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Of Mayans and Mexico............................ Smith's Neilson Professor Is a Noted Latin American Anthropologist By Winston Smith ............................
June Nash............................ |
Anthropologist June Nash has trekked her way through the highlands of Mexico, Guatemala and Bolivia to explore Mayan belief systems, the consciousness of Andean tin miners and the impact of economic globalization on women and children. Last semester her journey led her to the Smith College campus. At Smith, in her role as the William Allan Neilson Professor, she taught a class and gave three well-attended public lectures focusing on indigenous Latin American cultures. "It's a great honor to have a Neilson Professor in your department or program," says Ann Zulawski, director of the Latin American Studies Program. Zulawski notes that it is especially gratifying to have Nash at Smith because Latin American Studies has been an independent major at Smith for only about 12 years. Biology played a role in Nash's destinations as an anthropologist, she will tell you. She says her fieldwork took her into the highlands of Mexico and Central America partly because of her aversion to hot weather. "I wouldn't want to work in the jungle," she protests. "The environment doesn't appeal to me." Nash learned about the Mayan Indians of the Mexican highlands almost by happenstance. In 1950, after graduating from Barnard College and working a year in Washington as a statistician, she went to Acapulco. She wasn't enjoying herself, though. "I'm not good at the beach," she says. "I fry." So she went to the mountains. While there, she joined members of the American Friends Service Committee who were engaged in a variety of community projects with the Mayans. Through the Friends, Nash taught sewing in the schools and helped build latrines. From there a fascination with Mayan life and the cooler climes of Mexico developed. "Mexico is a very beautiful country and people have a sense of living," Nash says. "They take things in their time. They are not as driven as Americans." Returning to the United States, Nash went on to study anthropology at the University of Chicago under two of the leading authorities on Central American Indians. "I think anthropology is very comprehensive. It takes into account all aspects of life," she explains. "It's a method of living with people." But she uses an economics degree from Barnard to lend intellectual heft to her explorations in the field. Barnard is central to Nash's identity in other ways, too. "It was a very protective environment for me," she says. "I like the idea of education for women. I think I probably developed more independence, and you really hang out with your peers. I still see my roommates." Indeed, it was through those same Barnard connections that Nash was able to get an acting troupe of Mayan women from Chiapas, Mexico to perform two plays at Smith last semester. Among her current interests are women's artisan production and popular movements in Chiapas, which is one of the poorest and most heavily native states in Mexico. Because she has been conducting research there since the mid-1950s, Nash is also a leading authority on the Zapatista peasant guerrilla movement. The Zapatistas burst into global view on New Year's Day 1994 with a rebellion of indigenous Mayan-speaking peoples against the Mexican central government. Their calls for an end to official corruption and more control over the land in areas where they live have been met with increased militarization in their region by the Mexican army. The government and the rebels are still in a tense standoff punctuated by on-again-off-again talks about the issues dividing them. During her October talk on women and militarism in Latin America, Nash noted that enough women entered the conflict as combatants for the Zapatistas that they now make up 30 percent of the high command. The status of women in Chiapas is generally higher than that of their sisters in other parts of Latin America partly because of a pottery collective they founded in the 1970s that produced income independent of agriculture, Nash said. "In the household economy, men control the income from pottery because they market it," Nash said. "In the collective, men's control over the market income was challenged. Women went directly to market or to their agents in the collective." The collective lay dormant after its leader was killed by men who claimed it had a policy of admitting only single, widowed and divorced women into its ranks, she said. In fact, there was no rule against married women participating, but they were not as driven to find new markets through cooperative channels, said Nash. The collective was reactivated under the Zapatistas in 1993. Nash views the Zapatista struggle with the Mexican government as part of a wide tendency in Latin America, over the last three decades, to militarize conflicts that involve indigenous Indian populations. Women tend to bear the brunt of such conflicts, she said. Already at the bottom of the social pyramid in these patriarchal societies, women are further exposed to large-scale violence when the war front encroaches upon the home front, Nash explained. Nash, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology of the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University, has written or edited 15 books and dozens of articles on the anthropology of work. She is one in a long series of Neilson scholars to visit Smith since 1927, when the professorship was established. "The professorship honors Smith's third president, who was very international in outlook, so the holder often has some international slant, as in the case of June Nash and Latin America," Dean of Faculty John M. Connolly explains. "Some of the early Neilsons are among the most famous academics." W. H. Auden, Alfred Kazin and Eudora Welty were three of the most well-known Neilsons. Other distinguished scholars who have held the Neilson professorship have included psychologist Kurt Koffka in 1927 and, more recently, French scholar Auguste Anglès in 1981. |
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