Blog #4: Teotitlán del Valle

Teotitlan del Valle

Today, we went to a village outside Oaxaca City.  Ethnically,  is a Zapotec village.  Its economy is based on the manufacture of woolen textiles.  In a broad range of ways, it is traditional.  The paved streets are cobblestone, rather than asphalt; the main building we visited is Andalusian in its open architectural style – that translates to colonial, in a Mexican context.  Yarn is spun on a wheel similar to the kind that, 60+ years ago, even in an overwhelmingly rural society, Gandhi was nearly laughed out of the circles of power, for advocating.  Many pieces of evidence could lead one to feel that Teotitlán de Valle is a benighted land, skipped over by the blessings of modernity.

     On the other hand, the artisans of this town command a price for their work that, by my calculations, boils down to about 2-pesos per square inch of finished rug – possibly double that if the design on the rug is intricate.  They take credit cards [but not American Express – no one in Oaxaca accepts that card for some reason.  There must be quite some competition for market exclusivity between the credit-card companies.  The US clearly is not a monolithic force of capitalist imperialism; there is internal competition, as well as external].  Remote Teotitlán de Valle also ships though DHL.  Especially considering the fact that this town is situated in one of the poorest states in Mexico, where communication, transport, and financial infrastructure can't be the easiest things to come by, Teotitlán de Valle is anything but a backwards backwater; it is a spot of impressive relative economic brightness.

     This evident economic fortitude [at least in a relative sense] is juxtaposed against methods of production that are pre-industrial, if not pre-modern.  The yarn is dyed with rocks and plants, and is woven into rugs on foot-powered wooden looms.  No modern technology is required for production [although a phone to call credit card companies clearly boosts sales].  Teotitlán de Valle is an outlier, or possibly a partial refutation of the Western, technology-deifying measures of human progress.  Were Harry Truman with us today, he would have a strong case for calling the methods of production in Teotitlán de Valle [their means to wealth] "underdeveloped," but whatever their methods, these Zapotecs do appear to rake in some considerable revenues, judging from the prices their products command.  A true capitalist must judge by the financial outcome; only a dogmatist would give primacy to methodological details.  Even in the brutally capitalist judgment of a NorteAmericano, Teotitlán de Valle holds its own.  Because of that, it would be difficult for anyone to make a case that they are backwards, deprived, or would even choose to use automated technology if it was delivered gratis to their doorstep.  Their unique, artisan-based methods are something unique, which the world chooses to pay for – their quaintness is a legitimate market niche.  Lest it becomes ossified, dogmatic, and ultimately a not-completely-correct model, notions of development and financial viability must be flexible enough to accommodate unorthodox avenues to common-weal, which Teotitlán de Valle exemplifies.  Maybe US interventionists would have been a little less heavy-handed in dealing with foreign peoples, had they seen places like this – points of prosperity that a Westerner would call "unorthodox," yet results are difficult to argue with; Teotitlán de Valle makes a strong case for alternative, non-Western-industrial paths towards prosperity.

-Justin-