Aculturación apropiativa
Carlos Guadalupe Heiras Rodríguez
Revista Trace January 31, 2024 DOI: 10.22134/trace.85.2024.714 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Eastern Tepewa (Ma’álh’amá’) shamans |
| Key findings | Argues that Eastern Tepewa shamans appropriated Eastern Otomi traditions of paper cutting and cannabis use while retaining their own bark-figure binding and cult style, a process termed 'appropriative acculturation'. |
Abstract
The concept of appropriative acculturation unites the concepts of acculturation (sensu Aguirre Beltrán) and appropriation (sensu Bonfil Batalla), with the aim to comprehend the process which took Eastern Tepewa (Ma’álh’amá’) shamans to appropriate two Eastern Otomi (Ñühǘ) traditions for them to, on the one hand, start cutting paper figures without giving up their ancient tradition of binding bark figures; and on the other hand, to substitute the old use of datura in favor of the more recent use of cannabis, in accordance with their own Tepewa cult style, very different from Otomi style. Description of these appropriations rests on ethnographic material collected by myself mostly between Eastern Tepewa people, which I contrast and compare with ethnographic material collected by others who worked with these and other ethnic groups within the southern Huastec regional neighborhood, and which I contextualize with also published historiographic material.