, 71; David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre
Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 169. Traveler accounts frequently depict Mexican
country life as backwards and stuck in time.
224
Pletcher, “American Railroad Promoters,” 92.
225
Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club, 71,79; Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 1.
226
Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club, 77-79.
51
cash, that they would be heavily taxed, their excess output seized by local caciques,
hacendados, or the state.227 Further, criticisms of the indigenous diet and clothing style failed
to recognize the practicality of both. Indeed, the use of the tortilla made both wheat and
utensils near obsolete while European style shoes were likely among the most impractical
form of footwear for a farmer from hot, and sometimes tropical, climates, who often could
only afford the “the clothes on their back.”228 This fermenting memory of mistrust and
exploitation from foreigners led many indigenous communities to resent modern, or foreign,
things, even while simultaneously wanting many of the benefits of the projects themselves.229
The political landscape in Oaxaca most certainly reflects this tenuous position.
While the initial liberal project of modernization was intentionally favorable to those
in power, great space still existed to resist in a multitude of ways. Ranajit Guha claims that
forms of violence include those forms of delegitimization that aim to incinerate the symbols
of one’s oppressive culture or leader, or appropriate them. This action, while passive, seems
to exist in all popular movements around the globe.230 Indeed, around México, indigenous
politics often began with a simple “mocking” of the “culture of modernity” forced upon them
and displayed in major urban areas. Throughout the Díaz period, not even the Catholic
Church could slow the peasant appropriation of saint’s days fiestas in which effigies of local
politicians or elites were often hung and burned in protest, the world turned symbolically
upside down. Díaz made great effort to stop these forms of resistance with some success, but
Beezley believes they really were a “seedbed for populist political campaigns” and helped
form real cultural boundaries between the rich and the poor during the Porfiriato.231 Indeed,
sports were not excluded from resistance as bicycle riders were berated and laughed at by
campesinos.232
227
Ibid., 78, 87.
228
Ibid., 68, 85-86.
229
Delgadillo García, “Radio Broadcasting and Popular Culture,” 31.
230
Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1999), 28-29; Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 334.
231
232
Ibid., 48-50.
52
Other forms of resistance were more common and followed those typical in James
Scott’s Weapons of the Weak where supposed subdued agents sabotaged, ran away,
slandered, foot-dragged, and played up their own ignorance when in a position of perceived
limitation under oppressive agencies or institutions.233 Frequently, as was the case with the
imposition of public dress codes and many land disputes, campesinos simply ignored laws in
non-violent acts of defiance.234 However, Chassen-López believes that patterns evolved in
Oaxacan politics in which non-violent forms of resistance constantly threatened to grow into
machete-wielding revolt.235 Indeed, a general political pattern emerges among the state’s
highly indigenous campesino communities in which peoples first find a local leader to bring
their problems to public officials or local elites. If this tactic proves fruitless then one may
seek litigation. However, if this doesn’t work, delegitimization and defiance, like the
examples above, could spill into the violence that deeply rattled the imaginations of elites.236
Historian Mary Kay Vaughn assures us that to understand popular resistance, we
must understand the symbolic meaning surrounding the use of space. Indeed, federal schools
in rural areas were often burned and privatization of property resented. Both were perceived
as living symbols of imperialism in what is understood as communal indigenous space.237
Much of the most violent resistance in Oaxaca has taken place in the Isthmus, often over land
use disputes. Among the most notable of these uprisings was in Juchitán with “Che” Gorio
Melendre who, in resistance to Benito Juárez’s privatization of communal salt flats, raised an
indigenous army to occupy the territory, even claiming it autonomous from Oaxaca and
México for three years before finally being driven out.238 Before resorting to violence,
however, Gorio and Juchitecos engaged in delegitimization campaigns in local newspapers
233
James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1985), 28-42. Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 332-333.
234
Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 2, 333.
235
Archivo de Santa María Atzompa. There are multiple unsorted documents that describe the frequent
use of machetes and violence to solve community conflicts. See also Wysocki, field notes, June 25, 2010.
236
237
Mary K. Vaughan, “Cultural Approaches to Peasant Politics in the Mexican Revolution,” Hispanic
American Historical Review 79 (1999): 275-279.
238
53
against prominent politicians and staged sit-ins in the mining territory, retreating when troops
were sent only to return just as they had left.239 In the 1890s, “Che” Gomez continued the
fight over the flats and some argue that the region, even today, remains in a state of rebellion
due to land and tax issues and cultural exclusion, leading Benjamin Smith to assert the region
to be “years ahead of the rest of the Mexican Revolution.”240 Importantly, Juchitecos wanted
access to the flats to help provide a stable income, as well, and always fought to gain access
to the benefits that came with national modernization efforts from the top. In all, Juchitecos
supported some aspects of modernity, but wanted to be represented in modernity’s definition,
something that porfiristas and indigenistas did not support in plural forms.241
Due to geographical closeness to Oaxaca City and mining and railroad operations,
many in the Valley were drawn into wage labor and began to somewhat acculturate to US
and European customs, actually instilling alternate forms of resistance drawn from other
foreign workers. Indeed, many wage earners encountered labor unions through foreign
workers; among the biggest was the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from which the
prevalent culture of obedience in the Valley was challenged.242 While at the turn of the
twentieth century many Valley communities still primarily spoke an indigenous language, by
the 1940s most exclusively spoke Spanish, or were bilingual, and the closeness to Oaxaca
City allowed many to learn the rules of the political game.243 As opposed to the coffee zones
to the south and west, Valley haciendas were generally not stolen by foreigners, but were
purchased, and some laborers even achieved share-cropping status instead of that of complete
debt peon.244 However, it is clear that opportunities to gain under all systems were severely
limited for indigenous labor everywhere.245
239
Ibid., 324-325.
240
Ibid., 327-329. Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements, 28-29.
241
242
Pletcher, “American Railroad Promoters,” 93.
243
Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements, 216-218; Delgadillo García, “Radio Broadcasting and
Popular Culture,” 29-34.
244
245
Norget, Days of Death, Days of Life, 33-38.
54
Most Valley resistance would come in the middle to the end of the twentieth century.
While the Mexican Revolution was to redistribute land, reform under Revolutionary
presidents was fairly weak until the presidency of Cárdenas. By 1940, nearly all of the Valley
haciendas had been redistributed, the first land taken from foreign properties.246 In response,
many landowners began “campaigns of terror,” perhaps like that of Harloe Hamilton in 1916
who murdered two men on his father’s property at Santa Gertrudis.247 In such circumstances
violent resistance and land invasions were no less common than those of the Isthmus. Indeed,
at Santa Gertrudis residents claim workers had fought for decades for land reform, winning it
in 1935 only to lose it again to a local cacique, or a regional strongman. Their fight again
picked up in the 1970s and was the subject of a popular documentary of the period.248 Tax
issues were also a sensitive point in the region and again the Hamiltons stood at the forefront.
In 1952, in protest of perceived unfair tax codes, mobs burned tax records and attacked elitist
symbols in Oaxaca City including Jimmy Hamilton’s Chevrolet dealership and the Nuevo
Diario newspaper.249 Many communities in the Oaxaca Valley continue with this tradition,
such as Santa María Atzompa, a community that is known to take quickly to machetes to
help settle disputes even today.250
As with inequality within society, elites attributed frequent uprisings to the nature of
the popular classes. Indeed, the naïve and simple Indian naturally preferred to have less than
the rich. Delegitimization campaigns claimed that it was this simplicity and naiveté that
allowed the Indian to be corrupted by warlords whom, in turn, brought out buried bloodlust
246
Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements, 35, 218-219.
247
“One Arrested Held for Murder of Which He Says He Is Innocent,” New York Times, June 23, 1916.
248
Arango, “Santa Gertrudis, Zimatlán, Oax”; Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México, http://www.elocal.gob.mx/work/templates/enciclo/oaxaca/municipios/20387a.htm (accessed May 2); Julio Moguel, “Los
Campesinos de Gilles Groulx,” La Jornada, January 13, 2009,
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/01/13/campesinos.html (accessed May 13, 2011).
249
250
Wysocki, field notes, June 23, 2011; Archivo de Santa María Atzompa; Yazmín Gómez, “Atzompa, un
foco rojo; sigue ocupado el palacio municipal,” Diario Despertar, January 10, 2011,
http://www.diariodespertar.com.mx/politica/46105-Atzompa-foco-rojo-sigue-ocupado-palacio-municipal.html
(accessed January 12, 2011). Through the 1970s and 1980s dozens of documents describe various domestic and
political disputes settled in Santa María Atzompa with violence, often with machetes. A recent political election
even saw the municipal palace occupied by protesters with machetes.
55
and savagery.251 This strategy was likely spawned out of a rising fear among the upper
classes that made up a stark minority in the state. Indeed, even small pockets of popular
resistance led skittish elites and newspapers to designate the settings as a habitat of anarchy
and race war, leading many into no less than “hysteria.”252 Of course, still fresh in upperclass memories was the Caste War in the Yucatán Peninsula in 1847 where united rebel
Maya nearly took the entire region, even garnering support from the adjacent British
Honduras.253 Díaz had also struggled to put out the flames of rebellion from the Apache and
Yaqui in the country’s northern borderlands and constant peasant-led revolts from the
nation’s southern states proved difficult to extinguish. These revolts in the south often
pressured government leaders to negotiate with their peasant masses and other leaders later
refused to join in larger campaigns against the poor, fearful of their own population’s
response.254 It is, then, that violent resistance proved a useful strategy for many indigenous
peoples to force negotiation, or at times, even their own autonomy, as was the case with
Gorio.255
Oaxacan politics have been largely negotiated through this impending fear and a
demand from indigenous and campesino communities to take some part in the conventional
definition of modernity. This is expressed most clearly in the unique survival of communal
and indigenous usos y costumbres in local government and the historical presence of regional
caciques, who often subvert the official political process and gain access to power through
kinship ties and negotiation. These men have been known, like many of the communities in
Oaxaca, to settle political disputes outside of the law, often with pistols.256 Indeed, even
governors were placed into power holding deep camarillas themselves, relying on an odd
251
Peter Guardino, Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexico's National State: Guerrero, 18001857 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996), 187.
252
Garner, Porfirio Díaz, 22. Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 334.
253
Paul Sullivan., Xuxub Must Die: The Lost Histories of a Murder on the Yucatan (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh
University Press, 2004).
254
Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 334; Guardino, Peasants, Politics, and the
Formation of Mexico’s National State, 190-191.
255
Ibid.
256
56
balance of agreements between local peoples and the vallistocracia, like that of Eduardo
Vasconselos near the middle of the century, to help maintain stability.257 What came about
from these relationships from jefe politicos to caciques, on opposite sides, was an odd and
tenuous political system that functioned through ongoing negotiation of personal ambition,
usos y costumbres, and federal decree.
2.7 CONCLUSION
The liberal modern project in Oaxaca was never fully completed as is evidenced by
the failure of the government to eliminate usos y costumbres.258 From Juárez to Díaz, the
state found itself pulling in hoards of new immigrants and investment while workers found a
mixed bag. While some workers in the state earned humble wages, for most the Porfiriato
developed an exclusionary “Emerald City” while campesino communities widely suffered
from land theft, poor work conditions, and sometimes starvation.259 This project spatially
separated a core and periphery and was constructed through ritual, grandiloquence,
engineering, and even leisurely activities such as baseball. Like the “other rebellions”
running underneath official claims of independence unity a century earlier, Beezley asserts
that Porfirian popular restrictions to official identity allowed a separate movement to take
place under Díaz’s feet.260 Interestingly, Oaxacan communities have developed a reputation
for resistance, but they still wanted access to many of the material benefits of
“modernization” of the capital. Some, such as those in the Sierra Juárez, actively worked to
support modernization for a short time.261 Indeed, while Oaxaca City received plumbing and
electric lighting, some significant populations of the Valley and the Isthmus to this day do
not have access to one or other, or neither.
Modernization in the Porfirian sense (which seems to incorporate economic
development, embrace of foreign culture, and some types of homogenization) did not stop in
257
Ibid., 330-334.
258
259
Anthony M. Orum and Xiangming Chen, The World of Cities: Places in Comparative and Historical
Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 14-18.
260
Beezley, Mexican National Identity, 58-59, 66.
261
McNamara, Sons of the Sierra.
57
Oaxaca after the Porfiriato as is evidenced by the gross rhetoric that refers to, and assumes a
need for, racial cleansing, obedience, and assimilation during the Revolutionary period.
Indeed, educational curriculum under President Álvaro Obregon (1920-1924) was to teach
hygiene, temperance, and Spanish, all characteristics long advised to erase the Oaxacan
Indian.262 President Plutarco Calles (1924-1928) attempted to capture that institution, which
foreigners and promoters long claimed was stagnating the naïve campesinos: that of the
Catholic Church. Indeed, he went so far as to attempt to replace the Catholic Church with a
national version.263 Calles’ political apparatus worked hard to promote cosmopolitanism and
urban modernism, renaming Porfirian symbols with those of heroes from the Revolution.264
Finally, while Cárdenas recognized the importance of land reform, the plural identities of
indigeneity were no longer allowed to exist. The Mexican nation, still not formulated in
indigenous areas, was to consist of mestizo campesinos without regard for ethnicity or
collective history. For Cárdenas, as under Díaz, sport was to have a central role in the
modernization and rehabilitation process of the state’s most primitive inhabitants.265
Baseball was brought to Oaxaca in this period and carried a specific function for
liberals and revolutionaries, being the most complete and civilized of sports. For liberals in
the Porfiriato, baseball served as an exclusionary retreat for affluent foreigners and could
even work as a method to channel frustrations of workers in a safer way. Indeed, baseball
worked as a “mirror” of Porfirian society, both in its uneven access, like rural peoples to the
services of the capital city, and due to its inherent demand of player obedience to the umpire,
a paternalistic and uncompromising authority of the game.266 During the Revolution baseball
continued to work for modernization. Modernization, however, meant not just filling the
Emerald City with foreign things, but worked as a performative assimilation project of
indigenous peoples in hopes of reforming them into civilized and obedient Mexican citizens.
262
Beezley and MacLachlan, Mexicans in Revolution, 54, 65.
263
Ibid., 67.
264
Ibid., 77, 91-93.
265
Ibid., 113-134.
266
Eric A. Wagner, “Sport in Revolutionary Societies: Cuba and Nicaragua,” in Sport and Society in Latin
America: Diffusion, Dependency, and the Rise of Mass Culture ed. Joseph L. Arbena (New York: Greenwood
Press, 1988), 130-132.
58
However, these projects were just the beginning of baseball’s life in the state and largely due
to a weakness in central authority and the peasant desire for control over their own definition
of modernity, baseball moved to take many different shapes.
59
CHAPTER 3
TODOS SOMOS GUERREROS: SEX, ECONOMY,
AND POLITICS IN THE PROFESSIONAL GAME
Professional baseball in Oaxaca has many contradictory and complex expressions that
run through it. It has been the site of excitement and one of frustration. Its outcomes have
been influenced by ancient gods yet it is measured through performance based statistics. It is
produced by warriors but encouraged by gentility. Moreover, it is a mimicked site without
borders in ways yet it is physically quarantined inside the Valley of Oaxaca. While some
affects are hyperbolized, others are very real. The space professional baseball occupies
blends constantly the dichotomous glorified memories of the past with glitzy symbols of the
modern. Often these dichotomies appear not so dissected. Indeed, the professional game tells
us much about the current and historical state of Oaxaca by expressing the identities of its
participants and aficionados and translating meanings of the sport’s bodily movements.
Moreover, this examination describes a new function of baseball unrealized during the
Porfiriato and Revolutionary periods in Oaxacan history, while significantly drawing from
them.
This chapter aims to precisely answer questions surrounding the identity of the
current professional game in the state. Many of the questions are the same: Who is producing
this game and who is participating? Who is the fan? How does the game’s professional
production relate to its historical antecedents seen during the Porfiriato and the Revolution?
Finally, what does the production and participation in the contemporary professional game
tell us about the identity of Oaxacans?
3.1 HISTORY OF THE MEXICAN LEAGUE
The first professional baseball league in México began as the Porfiriato approached
its twilight with the founding of the semi-professional Mexican Association of Baseball in
60
1904.267 While baseball leagues have since fluctuated and varied in popularity around the
country, they have lasted to become one of México’s favored pastimes and now the sport is
commonly referred to as “El Rey de Deportes.” However, it was June 28, 1925 at Parque
Franco Inglés when Mexican professional baseball took a gargantuan step by hosting the
first game of the Liga Mexicana de Béisbol (Mexican League), a six-team summer league
that became the class of the country. Created by “Fray Nano” Reyes, the founder of the first
sports-only newspaper in the world, and Ernesto Carmona V, the league was initially very
small and represented clubs just from around México City.268 Like the more informal teams
in Oaxaca during the period, most teams represented social clubs and official collectives such
as the “74th Regiment of General Andrew V. Zarzosa” (the league’s first champion),
“Nacional Agraria de Ernesto Carmona,” and “México de Gualo Ampudia.”269 Since,
however, the league has expanded greatly and is now considered one of the world’s most
competitive, reaching Triple-A designation from Major League Baseball (MLB).270
While the Liga Mexicana del Pacífico (LMP) garners much attention during the
winter season, featuring many MLB players and Mexican stars, the Mexican League has
grown past a single region, touching distant spheres from the Yucatán, to the northwest, to
Veracruz, through México City, and, of course, even into Oaxaca.271 The strength of the
league was never more realized than when Alfonso, Bernardo, Girardo, Jorge, and Mario
Pasquel took it over with intentions to morph it into the world’s “third major league,” even
competitive with MLB in the late 1930s.272 The Pasquel period, which roughly occupied
1938 to 1954, is marked as the second major stage of the league’s history that also included a
267
268
McKelvey, Mexican Raiders in the Major Leagues, 43. Reyes’ newspaper was called The Liking.
269
Janet Contreras Loyola, “Historia del Beisbol - Nacimiento de la LMB,” Archivo del Beisbol,
http://www.archivodelbeisbol.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=130&Itemid=34&lim
itstart=4%29 (accessed March 6, 2011).
270
Baseball Reference, “Mexican League (AAA) Encyclopedia and History,” http://www.baseballreference.com/minors/league.cgi?code=MEX&class=AAA (accessed May 4, 2011).
271
Salón de la Fama del Beisbol Profesional de México, “Immortales, Búsqueda por lugar de origen,”
http://www.salondelafama.com.mx/salondelafama/trono/origensf.asp?pais=0 (accessed March 2, 2011).
272
Ted Williams and John Underwood, My Turn at Bat: The Story of My Life (New York: Simon and
Schuster, Inc., 1988), 122; McKelvey, Mexican Raiders in the Major Leagues, 41.
61
move to capture performance-based statistics and embrace official record keeping likely to
augment the league’s modern image by enhancing its professionalization.273 Moreover, the
Pasquels, led by the flamboyant Jorge, would aim to enhance the league’s image in another
way: by signing American players.
Jorge Pasquel, “eccentric” and “dapper,” was one of the México’s wealthiest men,
living well off his highly successful import and export company, and was politically wellconnected, married to the daughter of President Plutarco Calles (1924-1928), yet maintaining
an extended relationship with alluring actress María Felix.274 With the MLB ban on AfricanAmerican players, mass deployment of MLB talent to the Pacific and Europe during World
War II, and MLB’s union-busting tactics and ownership fat-cattery, Pasquel exploited a
window of opportunity by offering staggering contracts to some of the world’s top talent
such as Negro Leaguers Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, Cuban stars like Martin Dihigo, and
even some white players like Max Lanier of the St. Louis Cardinals and Mickey Owen of the
Brooklyn Dodgers.275 Indeed, Pasquel, bold and perhaps arrogant, even went after players
that seemed least likely to move. On one such occasion he approached Ted Williams of the
Boston Red Sox, known by some as the greatest hitter of all time, offering him a three-year,
$300,000 contract. For comparison, he was making a paltry $40,000 per season in MLB.
Williams turned down the money saying, “I knew the moment I got into Pasquel’s room I
wasn’t interested,” citing the flashiness and style of the Mexican League owner who smoked
big “Havana cigars” and was draped in “three or four-carat diamonds.”276 That wasn’t all,
however, as Pasquel was known to carry two “pearl-handed revolvers” and according to
rumor may have actively engaged in duels. He was also widely known to have ordered thugs
to beat up Satchel Paige after he felt he was swindled by the right-hander.277 Still, in all,
twenty-three players jumped from MLB into the Mexican League from ten different clubs
273
Loyola, “Historia del Beisbol.”
274
McKelvey, Mexican Raiders in the Major Leagues, 44.
275
Ibid., 45-55; Contreras Loyola, “Historia del Beisbol.”
276
Williams and Underwood, My Turn at Bat, 121-122.
277
McKelvey, Mexican Raiders in the Major Leagues, 43-44, 51; Mark Winegardner, The Veracruz Blues
(New York: Viking, 1996). Satchel Paige, a pitcher, apparently had an injured shoulder that he did not disclose
with Pasquel. When he played in the Mexican Leagues he was limited to mostly hitting. He was a terrible hitter.
62
and caused incredible uproar among sports writers and owners in the US, as Pasquel was
raiding the nation’s cherished pastime.278
In 1946, however, MLB commissioner “Happy” Chandler, former Governor of
Kentucky, embarrassed of the defections, began to issue lifetime bans to American players
who crossed the border to play, calling the Mexican League an “outlaw league.”279 In all,
seven players were banned for life even after amnesty was offered in 1949.280 Nevertheless,
Pasquel used the media to denounce MLB, framing Chandler’s punishment as a hateful
attack against México and its people, adding that he was personally hurt and wanted an
apology. He drove the dagger deeper by claiming players in MLB to be “peons” of the
league’s penurious owners and that “slave wages” had driven the players into his arms.281
However, it was rumored by many of the American players that Pasquel, in fact, often did
not pay what he promised, limiting the potential exodus of MLB’s top talent.282 The heated
rhetoric and growing feud between MLB and the Mexican League became so intense that the
US State Department became widely concerned, believing the parties were, in fact, creating
great problems for the relations of the two countries.283
Jorge Pasquel’s nationalist tone and powerful friendships meant politics were often
fused with the professional game in México. Outside of his convenient marital
circumstances, Pasquel was also close with fellow veracruzano, and future president, Miguel
Alemán (1946-1952) who often appeared at Pasquel’s side at ballgames, likely a political
move to seize an already “captive” audience and fuse symbols of government and sport
together.284 While Pasquel bonded with Alemán to get closer to the office of the presidency,
perhaps to run himself in the future, Alemán was able to bond to baseball, still a glowing
symbol of American modernity. Indeed, he glued himself in this way with symbols of
278
McKelvey, Mexican Raiders in the Major Leagues, 70-71.
279
Ibid., 58; Williams and Underwood, My Turn at Bat, 120-125 .
280
281
Ibid., 45, 57, 64.
282
Williams and Underwood, My Turn at Bat, 120-125.
283
McKelvey, Mexican Raiders of the Major Leagues, 64.
284
Petrie, “Sport and Politics,” 199.
63
promise and strength. Further, appearances at sporting events gave rare access and
confrontation to politicians for fans, allowing the politician to appear approachable or
relatable.285 After leaving the presidency, Alemán continued to work in sports, helping to
bring the Olympics to México in 1968.
The Mexican League never was able to secure enough international talent to
challenge MLB, but the league has closely moved in step with their former rivals since the
departure of the Pasquels. Since, teams have agreed to development contracts with MLB
franchises, stadium dimensions are largely the same, and no more are the days of the corky
Mexican ballpark with an active railroad track running through its outfield.286 In 2005, the
league hosted sixteen clubs including the “Campeche Piratas,” “Puebla Pericos,” “Tabasco
Olmecas,” “México City Diablos Rojos,” “Cancun Langosteros,” “Yucatán Leones,”
“Puebla Tigres,” “Veracruz Rojos de Águila,” “Monterrey Sultanes,” “Monclova Acereros,”
“Aguascalientes Rieleros,” “Tijuana Toros,” “Saltillo Saraperos,” “San Luis Potosí
Tuneros,” and the “Laguna Vaqueros” in addition to the Oaxaca Guerreros.287 In 2011, the
league has contracted with fourteen clubs; teams from Tijuana, Aguascalientes, and San Luis
Potosí have disappeared while clubs in Reynosa and Minatitlán have risen.288 Despite
contraction, the Mexican League continues to be a launching pad for the country’s talent into
the world’s top leagues, and some have argued that it is Mexican players in MLB, like
Fernando Valenzuela, that helped truly internationalize the US league.289
285
Ibid., 193.
286
287
Jonathan Clark, “‘We are all Guerreros’: Oaxaca's unique culture is on display at local ballpark,”
Entrepreneur, March 2005, http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/131329671.html (accessed
January 8, 2011).
288
La Liga Mexicana de Béisbol, “Standings,”
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?t=l_sta&lid=125&sid=l125 (accessed March 10, 2011).
289
David G. LaFrance, “A Mexican Popular Image of the United States through the Baseball Hero,
Fernando Valenzuela,”.in Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 4 (1985): 14-23.
64
3.2 THE ARRIVAL OF THE GUERREROS
Alfredo Harp Helú was born in Oaxaca City in 1944, a Lebanese-Mexican and cousin
to billionaire Carlos Slim Helú.290 He attended Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
(UNAM) and later went on to create the Casa de Bolsa Acciones y Valores de México
(ACCIVAL) that later turned into the Banco Nacional de México (Banamex), among the
most successful institutions in Latin America.291 Not surprisingly, growing up a baseball fan
in the period, he claims to have obsessed as a youth over the New York Yankees, a team that
appeared in an unprecedented fifteen World Series, winning ten of them, and featured stars
such as Joe DiMaggio, Phil Rizzuto, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle, Don Larsen,
and Roger Maris from 1947 to 1964.292 In fact, his childhood dream was to one day own a
professional franchise. His dream came to fruition when he purchased the México City
Diablos Rojos in 1994. Indeed, the Diablos Rojos are the Mexican equivalent to the Yankees
with a big stadium, expansive domestic market, marquee players, and five championships
over fifteen seasons under his direction.293
Despite the long popularity of El Rey de Deportes in Oaxaca, before 1996 the state
had no top-level team in either of the country’s major leagues. However, after another
disappointing season, the “Jalisco Charros” were put up for sale, allowing Harp Helú, one of
Oaxaca’s native sons, to make a move on the club. Growing popular for his philanthropic
work in México City and Oaxaca, Harp Helú, with a team of associates from the Diablos
Rojos, including the president of the Mexican League Pedro Treto Cisneros, bought the
struggling Charros and moved them to Oaxaca City.294
290
Archivo del Beisbol, “Nuestro Fundador,”
http://www.archivodelbeisbol.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=83&Itemid=2
(accessed February 22, 2011); “The World’s Billionaires: #937 Alfredo Harp Helú,” Forbes, March 10, 2010,
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_Alfredo-Harp-Helu-family_G4YN.html (accessed May
3, 2011).
291
Archivo del Beisbol, “Nuestro Fundador.”
292
Ibid.; Baseball Reference, “New York Yankees,” http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYY/
(accessed February 2, 2011).
293
294
Archivo del Beisbol, “Nuestro Fundador.”
Ibid.; Guerreros de Oaxaca, “Historia,” http://www.guerrerosdeoaxaca.com.mx/?page_id=182
(accessed January 2, 2011); Curiously, the Mexican League has no rules against purchasing multiple franchises.
65
The arrival of the franchise spun the city into excitement, the brand priding itself on
the fact that baseball in the state was deeply tied to local culture. Before the 1996 season a
public survey was supposedly given to ciudadanos which would determine the club’s name.
According to one foreigner, it was here that the name “Guerreros” (Warriors) was chosen,
something marketing director Raul Solis believed was close to the people because of pride in
the historical resistance of the Valley and Isthmus Zapotecs. It was also from this that the
team came to develop its slogans “We are all Guerreros” and “Proudly Guerrero.” Indeed,
Solis argued that the people demanded something local and that “Everything that we do in
terms of publicity is going to connect the team in some way with the traditions and pride of
Oaxaca.”295 It is not surprising, then, that the club often refers to itself as “the Zapotec
tribe.”296
In their inaugural season the club acquired the great “Almirante” Nelson Barrera, a
star of the Mexican League, who in 1997 broke the circuit’s record for career runs batted in
(RBI) with 1,574 as a member of the Guerreros. He gave the team immediate recognition
and, after just two seasons, the Guerreros won their first league championship in 1998, on the
way defeating the powerful México City Diablos Rojos with whom the Guerreros hold a
heated rivalry.297 Later, in 2001, Barrera became the all-time Mexican League home run
champion by belting career number 454 at age forty-three, surpassing the legendary Hector
Espino.298 In 2002, Barrera died in what is described as a tragedy while working on home
repairs, but the Guerreros returned to the playoffs multiple times after.299
The symbolic merging of the professional franchise and indigenous lore did not stop
with the club’s naming rights. Stated with optimism, the Guerreros apologized for the
disappointing results of the 2008 season by invoking a power beyond their own. The team
295
Clark, “We are all Guerreros.”
296
Ibid.
297
Guerreros de Oaxaca, “Historia;” Archivo del Beisbol, “Nuestro Fundador.”
298
Guerreros de Oaxaca “Historia;” Baseball-Reference, “Nelson Barrera,”, http://www.baseballreference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=barrer001nel (accessed January 17, 2011).
299
Guerreros de Oaxaca, “Historia.”
66
quickly termed the season, the thirteenth in team history, as the “Pesadilla Histórica.”300 The
fourteenth season, however, combining two sevens, provided deliverance. Indeed, the club’s
website found many opportunities to list odd seven-related occurrences that season. First,
their new manager Ramon Esquer was the club’s seventh in their history. Secondly, in the
past, the Guerreros had made the playoffs seven times, while failing another seven. The
manager and head coach wore numbers one and fifteen respectively, meaning 1+1+5= 7.
Further, one of the new coaches chose to wear the lucky number. Lastly, the Guerreros
managerial successor wore number six, making another seven when combined with the
current manager’s number.301 “Disneyfication is Dollarfication,” and the marketing of the
club as indigenous, subject to the mystical laws of ancient gods and curses, carves out a
market niche while symbolically embracing the local.302
3.3 LOS GUERREROS “EN VIVO”
While the franchise continues to push its traditional imagery, it has simultaneously
become one of the more technologically progressive clubs in the Mexican League. While
games are routinely broadcasted on radio (XEOA 570 AM) and can often be found on
television on local channel nine, the team offers a state of the art interactive website,
designed with Flash.303 While most Mexican League clubs register a standardized page under
minorleaguebaseball.com, a sub-directory of MLB, the Guerreros site is personal and offers
in depth information such as the history of the club, schedules, news updates, player
biographies, ticket pricing, statistics, and email and telephone contact information.304
300
Ibid.
301
Ibid.
302
Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney
Comic (New York: I.G. Editions, Inc., 1984), 62; Orum and Chen, The World of Cities, 14-18. John Gledhill,
“Neoliberalism”, in A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics, ed. David Nugent and Joan Vincent (Malden,
Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 340; George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture
in the Global Era (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 17.
303
Ron Mader, “Baseball in Oaxaca,” Planeta, http://www.planeta.com/ecotravel/sports/baseballoax.html
(accessed February 22, 2011); Guerreros de Oaxaca.
304
Guerreros de Oaxaca; Minor League Baseball, http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp (accessed
April 21, 2011).
67
The most impressive aspect of the Guerreros website, however, is an interactive live
broadcast of every home game from the grandstand of the ballpark, which is called “TV en
vivo.”305 Here fans with an Internet connection can watch every game as if sitting behind
home plate, without announcers, and a chat box on the right hand side of the screen provides
an interactive element. Indeed, during the summer of 2010 it was common to find anywhere
from 90 to 300 people logged into this chat during games, talking about the game itself, but
also making jokes, flirting, and engaging in informal conversation that one would expect to
hear at a ballgame in the US. Because of the tumultuous weather in the summer in Oaxaca
City, rainstorms frequently change game schedules and updates often don’t make it onto the
team’s official site.306 Often these announcements are made directly from the Guerreros
announcing booth into the chat room on the “TV en vivo” page, often attributing the delay to
that of the will of Tlaloc, the Mesoamerican god of rain. The popularity of the interactive
feature suggests the club has a fairly strong core following and evidences a fluidity and
expansion of Arjun Appadurai’s “tecnoscapes” and “mediascapes” into even the places most
considered “backward” or cut off.307 Indeed, it is interesting to find the league’s most
interactive website in Oaxaca, still among the nation’s poorest states and likely among the
states with least popular Internet access.
3.4 THE STADIUM: OAXACA’S INTERNATIONAL SPACE
The Guerreros play in a refurbished Lic. Eduardo Vasconselos Stadium, named after
the state governor who allowed the site’s development for a local university in 1950.308 The
stadium is enclosed by hulking white walls that near thirty feet tall behind the grandstand. In
the center of the complex, on a busy corner of a street called Niños Heroes, is the entry gate,
305
Wysocki, field notes, July 5, 2010.
306
Ibid., July 3, 2010, July 15, 2010.
307
Ibid., June 30; Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy,” Public Culture
2 (1990): 1-24. Appadurai described print media (mediascapes) and technology as extremely fluid in
globalization and allows the wide and largely unabated movement of images. For information on services in
Oaxaca see Figure 4.2.
308
Alvin Starkman, “Baseball at its Best... Los Guerreros De Oaxaca,” The Pacific Coast of Mexico,
March 11, 2006, http://www.tomzap.com/baseball.html (accessed October 4, 2010); Mader, “Baseball in
Oaxaca”; “Historia,” Guerreros de Oaxaca.
68
guarded by playful security officers. Across the street are a line of busy taco huts, one with
an upper shelf lined with baseballs on bottle-cap stands to remind you the place is baseballfriendly.309 To the left of the front gate of the park sits the ticket window; an imposing sixfoot piece of darkened glass about six feet tall sitting atop a four foot concrete half wall.
Oddly one cannot see through the glass and can only hear through a four inch slot near its
bottom.310 While in the US the standard walk-up ticket purchase on game day has been
largely replaced in popularity by Internet purchases, one still cannot purchase tickets for a
future Guerreros game. Fans can usually only purchase game day tickets a couple of hours
ahead of the first pitch. Depending on the circumstance, the game start times don’t seem to
be maintained with much rigidity, making showing up early a fair strategy. Additionally,
most fans seem to walk to the ballpark and there is very limited parking, most of it relegated
to the street.311
While the stadium retains freshness, indigenous symbolism has not escaped this
realm. Indeed, paintings from the renowned Juchiteco artist Demián Flores Cortes were
plastered across many of the park’s interior walls. Flores is “obsessed” with baseball
symbolism and expresses what he sees as the “violent collisions of competing value systems”
in the Isthmus that he sees as both traditional and modern. Two of the more popular pieces in
the stadium are an indigenous man in a headdress of feathers and baseball uniform throwing
a pitch and an “El Zorro” type of character brandishing a wooden bat and a black mask
across his eyes.312 He also displays work depicting changing family life in the region. One
spectator believes that the murals fit nicely in the ballpark because Oaxaca “abounds” with
artisanal markets and art museums, the domestic product world-renown for their indigenous
character and high quality.313 Flores believes that the installment of his ‘gallery’ in the
309
310
Ibid., July 2, 2010.
311
Starkman, “Baseball at its Best”; Wysocki, field notes.
312
Clark, “We are all Guerreros”; Reed Johnson, “Conflict Resolution,” Los Angeles Times, February 19,
2006, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/19/entertainment/ca-flores19 (accessed July 12, 2010).
313
Clark, “We are all Guerreros”; Ramona L. Perez, “Challenges to Motherhood: The Moral Economy of
Oaxacan Ceramic Production and the Politics of Reproduction,” Journal of Anthropological Research Vol. 63
(Fall, 2007): 307-308, 313-314.
69
stadium “brought a cultural space to a public space,” to be enjoyed by all people, not limited
to collectors.314 Of course, the public here is limited to those who can afford to attend
ballgames.
Upon entering the stadium one encounters not only artwork, but also a bustling atrium
that leads to two different passages for stadium seating on the third and first base sides.315
The park holds roughly 7,500 people at capacity, about the size of the Mexican League’s
smallest parks even in the 1940s. In 2008, in addition to the installment of a state of the art
video board in right field and a new canopy roof for the grandstand, about 5,000 seats were
replaced.316 In the outfield one still finds affordable bench seating, but the grandstand now
has individual numbered red and white (the team colors) plastic seats where only benches
once sat.317 Nets line the grandstand providing much needed protection for the fans, but the
new tarp-like roof over this section often gives errant foul balls a slingshot action back onto
the crowd below.318
The field is an artificial turf in the faux grass, not the ‘astro-turf’ carpet, look. This
was likely chosen because it’s cheaper and easier to maintain, not to mention it is practical
considering the varying weather patterns of the mountainous region. Field dimensions
themselves follow typical MLB guidelines, the left field, center field, and right field fences
measuring 350, 410, and 320 feet from home plate, respectively, the outfield walls standing
roughly eight feet tall.319 Interestingly, the scoreboard in right-center field listed categories in
English including “at-bat,” “runs,” “hits,” and “errors,” and even defensive positions on the
field were given their English acronyms with the exception of right field and left field which
were demarcated as “JI” (jardinero izquierdo) and “JR” (jardinero derecho).320 In other
Latin American countries these designations are made differently, and may say much about
314
Johnson, “Conflict Resolution.”
315
316
Mader, “Baseball in Oaxaca”; “Historia,” Guerreros de Oaxaca; Wysocki, field notes, July 6, 2010;
317
318
319
Mader, “Baseball in Oaxaca”; Wysocki, field notes, July 2, 2010.
320
Wysocki, field notes, July 2, 2010; Starkman, “Baseball at its Best.”
70
the respective place. In Cuba, for instance, the scoreboard uses the Spanish version of “runs”
(correos) spelling out “C-H-E,” for runs, hits, and errors, linking their political project and
baseball together through a seemingly ‘natural’ fit by resurrecting the name of Che Guevara,
the ideological lifeblood and hero of a now withering Cuban Revolution.321
The Mexican professional game, however, surely is different from the “amateur”
Cuban version in the types of symbols promoted.322 As Figure 3.1 suggests, the real
bombardment of images one finds at a Guerreros game is predictably plastic, resembling
other professional leagues around the world. Corporate advertisements plaster seemingly
every available nook in the park where across the outfield walls one cannot escape from
Modelo, Marti Sports, and Banamex. Above the wall stood large twenty foot panels,
stretching from foul pole to foul pole, pitching Sports City Gym among others. Finally,
competing with the beautiful mountain scenery of the majestic Sierra Juárez from one angle,
and the twinkle of the five hundred-year-old urban metropolis from another, are the golden
arches of the local McDonald’s restaurant behind the left field wall.323 In 2002, a
McDonald’s was to enter the city’s zocaló and was met with intense protest.324 However,
today the McDonald’s next to the park seems a local favorite and a Burger King is stationed
just a few blocks from both the zocaló and Santo Domingo Church, two of the city’s biggest
attractions.325 The city’s lone McDonald’s was likely not placed next to the ballpark by
accident as many fans in attendance of baseball games may be reasoned to be somewhat open
to American ‘products,’ and arguably few more entities produce or contribute more to this
expanding culture than does McDonald’s, among the world’s largest corporations.
321
Eric Enders, “Through the Looking Glass: The Forgotten World of Cuban Baseball,” NINE: A Journal
of Baseball History and Culture 12, (Fall 2003): 147-152; Sujatha Fernandes, Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts,
State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 130-134.
322
Cuban baseball leagues are considered amateur but players do receive some benefits. Certainly, their
alent would place them among the world’s best professionals. See Roberto González Echevarría, The Pride of
Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 363-364.
323
Wysocki, field notes, July 2, 2010. The local McDonald’s was frequently packed full during the
summer of 2010.
324
Jonathan Clark, “In tradition-minded Oaxaca, 'Antojitos Lupe' is the queen of ballpark snacks,” John
Clark, Freelance Reporter, May 19, 2005 (Story originally published in Miami Herald, Mexico edition),
http://jonclark500.com/stories/stories/lupe.html (accessed May 11, 2011).
325
Wysocki, field notes.
71
Figure 3.1. Eduardo Vasconselos stadium in Oaxaca City, Oaxaca. Source: photo by
author. Taken in July, 2010.
It remains interesting, however, that in the 1940s Jorge Pasquel described the sight of
advertisements from Coca-Cola, Seagram’s, Calvert, and Bacardi at Mexican League ball
parks positively as vestiges of progress, modernity, and respectability for the league.326
While many westerners may see this barrage of consumer symbols smeared around the
stadium as evidence of corporate imperialism, many poor Mexicans do not value “Old
México” which often represents poverty and “servitude,” while access to new products and
skills associated with the percolation of globalization often makes “traditional” values and
lifestyles unwanted.327 Indeed, the baseball stadium is argued to have taken over the religious
326
327
David Lida, First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century (Riverhead
Books, 2008), 98; Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), 240-241.
72
cathedral in a new era of human existence dominated by international capital and technology.
Here, an image-based shrine, the rituals of consumerism are celebrated and reinforced.328
While cosmopolitan and international capital symbols abound, interestingly missing
from the stadium is a visible Mexican flag or a pregame national anthem. This is a far cry
from the Cuban and American game where stadiums are emblazoned with national
symbols.329 Indeed, even Petco Park in San Diego, California, the home of the San Diego
Padres, hoists flags for the US, Canada, and México because of the city’s bi-national
community and because of the existence of a Canadian team in MLB. One has to wonder if
the effort to promote regional pride, through the naming of the stadium and team and the
gallery of Juchiteco art has come at the expense of the Mexican nation, or if the Mexican
nation exists at all inside the Oaxacan fortress of modernity.
3.5 THE FLAVOR OF THE GAME
The international again invades the local when one examines the variegated food
choices at ballgames. When the Guerreros first arrived in 1996 all food concessions were
handled through contract by “Antojitos Lupe,” a family business three generations deep with
over twenty years of serving experience at municipal and semi-professional baseball games
in the state of Oaxaca. The family grandmother, Eustolia Cruz, draped in her rebozo and her
braids twisted into the classic rodete, was considered a “fixture” at Guerreros games,
balancing baskets on her head while selling empanadas in the stands.330 According to an
article on the family, a careful and traditional approach to Oaxacan cooking that stressed
“patience and exactitude” was carried over into the family’s preparation for game-day
snacks. All ingredients were fresh from local markets and the chefs maintained time-worn
techniques of milling corn by stone for empanadas and sun-drying tostadas, all beginning at
four in the morning on the day of each contest.331 In addition, one could find chapulines
328
Robert C. Trumpbour, The New Cathedrals: Politics and media in the History of Stadium Construction
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2007), 1, 3, 39, 59, 275-276, 283.
329
330
331
Ibid.
73
(dried grasshoppers popular in Southern México), hand-packaged seeds, fruit, nuts, esquites,
various candies, and tacos.332
The family business thrived for years, beating out powerful competition from
corporate foods such as Domino’s Pizza who provided their own vendors at the park. Indeed,
the long survival of Antojitos Lupe is seen as a familiar story throughout Oaxaca where “doit-yourself ethic is more than a way of life, it's a necessity for survival.”333 Competing with
Domino’s Pizza proved a difficult task for the home-based business, but the Oaxacan loyalty
to wholesome and traditional foods drove them out of the stadium completely in 2005.
Another spectator believed that Domino’s “vendors just didn't have that same ‘spark’ as
Lupe.”334 Whatever the root of victory, it was short-lived. In the 2010 season Antojitos Lupe
no longer sold at the park, the complex’s menu swallowed up by corporate foods.335
Omar Hernández, the business manager of the club, explained that the reason the
stadium must provide Domino’s and Pepsi was because young people simply demand it.336
However, the most popular foods seemed to be hot dogs, empanadas, tortas, and tlayudas.
The hot dogs were prepared in the atrium near the park’s entrance and usually had a line of
customers six to ten-deep. A middle-aged woman took all of the orders and cooked
simultaneously. While transnationalism and hybridity are often examined most commonly
through language, music, and dance, an examination of the Oaxaca hot-dog may be in order.
The standard frank is wrapped in bacon or ham before cooking then placed in a warmed bun,
topped with onions, cilantro, jalapeños and other chilis, and then smothered in warm
mayonnaise and ketchup, or salsa. This style is close to what Keli Dailey calls “Sonoran
style” dogs that have even reached San Diego in 2011.337 Tlayudas, known as a uniquely
Oaxacan food, often referred to as the “Oaxacan pizza,” are a common sight in the zocaló in
332
Starkman, “Baseball at its Best”; Mader, “Baseball in Oaxaca”; Clark, “In tradition-minded Oaxaca.”
333
Clark, “In tradition-minded Oaxaca.”
334
Ibid.
335
Mader, “Baseball in Oaxaca.”
336
Omar Hernández, interview by author, San Pablo Huixtepec, Oaxaca, July 6, 2010.
337
Keli Dailey, “Major League Menu”, San Diego Union Tribune, April 4, 2011,
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/apr/04/major-league-menu/ (accessed April 4, 2011).
74
Oaxaca City. These have made their way into the ballpark and are sold from street vendors,
appearing to outnumber the sale of hot dogs slightly.338 Ham and pineapple pizza is also
served, the dough seemingly extra sugary. Of course, beer, candy, cigarettes, and soft drinks
were also all available in great abundance although, according to Hernández, while men over
twenty-five drink the majority of the beer, women usually only purchase water.339 With the
exception of hot dogs, everything was delivered to fans by vendors.340
The food vendors at the park were not Antojitos Lupe, but they did appear to be a
family-run business. Two circled the main walkway on the grandstand, wearing bright orange
construction vests and carrying trays or buckets of food and beer. One of the vendors was a
woman who often brought her kids to the game. The children, roughly four to seven years
old, sat with booklets of reading material or math problems. The female vendor periodically
came over to check on the youngest child, who wore a “Bob the Builder” cap, at times
laughing at the child’s math answers before giving him encouragement and walking away. At
times, however, the kids would steal drinks out of the cooler, causing great stress for their
mother who likely didn’t make much money. The other main vendor was a man who
primarily sold Corona and Victoria brand beers. During busy games these vendors even had
older children go through the crowd and take drink orders, collecting money and being paid
some unknown amount in return. There is little doubt that vendors at Mexican ballgames do
more to appease the crowd than their US equivalents. Often vendors in Oaxaca carry hot
sauce in their trays and offer to empty it into opened potato chip bags, collect garbage, and
even wipe down wet seats with a towel always buried in their pockets. Some in the crowd
actually demand these services, whistling to get the vendor’s attention, but frequently
refusing to acknowledge the existence of the vendor when the task is complete, let alone
acknowledge the need for gratuity which doesn’t seem to be common for this type of
service.341
338
Wysocki, field notes, July 2, 2010, July 13, 2010, July 14, 2010; See also Clark, “In tradition-minded
Oaxaca.”
339
Hernández, interview by author, July 6, 2010.
340
341
Ibid., July 2, 2010, July 5, 2010, July14, 2010.
75
3.6 MUSIC AND THE “SPECTACLE”
While appreciable fans follow the Guerreros even when not attending ballgames, an
equal amount admit that the appeal of attendance is the sheer entertainment at the stadium
referred to as “the spectacle.”342 Featuring a video board and loud speaker system, the
stadium rocks from first pitch until the seventh-inning stretch in an atmosphere that reminds
the avid US baseball fan of what they would expect to see at a minor league baseball game at
home, where mascots, promotions, and antics border onto the ridiculous to attract people into
the game who would not normally find themselves there. Commonly, the ball park plays
recycled MLB bloopers and fans clamor to appear on the video board, women drawing
predictable catcalls and whistles.343 However, it is through the production of foreign
exoticisms, especially that of Caribbean and US culture, and intense sexuality, that prove to
be the biggest draw for those seeking entertainment off of the field.344
It is unlikely one will hear a norteño ballad or a country music song at the ballpark
through most of the game. More likely, the popular sounds of other prominent baseball
producing nations are what rings the ear. Indeed, it is American classic rock and pop,
Dominican bachata, Puerto Rican salsa, and reggaeton that get the crowd excited. Often
these songs are combined with sexually explicit music videos, sometimes which curse in
English and are unlikely to be shown at ballparks in the US.345 Perhaps the selection of
hyper-sexual songs and those associated other prominent baseball producers is a way to
further commodify and sell an international experience generally associated with modernity.
However, a team executive says, like the choices in vended foods, those songs which are
selected are those demanded by their consumers.346 The relative absence of regular regional
342
Hernández, interview by author, San Pablo Huixtepec, Oaxaca, July 6, 2010; Miguel, interview by
author, San Pablo Huixtepec, Oaxaca, July 5, 2010; Andrés, interview by author, Zimatlán, Oaxaca, July 11,
2010.
343
Wysocki, field notes, July 2, 2010, July 13, 2010, July 14, 2010.
344
Marte E. Savigliano, “Exotic Encounters,” in Tango and the Political Economy of Passion, 169-206
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1995).
345
346
Hernández, interview by author.
76
folk songs and conservatism through the majority of the game once again harshly opposes a
discourse of a sealed and unchanging Oaxaca.
Likely the most popular spectacle at Guerreros games, however, are the Guerreritas,
a team of scantily dressed, and poorly choreographed, cheerleaders that prove to be a draw
all on their own.347 However, blaming the dancers for their poor routines may be unfair
considering the uniform. The six-woman team wears black four-inch heeled boots, which
extend up to just above the knee, and black mini-skirts or spandex shorts that barely cover
their buttocks. Their tops vary but generally show off their shoulders and stomachs,
sometimes the cleavage of their breasts. Clearly the intention is for the girls to be models
first, dancers second. All six are attractive, thin, young, have fair skin, wear significant
makeup, and some have exposed navel piercings, likely a shocking image for those expecting
the totality of Oaxacan women to be reserved and wielding rebozos. Often ballpark sponsors
sent their own girls. For example, Modelo beer sent a team of busty dancers dressed similarly
that would compete with the Guerreritas in between innings, signing autographs in the down
time. On another occasion, a representative from Monroe, an auto-parts company, traversed
the grandstand, flirting with men in the crowd and handing out free “thunder-sticks” with
“Monroe” emblazoned across them, turning the crowd raucous.348
Like the Monroe and Modelo girls, the Guerreritas are encouraged to walk the main
drag of the grandstand every few innings to give their fans a more personal experience.349
They often stop to pose for photos, giggling at the barrage of whistles that are thrown their
way from the restless men in the crowd while the women in the stands typically laugh to
themselves in embarrassment.350 The cheerleaders even host games and contests between
fans in-between innings on the field. In one of these contests, two middle-aged men were
pulled out of the crowd and given three heavy bags for which they were to hold out
perpendicularly, straight out from their body, to see who could walk the furthest without
dropping a bag. With the Guerreritas cheering them on, the men tested their strength, the
347
Hernández, interview by author; Andrés, interview by author; Starkman, “Baseball at its Best.”
348
349
350
Wysocki, field notes, July 2, 2010, July 14, 2010.
77
winner receiving hugs as champion macho.351 Sexuality and machismo are likely not absent
in any professional sport around the world, however, the overt sexuality promoted through
the Guerreritas and the music videos played at the park are somewhat unique and seem to
violate the unwritten code of ethics embedded into baseball lore. It was this civilized nature
of the game that had made it an elite modernization practice that stressed discipline,
conceivably especially over one’s sexual impulses as well. While few admit it, to this day the
US brand still holds these values tight to the chest and cheerleaders have never been widely
used in the sport there.
In addition to the Guerreritas, there’s Tato, the Guerreros’ mascot. Although he
doesn’t take one form, he begins the game typically dressed as a large red-bird wearing a
jersey with his name on the back. This stays on throughout the game, but he changes his head
piece, sometimes into a black lucha libre wrestling mask or even a mask of a man in black
face. This mask would be undoubtedly deemed politically incorrect or even blatantly racist in
the US, especially when taunting a Puebla Pericos pitcher from the Dominican Republic who
clearly carried African physical traits.352 Indeed, for Tato, the gloves seem to be off. On one
occasion, playing off of a sexually explicit music video on the video board, Tato pointed to
the crowd and began grind-dancing, miming himself holding a woman in front of him. In
order to hammer the point across, he faced the crowd, ran his hands down in an hourglass
shape, to mimic a woman’s body, and then thrusted his crotch towards it, quickly pointing to
the video board once again before scurrying off into another project. Later in the same game,
against the Campeche Piratas, the opponent’s right fielder made an error on a Guerreros’
base hit. After the play, Tato sprinted out towards the player, and, within a few yards of him,
lifted his arms in the air, as if to ask, “what happened?” The red-suited mascot then turned
around, bent over towards the player, and abruptly pointed to his anus, leading the crowd in a
ferocious series of “culo” chants directed at the downtrodden outfielder.353
351
Ibid., July 2; Starkman, “Baseball at its Best.”
352
353
Ibid., July 14, 2010. “Culo” is roughly translated as “asshole.”
78
The spectacle, no doubt, consists of a series of odd influences from around the globe
in a collaboration that makes the game feel new and exciting. However, the traditional that so
many want to find when they travel to Oaxaca is also not completely left out, and, in fact,
makes the Oaxacan ballgame distinctly unique from other stadiums within the Mexican
League. For example, in Oaxaca, the seventh inning stretch serves as a departure point in the
common event of rain, a unique function. Therefore, the spectacle is planned throughout the
match up until the middle of the seventh inning, from which point “it’s all baseball.”354
However, the game becomes much more regional here as well. Indeed, if there is no rain,
the traditional “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is not sung during the stretch, as it is widely
in the US and other Latin American countries, but instead a stream of local folk songs are
played as the crowd sings along.355 Indeed, since the club’s inception, “Mi Linda Oaxaca”
has played in place of the American piece.356 The lyrics read as follows:
Oaxaca, vives en mí (Oaxaca, you live in me)
y yo por ti doy la vida, (and for you I give my life)
oye la voz de mi angustia (it hears the voice of my anguish)
que llora y que canta (that cries and that sings)
queriendo volver. (wanting to return)
Linda Oaxaca de mi alma, (Pretty Oaxaca of my soul,)
no quiero morirme (I don’t want to die)
sin volverte a ver [...] (without returning to see you…)357
Other songs that frequent the latter innings or postgame celebrations are the “Pinotepa
Nacional” and “El Dios Nunca Muere.”358 In addition to the seventh-inning stretch, the fans
sing a cheer after every home victory. The cheer follows, “A la bio, a la bao, a la bin bon
bah, Guerreros, Guerreros, rah rah rah.”359
354
355
356
Clark, “We are all Guerreros."
357
Ernesto Valenzuela, “La geografía en la música tradicional mexicana como estrategia didáctica,”
Revista Investigación Universitaria Multidisciplinaria (December 2004): 90.
358
Starkman, “Baseball at its Best”; Hernández, interview by author.
359
Mader, “Baseball in Oaxaca.”
79
3.7 WHO’S WHO? THE GUERREROS FANS
While profiling the game’s attributes and ‘popular’ expressions, or Flores’ “public,”
we must understand what we really are profiling. It is important to note that the estimated
average annual per-capita income in the state of Oaxaca sits at a despicable $3,400, among
the lowest in all of México; México City lies near $20,000, according to one organization.
Certainly one would not expect a family from the Mixteca to make the trek to attend a game
in normal circumstances anyway, but the fact of the matter is that Oaxaca is host to great
social and economic inequality even within the Valley.360 However, the municipality of
Oaxaca de Juárez, where the Guerreros play, has the seventh highest per capita income
among the state’s 570 municipalities at $11,491 a year. Surrounding communities in the
Valley such as Zimatlán de Alvarez and Ocotlán de Morelos rank high as well at $5,333 and
$5,833, respectively, although far off the capital’s numbers.361 Even San Pablo Huixtepec,
while not having accurate income data available, likely lies in the more affluent category due
to their extremely high rates of US-bound migration. All of these communities are within
fifty kilometers of Oaxaca City and one can easily find a bus, collectivo (collective taxi), or
drive their personal cars to games in a relatively short trip.
Hernández, however, is forced to admit that costs of attendance remain very
restrictive for most Oaxacans. The Guerreros offer tickets that range from 10 pesos
(US$1.00), in the metal bleachers in left field, to 70 pesos (US$7.00) for ground level seats
next to the clubs’ dugouts.362 Interestingly, these prices are comparable to many Mexican
League prices in the 1940s that ran about US$3.50.363 However, seemingly 85 percent of the
360
Oaxaca Fund Initiative, “About Oaxaca,” by Fundación Comunitaria Oaxaca and International
Community Foundation, http://oaxaca.icf-xchange.org/aboutoaxaca (accessed March 2, 2011). Reliable income
data is difficult to find. Most economic data here is estimated by the International Community Foundation and
the Fundación Comunitaria Oaxaca. Typically, the ICF does not provide raw dollar figures for estimates. The
organization says its data comes from the “PNUD (Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo) 2003,
Informe sobre desarrollo humano México 2002,” or the United Nations Development Programme. The figures
in this research are meant to primarily give the reader an idea of relative conditions in Oaxaca and México.
However, the literal figures themselves may be fairly scrutinized.
361
Oaxaca Fund Initiative, “About Oaxaca.”
362
At the time of the research, the exchange rate of one dollar US was equal to roughly ten Mexican pesos.
363
McKelvey, Mexican Raiders in the Major Leagues, 61; Wysocki, field notes, July 2, 2010, July 5,
2010, July 6, 2010.
80
crowd sits in the 50 peso (US$5.00) “Central” grandstand behind home plate or the 40 peso
(US$4.00) “Laterales” that parallel the outfield foul lines.364 Also, women get entry into
gates at half of the cost of men.365 Considering the ballgame experience that many covet as
part of the spectacle, which generally includes eating from the concessions or buying club
merchandise, or both, the picture becomes more ominous. The club recognizes the high price
of concessions, saying a slice of pizza was roughly 30 pesos and drinks were priced highly as
well.366 Hot dogs and tlayudas were priced at 15 pesos each.367 All in all, games run about
$15 per person in the opinion of one American, if one is sitting in the grandstand and not
buying merchandise.368
If we were to accept the $15 figure, which seems fair considering the cost of
concessions and transportation, then someone making an average income in Oaxaca City
would be surrendering roughly 0.1 percent of their annual income for an excursion at the
park. For better perspective, if we apply this percentage to the average per capita income of
someone in the US, a Guerreros game would cost roughly $40. Now if we compare the
original $15 figure to the average income of someone in Zimatlán de Alvarez, the percentage
of annual income sits at 0.3 percent for a single-game attendance. Again, compared to the US
equivalent this would represent nearly $119 per person. Now, if the original $15 figure is
compared to the average of San Simón Zahuatlán, the poorest municipality in Oaxaca where
per-capita income is near $933, a Guerreros game represents 1.6 percent of annual income.
For an American this same distribution would mean a game costs $634.369 It is not hard then
to understand that, even for Oaxacans in the highest income levels, Guerreros games are
364
Guerreros de Oaxaca, “Localidades,” http://www.guerrerosdeoaxaca.com.mx/?page_id=82 (January 2,
2011); Wysocki, field notes, July 2, 2010, July 5, 2010, July 6, 2010; Hernández, interview by author.
365
McKelvey, Mexican Raiders in the Major Leagues, 61; Wysocki, field notes, July 2, 2010.
366
367
368
Starkman, “Baseball at its Best.”
369
Bureau of Business and Economic Research, “Per Capita Personal Income by State,”
http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm (accessed April 2, 2011); Oaxaca Fund Initiative, “Oaxaca's Per Capita
Income by Municipality,” http://oaxaca.icf-xchange.org/munipercap.html (accessed March 3, 2011). The figure
for Americans was calculated based on the average per-capita income in the US. US per-capita income data was
taken at 2009 levels from the University of New México and is estimated at $39,626.
81
quite restrictive, if not impossible, for many to attend without sacrificing significant time and
money needed by many for basic food and shelter. Indeed, even among those who attend the
game, the difference in price works to separate the rich in the grandstand and poor in the
outfield bleachers just as it does in most professional venues globally and as it had in the
bullring during the early Porfiriato.370
As one would expect, the cost restrictions largely expose the Guerreros regulars.
While demographics by age and gender are mixed, the core following of Guerreros fans are
males between the ages of 35 and 70, mostly because this is the group that has the best
prospects of finding jobs that pay well enough to support attending multiple games.371 Most
of the regulars were dressed nearly head to toe in Guerreros merchandise including officially
licensed fitted hats, jerseys, shirts, and jackets. Some even bring their gloves.372 If one wants
to purchase a jersey, one heads into the “Guerreromania” atrium merchandise booth. Here,
while the lines were always bustling at the food vending booths, the merchandise line was
rarely more than one or two people deep, most often empty.373 Here jerseys cost 650 pesos,
or roughly $65, while fitted caps ran between 225 to 250 pesos, or $22.50 to $25.00.374 The
prices of official jackets are typically much higher in professional baseball; almost double the
cost of the jerseys, so their prevalence among the regulars in the crowd is quite indicative of
from where these fans come.
The regulars were fairly easy to recognize and all seemed to know each other, at least
superficially. Among them is an elderly man, perhaps in his seventies. He wore a tall straw
sombrero, painted red and black, and a button-up beige shirt. Carrying a drum at his waist,
the man gave a slow and steady beat that he hoped would pace the Guerreros to victory.375
Another man, thin and feasibly in his sixties, consistently wore a red Guerreros winter jacket,
an Atlanta Braves cap, and what could be considered a trademark white Porfirian mustache.
370
Wysocki, field notes; Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club, 5.
371
Hernández, interview by author; Wysocki, field notes, July 2, 2010.
372
373
Ibid., July 13, 2010, July 14, 2010.
374
Ibid., July 5, 2010, July 13, 2010. Currency conversion figures based on marks from April 4, 2011.
375
82
In the first few rows sat a young man, likely in his mid-twenties, wearing a grey Guerreros
jacket, who always kept score with a pencil and old fashioned baseball score sheets. He
normally talked to another younger man, possibly the same age, a few seats away, who wore
a red and black Guerreros jacket. Then, always sitting alone, was a young man who dressed
as if he was the first player off the bench for the team, in official red jersey and fitted black
cap pinned down as if he was on the mound ready to challenge the next hitter. On cold nights
he predictably slung a solid black Guerreros jacket over his shoulder, but he always wore his
blindingly white Nike “kicks.”376 For those in the grandstands, it was clear that attendance at
Guerreros games may have functioned as a “technique of sociability;” a space for the
accumulation of social capital among what appeared to be people of the upper classes.377
Just because the Guerreros grandstand is likely dominated by the region’s wealthy
doesn’t mean Guerreros fans are reserved. In between every pitch one is likely to hear
random cheers and sound making devices inspired from within the crowd.378 In addition to
the elderly drumming man, one may see people clapping ‘thunder-sticks,’ spinning wooden
noisemakers, banging their seats, striking cowbells, or shaking rattles. At one game, a boy
even brought a trumpet.379 The fan base is strong even facing as much as a ten run deficit in
the last innings. The crowd never seems to have their spirit leave them; even in the case of a
tie score one may find themselves witness to the raining of confetti.380
The behavior of the crowd stems likely from a certain feeling of closeness that fans
feel with players in the Mexican League. Indeed, in Oaxaca, players are actively engaged in
conversation with fans while waiting for their turn to bat in the on-deck circle and the
ballpark is likely one of the only professional baseball venues where the fan shares a
bathroom and urinal with the actual uniformed, and cleated, players mid-game.381 This
closeness is never more evident than the disruptive and consistent razzing of opponents
376
Ibid., July 14, 2010.
377
378
379
Ibid., July 2, 2010, July 5, 2010, July 14, 2010; Clark, “We are all Guerreros.”
380
Wysocki, field notes, July 14, 2010; Clark, “We are all Guerreros.”
381
83
through whistles, the Mexican equivalent of booing, and derogatory name calling.382 The
fans surely make the most of what they pay for in a seemingly open social engagement. In
fact, once in the early 1940s, Don Beaver Monton, one of the Mexican League’s early
promoters and owners, was rushed and attacked inside his luxury box at his own park
because the team had committed so many errors.383 Mexican League players of the same
period, especially foreigners, often begged teammates not to botch a play in fear of the
raucous reaction from the ruthless fans. At that time it became necessary for Mexican League
officials to line the field with police officers armed with teargas; the same period that
baseball fans rioted in Oaxaca City when unhappy with the results of the city
championship.384
Any action can trigger fan arousal; however, the most fervent reactions come after an
error, a home run allowed, or when a player gets hurt. In one game experienced during my
research, Willis Otañez, slugger for the Puebla Pericos, fouled a ball off of his ankle and fell
to the ground. The crowd taunted him to no end, some even cheering, but most calling him
names because he was revealing pain.385 A couple of days later, a different Pericos player
was hammered in the middle of his back by a 90 mile-per hour fastball, forcing a gasping
“AHH!” to echo through the park. The crowd stood up and whistled at him, calling him
“culero” as he rolled at home plate in pain.386 One American and former Guerreros outfielder
Greg Martinez said, “I've found that in México I've been offended pretty much the most I've
been offended anywhere.”387 He followed this quote up by stating the personal nature of
obscenities, most often against his mother or sexual acts involving a donkey.388
Even umpires, symbols of paternalism and authoritarianism in many Latin American
baseball leagues, are not immune to this fan on-field dialogue. On one occasion an umpire
382
Ibid., July 14, 2010.
383
384
Ibid., 46.
385
386
387
388
Ibid.
84
received a foul tip into the crotch, dropping him immediately to both knees and prompting a
collective gasp from the empathetic crowd. However, it didn’t take long for this empathy to
turn into parody as whistles, obscenities, and laughter filled the Oaxaca night sky. After a
man called him a “chela,” a term used to describe both a cold beer and a perfect woman in
México, the umpire got up, splashed water on his face and with great haste threw the mask
back on his head, bending over to call the next pitch. The crowd roared in support as the
umpire had risen up to their challenge of toughness.389 Alan Klein experienced a similar
incident at a winter league game for the Laredo Tecos, where an umpire was also struck in
the crotch by an errant ball. Similarly he was subsequently razzed by the crowd, but instead
he shot back, “Chingen sus madres, pendejos!” to the awe of the audience, before laughing
loudly and resuming the game, drawing the crowd into cheers once again.390 For Klein, one’s
machismo isn’t measured in sexual exploits or how much alcohol one can consume, but
instead it’s more specifically a behavioral mix of pride and humility where one is respected
by the community if they remain steadfast to the unwritten code.391 Clearly, then, fan and
umpire dialogue resembles much of this process.
Crowd participation in the stands is certainly unique in the sport compared to
American and Asian games. Indeed, “catcalls,” certain putdowns, and the treatment of
injured players may be perhaps considered rude or uncivil for the sport. This difference
reveals a sort of raw and honest aspect of the Mexican game but also reveals how many in
the society measure each other. Octavio Paz believed that the jokes from the macho are
exaggerated, individual, and absurd, often evoking violence or symbolic tearing or ripping, a
symptomatic feeling of helplessness inherited from a culture raped in colonization.392 Often
spaces in Oaxaca are gendered, as are behaviors associated for those spaces. The “profane”
reserved for males and the “sacred” for women, severely limiting both in many respects.393
However, these spaces can blend at sporting events and fiestas, as was documented by one
389
390
Klein, Baseball on the Border, 156.
391
Ibid., 152.
392
Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, 81.
393
Norget, Days of Death, Days of Life, 74.
85
journalist who saw women participating in and perpetuating machista culture despite
simultaneously “venting their rage” at it during a lucha libre match.394 For Paz, “The humor
of the macho is an act of revenge.”395 However, despite the ever obvious presence of the
city’s wealthy elite at ballgames, the selling of the game itself as a spectacle, and the relative
vulgarity of fan behavior compared to the sport’s intended purposes as a civilized enclave,
show evidence that baseball in Oaxaca, has, in fact, been seized back by the popular at least
in spirit.396
The insults, music, and cheers are believed to not only prove an advantage for the
home team by distracting opponents, but, according to Solis, also ferment a growing unity
among the fans through laughter. For these reasons, these behaviors are not only welcomed,
but encouraged by the team.397 Indeed, Elias and Dunning claim that because of the strong
“in group” and “out group” associations in modern sport, with teams and players representing
cities and countries, a powerful “in-group identification” that is created at sporting events are
perhaps among the few ways cities can unite in contemporary times due to rising inequality
and increased displacement.398
Despite the fervor present at ball games and the seeming personal relationship
between fans and players, a Guerreros game has never sold out in Oaxaca, and most often the
venue appears about one third to half full.399 Because of restrictive costs, groups are
generally small, even for families, limited to about three people or less. The Fundación
Alfredo Harp Helú even claims that the Guerreros have lost significant money since bringing
the team to Oaxaca, and are appealing to the state government to help support the
professional club and its facilities through promotion and fundraising.400 Indeed, tickets are
394
Ibid.; Lida, First Stop in the New World, 65.
395
Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, 81. Emphasis in the original.
396
397
398
399
Hernández, interview by author; Wysocki, field notes, July 2, 2010.
400
Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú Deportes, “Baseball Projects,”
http://www.fahh.com.mx/ModeloArtsFijos.aspx?l=en&s=1&idx=66 (accessed February 12, 2011); Archivo del
Beisbol, “Nuestro Fundador.”
86
often given away to government workers and corporations before they go on sale at the
ballpark, the club with little hope of filling to capacity.401 However, this may not have
indicated a long-term downward trend. In 2006 and 2007 the Guerreros tallied more than
123,000 for yearly attendance, respectively. In 2008 that figure rose to 149,492 only to climb
by over 25 percent in 2009, reaching a staggering 200,822, a year where the Guerreros
finished third to last with a dismal 42-63 record. This year they even outgained the México
City Diablos Rojos, one of the league’s best draws, by nearly fifteen thousand. In 2010, the
number settled back at 166,393.402
3.8 THE OTHER PRODUCT: PLAYERS AND THE BODY
The spectacle and fans aside, certainly the play on the field is a significant part of the
entertainment of the eighty-seven year old league. While the league does feature international
players, it is unique in that it relies primarily on Mexican-only talent, capping the number of
foreigners for each team, unlike the winter league that features the best players available
regardless of nationality. The reasons for this strategy are partially rooted in marketing,
perhaps a symptom of the league’s overall weakness, as it is much easier to sell players from
one’s region if the fan base largely is indifferent to winning or losing. The other option
would be to attract a major superstar as the Pasquels attempted for many years. Clearly,
judging by rumored salaries, this is not an option for most Mexican League clubs.
The Mexican League is among the few major baseball leagues globally to not publish
their team payrolls, a right reserved from Ley López, which argued owners had license to
block certain information related to their private business.403 For this, there are no precise
numbers published on what players earn, and during interviews one front office executive
seemed personally insulted when the practice was questioned.404 While LMP players are said
to make roughly 10,000 pesos (US$1,000) to 150,000 pesos (US$15,000) per month,405
401
402
Baseball Reference, “Mexican League (AAA), Encyclopedia and History.”
403
404
Ibid., 7; Wysocki, field notes, July 6, 2010; Hernández, interview by author.
405
87
rumor has it that those in the Mexican League make between $2,000 to $20,000 per month,
depending on skill level, popularity, and experience. This figure is likely competitive,
although it falls well short of the Dominican League.406
While many Mexican League teams target local players, this has been especially
pressing for the Guerreros who represent a region that is largely in extreme poverty and has
little experience with professional baseball. According to Hernández, it is very important for
the Guerreros to find players like Jaime Brena, current second baseman and an Oaxacan
native from San Sebastian Etla in the Valley. Fans can personally identify with players like
Brena, making travel of great distances to see them far more likely. The infielder admits
there is an additional responsibility to perform for the home crowd for this reason, as he
believes they see him as one of their own. He said, “They'll always say to me: ‘I go to the
stadium to see you play, so if you're not playing, I have no reason to go.’” Indeed, Brena
even has held a special biographical section in the club’s media guide.407
Other players have emerged from the state to find great success. Among them are
Vinny Castilla, a former MLB third baseman from Oaxaca City, and Geronimo Gil, a former
MLB catcher from El Barrio de la Soledad. Gil did briefly play for the Guerreros in 2008
before Harp Helú traded him to his other team, rival México City.408 In fact, Gil and Brena
are currently the only players in the Mexican League listed as from Oaxaca, and those good
Oaxacan players that do exist often play in the Isthmus which hosts their own semi-pro
circuit.409 While nearly one-hundred Mexican players have played in MLB, just two of them
have been from Oaxaca.410 In México’s Salon de la Fama in Monterrey, the Hall of Fame for
players of México’s professional leagues, there are 183 players enshrined for outstanding
406
John French, email with author, January 29, 2011. French is currently a pitcher in Major League
Baseball and has experience playing in Latin America.
407
408
Baseball Reference, “Geronimo Gil,” http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=gil--001ger (February 23, 2011).
409
La Liga Mexicana de Béisbol, http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=l125 (accessed
March 10, 2011).
410
Baseball Historian, “Mexico Béisbol,” http://www.baseballhistorian.com/mexico_baseball.cfm
(accessed February 23, 2011); Baseball Almanac, “Major League Baseball Players Born in Mexico,”
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/birthplace.php?loc=México (accessed February 27, 2011).
88
achievement. Of these, 153 are Mexican-born. Of these Mexican-born players, none are from
Oaxaca.411
Every Mexican team does feature some foreigners to compete and keep play on the
field exciting. Indeed, many of the imported Dominican pitchers seem especially superior to
Mexican equivalents.412 Carrying foreigners also increases star power as the Mexican League
has often been the site where failed MLB prospects such as Ruben Rivera, the former San
Diego Padres outfielder, once considered the “next Mickey Mantle,” come to realize their
potential, or where former regulars fritter in their twilight.413 Some notable names that have
played on the Guerreros have included former All-Star Felix José of the St. Louis Cardinals,
Randy Milligan of the Baltimore Orioles, Hector Villanueva of the Chicago Cubs, Juan Uribe
of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Luis Sojo of the New York Yankees, and even Jim Leyritz,
World Series hero of the Yankees and Padres.414 Undoubtedly, these foreigners have been
among the club’s top performers.415 While foreign players enhance the quality of play, fans
cannot connect with them as easily because they tend to leave after a season or two due to
restrictive salary demands versus cheaper Mexican equivalents.416
While the terms ‘property’ and ‘product’ are often used to describe players, much to
the delight of Marxists, the aesthetics of the professional Mexican game force one to think in
these terms. Like professionalism everywhere, the promotion of consumer products and
services has gone hand in hand in the sport’s production, as was described with the stadium’s
outfield signage. However, in the Mexican League, the uniform serves as bonus advertising
space.417 In fact, the Guerreros uniform design left little space for the individual in 2010, a
411
Salón de la Fama, “Immortales,”
http://www.salondelafama.com.mx/salondelafama/trono/default_trono.asp. (accesed February 22, 2011).
412
Wysocki, field notes, July 5, 2010, July 14, 2010.
413
Mal Florence, “USC Frequents Pick and Save to Buy a Tie,” Los Angeles Times, November 28, 1994,
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-11-28/sports/sp-2360_1_usc-tie-team (accessed April 23, 2011).
414
Baseball Reference, “Mexican League (AAA), Encyclopedia and History.”
415
Baseball Reference, “2010 Guerreros de Oaxaca,” http://www.baseballreference.com/minors/team.cgi?id=8dadb97c (accessed March 23, 2011).
416
417
89
large Modelo Especial patch running across the middle of their backs where typically a
player’s last name would be found.418 In the past, the Guerreros wore large “Volkswagen”
emblems on their backs and each player was introduced during his at-bat with a different
sponsor.419 The Campeche Piratas had it worse, however, resembling auto drivers with large
patches on their left thighs, a Telcel patch across their stomachs as big as their team name,
and an elephantine Tecate patch across their upper backs.420 These uniform tendencies led
one scholar to compare players to “walking billboards,” symbolic of the excessive corporate
concessions given by the Mexican government during waves of neoliberalism.421
Perhaps to find an individual space, players are often seen loaded with jewelry,
chewing tobacco in their back pockets, and big-league style sunglasses, all of which are
common in MLB.422 Comically, many players’ wives in the LMP believe that much of the
machismo found in baseball players is derived or enabled by the player uniforms that are
worn “like a badge,” as if giving those who don them immediate and legitimate physical
power over others.423 In fact, in the LMP, players actively engage with each other in macho
challenges where lines like “ese vato no se raja,” work to call out what is “real,” while
simultaneously actively measuring toughness in a “sexually-anally aggressive” way, a
characteristic found in Mesoamerican cultures which once used symbolic and real anal rape
of idols and enemies to publicly display their own positions of power and prestige.424 This
language is used between ballplayers to naturally get “sexual one-upmanship” over others
and double-entendres such as “cachucha” and “Sácala” pock the Mexican baseball
landscape.425 Considering the percolation of other extreme sexually active symbols in the
418
419
Starkman, “Baseball at its Best.”
420
421
422
423
424
Sigal, 28. Klein, Baseball on the Border, 155-158.
425
The rough translation for “ese vato no se raja” is “that guy doesn’t back out, he’s not a pussy.”
“Cachucha” refers to both a baseball cap and a woman who is of little value, or used up, and thus can be thrown
out at any moment. “Sácala” means both “knock it out of the park” and to “pull it out,” meaning one’s penis out
of his pants. See Klein, Baseball on the Border, 155, 157.
90
Guerreros spectacle, and the prevalence of Northern Mexican players in the Mexican League,
the same regions that dominate the LMP, it is reasonable to believe this culture exists in
Oaxaca as well.
Baseball all over the world seems to promote some aspects of the macho in its most
intimate and frequent movements, much like other modern sport. While the US contemporary
version of the game has given heavy space to the home run ball, a symbol of power and
domination, the Mexican game seems to worship this style of play. Indeed, Klein has noticed
a “cult of home runs” with the Tecos as well, where a player’s ability to run was near
unimportant and ‘round-trippers’ were celebrated with a powerful salute, or “chop,” from the
chest.426 Indeed, the Mexican League seems to play a brand of ball that can be labeled
relatively “stiff,” perhaps “choreographed,” in that one rarely sees a “scrappy” or “dirty”
player who gives full effort on each play at the expense of his unperturbed and vainglorious,
yet rugged, style.427 Pierre Bourdieu, in fact, noted the masculinity in modern sport as “an
artistic practice but it affirms the manly virtues” of a society’s young leaders.428
Often “body culture” of sports, especially professional modern sport, is used as an
exclusionary ritual, a feature expressed by the cientificos of the Porfiriato who tied control
over the body to represent civility and refinement.429 According to Bourdieu, the style of a
body’s movement reflects the social position of the person, and a reflection of their
experience of their social, and sometimes physical, world. Indeed, physical space and
distance from one’s opponent in, and on, the field often works to reflect the social distance
one occupies when dealing with “adversaries” off of the field in their respective social world.
The practices most “distinctive” are those with the most distance from one’s opponent.430
The emphasis placed on the stylized power of baseball in México may be an
inheritance of its affluent roots, and the modern era pursuit of civility that has provided
426
427
Ibid., 152; Wysocki, field notes, July 5, 2010.
428
429
430
Pierre Bourdieu, “Programme for a Sociology of Sport,” in In Other Words: Essays Towards a
Reflexive Sociology, by Pierre Bourdieu, trans. by Matthew Adamson, 156-167 (Cambridge, England: Polity
Press, 1990), 157.
91
escapism where all participants occupy elitist spaces. The style represents a clear distance
from the ‘gritty’ expressions seen in other baseball producing countries, and the batter works
to measure his own success by the distance from which he can drive the ball, preferably all
the way out of the park, thereafter not even needing to run the bases, but instead jogging
slowly where he bakes in the glory of adoring fans. Indeed, modern sport was initially
intended for the gentleman who exercised “strict self-control” and had no need for
“immediate gratification” like that of running out a ground ball.431 While the player may feel
in control by not seizing these minimal gains, ultimately his restriction of bodily movements
represents a larger obedience to the sport’s initial controllers, and may fear the inherent
punishments associated.432 Indeed, “Bodily discipline is the instrument par excellence of
every kind of domestication.”433 Further, the “self-assured slowness” and the ideological
worship of mastering one’s bodily movement works as a sign of disinterest compared to the
“working-class abruptness and petty-bourgeois eagerness.”434
The Japanese game is commonly known for its strategically strict adherence to the
fundamentals, sacrifice, and discipline, as well as its scrappy play. These features are
considered symbolically feminine in relation to the Mexican preference for controlled
physical strength, contributing deeper into the Orientalized discourse on men in Asian culture
thought of as feminine, weak, and unchanging, placing México at some level above some
that play internationally.435 Emphasizing power also allows greater confrontation against
another country almost as obsessed with home runs: the US, with whom a tumultuous and
bitter relationship resulted in the evolution of contemporary machismo, according to
Paredes.436
431
432
Ibid.
433
Bourdieu, “Programme for a sociology of sport,” 168.
434
435
Daisuke Nishihara, “Said, Orientalism, and Japan,” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 25 (2005):
249; Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
436
92
Paz may have hyperbolized and may be considered outdated in contemporary
academic circles. However, as Klein surmises, Paz is describing an outfit of male behaviors
and attitudes that do exist in some shape or form in México.437 Indeed, like the reenactment
of conquest popular in celebrations of the nation during the Porfiriato, with European men
symbolically overpowering Indian women, baseball in its style proves to function as a
performative masculinity, an element attributed to a developing Mexican citizenship even in
Revolutionary México.438 Perhaps, then, baseball in Oaxaca was officially intended to also
instill these performative, notably masculine, qualities into their own mass of Orientalized
and feminized indigenous demographics.
3.9 CONCLUSION
While Oaxaca sits at México’s most southern border, the domestic professional game
was created and molded like a clay model from MLB. Most of the league’s players hail from
Sinaloa, Jalisco, Chihuahua, Baja California, and Sonora and are brought south. It is through
professional baseball, then, at its highest level in México that the nation’s northern borders
begin to be redrawn through relational experiences between players and other players, and
players with fans. The game, through advertising, music, and the players themselves,
provides an international space interpreted by a select group of Oaxacans that attend games,
as every symbol in the stadium is in some way bent to satisfy their preferences as consumers.
Mass marketing and use of media in Oaxaca have further muddled this experience where a
Guerreros game is more than just baseball; it is a spectacle. It’s a spectacle not because of the
half-naked dancers and an outrageous mascot, although they do contribute significantly, but
in the plethoric music, rituals, and food hailing from baseball’s imagined and real roots in the
US and the Caribbean. Indeed, while the fan base is largely affluent, and the professional
modern game works to control all aspects of participation, including the limiting of fan
physical violence, the history and confrontation from fans with owners and players shows
that Oaxacan baseball, indeed, cannot belong specifically or completely to those who
11.
437
Ibid., 154.
438
Beezley, Mexican National Identity, 67; Olcott, Revolutionary Women in Post Revolutionary México,
93
produce it at its highest levels.439 Indeed, “capitalism does not only destructure and isolate: it
also reunifies and resets the scattered pieces into a new system.”440
While the Guerreros wish to claim their indigenous heritage by evoking Zapotec
symbols of resistance and battle, their product serves as a playground for modernity and
consumerism through its most expedient contemporary channels and works to reinforce these
traits into those who attend and participate in games. Indeed, the Mexican League’s
obsession with statistics, like other major leagues around the world, pushes a capitalist
message across to its participants, stressing hard work and individualism. In many ways,
Oaxacan professional baseball represents nicely what Oaxaca is becoming. While the state
retains many of its traditional symbols, it is little doubt modern in most definable aspects
while allowing space for some to call the game’s production in the capital city “distinctly
Oaxacan.”441 No one discourse can be applied evenly throughout the state.
Like Nahua markets and Mexican puppet shows that made communication and
definition of symbols expedient, the professional baseball stadium represents a “point of
contact,” a border overlapping with borders and a folding of places common in a period of
rapid economic and technological expansion that has made physical space itself less
important in some respects.442 Places like this force the academic to think of Oaxaca outside
of the “traditional” and accept a discourse that gives inhabitants room to maneuver. The state
has never been completely shut out from, or ignorant to, the “modern,” but the stadium itself
represents the state’s furthest reach into what is among the most capitalist and cosmopolitan
of spaces in the world. Whatever the intention of the sport’s producers, however, the
economic realities of the vast majority of Oaxacans restrict access to the Guerreros whether it
be through live attendance, watching on television, or interacting on the Internet. The
professional game, then, should be considered primarily an exclusionary production, but one
with flexibility.
439
440
García-Canclini, Transforming Modernity, 64.
441
442
Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest, 170; Beezley, Mexican National Identity, 105-117; Schultz,
“El Rey de Deportes,” 5-6.
94
CHAPTER 4
PLAYING THE FIELD: COMPETITING
MODERNITIES AND SHIFTING BORDERS IN
OAXACA’S OTHER LEAGUES
Baseball has no grand narrative among communities in the Valley or the Isthmus, and
its participation varies greatly.443 The sport was initially brought by foreign engineers and
companies and was further promoted by elites during the Porfiriato as an exclusionary
practice. More integrative aspects of the game were promoted during a wave of indigenismo
in the Revolutionary period from 1910 to 1946.444 Certainly baseball in the Valley has not
been wholly elite in production and the wider availability of communications technologies
have helped create undercurrents of baseball belonging. Indeed, sociologist Brian Petrie
placed heavy emphasis on sport as a relevant political and social study because it is part of a
“social reality” and “anchored” to the political and economic system. He argues that it
outlines and underlies all the major ideologies of those in power yet all levels of society can
use sport as a way to grab power or to be exploited.445
Contemporary baseball in the Valley and the Isthmus draws participation at multiple
levels. There are youth leagues, amateur adult leagues, and semi-professional leagues. Within
these leagues teams come to fruition for different reasons, influenced by historical identity, a
desire to feel a part of a modern community, the need for exercise, the desire for
entertainment, and as a way to escape from poverty with the rise of professionalism in
443
444
Beezley and MacLachlan, Mexicans in Revolution, 170-171; Charles A. Hale, “The Liberal Impulse:
Daniel Cosío Villegas and the Historia Moderna de Mexico,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 54
(1974): 485-486. William Beezley used these years to mark the span of the México Revolution. In 1946 land
reform was largely halted and México entered a period of corruption and growing inequality where many of the
Revolution’s perceived gains were reversed. These trends were noted by Daniel Cosío as well as noted by Hale.
Neo-Porfirianism is more commonly used to describe México from the 1980s to the present.
445
Petrie, “Sport and Politics,” 190-192.
95
baseball. Additionally, similar to the Porfiriato and Revolutionary periods, governments and
local business continue to use the game as a way to promote their own agenda. Just as during
the Porfiriato, nearly all of Oaxacans want a piece of modernity, just some want more say in
what modernity looks like and who defines it. This chapter examines these competing
“modernities” in an economic period similar to that of the Porfiriato where a neoliberal push
since President Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) has deepened canyons that have dissected
Oaxaca’s rich and poor.
This chapter reopens questions about how and why baseball came to the Oaxaca
Valley and the Isthmus and compares this to how and why baseball is produced in present
times. It is also logical to elucidate who exactly has and is playing. Moreover, this chapter
seeks answers on why and how people from all segments of society feel baseball belongs to
them. This section relies heavily on the voices of Oaxacans.
4.1 AMATEUR LEAGUES AND GRASSROOTS
ORGANIZATION
San Pablo Huixtepec is a small municipality just outside of Zimatlán, and an hour bus
ride from the capital. It was once a crossroads for development in the Valley and was situated
among productive mines and Hamilton’s railroad. However, after the Revolution and the
decline of mining, little lasting economic opportunities remained. It is possible that a baseball
team once existed here as the sun set on the Porfiriato, but if one did, it certainly left with the
foreign capital from which it arrived. It was in 1958, however, when the town’s baseball
spirit was reawakened, in part from one man’s acquisition of a radio and to a mythical
historical connection between the modern sport and the ancient indigenous ball game known
as pelota mixteca that made baseball feel natural and inherently indigenous.
Rodolfo, a 68-year-old very fit local, claims that San Pablo never had foreign
investment or Mexican corporations but rather was just a small conglomeration of farms and
humble homes in the 1950s. At that time Rodolfo and his teenage friends gained access to a
radio that played MLB and Mexican League games, which helped ferment excitement in a
new feeling of closeness to the US and México City.446 Indeed, like the almanacs from the
446
Rodolfo, interview by author, San Pablo Huixtepec, Oaxaca, July 12, 2010.
96
Revolutionary period that helped ethnically, linguistically, and regionally diverse Mexicans
imagine a fresh collective sense of place, baseball on the radio worked as a “vehicle of
culture,” allowing those in the community to think outside of its relatively bucolic and
pastoral existence.447
At sixteen, Rodolfo and a handful of friends took to the open fields, wearing towels
around their hands in place of expensive leather gloves and using a ball that was made from
whatever they could find.448 Soon after, the group created a team name, “Los Tigres de
Huixtepec,” and entered into the Valley’s popular Liga Joaquin Amaro, an amateur circuit
supported by a band of local promoters who organized tournaments and championships
between clubs from all over the Valley.449 San Pablo grew enough to create a tiered fourteam pyramid-style system that would ensure that the community’s best players would end
up on a single team in order to compete with Valley powerhouses from the communities of
Tlacolula, Etla, Zimatlán, and Colonia Reforma.450 At times the team would even get a crack
at distant clubs from Puerto Escondido and the Isthmus that exposed many to far regions of
the state for perhaps the first time.451 The Tigres acted as a catalyst for community building
against rival municipios and offered a unique opportunity for exercise beyond toiling away in
the fields.452
The team learned on the run, but media and increased experience soon transformed
the team into a legitimate baseball club with skilled managers. It did not take long for
Rodolfo to understand the complex strategies of the sport, such as the hit-and-run. Likewise,
the team quickly digested the culture of the game with its many unwritten rules, such as
intentionally hitting a batter in retaliation to a hit batsman on one’s own team. Indeed, “eso es
447
Beezley, Mexican National Identity, 25-27. Various documents and birth records in the Archivo de San
Pablo Huixtepec, San Pablo Huixtepec, Oaxaca, an archive being constructed at the time of writing, point to a
relative timelessness in San Pablo, yet connections to the French imperial invasion and economic ventures show
the many flows moving in and out of the village.
448
Rodolfo, interview by author.
449
Ibid.; Miguel, interview by author.
450
Ibid.
451
452
Ibid.; Miguel, interview by author.
97
béisbol.”453 The team also came to adopt one of baseball’s greatest traditions: that of the
nickname. Players were donned with all sorts of playful monikers, Rodolfo’s being “Tony”
because of his large size, likely a reference to “Tony the Tiger” from Kellogg’s Sugar
Frosted Flakes cereal that was popular through advertisements of the period, evidence of the
widening cultural penetration by US brands.454 While the team was never a champion, they
electrified San Pablo where attendance was always great. They even attracted the attention of
Mexican League scouts.455
While skeptics may label these expressions as simple mimicry, those in the
community believed the game to have unique Oaxacan elements.456 Indeed, the club valued
conditioning and weight training programs before they had become standard practice for
sports even in the US.457 Moreover, while those in San Pablo and many neighboring
communities consider themselves mestizos, baseball, according to Rodolfo and others in the
community, was considered to be in their blood, an inherent primordial expertise that was
handed down from their indigenous ancestors who communicated with the gods in an ancient
ball game that also involved a glove and a ball, high skill, and the need for superior hand-eye
coordination—that of pelota mixteca.458 Grassroots organization of baseball in indigenous
areas of México has precedent beyond San Pablo Huixtepec. In fact, many Maya in Yucatán
worked as producers of the game at the beginning of the twentieth century and formed
political collectives and opposition schools called Ligas de Resistencia around the sport’s
organization. The descendents of Mesoamerica’s greatest ballgames believed that
453
454
Ibid.; Advertising Age, “The Advertising Century: Tony the Tiger,”
http://adage.com/century/icon09.html (accessed April 3, 2011).
455
456
Miguel, interview by author.
457
John D. Lukacs, “Programs Decades in the Making,” June 22, 2010, ESPN.com,
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5312405 (accessed April 20, 2011); Winegardner, The Veracruz
Blues, 23. A misunderstanding of muscle contraction and expansion stagnated US programs until the 1960s.
Some players did lift weights in the US but the benefits were not widely understood.
458
Meliton, interview by author, Valdeflores, Oaxaca, July 5, 2010; Rodolfo, interview by author, Miguel,
interview by author; Wysocki, field notes, June 27, 2010; Beezley, “The Rise of Baseball in Mexico and the
First Valenzuela,” 1; Varina Del Angel, Gabriela Leon, and Oscar Necoechea, El Juego de Pelota Mixteca
(Mexico, D.F.: Ediciones Castillo, 2005), 21.
98
participation in baseball was more “spiritual” than even religion.459 The ancient Oaxacan
game, at times referred to as pelota zapoteca, was promoted as early as 1869 as a tourist
attraction and is still played today where nearly 800 teams are believed to exist.460
History, however, would seem to consider the current ball game connection to both
ancient Mesoamerican ballgames and to baseball as part of an origin myth, a tactic used by
many cultures to create historical authenticity and legitimacy for their own participation. It
also helps anchor an identity in that production.461 In fact, the scoring of pelota mixteca
mirrors that of contemporary tennis and other Southern European antecedents, and even
includes the rare “chase rule” found only in Franco-Flemish games known to have moved
through the Iberian Peninsula by the fifteenth century.462 Playing with rackets or the mano
desnuda was interchangeable. While anthropologists Jorge R. Acosta and Hugo Moedano
Koer declared it wholly unique to the region decades ago, the historical tracing of ball games
since that time shows Basque and Spanish ballgames spread all over the Spanish Americas
during colonization including Colombia and Ecuador, featuring nearly the same rules.463 The
game incorporates some elements unique to the region, as one would expect since every sport
evolves, including baseball.464 Indeed, during the Spanish conquest the way sports were
played changed, and during the Porfiriato many modern sports took on new meanings.465
Interestingly, with nearly all modern ball games originating from similar areas in Europe, it is
plausible to believe that baseball and pelota mixteca are distantly related. Either way, the
459
Joseph, “Forging the Regional Pastime,” 50.
460
Archivo Historico Municipal, “Actas de Cabildo,” April 16, 1869, Oaxaca City, Oaxaca; Del Angel,
Leon, and Necoechea, El Juego de Pelota Mixteca, 5; Heiner Gillmeister, Tennis: A Cultural History (New
York: New York University Press, 1998), 319.
461
Lise Waxer, “'In Those Days, Holy Music Rained Down': Origins and Influences of Musica Antillana
in Cali and Colombia,” in The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular Culture in Cali,
Colombia, 31-68 (Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 2002), 31-34.
462
Gillmeister, Tennis, 71-72; Del Angel, Leon, and Necoechea, El Juego de Pelota Mixteca, 10-11.
463
Gillmeister, Tennis, 71-73.
464
Ibid., 318-319.; Salón de la Fama del Beisbol Profesional de México, “Historia del Beisbol;” Collins,
Martin, and Vamplew, Encyclopedia of Traditional British Rural Sports, 41-42, 252-253, 271.
465
Josephine, interview by author, Zimatlán, Oaxaca, July 11, 2010; Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club,
33. During the Porfiriato, Beezley argues that many modern sports channeled cultural associations and meaning
from sports then banned. For example, the significance of boxing replaced that of the duel.
99
belief in the connection provides power to those at the bottom rungs of the social ladder to
claim the sport as their own.
While the San Pablo club’s presence has declined since its glory years of the Tigres
days, another Valley league has risen to prominence over the last thirty years. In 1983 the
amateur Liga Regional de Beisbol Eduardo Vasconselos (Liga Vasconselos) was created and
today boasts over 1,000 players and 59 teams, the most the league has ever had. The league
extends all over the Valley featuring teams from Tlacolula, Oaxaca City, Zaachila, Ocotlán,
and Miahuatlán. Some teams outside of the Valley compete as well like those from La
Cañada. San Pablo Huixtepec is also represented among these regions.466 The league has four
active divisions organized by skill level, not necessarily age. The top division is the “Primera
Fuerza Especial,” featuring eight clubs. The next is the “Primera Fuerza Intermedia,” also
with eight clubs followed by “Segunda Fuerza” with fifteen clubs, and lastly “Segunda
Fuerza B” with twenty-nine teams. Most of the teams in the league’s upper divisions feature
younger players, often between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three. The lower divisions,
on the other hand, are a complete mixed bag. For example, the “Cuerudos de Miahuatlán”
featured four players born in 1998 while the “Cuervos de Polo Sánchez,” of the same
division, listed thirteen players born before 1960.467 This puts the majority of players of one
team at thirteen years old against a team of men well into their fifties, sixties, and even
seventies. Most clubs have between sixteen to twenty players and coaches listed on their
rosters but the Santo Domingo Etla club had just ten. This diversity lends to a more informal
practice of the game and gives the league a unique quality compared to those in the US.
Team names reflect at some level the character, inspiration, geography, and
circumstances of communities in the league. Many teams take their name after MLB clubs
such as the “Bravos,” “Piratas,” “Tigres,” “Angeles,” “Atleticos,” “Astros,” “Yankees,” and
“Reds,” showing the fondness and awareness they may hold for MLB. There is even one
team that takes its name from Japan with the “Lions de Tokio,” reflecting global baseball
466
Liga regional de béisbol Eduardo Vasconselos, “¡¡Somos 59 equipos!!,” Feb. 2, 2011,
http://www.ligavasconcelos.com/nota.php?nota=1431 (accessed February 22, 2011).
467
Liga regional de béisbol Eduardo Vasconselos, “Rosters,”
http://www.ligavasconcelos.com/campeonato.php?opc=5 (accessed February 24, 2011).
100
consciousness among players and coaches. Other teams take names from sponsors, unions, or
local industries such as the “Oaxaca Inn,” “Tubos y Conexiones,” “Carniceros RESCER,”
“Gasolineras ‘Las Joyas,’” “Cerverceros,” “Escribanos,” “Gladiadores INEGI,” “Nueva
Era,” and more. Others just use family or city names.468 Many of the men play for the love of
the game while others in the league are actively scouted by professional clubs. Others may
play to capture the cash prizes that are often awarded to tournament winners. The Oaxaca
Valley boasted seventeen semi-pro clubs in 2011 with the region’s best players hailing from
Etla, Ejutla, Zimatlán, and Vulcanes. In the Valley the game is expanding.469
4.2 NATIONAL RECOGNITION: THE STARS AND REBEL
LEAGUES OF THE ISTHMUS
While baseball is in its nascent stages for many Valley communities, the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec has been host to the most zealous of peloteros. Nearly every municipality
hosted a field either for professional or amateur games in 2011.470 Indeed, the region features
near 200 semi-professional teams, many coming from the competitive Liga de Beisbol
Regional del Istmo (Liga del Istmo).471 The Isthmus of Tehuantepec has nearly as many
municipalities with baseball fields as it does those with soccer or basketball, a striking fact
considering that basketball courts nearly come standard to municipal plazas in Oaxaca and
soccer fields are sometimes just tracks of open land and dirt.472 The Isthmus is home to some
of the most indigenous municipalities in Oaxaca, defined by the ability to speak an
indigenous language. They are the proud descendents of the Zapotec resistance movements
in the mid-nineteenth century that pestered Benito Juárez and challenged former ally Porfirio
Díaz.473 Of the Isthmus’ forty-one municipalities, twenty have indigenous populations that
number over 1,000. By contrast, the Oaxaca Valley hosts just thirty-five out of 120
468
Ibid.
469
470
Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México, Estado de Oaxaca.
471
Academia de Béisbol Alfredo Harp Helú, “Video,”
http://www.oaxacabeisbol.org/Academia_de_Beisbol/Video.html (accessed May 11, 2011).
472
Josephine, interview by author.
473
Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, 315; Johnson, “Conflict Resolution.”
101
municipalities with the distinct advantage of closeness to the state’s capital where service and
tourism jobs support larger populations.474
The Liga del Istmo is one of the country’s most competitive leagues and features
players almost exclusively from the Isthmus itself. It has recently incorporated teams from
Chiapas as well.475 The Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú, Alfredo Harp Helú’s philanthropic
organization, conceded that the talent level in the Liga del Istmo is competitive with the
Mexican League. In fact, the leagues frequently play exhibition matches against each other
during the offseason to help prepare for their respective regular seasons.476 The region also
features a highly competitive amateur league called the Liga de béisbol Municipal.477
Arguably Oaxaca’s three greatest players passed through the Liga del Istmo on their
way to illustrious baseball careers elsewhere. Jesús “Chito” Ríos Villalobos is still one of the
most infamous names on the Oaxacan diamond, especially in the Valley where he coaches
the “Tigres de ‘Chito’” in the Liga Vasconselos. Ríos was born in El Espinal in the Juchitán
district in 1963, a town that now populates a little over 8,000 people, nearly half of its
inhabitants indigenous.478 Ríos was signed at a very young age and it wasn’t long that other
professional leagues in the country took notice of the budding right-handed pitcher. His first
professional action came in the LMP with the Tomateros de Culiacán, but harassment from
Mexican League scouts to sign pushed him a different direction.479 He joined the
474
Jeffrey H Cohen, The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2004), 63; Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México, Estado de Oaxaca. Nearly one-fourth of all jobs in
Oaxaca are service based because of tourism.
475
Jaime Velázquez Olmedo, “Liga de béisbol Oaxaca-Chiapas,” El Sol Del Istmo, Mar. 4, 2009,
http://www.elsoldelistmo.com.mx/index.php?ver=deportes&dia=3&nuevo_mes=04&nuevo_ano=2009&nota=L
iga%20de%20b%E9isbol%20Oaxaca-Chiapas (accessed April 18, 2011).
476
Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú Deportes; Conexión Deportiva “Cultural pierde los dos amistosos ante
Olmecas de Tabasco,” Conexión Deportiva (March 2009), http://www.conexiondeportiva.net/html/beisbol.html
477
Jaime Velázquez Olmedo, “Liga de béisbol municipal,” El Sol Del Istmo, March 4, 2009,
http://www.elsoldelistmo.com.mx/index.php?ver=deportes&dia=3&nuevo_mes=04&nuevo_ano=2009
478
Baseball Reference, “Jesus Rios,” http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=rios-002jes (accessed April 23, 2011); Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México, Estado de Oaxaca.
479
Beismex, “Biografias Pitchers Mexicanos,” http://beismex.galeon.com/enlaces943027.html (accessed
April 23, 2011).
102
controversial Asociación Nacional de Beisbolistas player’s labor union in the early 1980s,
soon after signing with the Tigres Capitalinos, now the Tigres de Quintana Roo of the
Mexican League.480 It was here that Ríos made himself one of the country’s greatest pitchers
of all time. In one of his first seasons with the Tigres, he punched out an astounding 202
hitters and went 63 innings without allowing an earned run. His domination earned him a try
out for the Chicago White Sox and the Philadelphia Phillies of MLB, failing to stick with
either organization because of a fastball that only reached 88 miles per hour.481
At twenty-one years old, Ríos’ career seemed to soar and his advanced feel for his
best pitch, a slider, improved further. In 1985 he had his best season completing all 26 games
he started and throwing a powerful 225 innings.482 He was again given MLB auditions at
ages twenty-two and twenty-three with the New York Yankees and California Angels
organizations, reaching the Triple-A level on both occasions. While his strikeouts were
healthy, he walked too many hitters and would later be forced to continue his career in the
Mexican League.483 Ríos went on to become the Mexican League’s strikeout leader in five
different seasons and led the Tigres to a championship in 1992.484 If this were not all enough,
the right-hander played until age forty-three, throwing two shutout innings for the Tigres de
Quintana Roo in 2007 to end his career.485 He retired as the all-time Mexican League leader
in strikeouts.486
While never reaching great accolades in domestic leagues, Geronimo Gil, born in El
Barrio de la Soledad in the Juchitán district in 1975, is one of the most successful ballplayers
in the state’s history. The lead-footed catcher incredibly broke into the Mexican League at
seventeen years old with the México City Diablos Rojos, but stayed only briefly. At twenty,
Gil’s contract was purchased by the Los Angeles Dodgers where over the next five years he
480
Ibid.; Jaime Cervantes Pérez, “El Sindicado del Béisbol, ¿Ayudaría o no?,” Mi Religión y su Dios
Teobol, April 24, 2006, http://www.jaimecervantes.netfirms.com/ArSindicato.htm (accessed May 3, 2011).
481
Biesmex, “Biografías Pitchers Mexicanos.”
482
Ibid.
483
Baseball Reference, “Jesus Rios.”
484
Beismex, “Biografías Pitchers Mexicanos.”
485
Baseball Reference, “Jesus Rios.”
486
Beismex, “Biografías Pitchers Mexicanos.”
103
ascended through the minor leagues, reaching Triple-A before being dealt to the Baltimore
Orioles. In 2001, Gil made his Major League debut with the team and played in 17 games,
batting an impressive .293. In 2002 he became the first rookie catcher since 1966 to start on
opening day for the club.487 The 2002 season would prove to be his best in MLB, playing 125
games as the Orioles’ primary backstop and hitting 12 home runs. Gil ended his MLB career
after the 2007 campaign with the Colorado Rockies, but since he has ignited the Mexican
League as a member of both the Oaxaca Guerreros and the Diablos Rojos.488 Gil continues to
play in the LMP over the winter with the Yaquis de Ciudad Obregón and was the starting
catcher for the Mexican national team in the World Baseball Classic in 2006.489
The greatest player of them all, and the closest thing to an Oaxacan Fernando
Valenzuela, is Vinicio “Vinny” Castilla Soria. Valenzuela, born in Sonora, was a phenom at
age fifteen, transforming Mexican baseball forever by permanently putting the nation’s mark
in MLB.490 “Fernandomania” introduced MLB to thirty to forty million Mexicans, with only
World Cup matches beating his ratings during his outings.491 As a member of the Los
Angeles Dodgers, Valenzuela dominated the competition like no other Mexican athlete had
ever, winning a World Series title, Rookie of the Year, and the National League Cy Young
Award, given to the league’s best pitcher. Over his career he was a six-time MLB All-Star
and won two Silver Slugger Awards for the league’s best hitter at his position.492 While
Castilla would never be the immortal that Valenzuela became, his performance fits nicely
next to Valenzuela’s.
Castilla was born in Oaxaca City in 1967, but he began his baseball career in the Liga
del Istmo as a teenager. Always overshadowed by his polished older brother and dad, who
487
Ángel Domínguez, “Gerónimo Gil, ‘Grandes Ligas’ de Naranjeros,” El Vigia, October 8, 2010,
http://www.elvigia.net/noticia/ger-nimo-gil-grandes-ligas-de-naranjeros (accessed April 14, 2011).
488
Baseball Reference, “Geronimo Gil”
489
Ángel Domínguez, “Gerónimo Gil, ‘Grandes Ligas’ de Naranjeros,”El Vigia.
490
LaFrance, “A Mexican Popular Image of the United States through the Baseball Hero, Fernando
Valenzuela,” 14.
491
492
Ibid., 15-16.
Baseball Reference, “Fernando Valenzuela,” http://www.baseballreference.com/players/v/valenfe01.shtml (accessed April 3, 2011).
104
played in amateur leagues in the state, one venerating recollection tells of Castilla entering
the Universidad Benito Juárez as a youth to become a lawyer, but being unable to refuse his
true vocation.493 Castilla broke out in his rookie season and in 1986 was picked as a reserve
for the Mexican National Selection.494 By 1987 he was a regular in the Mexican League with
the Saraperos de Saltillo and at age twenty-one he was signed by the Atlanta Braves of
MLB.495 Despite struggling in the low minors, Castilla was rushed through the Braves’
system and in 1991 the shortstop turned third baseman made his MLB debut. In 1993, he was
drafted by the expansion Colorado Rockies.496
Over a sixteen-year MLB career ending in 2006, Castilla hit .276 with 320 home
runs, driving in 1,105 runs, and is easily the most successful Mexican hitter in MLB history.
Between 1995 and 1998 alone Castilla belted a gargantuan 158 homers with 460 runs batted
in (RBI), all the meanwhile posting batting averages above .300 annually. His career high in
home runs and RBI came in 1998 when he slugged 46 with 144 RBI. Over his career he
appeared on the Most Valuable Player ballot four times, won three Silver Sluggers, and was
an All-Star twice. Some advanced defensive measures even count Castilla as one of the
league’s best defensive third basemen.497 He played often in the LMP with the Naranjeros de
Hermosillo as late as 2009 and 2010 and represented México in the World Baseball
Classic.498 His star power is not faded in Oaxaca, where tournaments and playing fields in the
Liga Vasconselos and amateur leagues commonly don his name next to national heroes such
493
Shaila Rosagel, “Vinicio Castilla, El señor cuadrangular,” May 17, 2009,
http://shailarosagel.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/vinicio-castilla-el-senor-cuadrangular/ (accessed April 28,
2011).
494
Ibid.; Ivan Santos, “Vincio Castilla,” Archivo La Revista Historica de Beisbol Mexicano, 17-21,
http://www.archivodelbeisbol.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=138&Itemid=99
495
Rosagel, “Vinicio Castilla, El señor Cuadrangular”; Baseball Reference ,“Vinny Castilla,”
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/castivi02.shtml (accessed March 7, 2011).
496
Ibid.
497
Ibid.
498
Julio Sánchez León, “Vinny, deportista del Bicentenario,” Voz e Imagen, March 19, 2010,
http://174.123.68.163/portal/deportes/vinny-deportista-del-bicentenario (accessed April 4, 2011).
105
as Juárez.499 In 2010 he was recognized in México as the nation’s Athlete of the Year with a
special Bicentennial distinction.500 He works not only as a special assistant to the general
manager for the Rockies, but also as manager for the Mexican national team. Interestingly,
his pitching coach is Valenzuela.501
Baseball in the Isthmus reigns as the undisputed king of sports but baseball politics
may be tumultuous. The state wishes to use its baseball acumen as a weapon to strike down
the stranglehold of the country’s northern states. Indeed, the nation’s northern stretches and
México City dominate in the production of baseball and represent the most economically
active and viable regions of the country in industry and finance. This relationship is reflected
often through baseball. Perhaps by showcasing great skill in the sport long associated with
affluence and cosmopolitanism, baseball holds power to help transform the image of Oaxaca
that is still portrayed as largely traditional and indigenous. While much of this image is
attributed to national tourism campaigns that many communities in Oaxaca often perpetuate,
recognizing the immediate profits that can be made from “Indian” tourism, the state’s
economy is among the least industrialized in the country representing just one percent of the
national figure.502 In fact, the lone economic sector to grow consistently in the state from the
mid-century mark was tourism.503 As in rural Cuba which played baseball as a way to assert
their own regional relevance against the dominant capital Havana, baseball in Oaxaca seems
to be officially promoted in part to augment the region’s importance versus other modern
baseball-playing regions in the country.504 Indeed, sports are, in the estimation of one, among
499
Julio Sánchez León, “En la Monte Albán arrancan las acciones,” Voz e Imagen, September 9, 2010,
http://174.123.68.163/portal/deportes/beisbol/local/liga-monte-alban/monte-alban-arrancan-acciones (accessed
April 4, 2011); Liga regional de Beisbol Vasconselos; Hernández, interview by author.
500
Sánchez León, “Vinny, deportista del Bicentenario.”
501
Rosagel, “Vinicio Castilla, El señor Cuadrangular.”
502
Norget, Days of Death, Days of Life; Perez, “Challenges to Motherhood,” 313-314; Arthur D. Murphy
and Alex Stepick, Social Inequality in Oaxaca: A History of Resistance and Change (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1991), 2, 79.
503
Norget, Days of Death, Days of Life, 38.
504
Wagner, “Sport in Revolutionary Societies,” 131.
106
the most affordable and least risky “foreign policy weapons” a country, or region in this case,
can use to legitimize itself.505
To help show off the recent progress and development of the state, local officials such
as Benjamín Salinas, president of the Asociación de Beisbol del Estado de Oaxaca, have
pushed to organize the state’s leagues in the Federacion Mexicana de Beisbol, AC (Femebe).
In exchange for compliance with the blanket organization, federated states have opportunities
to play in and host national baseball tournaments. There have been problems to
accomplishing federation in Oaxaca, however. Harkening images of Che Gorio’s Zapotec
autonomy movements of the mid-nineteenth century, many Isthmus and Valley leagues have
not agreed to federate, likely desiring to maintain independent of the organization’s rules and
perhaps to avoid restrictive costs associated with those rules. In fact, this sort of
organizational move by Femebe marks what Elias and Dunning have seen as the “civilizing
of sports,” where a governing body tries to control the physical force inside a game and
maintain power over roles assigned within it.506 In exchange for membership, Femebe
recommends the employment of some standardized rules from how to train players to how to
maintain a ball field.507 Most of all, however, they want to rope-in independent leagues that
they feel are slowing progress for Mexican organized ball as a whole.508 Frustrated at the lack
of progress in Oaxaca, Femebe has given ultimatums to state sporting promoters that threaten
to ban it from national and regional tournaments they sponsor, along with it potential funding
opportunities associated. A ban would conceivably handcuff the potential of local leagues,
the national organization, and the state’s promotional project associated.509
505
Paula J. Pettavino and Geralyn Pye, Sport in Cuba: The Diamond in the Rough (Pittsburgh: University
of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), 6, 225, 229.
506
Elias and Dunning, Quest for Excitement, 230-231.
507
Federación Mexicana de Béisbol, A.C (Femebe), “Sistema de Capacitación y Certificación para
Entrenadores Deportivos,” http://www.femebe.net/htmltonuke.php?filnavn=html/sicced.htm (accessed March
16, 2011).
508
Julio Sánchez León, “Oaxaca, presente en la asamblea de la Femebe,” Voz e Imagen, February 1, 2011,
http://www.noticiasnet.mx/portal/deportes/oaxaca-presente-asamblea-femebe (accessed February 22, 2011).
509
Gerardo Santaella, “Solucionado el conflicto de beisbol,” El Imparcial, January 22, 2010,
http://www.imparcialenlinea.com/?mod=leer&id=110332&sec=deportes&titulo=Solucionado__el_conflicto__d
e_beisbol (accessed February 22, 2010).
107
The state, on the other hand, believes Oaxaca’s lack of federation lies partly in
discrimination. Indeed, Salinas states that the federation’s requirements for inclusion have
changed as Oaxaca has met them; the organization demanding first the inclusion of five
leagues at minimum, but just months later asking for an even greater commitment of 1,500
players.510 As of February of 2011 the state had federated 1,300 players, 200 short of the
requirement.511 That did not stop officials from campaigning, however. Believing they will
reach recognition, in December of 2010, Alberto Ortega Castro of the Comisión Estatal de
Cultura Física y Deporte (Coesde) announced that Oaxaca would host their region in the
Olimpiada Nacional 2011in baseball and softball, which includes strong baseball regions
such as México City, Veracruz, and Puebla.512 However, Eduardo Carrasco Toral of the
Asociación Oaxaqueña de Beisbol had bigger plans: to lobby Femebe to host the 2012
seventeen to eighteen year old and the nineteen to thirty-nine year old brackets of the
baseball national championships, claiming that the state’s infrastructure was ready and in
place.513
Salinas believes that Oaxaca has been fired “cheapshots” from the north who depict it
as underdeveloped or unsafe. In response, he has cited the north’s obvious instability brought
by the war on drugs. Frustrated, he believes that nobody in the north cares about baseball
contributions from Oaxaca.514 Since the rise of nearby port cities, such as Salina Cruz and
Acapulco, Oaxaca City has largely been productively irrelevant at the national level, tourism
and remittances representing two of the larger sources of income for the state.515 The city
does not even appear on the World Bank’s “Doing Business” website, which measures the
510
Gerardo Santaella, “Ultimátum al béisbol oaxaqueño,” El Imparcial, April 23, 2010,
http://www.imparcialenlinea.com/?mod=leer&id=119066&sec=deportes&titulo=Ultim%E1tum_al_b%E9isbol
_oaxaque%F1o (accessed February 22, 2010).
511
Sánchez León, “Oaxaca, presente en la asamblea de la Femebe,” Voz e Imagen.
512
Victor Hugo Villanueva, “Fiesta en Zimatlán de Álvarez,” NSS Oaxaca. January 12, 2011,
http://www.nssoaxaca.com/deportes/34-local/59017-fiesta-en-zimatlan-de-alvarez (accessed January 19, 2011).
513
Julio Sánchez León, “Oaxaca solicitará sede de Nacional 2012,” Voz e Imagen, January 24, 2011,
http://www.noticiasnet.mx/portal/deportes/oaxaca-solicitara-sede-nacional-2012 (accessed February 22, 2011).
514
Santaella, “Ultimátum al béisbol oaxaqueño,” El Imparcial; Murphy and Stepick, Social Inequality in
Oaxaca, 2, 79.
515
Murphy and Stepick, Social Inequality in Oaxaca, 18, 86.
108
ease of creating and maintaining a firm in México. The Emerald City has no doubt fallen
from prominence in this way; a far cry from the cochineal and mining prosperity of the
region between 1700 and 1800 and the Porfiriato respectively.516
4.3 LIGAS PEQUEÑAS
Youth leagues also offer a mixed bag of producers. While youth leagues are spread
all over the Valley, the most advertised are the Liga de Beisbol de Aficionados Oaxaca (Liga
Oaxaca) and the Liga de Béisbol Infantil y Juvenil Monte Alban (Liga Monte Alban) near
Oaxaca City. Both are associated with Little League baseball. The Liga Oaxaca features
forty-eight teams and the Liga Monte Alban features thirty-three. The divisions are divided
by age from the five to six-year-old category (Escuelita) to thirteen and fourteen
(Prejunior).517 The season runs from late winter into summer and games are usually played in
tournaments held on Saturdays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Often there is a registration fee of
around 250 pesos per team for each tournament. Sometimes monetary prizes are offered for
those that play well.518
While the San Pablo club evolved from playing in dirt lots with creative equipment,
most youth leagues around the capital would hardly be considered so informal. In fact, the
bureaucratic nature of these leagues is mildly surprising. The Liga Monte Alban holds
regular board meetings to discuss issues such as league rules, scheduling problems, playoffs,
punishments, fundraising, and spending. Many decisions are made through a vote requiring a
quorum.519 The league also hosts an updated website which features the game schedule, team
516
Ibid., 22; Doing Business: Measuring Business Regulations, “Economy Rankings: Mexico,” from the
World Bank, http://www.doingbusiness.org/Rankings/mexico/2009 (accessed March 26, 2011).
517
Liga de Béisbol Infantil y Juvenil de Monte Albán, ACTA DE ASAMBLEA No. 10, Liga de Béisbol
Infantil y Juvenil de Monte Albán (March 28, 2011), http://www.ligamontealban.com/ (accessed March 30,
2011).
518
Moret García, “Play ball en la Liga Oaxaca,” Oaxacain.com, January 18, 2010,
http://www.oaxacain.com/eventos/50-eventos/843-play-ball-en-la-liga-oaxaca.html (accessed January 25,
2011); Convocatoria, Liga de Béisbol Infantil y Juvenil de Monte Albán, November, 2010,
http://www.ligamontealban.com/ (accessed March 30, 2011).
519
Liga de Béisbol Infantil y Juvenil de Monte Albán, ACTA DE ASAMBLEA No. 10.
109
standings, previous meeting minutes, team photos, news, and a contact page.520 Further the
site provides Google-Earth GPS satellite maps that demarcate the locations of ball fields.521
To raise money for new playing fields, the Liga Oaxaca has even held public auctions of
donated vehicles worth in upwards of 150,000 pesos.522 Moreover, the paper trail for
registering a child for tournament play is extensive. A family is required to provide
documentation including an original birth certificate, a copy of their CURP, two recent
photographs, proof of the child’s participation on a team, a waiver from a parent, proof of a
passing physical examination, and sometimes school records for each player. All of the
material is kept by the tournament board as a permanent record for the participant.523
It is likely that the organizational effort among youth leagues is partially a result of
the leagues’ association with Little League, which, like Femebe, requires its federated
leagues to follow mandated rules in exchange for funding opportunities and participation in
tournaments. Little League was established in the US in 1939. In 1954 there were 3,349
leagues. By 1996, however, the league had widely expanded, reaching its peak with 7,452
leagues worldwide. In 2010, the organization had 2,168,850 registered participants in
baseball and a small amount in softball in seventy-five different countries.524 Today Little
League All-Star teams, which represent every registered league, compete for the right to play
in the annual Little League World Series tournament held in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It is
considered the most participated youth sports tournament in the world, providing potential
520
Liga de Béisbol Infantil y Juvenil de Monte Albán, http://www.ligamontealban.com/ (accessed May 12,
2011).
521
Liga de Béisbol Infantil y Juvenil de Monte Albán, “Décima Asamblea,” Liga de Béisbol Infantil y
Juvenil de Monte Albán (March 28, 2011), http://www.ligamontealban.com/ (accessed March 30, 2011).
522
Gerardo Santaella, “La Liga Oaxaca entrega premio,” El Imparcial, January 9, 2011,
http://www.imparcialenlinea.com/?mod=leer&id=144172&sec=deportes&titulo=La_Liga_Oaxaca_entrega_pre
mio (accessed March 12, 2011).
523
Liga de Béisbol Infantil y Juvenil de Monte Albán, Convocatoria, Liga de Béisbol Infantil y Juvenil de
Monte Albán ( November, 2010); Liga de Béisbol Infantil y Juvenil de Monte Albán, ACTA DE ASAMBLEA
No. 10. A CURP is the Clave Única de Registro de Población, a proof of nationality.
524
Little League Baseball and Softball, “Little League Around the World,”
http://www.littleleague.org/learn/about/historyandmission/aroundtheworld.htm (accessed May 3, 2011);
“Reason 8: History and Mission of Little League,” Little League Baseball and Softball,
http://www.littleleague.org/learn/Start_Find_a_League/whyaffiliate/reason8.htm (May 3, 2011).
110
“instant recognition” on a global scale of each region that sends a representative.525 Oaxaca
has never had a team reach this level and most of México’s top teams play in the country’s
borderlands. However, outside of the immediate metropolitan area, Little Leagues are also
firmly established in Vulcanes, Ejutla, Etla and more.526
As is often the tradition in México since the Porfiriato, official playing fields and
tournaments are typically named after prominent locals or baseball heroes. Often these titles
are rewarded for personal charity. In 2010, a wave of powerful rain storms caused severe
flood-related damage to many of the Liga Monte Alban’s complexes. Campo Daniel Jarquín
Zayas, Campo Pedro Cardenal, and Campo Salvador Luna were slammed with small
mudslides that turned fallen tress into battering rams against structures and fencing. All three
fields were near completely underwater.527 In response, Harp Helú donated significant money
through the Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú to help repair the damaged fields. The league later
opened a tournament bearing his name with a military-style band and national anthem. Here
Harp Helú gave a speech about the importance of baseball to help strengthen family life. The
native Oaxacan proudly exclaimed, “Oaxaca se merece tener esto y más,” before giving way
to the internationally recited Little League pledge.528
The Little League pledge, unchanged since its creation in 1954, provides a stellar
example of the believed socializing potential of sport realized through symbolic fusions and
rituals associated with it. The Little League creed follows as so:
Creo en dios (I trust in God)
Amo a mi patria (I love my country)
Respetaré sus leyes (And will respect its laws)
Jugaré limpio (I will play fair)
Me enforzaré para ganar (And strive to win)
525
Little League Baseball and Softball, “Reasons to Affiliate,”
http://www.littleleague.org/learn/Start_Find_a_League/whyaffiliate.htm (accessed May 3, 2011).
526
527
Liga de Béisbol Infantil y Juvenil de Monte Albán, “Lunes 20 de septiembre,” Liga de Béisbol Infantil
y Juvenil de Monte Albán (September 20, 2010), http://www.ligamontealban.com/ (February 22, 2010).
528
Julio Sánchez León, “Ambiente, colorido y beisbol,” Voz e Imagen, February 4, 2011,
http://www.noticiasnet.mx/portal/deportes/ambiente-colorido-beisbol (accessed March 6, 2011).
111
Pero gane o pierda (But win or lose)
Siempre hare lo mejor que pueda (I will always do my best)529
The pledge was written in an effort to “give all leagues…a pledge reflecting some of the
sentiments of the Pledge of Allegiance, minus the references to the U.S.”530 The explicit
references to God and nation, in a still very Catholic and ethnically diverse state, contribute
to the general promotion of obedience long demanded from regional leaders. In this way
Little League baseball may be seen as among Oaxaca’s most successful performative
socialization efforts with baseball since it was first attempted in the Revolutionary period.
Interestingly, Little League does not require its leagues to recite the pledge to maintain
registration, evidencing the generally positive attributes the pledge is still believed to carry.
The organization claims, however, that those who choose not to use it typically substitute it
with a national anthem or prayer, both of which can be argued to share goals of mass
obedience and discipline from its participants.531 Indeed, from US President Dwight
Eisenhower to President George W. Bush, who led a public recitation of the pledge on the
White House lawn every year with children, the pledge, as intended, has been politically
charged. Here is part of the mission statement from the burgeoning Little League
organization:
Through proper guidance and exemplary leadership, the Little League program
assists youth in developing the qualities of citizenship, discipline, teamwork and
physical well-being. By espousing the virtues of character, courage and loyalty,
the Little League Baseball and Softball program is designed to develop superior
citizens rather than superior athletes.532
Even the Mexican Little League website claimed that baseball is important for the promotion
of health and to keep children monitored, orderly, and disciplined, reminding us of the
529
Fundación LLB, México, “!WILLIAMSPORT 2011!,” http://www.llbMéxico.com/ (accessed March
20, 2011); “Pledge,” Little League Baseball and Softball, http://www.littleleague.org/learn/about/pledge.htm
(accessed March 7, 2011).
530
Little League Baseball and Softball, “Pledge,” http://www.littleleague.org/learn/about/pledge.htm
531
532
Little League Baseball and Softball, “Pledge.”
Ralph Dannheisser, “Little League Baseball Aims to Blend Fun, Character Development,”
America.gov, September 8, 2008. http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplaceenglish/2008/September/20080908123707madobbA0.3626215.html (accessed April 7, 2011).
112
civilizing qualities the game is still believed to possess and further defining the citizen by
amount of civilized capital one has drawn from these socializing experiences.533
4.4 OAXACA’S NEW MODERN PROJECT
As was championed by AG Spaulding, and restated by porfiristas and indigenistas,
many believe baseball to carry inherent and contagious civilizing characteristics that instill
obedience, discipline, and collective self-sacrifice among others. Patsy Neal believed that
sports’ rules and structure, for which the participant accepts punishment, if violated, carry the
ability to “internalize” into athletes and make them particularly susceptible to social
control.534 Further, Brian Petrie believed that the behavior in athletes to accept the
unquestioned authority of coaches and umpires conditions the participant into becoming
politically conservative, at times even changing the participant’s value systems. The
voluntary participation of athletes makes them even more vulnerable to this type of
penetration.535 Indeed, Max Weber said that a “rationalization accompanies the
autonomization of the field of sport to ensure predictability and calculability.”536 Here a
“body” governs the “field” that carries significant power in the ability to punish those who
don’t cooperate with its rules. However, it also rewards those who do with trophies and
records, according to Pierre Bourdieu, “just as governments do.”537
While Vinny Castilla believes México is close to being a global force in baseball, he
realizes that in order for the nation to be competitive it must divert resources from its long
favored sport of soccer into baseball. For Castilla, México has the talent; it just needs money
to exploit it.538 He likely has a friend in Oaxaca governor Gabino Cue Monteagudo who has
taken baseball performance to a new level of importance at the local by announcing that to
“develop” the state, Oaxaca has to invest in sports programs. With Manuel Portilla, the sub533
Fundación LLB México, “CONCANACO,” http://www.llbMéxico.com/inicio/confederacion-decamaras-nacionales-de-comercio-concanaco/ (March 20, 2011).
534
535
Neal, Sport and Identity, 22-29, 33-38.
536
537
Ibid.
538
Rosagel, “Vinicio Castilla, El señor Cuadrangular.”
113
director of Conade, and Alberto Ortega Castro, of the Comisión Estatal del Deporte, Cue
announced plans to build one new sporting facility each year for youths with state funding
that will promote “physical culture” and provide better life training for men and women,
socializing kids and instilling discipline to avert youth gang membership.539 Indeed, the
promotion of physical education has been frequently outlined as an important task in the
state. Organizations such as the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) have worked
hard to organize sporting tournaments to keep people active and strong, especially in urban
areas.540 The rhetoric used, however, surrounding baseball generally is one of reform and
development. Additionally, the state hopes to give scholarships to support the Oaxacan
Olympiad. Cue’s announcement was met with immediate praise by Conade representatives
who agreed to donate six million pesos to help construct sports facilities in the state.541
Standing with prominent local businessmen and government representatives, as is common
for such an announcement, Luis Uhartechea Begué, municipal president of Oaxaca City,
assured a large crowd at a Liga Oaxaca tournament that the sporting future of the state
appeared strong.542 What has remained consistent is that when large announcements
involving sports are to be made, baseball games are typically the venues that are exploited in
the state.
When Alejo Peralta, owner of the Tigres Captalinos, created México’s first youth
baseball academies, he did so with an economic end-point in mind and acted ahead of the
curve. Although his baseball academies at El Carmen, Nuevo Leon and México City, “Ing.
Alejo Peralta” and “Pasteje Academy” respectively, were to have “revolutionized” the
Mexican professional development process by hiring full-time scouts, creating “farm” teams,
539
“Construir cada año un polideportivo en Oaxaca, anuncia Gabino Cué,” Realidad Oaxaca, February 4,
2011, http://realidadoaxaca.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20247:construir-cada-anoun-polideportivo-en-oaxaca-anuncia-gabino-cue&catid=70:deportes&Itemid=109 (accessed March 21, 2010).
540
“Promueven IMSS y CFE el deporte en Instituciones Públicas y Privadas,” Realidad Oaxaca, May 28,
2010, http://realidadoaxaca.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13078:promueven-imss-ycfe-el-deporte-en-instituciones-publicas-y-privadas-&catid=70:deportes&Itemid=109 (accessed March 21,
2011).
541
542
“Construir cada año un polideportivo en Oaxaca, anuncia Gabino Cué,” Realidad Oaxaca.
“Creará Ugartechea espacios para el deporte,” Realidad Oaxaca, January 24, 2011,
http://realidadoaxaca.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19740:creara-ugartecheaespacios-para-el-deporte&catid=70:deportes&Itemid=109 (accessed March 20, 2011).
114
and having players dedicate their whole lives essentially to baseball, since their opening in
1996 México had not seen another academy like them emerge.543 One academy went under,
and the other is considered subpar. No baseball academy was dedicated to the “complete
development” of its children at the time.544
In 2001, Harp Helú announced plans to build his own academy in Oaxaca that would
feed his professional organizations: the Guerreros and the Diablos Rojos. Long seeing the
financial benefits reaped through improved on the field performance of this own clubs, the
project broke ground at San Bartolo Coyotepec in 2002, a small municipality five miles from
Oaxaca’s main airport and twenty miles from the capital.545 To help finance the operation,
Harp Helú promptly secured development deals with the San Diego Padres and Conade while
also creating working relationships with local Little Leagues.546 The ribbon-cutting of
“Academia de Beisbol Alfredo Harp Helú” in 2009 was aureate, attended by prominent
politicians, such as Ulises Ruiz from the governor’s office, Bernardo de la Garza of Conade,
and businessmen such as Jorge Toledo Ruiz.547
Oaxaca’s finest did not come out to celebrate the advancement of professional
baseball. The opening of the academy seems to fit nicely into an ongoing narrative for
Oaxacan politicians and business elite. Upon the opening of the complex, Harp Helú
announced that the facility was to be a “grand slam” for Mexican baseball as a “high
performance” center, but would also work to better the lives of the players and their
communities. For Harp Helú, the training the children were to receive would help them
achieve professionalism in other job pursuits if they were to fail as athletes. Indeed, this
543
Bertha Servín and Eduardo González, “Un reto, la academia de beisbol,” El Universal, March 17, 2002,
http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/noticia.html?id_nota=47152&tabla=deportes (accessed March
20, 2011); Clark, “We are all Guerreros.”
544
Jesús Alberto Rubio, “Academia de béisbol.. y Zenón Ochoa,” Remehibe, blog, November 13, 2009,
http://www.conexioncubana.net/blogs/remehibe/academia-de-beisbol-y-zenon-ochoa/ (accessed March 17,
2011).
545
Servín and González, “Un reto, la academia de beisbol,” El Universal.
546
Ibid.; Wysocki, field notes, July 7, 2010.
547
Publimetro, “Inauguran en San Bartolo Coyotepec Academia de Beisbol Harp Helú,” Publimetro
(November 12, 2009), http://www.publimetro.com.mx/deportes/inauguran-en-san-bartolo-coyotepec-academiade-beisbol-harp-helu/nikl!ToblbYp0ZsjNAd3uLwt2Hg/ (accessed February 21, 2011).
115
facility was the first of its kind in México because not only did it work to produce
professional ball players, but it also worked to create better citizens and improve living
conditions for supposedly all Oaxacans. Through the academy and baseball, Mexicans were
to work together, just as is required in baseball to succeed, according to Harp Helú.548
The overtly political rhetoric is reminiscent of those who wished to modernize and
promote mestizaje in the state nearly a century earlier, where baseball socialization was
perhaps intended as an alternative to official education. Like those periods, the political
embedded into the Oaxacan baseball project is mostly blatant. For example, Harp Helú
believed the academy was needed desperately to help create a generation of role models for
other Mexicans. This would require more academies to be built in the future.549 He added,
“El Beisbol es una de mis grandes pasiones me resulta un buen parámetro para comparar la
vida. Todos los días salimos al campo de pelota y jugamos en equipo.”550 The Fundación
Harp Helú assures the public that with the academy, and promotion of other sports programs,
the overall health and values of Oaxacans will, in fact, improve, although it is not specific in
what improved health means.551 Further, Harp Helú assures that baseball will help promote
hard work and, in doing so, will help reform Oaxacan family life, in part saving the
population from desperation by molding a new class professionals. Of course, these claims
assume a deficiency in family life already existing and further seem to imply laziness among
the population, long a stereotype given to the dark-skinned Mexican, especially by foreign
548
Ibid.; E-consulta Oaxaca “Inaugura Harp Helú academia de beisbol en San Bartolo Coyotepec,” Econsulta Oaxaca (November 12, 2009), http://www.econsulta.com/oaxaca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11867&Itemid=27 (accessed July 20,
2010).
549
E-consulta Oaxaca, “Inaugura Harp Helú academia de beisbol en San Bartolo Coyotepec.”
550
Ivan Santos, “Alfredo Harp Helú: un diablo con alma de Ángel,” Archivo La Revista Historica de
Beisbol Mexicano, año 1, no 1, pg. 14-15.
551
Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú, “Deportes”; Luis Felix, “Inauguran Academia de Beisbol en Oaxaca,”
To2: Desarrollo Integral, November 12, 2009.
http://www.to2.mx/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1599:inauguran-academia-de-beisbol-enoaxaca&catid=1:timas&Itemid=76 (accessed January 12, 2011).
116
travelers during the Porfiriato.552 However, as many Oaxacans will assure you, only those
who don’t work are widely considered lazy.553
The combination of the rhetoric and the means to achieving these goals make this
academy unique compared to those previous in México, and even those in the Dominican
Republic; the latter of which have long been criticized for their substandard facilities and as a
colonial outpost by American capital.554 This academy is, in fact, run by an Oaxacan and was
to be an intensive academic center featuring coursework extending beyond superficial
English language training. The complex provides state-of-the-art medical and therapy
facilities, private bathrooms, 1,422 square meters of garden space, dining facilities, a library,
a reading room, a television room, and even a computer lab. The 10.65 hectare facility also
includes two baseball fields and practice facilities intended for sixty students between
fourteen and seventeen years old.555 Moreover, the academy is steeped in “high” culture, part
of the academic curriculum including training in art. Indeed, pieces from José Luis García,
Adam Paredes, and Demián Flores, depicting the blend of the indigenous and the modern
through baseball, line the facility’s interior walls.556 Flores’ art is featured in a promotional
video produced by the academy, one of the “El Zorro” holding a bat and another with the
Zapotec donning full headdress, throwing a pitch in uniform. These are the same pieces
shown at Eduardo Vasconselos Stadium. Additionally, the video features a montage of
calaveras diving for balls in pelota mixteca before the gloves are transformed into baseball
gloves.557 A still-shot is displayed in Figure 4.1.
These images are powerful, suggesting an extinction or ‘natural’ acculturation of the
indigenous to modern vestiges such as baseball. The use of blanketed symbols of indigeneity
552
Julio Sánchez León, “Ambiente, colorido y beisbol”; Academia de Béisbol Alfredo Harp Helú;
553
Cohen, The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico, 40.
554
Klein, Sugarball, 42, 85; Rob Ruck, The Tropic of Baseball (Westport: Meckler, 1991).
555
E-consulta Oaxaca, “Inaugura Harp Helú academia de beisbol en San Bartolo Coyotepec.”
556
Ibid.; Felix, “Inauguran Academia de Beisbol en Oaxaca.”
557
YouTube.com, “ACADEMIA DE BEISBOL ALFREDO HARP HELU 2,” uploaded by
CIASDIABLOSROJOS, November 13, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x7p6AzaGL0&NR=1
117
Figure 4.1. Zapotec in headdress, throwing a pitch. Source:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x7p6AzaGL0&NR=1 (accessed May 19,
2011).
serves many purposes. Perhaps most of all, it conditions people to live submissively because
the action itself suppresses “plurality” and submerges “everything into uniform totality.”558
Further, however, by teaching art and promoting a school of professionalism, the academy
aims to set up a mass transfer of “cultural capital” that can only be possessed by those who
are given the means to accumulate it.559 Further, the academy aims to do it at an age Adam
Smith considered among the most malleable and formative for people.560 However, art and
baseball are not far separated in the promotion of class based difference:
The art of sport and the body is similar to the elite use of language as an end.
Among the poor sport is often seen as childish and abandoned when one enters
558
García Canclini, Transforming Modernity, 67.
559
Ibid., 17.
560
Sen, Development as Freedom, 295.
118
marriage or other serious responsibilities associated with adulthood. However, the
frequency of sport rises with education level. In school, especially boarding
schools, kids are taken away from the real world of practices in bourgeois form,
and engage in activity for no purpose. The bourgeoisie act disinterested and take
to art and sport to show how distant they are from the concerns of material
interest.561
As Petrie advises us, contemporary sport is most often used as a tool for the spread
and reinforcement of political ideologies that emerge from a new economic organization,
where the economic organization itself has overlapped and is increasingly blended with the
political.562 The economic climate in México changed in the 1940s, hosting a sort of
“development at all cost” met with “a withering of democratic institutions, failure of
leadership, and pervasive corruption and servility in government.”563 This period graduated
into a “Mexican Miracle” through the 1970s where inflation and growth remained steady and
moderate. Unfortunately, it was followed by a harsh debt crisis in the 1980s that sunk the
value of the peso. Under the presidency of Carlos Salinas from 1988 to 1994, the answer was
found in embracing World Bank recommendations for an economically open México. Under
Salinas, lessened barriers to investment and production were coupled with an imposed
undemocratic structure and partial abandonment of the social; a move some have tabbed as
the neo-Porfiriato.564 Simon Kuznets once argued that with all rapid economic growth,
inequality should be immediately expected, later subsiding.565 This pattern has been
inconsistent in Latin America. Oaxaca, which is firmly among the country’s poorest states,
has historically found economic growth to increase inequality in the state.566 While Oaxaca
never experienced the benefits of the Mexican Miracle, it is said to have felt the worst of the
debt crisis.567
561
Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” 359-360.
562
563
Hale, “The Liberal Impulse,” 482.
564
Gledhill, “Neoliberalism.”
565
Patrice Franko, The Puzzle of Latin American Economic Development (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield,
2007), 401.
566
Murphy and Stepick, Social Inequality in Oaxaca, 10; Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture, 14.
567
Murphy and Stepick, Social Inequality in Oaxaca, 79.
119
It is common to draw comparisons to a time of great change and importance in one’s
history, and thus recent neoliberal economic expansion has led to significant comparisons to
the Porfiriato. However, this period is unique because of communications and information
accumulation. George Yúdice has outlined the recent globalization as a period where national
governments have generally chosen to cut social spending, especially in education and art.
This has opened the door for “artists” and philanthropists, among other producers of culture
(perhaps brands or NGOs), to fill the void to help stabilize the nation for the spread of
capitalism. Reduced state spending helps these institutions grow politically strong, and as
almost an alternative governing body. New capital organization in this process puts cultural
producers often in charge of managing the social.568 John Gledhill believes that space is even
created for non-governmental organizations to grow as an extension of economic empire.569
Harp Helú and his academy would seem to fit into this discourse by becoming cultural
producers and working to enhance the stability and citizenry of the region in an economic reorganization.
More than with baseball, Harp Helú has become an essential provider for all types of
cultural capital by giving needed dollars for the maintenance of, or buying outright, youth
facilities, sporting fields, libraries, and archives. Further his foundation provides educational
opportunities and contributes to solving environmental problems.570 Photos at press
conferences frequently portray the man with children sitting on his knees, or holding his
hand, and his own Archivo del Beisbol described him as one of the great owners in Mexican
League history, interestingly next to Jorge Pasquel.571 Little doubt, Harp Helú is contributing
greatly to the improvement of the quality of life in a tough economic time for many
Oaxacans. However, if we are to believe Elias and Dunning’s claim that in an increasingly
568
Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture, 12.
569
Gledhill, “Neoliberalism,” 335.
570
Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú.
571
“Joakim Soria visitó la academia de beisbol Alfredo Harp Helú,” Voz e Imagen, November 26, 2010,
http://174.123.68.163/portal/videos/2010/11/26-0 (accessed March 1, 2011); Archivo del Beisbol, “Introducción
- Beisbol en México,”
http://www.archivodelbeisbol.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112&Itemid=102&li
mitstart=1, (accessed May 2, 2011); Santos, “Alfredo Harp Helú: un diablo con alma de Ángel,” Archivo Hla
Revista Historica de Beisbol Mexicano, 14-15.
120
secular and capitalist world that sport, in part, fills a void left by declining religion, then
some may argue he is in fact sliding into a quasi divine interventionist persona as well as a
paternal alternative to a government often seen as untrustworthy.572 Indeed, Jaime Brena and
Joaquim Soria, the most dominant Mexican pitcher in MLB today, have made appearances at
the academy advising children to obey and trust in “Don Alfredo.”573 While widespread
religious baseball fervor is questionable across the state of Oaxaca, for those who participate
these symbols may not be so elusive.
Baseball production in the Valley has benefits for many of those who participate in its
production. Bourdieu believed that the arrival of modern sport brings a system of institutions.
Among these are public and private sporting clubs and producers and vendors of goods one
needs to follow the sport. Finally there are those who promote the goods based on the
entertainment of sport itself. All help form a “field of competition.”574 However, in Oaxaca,
Harp Helú interestingly represents all three by controlling the only professional team,
opening a baseball academy and acting as a primary sponsor to local amateur leagues, and by
holding a majority stake in Grupo Martí, among the biggest sporting goods stores in the
country.575 Promoting the participation of baseball creates a new consumer base for baseball
gear, and perhaps other products that are associated with that culture, as was suggested by
DS Spalding when he barnstormed México with his own sporting goods stores at the
beginning of the twentieth century.576 Additionally, the rise of professional baseball in the
Valley, and the building of Harp Helú’s academy, place Oaxaca into a greater conversation
of Latin American baseball which has proven to offer a potential escape from poverty and
opportunities for societal advancement that rarely exist outside of migration.577 Baseball in
572
573
Ricardo Urquidi, “Visita Joakim Soria la Academia de Béisbol de Oaxaca,” Furiagris.com.mx,
November 28, 2010, http://furiagris.com.mx/sitio/?p=9336 (accessed January 10, 2011); “Joakim Soria visitó la
academia de beisbol Alfredo Harp Helú.”
574
575
“The World’s Billionaires: #937 Alfredo Harp Helú,” Forbes.
576
577
Ruck, The Tropic of Baseball, 198; Klein, Sugarball, 1; Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” 366.
121
Oaxaca, in this sense, is “elevated” as it is in the Dominican Republic where relatively high
paying jobs outside of tourism are difficult to find.578
4.5 FINANCIAL BARRIERS TO BASEBALL
While contemporary Oaxacan elites may want to integrate its population through
programs of mass participation, it is questionable whether they are succeeding or even if they
can potentially succeed without significant subsidies. San Pablo Huixtepec brought baseball
from what can be considered the basement, organically, and produced the sport themselves.
However, while some still play in the town, participation has since significantly dropped.
Some believe it’s because of incredibly high out-migration to the United States, as nearly 80
percent of all Oaxacan migrants are males and typically young, the demographic associated
with the production of the sport.579Rodolfo believed the lack of participation was the direct
result of failing education in the town’s schools, while others believe the sedentary lifestyle
of the US has been imported with children that return.580 While baseball seems to be growing
in some parts of the Valley, other segments are experiencing a sharp decline in participation
similar to San Pablo. Interestingly, in Zimatlán, a city just a few kilometers outside of San
Pablo, roughly four out of ten kids still play organized baseball in the estimation of a resident
trainer. In fact, baseball is a part of school physical education in which everybody
participates. Additionally, many practice basketball and other sports, like kung fu and
weightlifting, and the study of nutrition is also gaining in popularity, polarizing communities
when it comes to physical education and leisure activities.581
What is to be made of these contradictory currents? Can the decline of baseball or
other sports be blamed on a lack of education in one town, or even several towns? This may
be true in part. An alternative suggestion made by some in San Pablo seems to paint a much
clearer picture of what is happening. Indeed, “the probability of practicing a sport depends
578
Klein, Sugarball, 2.
579
Cohen, The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico, 41.
580
Rodolfo, interview by author; Miguel, interview by author.
581
Andrés, interview by author.
122
primarily on economic capital and, secondarily, cultural capital and spare time.”582 Most of
the Oaxaca Valley outside of Oaxaca City remains employed in the primary sector, mostly
farming, which is generally tied to long work days and low income. Indeed, one resident
psychologist suggests that these groups still worry primarily about eating, making
participation in sports for fun, improving physique, or for the “feeling” incredibly
impractical.583 Moreover, organized baseball requires a high amount of equipment and
generally a specific kind of field with measured bases, a pitching mound, and outfield fences.
Even sandlot games, like those organized by Rodolfo, are difficult to assemble in the
scattered countryside because of the sheer number of players needed to cover the field.
Further, baseball’s rules can prove frustratingly complicated. For these reasons (the ease of
finding equipment, simplicity of rules, lack of necessity of umpires, and the ability to play a
game with few participants), soccer is generally what is practiced most in the countryside,
and maybe increasingly so in poor areas.584 However, in cities and larger municipios baseball
still appears to be El Rey de Deportes, where travel is easier, neighborhoods more dense and
economic opportunities greater, making organization of larger teams simpler.585
Bourdieu believed the value of sport sociology came from the relation between the
social world of the participant and the sport itself as a field of struggle.586 An understanding
of the social position of participants and consumers is then badly needed to understand the
real space baseball occupies in Oaxaca. As was noted in the previous chapter, Oaxaca is the
second poorest state in México and many of its residents have restricted access to ample
food, water, or important services such as education or healthcare according to the Oaxaca
Fund Initiative, a Ford Foundation project.587 Oaxaca experiences the third highest
marginalization in all of the México with high illiteracy and infant mortality rates and low
582
583
Josephine, interview by author; Andrés, interview by author.
584
Josephine, interview by author; Rodolfo, interview by author.
585
Josephine, interview by author.
586
Bourdieu, “Programme for a sociology of sport,” 158-159.
587
Oaxaca Fund Initiative, “About Oaxaca.”
123
income.588 The per capita income of the state is at $3,400, featuring a median between $2,200
and $2,500. Only seven percent of Oaxacans are self-sufficient on their incomes alone, but
rely on pooling incomes, remittances, and welfare of some kind.589 Further, the state is
claimed to have a Human Development Index (HDI) comparable to many countries in Africa
and Southern Asia.590 According to the United Nations Development Programme, 44.9
percent of Oaxacans are considered indigenous, and these communities experience great
marginalization in the state, generally speaking.591 Most of the municipalities with accessible
baseball-only fields are among the most affluent in the state, as Table 4.1and Table 4.2
demonstrate.
It is evident that municipalities with baseball-only fields make significantly more, on
average, than the state-wide per-capita income reflects. This is especially true for the Valley
in which every municipality, with the exception of San Juan del Rio, is near $1,000 above the
average. This figure is significant considering the state’s poorest municipalities of San Simón
Zahuatlán, Coicoyán de las Flores, and Santos Reyes Yucuná average less than $1,000 per
capita annually.592Oaxaca is divided into 570 municipalities, yet those with baseball fields
litter the upper third in per-capita income. Another way of judging relative affluence is
through comparative examination of occupational sectors and services available to the public,
as is shown in Figure 4.2. Primary sector occupations are defined as primary food gatherers
or resource extractors.593 In Oaxaca, the majority of these workers are farmers.
588
Norget, Days of Death, Days, of Life, 29-30.
589
Oaxaca Fund Initiative, “Oaxaca's Per Capita Income by Municipality;” Murphy and Stepick, Social
Inequality in Oaxaca, 98. Estimation is based on the compared average incomes of municipalities around the
state. Murphy and Stepick’s claim that seven percent of Oaxacans are completely self-reliant attempts to
eliminate welfare from the economic picture to show relative positions of many in the state.
590
Oaxaca Fund Initiative, “About Oaxaca;” United Nations Development Programme, “Human
Development Index- 2010 Rankings,”Human Development Reports, http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics (accessed
April 27, 2011). There is a slight discrepancy in data here. The HDI of Oaxaca is listed at 0.716 which would
rank it closer to Eastern European nations and the Middle East more so than with most of Africa or India. For
example, Russia rates a 0.719 HDI in 2010 and India with a 0.519, putting Oaxaca much closer to that of
Russia.
591
en México.
592
“Oaxaca's Per Capita Income by Municipality,” Oaxaca Fund Initiative.
593
Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México, “Estado de Oaxaca.”
124
Table 4.1. Municipalities with Baseball Fields by Income in the Oaxaca Valley
Municipality
Oaxaca de Juárez
San Sebastian Tutla
San Agustin Etla
Villa de Etla
San Pablo Etla
Ciénega de Zimatlán
Ocotlan de Morelos
Tlacolula de Matamoros
Zimatlán de Alvarez
Guadalupe Etla
San Bartolo Coyotepec
Heroica Ciudad de Ejutla de Crespo
San Juan del Rio
Annual per-capita Income (USD)
11491.51
10701.01
9178.37
7538.53
6108.26
5886.43
5883.46
5612.01
5332.99
4934.67
4256.03
4095.33
2022.53
Source: “Estado de Oaxaca,” Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México; “Oaxaca's Per Capita
Income by Municipality,” Oaxaca Fund Initiative.
125
Table 4.2. Municipalities with Baseball Fields by Income in the Isthmus
Municipality
Ciudad Ixtepec
Salina Cruz
El Espinal
Barrio de la Soledad
Santo Domingo Tehuantepec
San Pedro Tapanatepec
Juchitán de Zaragoza
Santa María Mixtequilla
San Pedro Huilotepec
San Pedro Comitancillo
Santo Domingo Ingenio
San Blas Atempa
Unión Hidalgo
Matías Romero
Santa María Jalapa del Marqués
Santiago Laollaga
Santo Domingo Chihuitán
Santa María Xadani
San Francisco Ixhuatán
Santo Domingo Zanatepec
Asunción Ixtaltepec
Magdalena Tlacotepec
Chahuites
Reforma de Pineda
San Francisco del Mar
Santiago Niltepec
Magdalena Tequisistlán
Santiago Astata
San Pedro Huamelula
San Mateo del Mar
San Dionisio del Mar
Annual per-capita Income (USD)
13588.59
11495.59
7243.78
6398.87
6107.99
5701.1
5673.19
5575.09
5498.39
5141.4
5120.31
5082.35
4967.9
4590.61
4452.91
4287.63
4272.58
4190.32
4158.71
4111.55
4009.66
3955.51
3955.18
3818.6
3677.56
3360.27
3295.72
3156.36
2755.15
2382.99
2025.19
Source: Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México, “Estado de Oaxaca.” See also Oaxaca Fund
Initiative, “Oaxaca's Per Capita Income by Municipality.”
According to the data, in both the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Valley, there is a
strong correlation between income and primary sector occupation. Further, while Oaxaca
struggles to give its residents access to basic needs, most of these municipios have significant
126
access to water, public lighting, and drainage, the last often considered a luxury.594 These
figures are not insignificant as even those with access to water, for example, largely receive it
tainted. However, those without services gather water that is likely worse, often directly from
the Ayotac River in the Valley in which sewage and other pollutants are poured untreated
from the capital. Consumption of this water has led to alarmingly high rates of e-coli
infections and other gastro-intestinal problems, like dysentery which rank among the highest
in the world. Many residents cannot afford the health care to fix these problems.595 Further,
as Table 4.3 elucidates, those municipalities in the Oaxaca Valley that claimed baseball fields
also had nearly half the amount of primary sector workers on average. They also had
significantly higher access to potable water sources and drainage than those municipalities
that do not have a baseball-only facility. Even public lighting receives a higher mark for
those that participate in El Rey de Deportes.
The diversity of Oaxaca is often described in ethnic, linguistic, or political terms.
However, the significant variation in income equity around municipalities is striking.
Interestingly, in both 2000 and 2005, Oaxaca boasted multiple municipalities that qualified
among the five most equal municipalities in the entire country using the Gini coefficient.
Indeed, Santiago Camotlán (0.2428), Santa María Pápalo (0.2688), and San Antonio
Tepetlapa (0.2693) in 2000 and San Juan Teita (0.2469), Santiago Nundiche (0.2554), Santo
Domingo Ixcatlán (0.2672) y San Juan Bautista Suchitepec (0.2694) in 2005 all appeared on
these lists. However, in those same years Oaxaca rated as the third most unequal state in
México posting Gini figures of 0.5646 and 0.5259 in 2000 and 2005, respectively.596
Frequently, those municipalities with baseball fields rate as the most unequal municipalities,
likely because many retain an urban status where the poor often invade surrounding land or
594
Ibid.; Oaxaca Fund Initiative, “Oaxaca's Per Capita Income by Municipality.”
595
Murphy and Stepick, Social Inequality in Oaxaca, 50-51.
596
Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social, “Mapas de Desigualdad 20002005,”
http://www.coneval.gob.mx/cmsconeval/rw/pages/medicion/mapas_de_desigualdad_2000_2005/index.es.do;jse
ssionid=b83e8b4d97dae97a69665c6ffdc9571e83d1621ca21c1bc0348d17ffdc3266a2.e34QaN4LaxeOa40Lc350
127
Table 4.3. Services and Occupations: With and Without Baseball Fields in the Oaxaca
Valley
100
Potable water
(baseball), 90.18
90
Public lighting
(baseball), 89.72
80
Percent %
70
60
Drainage
(baseball), 49.52
50
40
30
Primary sector
(baseball), 24
20
10
0
Primary sector (no
baseball), 47.91
Potable water 1(no
baseball), 68.35
Public lighting (no
baseball), 87.69
Drainage (no
baseball), 31.67
Source: “Estado de Oaxaca,” Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México.
live on the periphery in hopes for access to service jobs.597 Considering that baseball is
played generally in more densely populated areas, and urban areas are, in fact, among the
most unequal municipalities in the state, a mass participation and integration program
through baseball seems difficult, even within communities that already have high levels of
participation.
Thus far the discussion of cost has traversed in extreme generalities, but equipment
costs may be the easiest way to measure one’s ease of entry into organized baseball.
Generally, US equipment is among the most expensive, but often cheaper Mexican
alternatives cannot be found. Sometimes Mexican alternatives prove not to be cheaper at all.
To discover what the entry costs to the sport via-equipment is in Oaxaca, a survey was
597
“Estado de Oaxaca,” Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México; Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la
Política de Desarrollo Social, “Indicadores de desigualdad con errores estándares 2000 y 2005,”
http://www.coneval.gob.mx/cmsconeval/rw/resource/OAX%20desigualdad%2000-05.pdf?download=true
(accessed April 25, 2011); Norget, Days of Death, Days of Life, 38.
128
conducted of online baseball stores “Beisbol Sports” and “Si-Beisbol.” Additionally, these
stores were compared with selection and pricing at three different sporting goods outlets in
Oaxaca City. These stores were “Ahorro de Oaxaca,” “Deportes Mexicanas,” and “Sport
Shack.” The survey begins with baseball gloves, an item used by all. The results seem to
confirm the conclusions above.
While there exist many types of baseball gloves, standard infield versions were used
as a representative cost because, while other specialty gloves exist (first baseman’s glove,
catcher’s mitt, etc), infield gloves are used most widely and tend to be least expensive. For
this survey, online stores provide a wide range of product including some of the top
American brands. Here Rawlings, Wilson, Worth, Easton, and Pro-Line adult gloves ranged
from 650 to 1,990 pesos with the average price falling at 1,217 pesos. The national
alternatives such as Palomares, Reguz, BS-Matus, and Rolin ranged from 380 pesos to 990
pesos with the average settling at 561 pesos, a significant difference from the top American
companies, yet still high. Interestingly, children’s gloves did not reflect much difference in
price. With far fewer options, national children’s gloves from Rolin, Palomares, and Comax
ranged from 199 pesos to 990, the average being 692 pesos. The American brands of
Mattingly, and those already mentioned, ranged from 270 pesos to 1,450 pesos with an
average of 684, actually cheaper than the national brands.598 The sporting goods stores
Ahorro de Oaxaca, Deportes Mexicanas, and Sport Shack had markedly less selection. Here,
the American brands ranged from 655 pesos to 1,180 pesos and the national brands from 495
pesos to 690 pesos.599 While one may be able to find a plastic rip-off glove such as “Spaldy,”
these items prove impractical for a serious player who will use it more than a handful of
times.600
Next surveyed was the aluminum bat. While some leagues around the world use
wood, generally youth and amateur leagues everywhere use aluminum because it gives the
ball “jump” when struck correctly and the bats rarely break, providing some safety and cost
598
Si-Beisbol.com, http://www.si-beisbol.com.mx/ (accessed March 13, 2011); Beisbol Sports,
http://www.beisbolsports.com/ (March 13, 2011).
599
Ryan Gwynne, email with author, March 14, 2011.
600
129
benefits that have prompted top level leagues like the Liga del Istmo and the Cuban League
to use them. For an adult, online aluminum bats ran between 1,050 pesos up to 9,990 pesos,
averaging 3,865. For children the number was cut nearly in half starting at 550 all the way up
to 5,700 pesos a median of 750. 601 One store offered a bat for 475 pesos, but another had
five bat options averaging 1,321 pesos each.602 All manufacturers of bats were Americanbased companies like Rawlings, Mattingly, Louisville, and Easton , leaving few options for
the consumer.
Certainly, however, to play organized baseball one needs more specialized equipment
as well. To get an idea of the cheapest alternatives, plastic and rubber cleats, the cheapest
form of cleats, were surveyed instead of the expensive metal cleats used at the upper amateur
and professional levels. Prices ranged from 450 pesos to 950, not including one outlier which
was priced at an astounding 1,850 pesos. The average cost minus the outlier, which priced
comparably to metal cleats, sat at 694 pesos.603 Catching equipment, not surprisingly, was
also high with a median online price at 3,350 pesos, with child’s gear pricing at nearly 4,800
at its highest point.604 Only one of the stores surveyed offered a set of equipment with a
mask, chest protector, and shin guards and it ran near the aforementioned median at 3,250
pesos.605 Most baseballs themselves, from both online stores and sporting goods stores in the
city, were sold for between 50 and 60 pesos, not including MLB or other official major
league balls.606
If we assume that when available the player will buy all national brands to lower
costs, a glove will on average cost 561 pesos, a bat 1,321 pesos, and cleats for 694 pesos
bringing a total of 2,576 pesos (~US$219).607 Of course, this figure does not include the cost
of a jock strap and protective cup, which run for 45 pesos, or pants, socks, batting gloves,
601
Si-Beisbol; Beisbol Sports.
602
Gwynne, email with author.
603
Si-Beisbol; Beisbol Sports.
604
Ibid.
605
606
Ibid.; Si-Beisbol; Beisbol Sports.
607
Currency conversion was calculated on May 15, 2011. The exchange rate was 11.73 Mexican pesos for
one dollar US.
130
sunglasses, jerseys, or tournament entry fees, which can all vary in price significantly.608 One
must also consider transportation costs. All of these may drive up the tally near $100 putting
the total at $319 for a bargain-hunting player in his inaugural season. However, judging by
the selection at sporting goods stores and online versions, which feature much more high
priced and foreign made equipment, it is likely that this total is commonly more than
doubled. For example, an American-made glove, a Rawlings bat, and good cleats would cost
closer to 6,000 pesos ($512) without including the ‘extra’ costs cited above. Metal cleats,
more often used in adult leagues, and specialty fielding gloves also drive the cost of their
respective items 100 to 200 percent higher than what is cited here.609 If we consider the near
$2,200 per capita median income by municipality in Oaxaca, the cost for an Oaxacan
baseball player buying quality gear is roughly 23.3 percent of annual income. For an
American making median income of $50,221, this same percentage would represent $11,701
per year, an astounding figure.610 It is clear that those who are participating en masse, and
likely reaching higher levels with superior gear and leisure time, are those with more
comfortable income or significant sponsorship.
4.6 CONCLUSION
Largely due to national and statewide promotion of the indigenous qualities of
Oaxaca to further tourism, the state has been continually depicted as backwards and
unchangingly traditional. Further, its communities have been depicted as isolated and
hermetically sealed from each other, never seeing the benefits or desire for modernity as
expressed through contemporary consumer capitalism. Among the poorest of states in the
country, and with historically bad infrastructure, Oaxacan officials and local businessmen
have supported a move to use championship tournaments in baseball to reassert itself as
relevant in a neoliberal age. Indeed, baseball, the favored sport of the affluent north, and also
strong in México City, remains a glowing symbol of progress and modernity since its
608
609
Ibid.; Si-Beisbol; Beisbol Sports. This estimation is based on averages from American-made infield
gloves, average of online aluminum adult bats, and averages of plastic and rubber cleats.
610
United States Census Bureau , “Household Income for States: 2008 and 2009,” United States Census
Bureau (September 2010), http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/acsbr09-2.pdf (accessed April 20, 2011).
131
introduction during the Porfiriato. The building of the academy in the Oaxaca Valley is
already drawing resentment from some baseball fans in the north even though it has not
produced one quality professional player, showing the symbolic importance of such a
move.611 Even so, Oaxacan officials still believed they are discriminated against by those
who control baseball’s national organization in the north, believing themselves to be seen as
primitive and unstable. Oaxaca’s success on the national level in tournaments, likely from the
perspective of its domestic promoters, could potentially catapult the state into a position of
respect, by beating teams in the north at their own game.
Likely due to the already glowing talent of the Isthmus, and a historical preference for
the civilizing qualities of baseball, baseball has once again taken center stage in the political
arena. While the Oaxaca Valley had always featured baseball teams in youth, amateur, and
semi-pro leagues, a new effort has been launched in the Valley to organize and mine
prospects for top talent due to the move of professionalization in the sport. However, likely
believing in the backwardness or primitiveness of its own residents, officials also seem to be
using baseball as a way to condition and socialize its residents into accepting the rules of
modern capitalism as they define them, leading ultimately to a healthier, more fulfilling, and
more prosperous life in their estimation. Indeed, with a return to free market economic
organization, citizenship often becomes largely based on how much one can consume.612 In
México there are “cabrones” and “pendejos.” One values self-interested gain and the others
simply submit to that body. Those who reject it are described as a “moral problem” that
needs to be fixed.613
The official vow to construct baseball and other sporting facilities across the state is a
key sponsorship of these programs of societal integration. In a place where political strife is
often met with mobs wielding machetes, the conservative mindset promoted in baseball also
increases the tolerance and acceptance of paternalism and inequity for the benefit of a few.
Indeed, baseball in these ways works to control the political landscape by limiting the social
world of participants. What makes this political project unique or relevant is its overt plan to
611
Rubio, “Academia de béisbol.. y Zenón Ochoa.”
612
613
Gledhill, “Neoliberalism,” 339-340.
132
reform the culture of the people to promote modernity. Martin Vinokur believed that as
governments realize more the political potential of sports, they make greater efforts to seize
control of it. Further, the stronger the association between nation and sport, the more social
integration can take place underneath its production.614
One must consider that the realization of mass participation follows an economic
logic. Spaces of possible practice depend on a supply that must meet with a demand or
“disposition” to play.615 While the efforts to build facilities is a positive step to realizing
increased participation, some communities that have participated in the past no longer do so
due to poor economic conditions that have led to increased out migration and made the
already restrictive costs of entering the game impenetrable. This makes the supply for many
nonexistent. Indeed, even in pelota mixteca, seen by many as an ancient game of pride
among communities tied to a deep indigenous identity, participation among youth is
increasingly and alarmingly low due to the high costs of equipment like gloves, which are
manufactured by only one family and cost near $300.616 It is likely that even in the baseball
communities that are very active, due to increasing inequality under the new economic
organization wrought in neoliberal expansion, baseball has largely worked in practice to be
extremely exclusionary just as it had been during the Porfiriato as it was initially intended.
Cultural productions can often give a safe feeling to citizenship, but ultimately what
underlies much about one’s identity are one’s values which can manipulate cultural
expression in a way that differences, not unity, are augmented.617
No doubt a modern project is underway in Oaxaca, as it is seen in perpetuation, but
there is significant space in the Valley for the bottom-up participation of the sport. Indeed,
sports production is like a “musical score,” with “competing interpretations,” each participant
contributing their own.618 Inspired by mythical and mystical connections to an ancient game,
many Oaxacans who participate do not feel the game to be foreign, but instead in the blood
614
Vinokur, More than a Game, 18-19.
615
616
Meliton, interview with author.
617
Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture, 22.
618
133
of indigenous descendants of the region. Pelota mixteca was believed at one time to adhere
the voices of people with those of gods, and as the academy and stadium for Harp Helú
exploits, the game is believed to belong to them. Baseball is the toy of politicians and the
weapon of peasants. Indeed, as Joseph Arbena has claimed, modern sports often represent a
multifaceted transcultural fusion. It is beneficial for all walks of society and every
socioeconomic group uses it to meet its own goals.619 Even while the sport’s production can
be dominated by a single class, which certainly seems the case in Oaxaca where most
participants in the Valley carry significant economic capital, another class’ participation may
reflect their own feeling of agency.620 Lamatrine DaCosta takes this further, believing sport
to be a reaction to poor social conditions and poverty. Modern sports growth on the bottom,
then, is not asserting dominant relationships, it’s actually “emancipating” its participants
throughout Latin America. Indeed, what ground-up baseball does do is turn unequal
relationships between dominant and subordinate society on their heads, giving those not
normally in positions of negotiation a place to help define what exactly modern is to look
like. Despite similar economic conditions in the Isthmus, however, baseball is thriving even
among the most indigenous communities showing no matter the intention of baseball
promotion from the top, all people contribute to the definition of symbols and meanings in
the sport.
619
Joseph L. Arbena, “The Later Evolution of Sport in Latin America: The North American Influence,” in
Sport in Latin American Society: Past and Present, edited by J.A. Mangan and Lamartine DaCosta (London:
Frank Cass, 2002), 44-46.
620
Ibid., 53.
134
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
In this thesis I set out to answer a core group of questions regarding the participation
of baseball in Oaxaca:
How did baseball, a long glowing symbol of American modernity, come to
Oaxaca, the country’s most southern state and one commonly assumed to be the
most ‘traditional’? Who brought it and for what purpose? Has this narrative
changed over time and what does participation mean to those actively taking part,
historically and in the present? Why has it been so readily adopted by local
people either through their own participation or through support of a local
team?621
In chapter two, I began my analysis by introducing the state of Oaxacan politics
during a unique period of Mexican history. Following decades of in-fighting since
colonialism, México was in relative shambles in the middle of the nineteenth century. Its
economy was rotten, its politics divisive, and choice military figures wielded power to
dethrone presidents nearly at their will. After the War of the Reform, however, a liberal
government took power and held it until the Mexican Revolution. This era was marked by
the leadership of Benito Juárez and Porfirio Díaz, two of Oaxaca’s sons. Both aimed to bring
obedience and stability to its inhabitants before instituting policies of mass modernization.
Modernization meant catching Oaxaca up to some of the world’s great powers in the US and
Europe. Ultimately, the period aimed to improve the economy before looking to reform its
citizens.
Oaxaca was long considered to have great potential in export commodities but the
region was deemed unsafe for investment. Díaz’s threat of force and uncompromising
politics helped create some stability. What followed was nothing less than a boom in mining
that witnessed a pouring of foreign investment into the state. Díaz and his hand-picked jefe
politicos gave concessions and land to foreigners and Oaxaca City received a virtual makeover. Indeed, electric lighting and plumbing were installed, bridges were built, monuments
621
See Chapter one.
135
were erected, and the streets were cleansed of many of its perceived backwards symbols in
efforts to create a city that mirrored in appearance those of Europe and the US. However, the
state also “bandwagoned” another component of modern nations: modern sport. Likely
because of the large investments from Americans in the state, baseball was chosen as the
sport the newly bonded vallistocracia could collect around. Because games were expensive
to attend and were promoted by elite social clubs, the sport in this era proved exclusionary.
The fall of the Díaz regime, however, meant baseball would take on more integrating aspects.
Indeed, it was believed that the sport held inherent and contagious characteristics that could
help reform the backwards citizenry and acculturate indigenous peoples to capitalism.
Modernization during the Porfiriato was extremely uneven and those in the
countryside found living conditions worsen significantly. The response was varied, but each
community adapted in some way. Most communities did not reject official projects, but
resented its uneven qualities and elite definition that excluded the indigenous masses.
Communities resisted in a multitude of ways, the most significant being that of violence.
Ethnic wars around the country made the minority elite in Oaxaca skittish and fearful of its
population. This fact, combined with the relative success of other forms of resistance, pushed
politics of negotiation compromise between communities and the state through
intermediaries. Through exclusion and negotiation Oaxacans developed competing
modernities colored by the social conditions from which people emerged and collective
historical memory.
Chapter three examines the professional baseball environment through mostly the
Mexican League club in Oaxaca City: the Guerreros. The Mexican League began in the 1925
but considered among its most exciting periods were those when it competed with MLB for
international talent in the 1940s. Stadiums in this period also represented an exciting time for
Mexican fans as the stadium was packed full of advertisements for appliances, foods, cars,
and other products associated with modern living. The baseball stadium emerged as a quasireligious shrine to global capitalism and cosmopolitanism in its choices of its entertainment
as well, referred to in Oaxaca as the spectacle. The stadium is as much a theme park for an
international, and highly sexual, spectacle as it is a field of baseball competition. Despite the
club’s official fusion of indigenous imagery into the team’s, an examination of the costs of
136
games shows that the professional version of the game continues to function as mostly
exclusionary.
The Oaxacan professional game is not one of mimicry because it retains much
regional uniqueness. Due to weather patterns in the state, the seventh inning stretch serves as
a unique breaking point in the ballgame where the spectacle gives way to regional songs and
chants. For over a decade a family-owned business that provided homemade regional treats
such as tlayudas out-dueled corporate foods such as Domino’s Pizza because the fans
preferred something more wholesome. Further, the intense sexuality and confrontation in the
game’s participation by fans shows some evidence that the game is being re-appropriated by
the popular from which ball games emerged and certainly don’t reflect the civility that was
intended to be promoted by its first producers earlier in the century. While the club’s core
following are likely more affluent, the stadium does provide some cheap seating and games
are broadcasted on television, radio, and the Internet. Attendance levels over the last few
seasons have shown that baseball is a welcomed sport in the region.
The fourth chapter examines other baseball participation throughout Oaxaca,
including some at the grassroots level. Indeed, many Oaxacans find baseball a natural fit,
historically linked to an ancient ball game through which participants could communicate
with the gods. Without a company team or any baseball experience, one community with
access to a radio formed a grassroots team that competed with other communities in the
region. The game worked as a boon for community pride and represented something new and
exciting from largely agrarian town. Some players were even scouted by Mexican League
organizations. The highly indigenous Isthmus, where most of the state’s 200-plus teams
reside, also proves to harbor some of the state’s most fervent participants. These leagues have
manufactured and developed the state’s best players, some that have since become national
icons.
The game is produced by wide array of people, communities, and institutions, but the
state’s elite have not given up on the sport as a tool for modernization. The state has renewed
its baseball efforts as a way to show its contemporary relevance, not against the US, but
against regions in México that champion the sport. Indeed, the northern regions and México
City simultaneously represent some of the best baseball playing regions and most
economically productive regions in the country. However, Oaxacan organizations have found
137
it difficult to meet requirements to enter into and host national tournaments, some claiming
the state is being unfairly treated because it is looked down upon by the north as underdeveloped. Mass participation efforts have been further promoted in children’s leagues and
through a new state of the art baseball academy maintained by Alfredo Harp Helú, the owner
of the Guerreros. As was the intention of indigenistas during the Revolution, Harp Helú has
rhetorically linked his academy with the development and reformation of Oaxacan people
into improved and healthier citizens. As an important regional philanthropist, he is an
increasingly important political figure and baseball imagery has helped maintain his position
as a paternal caretaker. His academy marks renewed efforts at alternative socialization but in
a new economic organization. His project seems hand in hand with the state efforts, both
hoping to reap the perceived benefits of mass participation in the sport in the state. Despite
this optimistic integrative spirit, dire economic circumstances of many Oaxacans caps the
potential of such projects and baseball again proves exclusionary in fundamental ways.
Oaxaca is still generally thought of by outsiders as “traditional.” The traditional is
generally attached to time and place as is the modern; the modern associated with newness
and the Enlightened West while the traditional draws images of a slow and unchanging
past.622 The modern of the twentieth century began by outlining one’s relation to liberalism
and capitalism. This later incorporated one’s relation to an exponentially intensifying
expediency of communications technologies and information. Certainly, Oaxacans would be
considered “modern” by most of these standards as they have among the highest rates of
migration to the US, domestic markets are full of goods from all around the world, and nearly
all have relative access to television, Internet, and some phone.623 While many have moved
to recognize the significance and importance in societies once believed primitive or
traditional, few can doubt that identity creation is now heavily influenced by how much one
can consume as much as access to certain products and information.624
622
Jennifer Robinson, Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development (London and New York:
Routledge, 2006), 28.
623
Wysocki, field notes, June 18, 2010; “Estado de Oaxaca,” Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México.
624
García Canclini, Transforming Modernity, 16; Robinson, Ordinary Cities.
138
Italo Calvino showed in his monumental work Invisible Cities that truly nothing is
hermetically sealed. Those places considered traditional borrow from the modern, and those
considered modern are inextricably linked with elements of the traditional.625 Because
Oaxaca is home to such great inequity, the “modern” is deeply segregated because the ability
to consume certain products and information is greatly varied.626 This segregation finds many
levels from within the state, within the country, and even within the continent. Limited
access to this modernity has perpetuated designations of spatial and ethnic territories in first,
second, and third worlds, and has even perpetuated the use of the term “modern” itself as a
defining characteristic of a society in what is considered a postmodern world. Indeed, for
something to be modern there must be a traditional, or less modern, of which it plays off,
even though they realistically reside inside of each other always.627 These designations are
powerful political terms to wage a war of legitimacy for the accumulation of power.
However, not all groups accept defeat if restricted access.
Nestor García Canclini argues that Mexican popular culture is a fusion of what is
considered the “folk” and what is associated with modernity. However, popular culture has
never been dominated completely by any person or institution.628 Likely in response to their
own failure to fulfill the unwritten prerequisites for entering the modern, perhaps categories
such as religious views, education, income, ethnicity, or even place of residence, alternative
and competing modernities rise to replace the modernities that are believed unreachable. In
Oaxaca, this fact must prove especially true where informality, multi-lingualism, mass
migration, and a collective memory of resistance has always painted the state as in flux;
complex and constantly redefining itself.629 Baseball is one of the many fields this game is
played out where agents pick and choose points of both entry and exit when they see it fit.
625
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, trans. William Weaver (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, 1972); Robinson,
Ordinary Cities, 28.
626
627
Robinson, Ordinary Cities, 28.
628
García Canclini, “Transforming Modernity,” 12-26.
629
David Bacon, Communities without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of Migration (Ithaca:
ILR Press, 2006), 45. Migrant Oaxacans often speak multiple languages. Many speak two or all three of an
indigenous language, Spanish, or English.
139
Culture, including baseball, has not represented themes of domination in Oaxaca,
although dominant classes have attempted to use baseball in such ways. Like the resistance
movements and political negotiations that have marked the region, culture has always
represented a two-way flow mapping.630 This is also represented in the typical Oaxacan
choice to migrate where a culture of migration has generally left room for communalism,
attachment to the village, while accepting some cultural fusions in new places.631 Modern
identities are in this way “liquid.”632 While some “balance mechanisms” will continue to
exist for all societies in some capacity, the Oaxacan traditional is one marked by
adaptation.633
In this thesis baseball has been presented as a window to examine some of the ways
people express their own position within the political field. In Oaxaca baseball can be
perceived as both a mirror of society and a place for a group to assert difference. It has
worked as host to a fair of international capital symbols and as a way to vent frustration and
confront politicians, elite symbols of modernity, and surrounding communities. It has been
introduced by those conceivably near the bottom of the social ladder as well as those from
the top. Baseball demonstrates nicely some of the ways a “society manipulates power and
status to create cultural change.”634 Without a dominant narrative, baseball and other art
forms function as hosts to these social poetics that help us color the complexities in human
societies.635
630
Arbena, “The Later Evolution of Sport in Latin America,” 53.
631
Cohen, The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico, 5-7; Bacon, Communities without Borders, 41-
42.
632
Gerard Delanty, “The Cosmopolitan Imagination: Critical Cosmopolitanism and Social Theory,” The
British Journal of Sociology 57 (2006): 30-36.
633
Norget, Days of Death, Days of Life, 224; Bacon, Communities without Borders, 41-42.
634
James Fernandez and Michael Herzfeld, “In Search of Meaningful Methods,” in Handbook of Methods
in Cultural Anthropology, edited by H. Russell Bernard (Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press, 1998), 95.
635
Ibid.
140
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ANCIENT GAMES: BASEBALL, MODERNIZATION, AND IDENTITY

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