The Mexican state's use of revolutionary history to invoke nationalistic sentiments nurtures a lively tradition of storytelling. Ironically, Buena Vista's storytellers criticize the inauthenticity of representations of the past even as they draw on the images and ideals of official history to weave their own tales. This article argues that discourses of authenticity reinscribe historic distinctions between the community and the state in a language which evokes modern notions of purity and truth. The article highlights the political role of discourses of authenticity within the hegemonic structures of modern state power in Mexico. The Problem of Authenticity My attention was drawn to issues of authenticity while I was carrying out research on a movement to defend communal land in Buena Vista, Morelos, Mexico.1 Many of the Mestizoes of this highland community identify themselves as peasant farmers, even though most engage in various forms of day labor, including construction work. The local-level Committee for the Defense of Communal Resources sought to protect communal land by clarifying the boundaries of the community, halting illegal sales of land, and stopping illegal land takeovers by owners of private property.2 They constituted a vigilante committee that worked in an often tense relationship with the Office of Communal Resources, the government office responsible for controlling communal land. During the course of my research in 1984, the number of members attending meetings varied from seven to thirty-five, but two members-one in his sixties, the other in his seventies-never failed to attend. Occasionally, they were joined by other elders. Ethnohistory 40:3 (Summer 1993). Copyright ( by the American Society for Ethnohistory. ccc 0014-8o0/93/$ . 50. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.51 on Sat, 18 Jun 2016 05:35:41 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Contesting Authenticity Elder members of the Committee frequently interrupted meeting discussions of land problems with tales of past struggles that rendered moral and strategic lessons concerning present-day problems. The tales were woven from events of the Mexican revolution in Morelos (I9IO-I9ZO) or from the time that the elders remembered more clearly-the period immediately following the revolution. The tales evoked imagery of conflict between the community and the state and the effectiveness of revolution in forcing recalcitrant bureaucrats to treat peasants with respect. The grounding of these tales in everyday problems and the intimate connection between the storyteller and the events of the story seemed to contrast with the manipulation of history that I observed in political speeches and ceremonies. In contrast to other anthropological studies which point to the relatively minor importance of narrative to the telling of history, Buena Vistan tales of the past almost always followed a clear path of plot development (cf. Comaroff and Comaroff 1987; Price I983; Rosaldo I980). Later, I learned that storytellers borrowed narrative structure, images, and ideals from the history of the Mexican state. Yet, the elders asserted that their stories, not the government's, were autentico (authentic). This article examines Buena Vistan understandings of authenticity by looking at the practices of storytelling that legitimate claims to authenticity. It sets these practices in the wider framework of theories concerning the development of modern institutions of power. Buena Vistan discourses of authenticity were embedded in a paradox. As the post-revolutionary Mexican state became increasingly aggressive in incorporating and transforming local history to serve the needs of nationalism, Buena Vistans tried to define a true, pure, and uncorrupted vision of history. But, the state seemed able to incorporate local versions of history as quickly as they could be produced. In short, people became more concerned with authenticity as it became increasingly impossible to find. In Buena Vista this paradox of authenticity was revealed in the fact that elders borrowed their authentic tales, or some might say reappropriated them, from history. What did this borrowing mean? Did it mean that in the final analysis the government's version of history reasserted its hegemony? The concept of hegemony as developed by Gramsci (1971) emphasized the role of institutions of civil society such as the school, the church, and the press in creating the cultural underpinnings of order. In recent years anthropologists and historians have highlighted the complexities of the process of creating hegemonies by providing empirical support for a concept of hegemony that goes far beyond a simple notion of a dominant ideology imposed on the masses through the institutions of civil 439 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.51 on Sat, 18 Jun 2016 05:35:41 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms