Buying Life and Rain or Waiting for Political Engagement and More Cash Transfers

ANDRES DAPUEZ

Washington DC

Congreso; American Anthropological Association Meeting; 2014

American Anthropological Association

Paper Abstract: For more than 26 months I engaged in observing, participating and inquiring on ritual life and economic prospection in a Yucatec Village as well as in metropolitan development agencies, in Merida, Mexico city and Washington DC. In my Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Promissory Prestations. A Yucatec Village between Ritual Exchange and Development Cash Transfers", I describe how agriculturalists evaluate the promissoriness of development transactions through their religious repertoire. Developers and agriculturalists struggle to perform their conflicting images of the times to come through the use of Procampo and Progresa-Oportunidades cash transfers and promissory ritual gift-giving, known as ?cargo? or ?fiesta system? in the anthropological literature. Economists at the Inter-American Development Bank and functionaries from the Mexican Agricultural Secretary suggest that migration and new economic activities should take place in the ?long term future? for these small farmers and their children. Agriculturalists, on the other hand, test their commitment, with both ritual specialists and nature´s ?masters? and ?owners?, and explore and perform short term expectations of ?rebirth? and ?evenness? for themselves, their families and field plots. At the interface of rituals and the economy promised by the North American Free Trade Agreements (NAFTA), Mayan speaking agriculturalists objectify their life regeneration through practices of ?requests?, ?promises?, ?engagements? and ?purchases?. Through this later term they figure themselves as buying life and wellbeing from political and natural forces.