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> Davis on Eber, _Women & Alcohol In A Highland Maya Town_
>
> H-Net Review Project ([log in to unmask])
> Wed, 10 Apr 1996 19:12:19 -0400 (EDT)
>
>  > H-NET BOOK REVIEW
> Published by [log in to unmask] (December, 1995)
>
> Christine Eber. _Women & Alcohol In A Highland Maya Town: Water Of
> Hope
> Of Sorrow_. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995 303 pp.
>
> Reviewed by Kate Davis, University of California Berkeley, for
> H-Latam <[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]>.
>
> _Women & Alcohol in a Highland Maya Town: Water of
> Hope, Water of Sorrow_ is a well-written feminist analysis of
> culture, tradition, gender, and alcohol use within a Highland
> Chiapas community. Eber states that her research was guided by
> two primary questions: "How is women's relationship to alcohol
> changing in Chenalho, and how are Pedranas handling their own
> and others' drinking problems?" (p.3) While her focus is on
> women in particular, her efforts to contextualize the study
> within the historical, cultural, and spiritual framework of an
> indigenous community broadens her work by providing a basic
> understanding of community life as a whole.
>
> Eber's method of feminist analysis which includes
> symbolic systems, historical materialism, and social
> construction of gender provides a solid, but not rigid,
> research framework which she uses quite masterfully. One of
> the most intriguing and ultimately effective aspects of this
> book is the choice of storytelling as the vehicle for
> presenting her research and analysis. This platform allows her
> to give voice to the women she worked with in Chenalho. While
> that voice is filtered through Eber's own personal and
> professional assumptions and experience, it is nevertheless a
> sincere and quite effective attempt. Eber does not pretend to
> be an "objective" participant-observer. Rather, she includes
> her own thoughts, feelings, and actions which gives the reader
> a three-dimensional perspective of the relationships Eber had
> with the women she studied. Eber's methodology and literary
> style added depth to the analysis of a very complicated
> cultural, social, and economic system.
>
> One of the main themes evident throughout the book is,
> of course, alcohol. Eber's analysis of the dialectical role of
> rum is excellent. Rum is a powerful substance within the
> context of traditional spirituality while it destroys people's
> ability to follow a path that demonstrates understanding of
> their god's desires for individual and community behavior. Rum
> is empowering and debilitating. Rum is cause and cure. Alcohol
> eases the pain of the economic exploitation in which alcohol
> was an effective tool of the Ladinos. Alcohol
> created/increased the pain of women and children through
> escalating domestic violence. The sale of alcohol (usually by
> women) often provided the only source of income for a family.
> Economic exploitation of Ladinos contributes to poverty,
> violence, alcohol consumption and frustration to a level that
> challenges the ability of Pedrano communities to maintain
> their culture and reject mestisoization. However, Eber does
> make the reader aware that for some in the community,
> especially the young, mestisoization is an attractive
> alternative to poverty and oppression.
>
> Alcohol is only one of many contributing factors in
> cultural, gender, and structural changes occurring in Highland
> communities. Ladino domination of indigenous peoples sets up
> an increasingly intolerable imbalance of power. Power
> struggles between Pedranos, Ladinos, and mestisoized
> indigenous people occur with increasing frequency. There are
> also internal power struggles within the community in which
> land and women are symbols of the struggle over autonomy and
> freedom from Ladino exploitation. As Pedranos become more
> powerless and aware of that condition, they turn with greater
> frequency to domestic violence which jeopardizes family and
> community structure as well as the health and lives of women
> and children (200). Economic instability in Mexico contributes
> to the significant re-definition and re-situating of
> traditional gender roles when women are forced to become
> breadwinners in whole or in part (69).
>
> In the chapter on "Traditions, Religion, and Drinking"
> Eber's analysis of the spiritual, religious, economic,
> political, and cultural aspects of Catholic Action,
> Protestantism, and Traditionalism is especially powerful.
> Protestant churches offered Pedrano communities entry into a
> capitalist economic system (217), improved living conditions,
> and required abstinence from alcohol. With the help of priests
> and nuns, Catholic Action lay leaders "organize their
> communities into small groups which identify and study the
> sources of their economic exploitation and political
> oppression, and develop strategies to confront these (223).
> Nuns (madres) work with women to place their "agenda within an
> overall economic and political liberation context" (226)
> without stressing the radicalism within feminist theology.
>
> I found the comparison/contrast between the alcoholics
> in the indigenous community and Alcoholics Anonymous in the
> U.S. a bit disconcerting. While I find cross-cultural
> comparisons important and useful, a comparison between the
> wealthiest country and one of the poorest communities in the
> world was, for me, ineffective. Near the end of the book Eber
> states that AA does exist in San Cristobal. It would be more
> useful to know whether AA in Mexico was successful in helping
> indigenous people stop drinking. Was the group in San
> Cristobal strictly Ladino? Did AA groups reach out to
> indigenous communities? If there were no meetings, groups, or
> outreach services to the Highland Chiapas communities then why
> was AA used as a point of comparison/contrast?
>
> This book is an important contribution to studies of
> indigenous communities and especially gender issues within
> those communities. It is clearly analyzed, artfully written,
> and perceptive. Perhaps one of the central contributions of
> this work is the lesson Eber credits Pedranas with teaching
> her. "[T]ake women's concerns out of a western framework of
> individual rights and put them into their framework of
> community and cultural survival." (242) This same advice is
> especially useful when studying and analyzing different
> cultures, ethnicities, and races. It is also one of the most
> difficult tasks of a researcher, but one that is crucial to an
> attempt to give voice to the people we study and work with.
>
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