New Patterns of Stratification in the Zinacantan Cargo System

Author(s): Frank Cancian

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 164-173
Published by: University of New Mexico
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New Patternsof Stratificationin the Zinacantan

CargoSystem
FRANK CANCIAN
Patternsof participationin the systemof religiousofficesin Zinacantan,Mexico,changed
duringthe 1960s. Datafor 1961 show mentakingsuccessiveofficeswith similarprestige
andcost,therebyclearlymarkingtheirrankin the community.
datafor 1967 do
Comparable
not show this pattern.The changesuggeststhat the breakdown
of the systemas the major
between
institutionin the community
is underway.Analysisof differences
rank-allocating
mobileand non-mobilemen in 1967 revealssome orderin the breakdown
process,and
illustratesa theoryof individualresponse
to socialmobility.
THIS PAPER HAS TWO GOALS. The first is to describe changes in
stratification patterns in Zinacantan between the early 1960s and the
late 1960s. These changes seem to be the result of population increase
and economic prosperity interacting with traditional rank-allocating
institutions. The second goal is to illustrate the usefulness of a general
theory about socially mobile individuals that explains some of the
patterns that have emerged as the traditional system heads toward
breakdown.
Zinacantan is a Tzotzil-speaking, Maya community of about 11,500
people (1970 census) in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. Vogt (1969,
1970) provides general descriptions, and Cancian (1965) discusses the
cargo system in detail.
In Zinacantan a man's community-wide reputation is established in
large part through service in the religious cargo system. The cargos are
year-long offices whose incumbents sponsor religious fiestas at great
expense to themselves. Similar systems have been described for many
Middle American communities (Cancian 1967). They have been called
variously the ladder system, the civil-religious hierarchy, and the cofradia
system.
THE CARGO SYSTEM IN THE EARLY 1960s

In the Zinacantan cargo system there are four levels of offices

arranged in a hierarchy. A man seeking honor or prestige in the
community must serve one of about 35 first level cargos to begin his
career. After that, he is eligible to serve one of 12 second level cargos,
1 An earlier version of this paper was presented in a session entitled "Trends and Processes of
Change in Contemporary Mexico" at the 1974 Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological
Association, Mexico City. I am grateful to Francesca Cancian for comments on various drafts.
As will become apparent, in this paper I use "stratification" and "rank" to refer to the same
patterns. I do not mean to challenge the distinction between "rank" and "stratification" in the
literature, but only to finesse it in the present context.
164
VOL. 30, 1974

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165

NEW PATTERNS OF STRATIFICATION

then one of six third level cargos, and finally one of two fourth level
cargos. These aspects of the system are represented in Figure 1.

2 fourth level cargos

6 thirdlevelcargos

Type II

12 second

30+ first

High

-&

level

level

cargos

cargos

Increasing

Low

prestige

Type I
Fig. 1. Zinacantan Religious Hierarchy

First service does not usually occur until the age of 35 or 40, and
years of "rest" between service periods are required to earn the money
necessary to sponsor fiestas. Thus, many men who hope to compete for
the limited number of offices on higher levels die before reaching their
goal.
It is possible to discuss two components of prestige in an individual's
career in the cargo system. First, the offices within each level may be
ranked according to the prestige accruing to the man serving in them.
Both the authority invested in the particular office and the cost of
performing the ritual associated with it contribute to the prestige
(Cancian 1965:chapter 8). For example, the Mayordomo Rey is in
charge of a chapel in the ceremonial center. A Mayordomo Rey must
spend considerably more than 10,000 pesos (measured in 1960 pesos) in
the course of a year's service. The Mayordomo San Antonio must spend
about 3,000 pesos. His principal duties involve ceremonial patterns
directed by someone else. Thus, a man who serves as Mayordomo Rey
acquires much more prestige because he has more authority and spends
more than one who serves as Mayordomo San Antonio. This type of

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JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

166

relative prestige within a level is labeled Type I on Figure 1. I have

adopted the convention of using the left hand side of the figure to
indicate the higher prestige positions within each level.
The second type of prestige is that acquired by serving in a second
or subsequent cargo. To maintain and enhance prestige established
through service in a first-level cargo, a man must progress through
higher levels of the system as he becomes older. The ultimate goal is
completion of a fourth cargo. The rewards for completion come mostly
in respect and deference, though the "elder" status is also recognized by
exemption from local taxes (a small saving compared to the cost of
service). This is labeled Type II prestige on Figure 1.
On the basis of data gathered in 1961, I have shown how men who
reach the top level of the system usually begin with the relatively high
prestige lower level positions, represented on the left side of Figure 1.
This pattern is not based on any explicit Zinacanteco ritual practice or
rule; rather, it is a behavioral tendency that reflects stratification in the
community (Cancian 1965:chapter 10).
Table 1 displays a small part of the data used to support this
analysis and interpretation. It shows that there is consistency in the
Type I prestige of successive offices taken by men climbing the ladder.
That is, there is a statistical tendency to "high-high" and "low-low"
careers among those who manage to serve two offices. This table
includes the careers of all men age 55 and older who lived in two
hamlets (Apas and Hteklum) that were censused in 1961.
TABLE 1

Prestige Rank of First and Second Level Cargos of Individuals: 1961

First
High

Low

High

11

Low

12

Second

On the basis of these and other data I concluded that the cargo
system in Zinacantan reflected stratification in the community. Cargos
cost enough so that even the rich were straining their resources by
taking expensive ones. These data show that the wealthy repeatedly
took expensive, high prestige cargos, whereas the relatively poor were
confined to lesser careers. My analysis showed that the operation of the
cargo system transformed economic rank into prestige rank in a manner
that usually did not destroy the economic standing of the individual.

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NEW PATTERNS OF STRATIFICATION

167

Even in the early 1960s, when this analysis was made, it was clear
that these functions of the cargo system were being threatened by
population growth and economic prosperity in Zinacantan. In what
might be called the "old equilibrium" there were roughly enough
cargos to go around, and virtually all of the adult men of the
community participated in the system to some degree. Further, the
economic resources of the participants roughly matched the demands of
the system. That is, few people took cargos that required vastly more
than they could afford and few took cargos that cost so little relative to
their wealth that they emerged from the year of service without debts.
But even in 1961 it was clear that population growth was producing
many more adult men than could be accommodated in the cargo
system, while economic prosperity was producing a great over-demand
for the most expensive and prestigious cargos.
Though the number of cargos available increased slightly with the
construction of chapels in some of the hamlets of Zinacantan, the
number of men wanting cargos increased even faster. Waiting lists were
created about 1950 and expanded in the next decade. For example, the
waiting period for the most expensive and prestigious first-level cargo,
Mayordomo Rey, grew from nine years in 1952, to 16 years in 1958, and
to 20 years in 1961. Less expensive, less prestigious cargos were available
with shorter waiting periods.
From the individual point of view, men who had the desire and the
economic ability to pursue highly prestigious careers were frustrated by
the long delays. From the community point of view, the cargo system
was becoming unable to provide a controlled mode of expression that
would commit men to the community by exchanging their money for
prestige good only in Zinacantan.
Alternative status systems based on consumer goods from the outside
world were already apparent in 1961, and have since expanded. Men
who did not need their money for service in the cargo system bought
radios, watches, and record players, and installed electric lights in their
homes. Even trucks began to absorb the economic surplus. These items
from the national culture undermine the former unitary scale (based on
cargo service) that reflected high economic rank in a specifically
Zinacanteco way. They open the road to the national culture.
On the basis of these trends, I predicted (Cancian 1965:chapter 16)
that the cargo system would lose its function as a major institution
maintaining Zinacantan as a closed corporate community. While the
cargo system as a system of offices might persist, the concentration of
most of the disposable income of most Zinacanteco families in the
because there are more men than
cargos would not continue-simply

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JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

available offices. And, if the community is to retain its boundaries, the

unity of Zinacanteco identity must depend more heavily on something
other than the cargo system. In sum, I predicted that the cargo system
would lose its integrating, boundary defining functions in Zinacantan.
Of course, the cargo system is not the only boundary maintaining
feature of Zinacanteco culture. Language, among other things, also
separates Zinacantan from the national culture. If the community or
"ethnic" identity of Zinacantecos does substantially decrease in the near
future, the causes of the decrease will certainly include important
factors in addition to the demise of the cargo system.
NEW PATTERNS OF STRATIFICATION IN THE LATE 1960s

Data on cargo careers gathered in 1967 do not undermine the

overall prediction made above, but they do reveal an interesting pattern
that illustrates the resilience of the cargo system and suggests that the
breakdown is not a substitution of chaos for order.
For 1967 I have data on the first two cargos passed by 43 men (see
Table 2). These data are comparable to the data from 1961 (Table 1) in
that they are also the result of censuses of two hamlets (this time Apas
and Nachig). Note that the clear statistical tendency to "high-high" and
"low-low" careers has disappeared. Stratification, as I interpreted it in
my earlier analysis of the cargo system in Zinacantan, is simply not
present. If I were to use the data in Table 2 as the basis for an analysis of
the cargo system, I could not argue that they showed stratification, and
I could not make the subsequent interpretation of integrating functions
for the community. Distinctions between the rich and the poor, the
prestigious and the ordinary, have not disappeared in Zinacantan, but
the pattern of service in the cargo system shown in Table 2 certainly
does not reflect them.
TABLE 2

Prestige Rank of First and Second Level Cargos of Individuals: 1967

First
High

Low

High

11

Low

11

13

Second

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NEW PATTERNS OF STRATIFICATION

169

I would like to consider three possible interpretations of these two

sets of data (Tables 1 and 2). The first is that the numbers are too small
and the trends too weak to be taken seriously. It might be argued that
the 1967 data simply show that the 1961 data were a statistical accident,
and therefore that all the interpretations based on them should be
thrown out. Or it might be argued that the 1967 data are a statistical
accident. I choose to reject these arguments and to take both sets of data
seriously.
Taking both sets of data seriously means that the differences
between them must be explained. The most straightforward explanation is that the cargo system (as represented by the measures I am using)
did reflect the stratification system in 1961, and that by 1967 the
breakdown of the system as the central stratification institution in
Zinacantan was almost complete. This would be extreme interpretation,
especially since, in 1967, many Zinacantecos seemed to retain the
traditional interest in cargo careers. Though casual observation indicated that many men were becoming more interested in other things, at
least the rhetoric of respect for cargo service remained very broadly
diffused in the population. Nothing like an open gulf between
traditionalists and modern elements had emerged.
Thus, I would like to choose a third explanation. I will try to show
that the old prestige-allocating
functions of the system were still
operating to some degree in 1967.
The data displayed in Tables 3a and 3b show that when the 1967
population is broken down by rank of the individual's father, the mobile
individuals adhere to the old "high-high" "low-low" pattern, whereas
the non-mobile individuals do not. Interpretation of the difference
between mobile and non-mobile individuals suggests that the old
standards of prestige allocation remain despite the difficulty of all men
meeting them in the overcrowded system of offices.
TABLE 3

Prestige Rank of First and Second Level Cargos of

Mobile and Non-mobile Individuals: 1967
Table 3a.

Table 3b.

Non-mobile
First

Mobile
First

Second

High

Low

High

Low

Second
7

High

Low

High

Low

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JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Part of a more general theory that I developed before analyzing

these data (Cancian n.d.) provides the interpretation. Informally stated,
the theory goes like this: in prestige rank systems, upwardly mobile
people must avoid behavior that is atypical of their newly acquired
rank. If they revert, even temporarily, to "lower" behavior patterns, the
social alters on whom they depend for their prestige will remember their
past and assume that they are backsliding. Non-mobile people do not
have this problem. When they do something atypical and "low,"
attention is also focused on their background. But this attention simply
confirms the idea that their behavior is temporary. In fact, the
consistently high past position of the non-mobile person may even lead
the social alter to interpret deviant behavior as intelligent innovation.
Another way of stating the theory is to say that prestige rank is very
sluggish, and that upwardly mobile people must avoid drawing
attention to the past if they want to make the most of their recent
achievement. By contrast, non-mobile people can use the sluggishness of
their rank to free them from the threat of a sudden change in rank.
This theory is relevant to the dilemma faced by many men in
Zinacantan. Since the waiting lists for the most prestigious cargos on
each level are longer than the waiting lists for the less prestigious cargos,
a participant must decide between the immediate prestige of a highly
ranked first or second level cargo and the ultimate prestige of attaining
the top level of the system. If he does not hurry, he will die before
reaching the top. If he hurries, he must take lesser cargos along the way.
If the theory stated above is correct, upwardly mobile men should
opt for a delay between first and second cargos, because a low-ranking
second level position would be inconsistent with their newly established
image and remind others of their family origins. Non-mobile men of
comparable rank should be more free to opt for a lower ranking second
level cargo that is available immediately and that speeds them on their
way to higher level service and the ultimate in Type II prestige.
These ideas motivated the reanalysis of the 1967 data that showed
no consistent pattern of "high-high" and "low-low" careers in the cargo
system. All of the 43 individuals in that population are relatively high
ranking people, for they have passed two cargos. I divided them
according to the cargo performance of their fathers. Eighteen had
fathers who passed no cargos or only the lowly position of Mayor, which
involves less than 100 pesos expense and little authority. The other 25
had fathers who passed at least some respectable Mayordomo cargo.
This analysis led to the results presented in Tables 3a and 3b. Though
the numbers are very small, it is clear that the traditional "high-high"
"low-low" pattern that was lost in the aggregated data for 1967 reappears

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NEW PATTERNS OF STRATIFICATION

171

in the data for mobile individuals. The difference between Tables 3a

and 3b is even statistically significant at the .05 level of probability
(Goodman 1965).
These data show that mobile individuals have held onto the
traditional pattern, while non-mobile people have compromised to
avoid the delays and frustrations brought about by population growth,
economic prosperity, and the consequent over-demand for expensive,
high prestige cargos. In a sense, the non-mobile people, who could
afford to do so, have used the memory of their fathers' accomplishment
to augment the supply of prestige normally available through service in
the cargo system. They have tried to create a new kind of high prestige
in the face of a short supply of the traditional kind.
In my earlier analysis of the changing cargo system, I suggested that
the waiting lists have a similar function (Cancian 1965:183-186). While
men cannot get cargos as soon as they want them, they can at least say
they are waiting for a distinguished position. When the waiting lists are
publically read at the major fiesta in August, word spreads about who is
waiting for cargos. Thus, those who are actually serving the position and
those waiting both have some prestige in the community, whereas
before the development of the waiting lists, only the prestige of actual
service was available to the men of the community.
Both the waiting lists and the more recent use of memory here
illuminated by distinguishing mobile and non-mobile cargoholders
stretch the supply of high prestige positions to meet the number of
Zinacantecos able to serve in them. But they are feeble gestures in the
face of growing population and prosperity, although both indicate that
Zinacantecos have not yet turned away from the cargo system.2
Zinacantan has not yet followed the example of some communities
where cargos are filled from a dwindling subgroup of traditionalists.
Still, I believe that thinking eventually follows behavior. These
delaying mechanisms will be shortlived. First, the flush of new meaning
2 The creation of new cargos over the last 20 years has been the most important adjustment
to population increase. However, these new cargos have not kept pace with population (Cancian
1965:chapter 14), and the present analysis takes for granted the increasing gap between the
number of adult Zinacanteco males and the number of cargos available.
The parallel "obvious" adjustment to prosperity (as contrasted with population) would be an
increase in the cost of cargos through elaboration of ritual. As noted in my earlier analysis
(1965:141, 193n referring to page 141 and not to Chapter 11, 217n) Zinacantecos seem to reject
this option. Schneider's grumbling (1974:114) that somebody or something (Zinacanteco behavior
or my analysis) is blameworthy because this response predictable from simple microeconomic
theory has not happened is topsy-turvy. It insists that people's behavior should fit theory, when in
fact theory should fit people's behavior.
Insofar as the important feature of the cargo system is inclusion of virtually all adult males
rather than leveling of all wealth differences, this differential response to population and prosperity
makes sense.

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JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

and new prestige added by the waiting lists 15 years ago is bound to
fade. Even before waiting lists, there were people who avoided cargo
service at the last minute when they faced the actual financial and
ritual burden. Soon Zinacantecos will accumulate experience of men
who evade service after 15 or 20 years on the waiting lists and the
"surplus" prestige created by the waiting lists will diminish. Second, as
a new generation enters the cargo system, jogged memories will find the
compromised careers that already appeared among non-mobile men in
the 1967 data. Eventually the behavioral model of an ideal high prestige
cargo career that was repeatedly displayed 15 or 20 years ago will be
rare. People's ideals about cargo service will change to fit the new
practice.
More population, more economic prosperity, and more alternative
systems for acquiring prestige will probably contribute to the further
demise of the cargo system as the central prestige-allocating institution
in the community. And, with this will go the clear ranking within the
community that was associated with the cargo system. Whether these
changes undo the distinct lines around the community previously
maintained in large part by the definite commitment demanded by
cargo service depends on many other factors. While the cargo system
served Zinacanteco identity, it was never equivalent to it. If present day
theory relating the maintenance of ethnic boundaries to basic economic
conditions (Collier 1975) is correct, there is every reason to think that
Zinacanteco identity will remain important.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

This paper has described and interpreted changes in stratification

patterns reflected by the Zinacantan cargo system. The consistent
prestige rank of successive cargos evident in the early 1960s had
disappeared by the late 1960s. The consequent rank-allocating function
of the cargo system for the entire community has diminished, and
boundary maintenance dependent on the cargo system is breaking
down. Cargo service and cargo ritual has not changed appreciably: only
their meaning for the community rank system is changing. However,
change in meaning may eventually lead to change in concrete
institutions, for the rank system is probably more stable than the
institutions that embody it at any particular time.
Distinguishing the careers of mobile and non-mobile individuals in
the late 1960s has shown that the breakdown is orderly, not a
substitution of chaos for order. I hope that the theory briefly outlined
here and similar ones will be useful in ordering other change processes.

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NEW PATTERNS OF STRATIFICATION

173

BIBLIOGRAPHY
CANCIAN, FRANK

1965 Economicsand Prestigein a Maya Community:The ReligiousCargo

Systemin Zinacantan.Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress.

1967

Political and Religious Organizations.

n.d.

Middle American Indians (Robert Wauchope, general ed., and

Manning Nash, vol. ed.) vol. 6. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Multiple Systems of Stratification (mimeograph).

COLLIER,

Pp. 283-298 in Handbook

of

GEORGE A.

1975

The Fields of the Tzotzil: The Ecological Basis of Tradition in

Highland Chiapas. Austin: University of Texas Press (in press).
GOODMAN, Louis A.
1965 On the Multivariate Analysis of Three Dichotomous Variables.
American Journal of Sociology 71:290-301.
SCHNEIDER,

HAROLD K.

1974

Economic Man: The Anthropology of Economics. New York: Free

Press.
VOGT,EVONZ.
1969 Zinacantan: A Maya Community in the Highlands of Chiapas.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
1970 The Zinacantecos of Mexico: A Modern Maya Way of Life. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

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