Mixtec plant nomenclature and classification by Alejandro de Ávila A dissertation submitted in ...

272 Pages·2011·4.2 MB·English

Mixtec plant nomenclature and classification

by

Alejandro de Ávila

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction

of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor in Philosophy

in

Anthropology

in the

Graduate Division

of the

University of California, Berkeley

Committee in charge:

Professor Overton Brent Berlin, Chair

Professor Laura Nader

Professor Leanne Hinton

Fall 2010

Abstract

Mixtec plant nomenclature and classification

by

Alejandro de Ávila

Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Overton Brent Berlin, Chair

Ñuu Savi (‘Sacred Rain’s collectivity’), the Mixtec people of southern Mexico, had created
some of the most complex polities in the continent at the time of European contact. Five
hundred years later, they remain cohesive, culturally distinct communities, as increasing
numbers of individuals and families migrate to northern Mexico and the US for work in the
agricultural and service sectors. In 2005, the Mexican Federal Government reported there were
more than 446,000 speakers of Tu’un Savi (‘Sacred Rain’s word,’ the Mixtec languages) five
years of age and older, 322,000 of them still living in 1551 settlements within their historic
homeland; an additional 100,000 to 200,000 are estimated to reside in the US.

The term Mixtec, derived from the Náhuatl mixte:cah (‘cloud-people’), has been considered
by different authors to encompass between 12 and 52 mutually unintelligible languages, in
addition to numerous dialects. According to the Summer Institute of Linguistics’ Ethnologue,
it is the second most diversified group of languages in the Americas, after Zapotec. The
Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas, however, recognizes 81 variants of Mixtec, making
it the most diversified language group in Mexico following official criteria. The internal
variation of Mixtec and its geographic proximity to three related groups (Cuicatec, Triqui and
Amuzgo, members of the same lineage in a progressively earlier sequence of branching
episodes), provide fertile ground for diachronic inquiry into various lexical and grammatical
traits of these languages, which are part of the Otomanguean phylum.

The Mixtec territory can be portrayed as an intricate mosaic in its geology and vegetation. It
boasts one of the richest floras in Mexico, itself one of the most diverse areas of the planet in
biological terms. Furthermore, the Mixteca (the local name for the region in Spanish) is
notable for a high incidence of endemic species of vascular plants and terrestrial vertebrates,
which reflect long series of climatic and ecological changes in the area’s natural history. It is
part of a larger region of Otomanguean speech where a characteristic stone-working
technology has been documented by archaeologists, in conjunction with the early development
of plant domestication and agriculture. Natural complexity and cultural history thus converge
to enhance the interest of the Mixtecan languages for ethnobotanical study.

This dissertation presents the results of several years of research on the names and uses of
plants in Mixtec communities in the states of Oaxaca, Puebla and Guerrero. Extensive
1
information is provided on plant terminology, backed in part by herbarium specimens
collected in the field by the author. The Mixtec languages make use of a productive system of
noun markers, in some cases matched by pronominal clitics, to label various plant categories.
Adscription to these groupings appears to be determined by use, edibility and symbolic
significance, as much as by life form affiliations that reflect adaptive design, such as woody
plants, leafy herbs, vines and grasses. Categories labeled by class terms appear consistently in
all the Mixtec languages that have been documented to date. The dissertation reviews the
botanical nomenclature recorded by linguists and naturalists throughout the Mixteca since the
16th century.
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction: natural history and cultural chronology of the Mixtec region 1
1.1 Geological history 1
1.2 Climate 6
1.3 Flora and vegetation 6
1.4 Language diversity and Otomanguean prehistory 9
1.5 Mixtec language history 15
1.6 Archaeology and history 19
1.7 The modern period 23
2. History and theory of ethnobiological classification and nomenclature 28
2.1 Francisco del Paso and Franz Boas 29
2.2 Conklin and Lévi-Strauss 31
2.3 Brent Berlin’s principles of categorization 33
2.4 Berlin’s general principles of nomenclature 40
2.5 Recapitulation 43
3. Semantic classification in Mixtec grammar and lexical morphology 46
3.1 Noun classifiers 46
3.2 Mixtec orthography 49
3.3 Phonology 51
3.4 Morphophonemics 53
3.5 Morphology 55
3.6 Contraction processes 58
3.7 The pronouns 59
3.8 Mixtec classifiers 63
3.9 Innovation and loss of the classifiers 70
4. A corpus of Mixtec plant lexicon 73
4.1 The sources of information 74
4.2 Dialectal geography of the sources 84
4.3 The plants marked tun-/tnu-/nu- 87
4.3.1 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <a> 91
4.3.2 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <ch> 91
i
4.3.3 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <d> 93
4.3.4 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <i> 94
4.3.5 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <j> 96
4.3.6 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <k> 96
4.3.7 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <l> 100
4.3.8 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <m> 100
4.3.9 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <n> 100
4.3.10 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <nd> 102
4.3.11 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <ñ> 110
4.3.12 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <o> 113
4.3.13 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <p> 113
4.3.14 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <r> 113
4.3.15 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <s> 113
4.3.16 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <t> 115
4.3.17 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <ts> 124
4.3.18 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <v> 124
4.3.19 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <w> 126
4.3.20 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <x> 126
4.3.21 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <y> 128
4.4 The plants labeled yuku 135
4.5 Plants labeled ita 153
4.6 The plants labeled yuva and nduva 167
4.7 Other labeled groupings 187
4.7.1 Thorny plants 187
4.7.2 Grasses 189
4.7.3 Brooms – switches – shrubs 190
4.7.4 Soap plants 191
4.7.5 Tuberous roots 192
4.7.6 Agaves and plants that resemble them 194
4.7.7 Vines 196
4.8 Unaffiliated plants 198
ii
4.9 The main crops 208
4.9.1 Maize 209
4.9.2 Beans 213
4.9.3 Squashes 215
5. Conclusion: the geography of quelites and flowers 218
5.1 Spatial distribution of the yuva and nduva class terms 218
5.2 Botanical class terms in other Mesoamerican languages 220
Notes 225
Bibliography 232

iii
Acknowledgments

I am indebted to numerous kind people who have generously shared their knowledge with me
during my field work in Oaxaca, Puebla and Guerrero. I cite their names in section 4.1 of this
dissertation, listed by communities. I am grateful to Celso Flores Romero and Sergio
Méndez, who instructed me in Coicoyán and San Miguel Tlacotepec Mixtec with great
patience. The members of Ve’e Tu’un Savi heard my original proposal for documentation of
the Mixtec plant lexicon and made helpful observations; I especially thank Juan Julián
Caballero and Ubaldo López García for their encouragement and friendship. Many
colleagues have offered the results of their own field research to me with great kindness; I
would like to express my gratitude to Esther Katz, Priscilla C. Small, Susan J. Hugghins,
Anna Piestrzynska, Jonathan Amith, Michael W. Swanton and Sebastian van Doesburg.
Alfredo Saynes Vásquez provided Latin binomials for many of the plants I collected in
Coicoyán and Jicayán; Silvia Salas Morales, Emily J. Lott and Abisaí García Mendoza have
helped me identify the voucher specimens we have gathered subsequently. Salvador
Maldonado Paz assisted me in the transcription of field notes, and Javier Ríos Medina
prepared the topographic map of the Mixtec region presented in chapters 1 and 4. Óscar
Mingüer Vargas helped me convert the manuscript into the format of a dissertation. My
research has been supported at different stages by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y
Tecnología (CONACYT), the Missouri Botanical Garden, the New York Botanical Garden,
the World Wildlife Fund, the Instituto Tecnológico de Oaxaca (ITO), the American
Philosophical Society, and the Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca.

iv
1. Introduction: natural history and cultural chronology of the Mixtec region

Ñuu Savi (‘Sacred Rain’s collectivity’), the Mixtec people, had created some of the most
refined polities in the American Continent at the time of European contact [1.]. Five hundred
years later, they remain cohesive, culturally distinct communities, as increasing numbers of
individuals and families migrate to northern Mexico and the United States for work in the
agricultural and service sectors. In 2005, the Mexican Federal Government reported there
were more than 446,000 speakers of Tu’un Savi (‘Sacred Rain’s word,’ the Mixtec
languages) 5 years of age and older in the country, 322,000 of them still living in 1551
settlements within their historic homeland (INALI, 2005); an additional 100,000 to 200,000
are estimated to reside outside of Mexico.

The Mixtec people have occupied historically an area of approximately 45,000 square
kilometers in southern Mexico. Their territory extends for about 260 kilometers south to
north, from the Pacific coast to the Balsas trough in southern Puebla State, and for
approximately 175 kilometers east to west, from the Cuicatlán Canyon and the Oaxaca
Valley to the mountains of eastern Guerrero State (Spores, 2007: 5). The Mixtec area, a very
heterogeneous geographical unit, has been conventionally divided into three regions. The
Mixteca Alta, an area that lies mostly above 1600 meters in altitude, designates the districts
of Coixtlahuaca, Teposcolula, Tlaxiaco, Nochixtlán, the northern part of Putla and the
westernmost portions of the Etla and Zaachila districts in the State of Oaxaca. Sustaining the
densest human population, the Mixteca Alta has played a central role in regional history since
the formative period.

The Mixteca Baja, where the average altitude is about 1600 meters (Ortiz Pérez et al.: 46),
covers the district of Acatlán and the western section of the district of Tepexi in southwestern
Puebla, and the districts of Huajuapan, Silacayoapan and Juxtlahuaca in Oaxaca. On grounds
of linguistic affinity, the Mixtec communities in the districts of Morelos (Tlapa), Allende
(Ayutla), Altamirano (San Luis Acatlán) and Abasolo (Ometepec) in eastern Guerrero have
been linked to the Mixteca Baja, although their lands stretch over mountain ranges as high as
those of the Mixteca Alta and reach down close to sea level on the Pacific coast. Finally, the
Mixteca de la Costa, largely below 800 meters in altitude, encompasses the district of
Jamiltepec, the western part of Juquila and the southern portion of Putla in Oaxaca.

The landscapes of the Mixtec territory are quite rugged and consist of a complex mosaic of
geological formations dating to different periods within the morphotectonic province called
the Sierra Madre del Sur (Ferrusquía Villafranca, 1998: 60), which extends from the
Mexican Transvolcanic Belt south to the Pacific Ocean, and from the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec to southwestern Jalisco. Three physiographic subprovinces are recognized
within the eastern Sierra Madre del Sur, where the Mixtec territory is situated: the Pacific
coastal plain, the Balsas trough and the Oaxaca-Puebla highlands. The latter, which constitute
the most complex subprovince, are divided in turn into two zones within our region of
interest: the Mixtec-Zapotec sierras and the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán rift valley. For the most part,
the Pacific coastal plain is a narrow strip (approximately 20 kilometers from south to north)
where rivers do not form significant alluvial depositions, since the sea currents close to the
shore disperse sediments rapidly. The continental platform is equally narrow along the coast.
1
The Balsas trough is an east-to-west depression that forms the watershed of the Balsas river,
ranging mostly between 200 and 1000 meters in altitude; in its easternmost section, occupied
partly by Mixtec communities, it is composed of plateaus that surpass 1000 meters above sea
level. The western portion of the Mixtec-Zapotec sierras comprises a high plateau that
descends gradually north towards the Balsas trough; the remainder of the zone is formed by
mountain ranges that exceed 2000 meters. The Tehuacán-Cuicatlán zone is a long and narrow
rift valley, i.e., a graben that is delimited by parallel faults, in a south-southeast to north-
northwest direction. The valley is part of the Papaloapan watershed, which drains into the
Gulf of Mexico. Figure 1 illustrates the physiography of the Mixtec territory.

1.1 Geological history

The Sierra Madre del Sur boasts the most complex geology in Mexico, and its history
remains largely speculative (Ferrusquía Villafranca, idem: 63). Ortiz Pérez et al. (2004)
characterize the major geomorphological features which distinguish five areas within Mixtec
territory (here underlined), largely coincident with Ferrusquía’s subprovinces and zones. The
Balsas trough to the northwest has a relatively gentle topography, with 75% of the terrain
showing slopes of less than 12°. It morphology is dominated by plateaus formed by
metamorphic rocks of Paleozoic age in a general pattern of stepped north-to-south blocks.
Mixtec presence in this area has been largely limited to the headwaters, the lower areas of the
basin being occupied historically by Tlapanec people (Kaufman, 1990: 98), and more
recently by Nahuatl speakers intruding from the north.

The mountains and valleys of western Oaxaca feature an intricate relief and diverse structure,
characterized by a pattern of ranges that converge towards cusps in the south, with igneous,
metamorphic and sedimentary rocks of varying age. Unlike the areas of the Sierra Madre to
the west and east, where the mountains relate to the subduction zones and the relief ascends
step-wise fashion towards the interior of the continent, here the mountains form linear,
parallel ranges, rotated clockwise. The south to north orientation of the Mixteca Alta ranges,
in contrast to the east to west axis of the Balsas trough and the general pattern of the Sierra
Madre from Chiapas to Jalisco, remains a puzzle. About 25% of the slopes in the area range
between 6° and 12°, and 6.5% exceed 30°. The geological history of this region is
particularly relevant to the cultural development of the Mixtec people since it occupies a
major portion of their territory, where human settlement reached the greatest density, and
where large areas of the exposed substrate are highly prone to erosion because of their
peculiar mineral composition. Soil retention has been a concern for Mixtec agriculturalists
throughout the region and motivated the construction of terraces since the mid to late Classic
period, about 500 to 900 AD (Spores, 2007: 75-76).

The Tehuacán-Cuicatlán rift bears evidence of having been an endorheic basin which
developed its current drainage into the Gulf of Mexico in the Tertiary, in the process
capturing flows from the eastern escarpment of the Mixteca Alta. The faults that flank the
graben bear witness of recent tectonic activity. Slopes exceeding 30° occupy 3% of the area.
Approximately 70% of it lies below 1000 meters in altitude; the warm climate and the
potential for irrigation allow the alluvial soils of the lower canyon to produce tropical fruits
and two to three crops of maize and other annual species. Mixtec communities settled the
2