Aculturación apropiativa

Appropriative acculturation, a concept uniting acculturation and appropriation, explains how Eastern Tepewa (Ma’álh’amá’) shamans adopted two Eastern Otomi (Ñühǘ) traditions while maintaining their own cultural style. They began cutting paper figures without abandoning their ancient practice of binding bark figures, and substituted datura with cannabis in accordance with Tepewa cult practices. The account draws on the author's own ethnographic fieldwork among Eastern Tepewa, contrasted with others' work in the southern Huastec region and contextualized with published historiography.

Study at a glance

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.