Globalization Can Help Preserve Indigenous Cultures
In rural Mexico, some 3,000 people living in the small mountain village of San Agustin have tapped into the global market using a very traditional practice - amate paintings. Their chronicles of daily life and ritual dances are told and preserved through these bark paintings, then sold to tourists wanting that perfect souvenir.
Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University and author of several books on the cultural effects of globalization, has been researching this village, trying to understand how world market forces affected the culture and livelihood of this rural Mexican village.
In a seminar with IRP Fellows, Cowen said he regards San Augustin as a "success story." In 1960, the average San Augustin family earned $50 a year. Residents had no electricity or cars and medical facilities were hours away. Then, an outside art dealer approached the village and persuaded the inhabitants that there was money to be made by creating these rustic bark paintings for tourists, in lieu of the traditional pottery they had transported down the mountain on the backs of burros. Today, thanks largely to the amate paintings, families bring in $1,500 to $2,000 a year.
Cowen draws a number of lessons from the experience of San Augustin. Globalization, he said, is not simply a matter of big, powerful cultures overwhelming small, indigenous ones. "The paintings show [that] creativity in indigenous cultures is fragile and dynamic," Cowen said. "They can rise or go away very suddenly." Cowen calls this "creative destruction" when market forces replace one tradition with another.
For example, because San Agustin residents have found that amate paintings generate more money than creating masks, mask making is disappearing. San Agustin now has access to markets in Mexico City and can tap wealthy buyers, fetching even higher prices for the art. Cowen said he has also discovered the town's residents, whose primary language is N�huatl, do not fear American cultural imperialism. Rather, they worry about being overwhelmed by the dominant Spanish-speaking Mexican culture.
Despite some cultural losses, Cowen believes globalization will help preserve traditions, such as amate paintings, by spreading them throughout the world rather than confining them to one geographical location.
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