Marching with San Miguel: Festivity, Obligation, and Hierarchy in a Mexican Town

Abstract

In an attempt to demystify the postrevolutionary Mexican state, this article examines the role of religious confraternities in the formation of a new hegemonic order. Based on ethnographic and historical research in Maxcanú (a mestizo town in Yucatán), I argue that religious confraternities not only helped revive invidious distinctions between groups following the demise of the Porfirian state but sanctified them within a field of custom, festivity, and communal obligation. Although participation in these confraternities (gremios) is voluntary, the linkage between gremio activities and public acts of contrition made participation in Maxcanú's hierarchically ordered confraternities a virtual obligation. Finally, while noting that the town's religious hierarchy has undergone important changes in recent years, I argue that the most prestigious gremio still serves as a vehicle through which upwardly mobile residents shed their parvenu status and fashion a more respectable past.