Clan Organization in a Nahuatl-Speaking Village of the State of Tlaxcala, Mexico

Abstract

MORE than 25 years ago Beals (1932:467) pointed out that frequent discussions of Mexican social organization in the past have centered almost entirely about the nature of the calpolli system of the Aztecs. Occasional suggestions of unilaterally organized societies elsewhere have aroused relatively little interest despite the possible light they might shed on the Aztec situation or their perhaps even greater importance in suggesting the type of social organization of pre-Aztec Mexico. Although a few cases of unilateral organization have been reported in the last two decades, the situation today is basically unchanged, and anthropologists continue to speak almost exclusively of the calpulli or barrio as the only important unit of social organization beyond the nuclear and extended families present in Mesoamerica. This undue concern with the calpulli is easy to explain. During the years preceding the Conquest, the Aztec empire extended its sphere of influence and political control throughout most of the area known today as Mesoamerica, and it is quite possible that the calpulli system widespread in the area today was nothing but an Aztec acquisition or imposition. Otherwise it is difficult to explain the presence of the term calpulli and its derivatives or subdivisions (calpul, calpolli, tlaxicalli, chinancalli, altepetl, and so on) among such a wide variety of linguistic groups.1 Furthermore, the early historians, writing about regions as far apart as Guatemala and Michoacan, indiscriminately translated the term calpulli as a territorial division embodied in the old Spanish word and the terms (calpulli and barrio) have retained this territorial connotation as their primary meaning. Although we will never know what the early historians were trying to describe when they translated calpulli as barrio, it is highly probable that it meant one thing in Kakchiquel and quite another in Tenochtitlan.2 Thus, the fact remains that the term calpulli, as it is found throughout Mesoamerica today, does not possess a unitary meaning, as several anthropologists seem to have assumed. Calpulli means different things in different regions. It can be either a territorial unit or a kinship unit; it can be endogamous, exogamous, or have no marriage regulatory functions; it can be localized, nonlocalized, or semilocalized; and membership can be hereditary, residential, or by choice (Redfield 1928; De la Fuente 1949; Weitlaner 1951; Guiteras 1947; Villa Rojas 1947; Beals 1945; Monzon 1945). It is important that the student of Mesoamerican social organization be aware that the term does not have the same meaning throughout the area. Of even greater importance is the need for