This book is a continuation of The Wages of Conquest (Nutini 1995), which is concerned with the Mexican aristocracy, the superordinate class of the country since the Spanish Conquest. Together the two volumes constitute a comprehensive structural and expressive treatment of this social class, its evolution throughout nearly five centuries, and its place in the stratification system of Mexico. Although each is essentially a self-contained monograph, a certain amount of background information will help the reader. Therefore, in these introductory remarks I summarize the most salient points and themes discussed in the first volume. Since the methodological and theoretical framework on which the entire study is based is discussed in the Introduction to that monograph, here I confine myself to restating the basic components underlying the nature of social stratification as I have defined the term: its expressive aspect, upward and downward mobility, the new realignment of classes, aristocratic-plutocratic acculturation, and so on. This is necessary because the conceptual foundation of the study must be handled differently in diachronic and synchronic contexts.

In the balance of these introductory remarks, I address three sets of interrelated topics. First, I present a summary of the Mexican aristocracy which emphasizes the salient diachronic-synchronic junctures from the Spanish Conquest to the Revolution of 1910. Next, I discuss the differential efficacy of expressive behavior, social mobility, and class affiliation in terminal decline. Finally, I describe the aristocracy in the context of the new Mexican superordinate class as it coalesced during the second half of the twentieth century. Unless otherwise indicated, the ethnographic present of this monograph is 1990-2000.

Inception of the Study and Diachronic Background

The paucity of studies of upper-class stratification originally led me to investigate the aristocracy and how it had changed since the onset of the Mexican Revolution. As if by design, social scientists had ignored this social class. Few of the works written on Mexico and comparable areas of Latin America by social scientists are useful, but the works of historians on the nobility and various European aristocracies from the tenth century to the twentieth century are indeed useful for comparative purposes.

Historians, unencumbered by sociological concerns, have been able to ascertain, for example, that within the predominant capitalistic mode of production characteristic of European society during the last 250 years significant elements of the seigneurial period have survived as distinct categories. Thus historians and some gifted social critics analyze contemporary nobility or aristocracy in England, Spain, or France as significant groups, although most social scientists dismiss them as irrelevant by seeing them as spurious survivals from the past. Or these groups are indiscriminately seen as part of a contemporary bourgeois ruling class. Politically powerless and relatively insignificant economically as these social elites may be, they nonetheless exist in a distinctly organized fashion, and they have something that undoubtedly appeals to the real ruling class and/or political class. Explaining social elites and their persistence, once they have lost their status as ruling and political classes, is a central concern of this book.

Shortly after data collection began in 1978, I realized two things. First, a study of an upper class in the traditional mold would result in either another description of a classical aristocracy in the process of being replaced by a new plutocracy or just another urban ethnography in the usual anthropological style. Second, a historical or ethnographic account of the Mexican aristocracy based on structural considerations alone would not explain how this social class has survived without political power and most of its wealth and how it has managed to influence and shape a new upper class that is in the process of replacing it.

Being in this predicament, I turned to the expressive approach as a complementary analytical tool, both to generate some answers to questions of social mobility and persistence and to amplify the concept of social class, particularly at the higher echelons of the stratification system. Class position, mobility, and class consciousness are admittedly entailed by economic forces in action, are concomitantly discharged in a number of cultural domains (the most prominent being the social, the political, and the religious), and are supported by an ideological superstructure designed to perpetuate the status quo.

Thus to say that this study is first and foremost an expressive description and analysis of the Mexican aristocracy means that, based on a solid structural foundation, the expressive focus is the main analytical tool that generates explanations in domains that the traditional approach to social stratification has not explained. This approach may be characterized as one in which structural (economic, political, and other) variables constitute the necessary conditions for the conceptualization of social stratification, while expressive variables constitute the sufficient conditions that in specified settings and domains account for social mobility and the persistence of class ideology.

Although the Mexican aristocracy today does not have residential unity—nor does it constitute a community in the conventional sociological sense—the great majority of its members reside in circumscribed areas of Mexico City. This is not a rigidly bounded group; but by standard criteria of self-identification, the majority of married members know each other personally or by reference and individuals can always be placed genealogically by ancestral place of origin. The Mexican aristocracy today has an approximate membership of 5,500 at most, including roughly 800 households (nuclear family households with a sprinkling of extended family households). The adult population, including married couples and young and old single individuals (roughly 55 percent of the group), constituted the pool from which informants were drawn.

This study is primarily an exercise in expression. The attendant conceptual approach, which I have termed the expressive focus and strategy, serves as the guiding mechanism of description and analysis. This book and the previous volume demonstrate the fundamental proposition of the study: that expressive behavior and expressively derived considerations are at the heart of explaining social mobility. Two other conceptual approaches are complementary to the primary expressive thrust: network analysis and the renewal of elites. Network analysis has been previously employed in studies of ritual kinship (Nutini 1984; Nutini and White 1977). The network approach is used in the analysis of plutocratic upward mobility and the accommodations made by aristocrats in order to survive. The renewal or circulation of elites, as originally postulated by Vilfredo Pareto (1935), provides the main analytical stance in explaining the evolution of the Mexican aristocracy and organizing the diachronic description in the first volume.

Finally, a few words about the general organization of this book. I should reiterate that the standard ethnography and expressive ethnography of the Mexican aristocracy are treated as an undifferentiated whole, as this seems to be the most efficient method of presentation. It avoids repetition and lends itself better to the identification of expressive domains. Thus the organization by chapters follows traditional ethnographic presentation, albeit modified by an accompanying expressive analysis. In this framework the reader will experience an immediate vision of the unfolding expressive array and witness the origin and implications of expressive domains as emanating from social and cultural behavior. Moreover, this method entails optimal conditions for isolating exclusive and inclusive domains and associating the latter with the social classes of Mexican society that share them with the aristocracy.

Differential Efficacy of Expressive Behavior, Social Mobility, and Class Affiliation in Terminal Decline

The combined approach developed in the historical-evolutionary analysis of the Mexican aristocracy applies equally to the fundamental changes that this social class has experienced since the 1910 Revolution. But the sociocultural milieu in which the aristocracy was embedded until 1910 is radically different from the economic and political environment generated by the Revolution. Moreover, the four-century dominance of the aristocracy created structural and expressive constraints that made it virtually impossible for this social class to overcome the impending economic decline that never materialized during the three renewals before the Revolution. These two factors require modifications in the conceptual framework and its application to the contemporary analysis of the aristocracy in terminal decline. Thus this book explains the dynamics of total class renewal—as contrasted with the partial renewals characteristic of the aristocracy from its inception to the 1910 Revolution—when a plutocratic sector becomes the predominant social and ruling class.

Expressive Acculturation with and without Dominance

The ideology and imago mundi of the Mexican aristocracy are essentially those of the Spanish aristocracy but somewhat modified by the Conquest of Mexico and the new socioeconomic conditions that emerged during the sixteenth century. The founders of the colonial Creole aristocracy were an original nucleus of conquistador-encomenderos that, by right of conquest, came to control large numbers of Indians and, in time, vast landed estates. By ancient seigneurial rights, conquistadors considered themselves entitled to honors and dignities (commoners aspired to hidalguía—gentry status—and hidalgos aspired to titles of nobility) which the Crown was not willing to grant, as it did not want to perpetuate a seigneurial system that the Catholic kings had largely managed to dismantle in Spain. Nonetheless, despite the original refusal of the Crown and gradual granting of honors and dignities, conquistadors and encomenderos from the start regarded themselves as nobles and gentry. The possession of tributary Indians and (later in the century) landed and some mining wealth validated their pretensions; and it is in this environment that a Creole aristocracy came into being by the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Concomitantly, the Creole aristocracy created an expressive array that, although essentially Spanish in its fundamental tenets, was significantly modified by colonial resources and constraints.

By the turn of the seventeenth century the ideology and imago mundi of the Creole aristocracy had achieved a configuration that remained remarkably constant for 300 years. Not surprisingly, the exclusive expressive array of the aristocracy also remained constant, since the overall social and economic configuration of Mexico, even after Independence, did not change much. The hacienda system—which came into existence as the result of the virtual demise of the encomienda system during the first half of the seventeenth century—remained de facto essentially unchanged as a seigneurial system until 1910.

Throughout these centuries the aristocracy underwent three renewals during which large numbers of nouveau riche plutocratic magnates joined the ranks of the aristocracy. These renewals generated changes in the aristocratic expressive array, as plutocratic ideology in all three instances was able to influence the dominant aristocratic ideology. But given the overwhelming preponderance of the aristocracy, the changes provoked by the acculturative context did not substantially change the exclusive array created by the conquistador-encomendero class in the sixteenth century and perpetuated by the hacendado class in subsequent centuries. On the whole, plutocrats changed the expressive array and worldview of aristocrats only peripherally throughout these renewals, as in most ways they had to adapt to aristocratic ways.

The Mexican Revolution not only terminated the local political importance of the hacienda but radically altered the position of the aristocracy as a social class vis-à-vis the global stratification system of the country. Despite the fact that the aristocracy had never been a political class (at the national level), for more than 300 years its social and ruling predominance had been unchallenged, as befitted the de facto seigneurial system that pervaded several aspects of Mexican society. All structural and expressive changes had hitherto been unable to dislodge the aristocracy as a social class.

By the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, during which the armed phase of the Mexican Revolution took place, the aristocracy had been largely reduced to a social group, increasingly vanishing from the consciousness of the population at large but still a group to contend with at the top of the stratification system. The coup de grace, however, came a decade and a half later with the massive land reform of President Lázaro Cárdenas, which by 1940 had completely abolished the great landed estates, so that their aristocratic owners ceased to have any ruling functions. From this point onward, the aristocracy was a mere social class, and a precarious one at that, as it was perceived both by the upwardly mobile elements that were filling the vacuum and by the majority of aristocrats themselves.

By 1920 most of the great landed estates were still in the possession of aristocrats, but a thorough land reform was only a matter of time. This was realized by only a small number of aristocrats, who managed to parcel and sell most of their land to farmers and small proprietors. These forward-looking aristocrats invested in industry and banking, ultimately becoming aristocratic plutocrats and spearheading the terminal renewal of the aristocracy. The great majority of aristocrats, however, held onto their land, wishfully thinking that massive land reform would never come. More than 90 percent of aristocratic landowners fell into this category, and by 1940 they were left with little more than the manorial establishments of their once immense estates. The net result of this economic disaster was that the aristocrats had become impoverished in less than a generation, and only the sheer predominance that they had once enjoyed saved them from even greater economic downfall. The situation was mitigated by the fact that (to some extent as a hobby and to some extent for utilitarian reasons) by the turn of the century significant numbers of aristocrats had become lawyers, physicians, and members of other liberal professions. Thus perhaps most members of the class were able to survive economically, without even considering that many of them were still rich in terms of art, residences, and other heirlooms which they adamantly refused to convert into negotiable assets. Nonetheless, impoverished as the aristocracy had become by the early 1940s, it still thoroughly dominated the social scene of Mexico City. This milieu is poignantly captured in the words of an informant:

I remember well the years before and after the war [1940-1950], when we were in fact aristocrats and not in name only, and when the new rich still paid us homage and we dominated the social life of the city [Mexico City] as if the Revolution had not taken place. Many of the families were no longer rich as in the old days, but they spent money as if there were no tomorrow on celebrations and balls that were the admiration of the city. It seemed as if our world was coming to an end, and the ostentation and lavishness [were] the last gasps of something that was dying. Some years later our resources could not compete with the nouveau riche class with which we had nothing in common [1955-1960]. From then on our decline began, so that today [1990] we are aristocrats in name only.

The fundamental reality in the evolution of the Mexican aristocracy since the Spanish Conquest is the seigneurial system that pervaded much of Mexican society and survived even after Independence, when the country became a representative democracy de jure but not de facto, as it took more than a century to approach that ideal. This institutional state of affairs underlined nearly four centuries of aristocratic dominance, which (despite lack of national political functions) enabled this social class to retain undisputed social predominance. A concomitant aspect in the evolution of the aristocracy is that all the renewals it underwent throughout its history were basically acculturative transformations—that is, concentrated periods of interaction with relatively large numbers of upwardly mobile personnel. These plutocratic personnel, as I have termed them, had a different imago mundi and expressive array; in the process of upward mobility and incorporation into the aristocracy, they made themselves felt, thereby structuring an acculturative matrix that resulted in a new social and ruling milieu, usually after a generation or so. Thus, in the renewals undergone by the aristocracy before 1910, a plutocratic imago mundi and specific expressive domains modified the ideology and expressive culture of the aristocracy but always within tolerable boundaries. The exclusive array of this culture remained basically unchanged, as these ideational elements came to reinforce aristocratic wealth and power.

This situation came to an end with the Mexican Revolution of 1910. As the seigneurial system disappeared, society as a whole began to democratize, and eventually the social system acquired a modern fluidity. The aristocracy, however, did not ipso facto disappear; nor was it drastically curtailed. Rather, there was a slow decline marked by four rather well-delineated stages, which are detailed in the Conclusions.

Herein lies the crux of the explanation of the evolution and transformation of the Mexican aristocracy before and after the 1910 Revolution. Before 1910 the aristocracy, by virtue of its unchallenged social and ruling standing, prevailed expressively. Because of its social and economic decline since the Revolution, the aristocracy has been seriously challenged by the new plutocracy, which, for at least a generation, has been creating its own expressive array.

The diachronic context of stratification of the Mexican aristocracy means fundamentally its transformation throughout nearly four centuries of total predominance, punctuated by adaptations enhancing its perpetuation as a social and ruling class. In this dynamic of continuous preponderance, economic variables (the encomienda and hacienda systems and seigneurialism, accompanied by rather pronounced ethnic differences) were the necessary conditions for the maintenance of a worldview and expressive array that constituted the sufficient conditions of superordinate stratification. Throughout the three renewals, plutocratic personnel in significant numbers were always incorporated into the aristocracy, increasing its survival and strength. Thus the processes of acculturation that these renewals involved were limited and asymmetrical, as plutocratic inputs, no matter how strong, were never enough to upset aristocratic supremacy.

Western European aristocracies, beginning shortly after the inception of absolutism in the early sixteenth century, interacted with an increasingly powerful plutocracy that made the process of structural and expressive acculturation almost symmetrical; by shortly after the French Revolution, they had undergone a significant degree of embourgeoisement. This is the natural development of the European aristocracy's not having been able to compete economically with the industrial plutocracy, which was the main architect of the Industrial Revolution that continued to dominate the economic life of Europe until the twentieth century. Thus expressive acculturation was until recently symmetrical, while structural integration was greatly skewed toward the plutocratic side of the equation—mainly because landed wealth could not compete with industrial wealth, to say nothing of the natural process of democratization that Europe has been undergoing for more than two centuries. The Mexican aristocracy, however, began its decline in 1910 and the accompanying process of asymmetrical acculturation (that is, processes that the European aristocracy began to experience when the Mexican aristocracy was in its formative stage) nearly four decades later. This was the result of the confluence of a belated seigneurialism and basically different ethnic and demographic orders as compared to those of Western Europe. Given these considerations, and far away from the mother country, the Mexican aristocracy de facto represents the perpetuation of a stratification system that had begun to decline in Western Europe while forming anew in the New World.

The synchronic context of structural-expressive stratification, in contrast, is concerned with the terminal phase of the Mexican aristocracy as a superordinate class, triggered by the 1910 Revolution and now approaching its end. The main concern of this final renewal is not with the continuity of expression. Rather, the emphasis is on how the terminal phase of the aristocracy has been instrumental in creating a new superordinate class: a new plutocracy that has been acquiring ruling functions for more than sixty years and is on the verge of supplanting the aristocracy as the dominant social class of the country. Indeed, the new plutocracy (including increasing numbers of the political class who become plutocrats after their one term in high office) is already the ruling class of the country and probably achieved that status during the 1960s. As a social class, however, the process of expressive acculturation has been going on since the 1930s but has not yet run its course. In this process, the aristocracy predominated until the new plutocracy indisputably asserted itself as a ruling class. For the past twenty-five years or so, however, the plutocracy has been innovating on its own and has fashioned many domains in a new expressive array that is neither aristocratic nor new-plutocratic but a combination of both, increasingly colored by the ruling predominance of the plutocrats. Thus this volume chronicles not only the expressive ethnography of the aristocracy but, as an important aspect of it, the input of the new plutocracy, which has significantly affected the aristocracy as a social class. The main analytical aims addressed throughout this study may be outlined as follows.

The first goal is to establish the dynamics of asymmetrical acculturation in the context of the increasing and ultimate predominance of an upwardly mobile group that becomes a new ruling class. Most important in this endeavor is to delineate the developmental cycle of expressive acculturation in terms of specific stages to determine the give and take of aristocrats and plutocrats.

The second aim is to determine how and to what extent the imago mundi of aristocrats has been modified by increasing contact with plutocrats and by their own inability to create new wealth and thereby join the ranks of the new ruling class. This process is largely determined by expressive constraints, and it is of the utmost significance to determine the social and psychological profiles of aristocrats who are able to overcome them—thereby becoming upwardly mobile economically and active members of the new emerging social class—and of those who are not—thereby becoming downwardly mobile or static economically and ultimately dropping out of the system. Conversely, similar profiles of plutocrats must be determined in order to identify those who are creating the new expressive array of the emerging ruling class and those who—despite economic success—drop out of the system by their unwillingness to interact with plutocrats or independently of them create new expressive domains not consonant with their potential position in the ruling class.

Third, as a concomitant aspect of the first and second points, the dynamics of structural and expressive interaction strike at the heart of explaining superordinate stratification. Thus it is necessary to identify not only the economic and political conditions that structure the rise of a ruling class but also the extent to which its members are able to create a new imago mundi underlined by the original ideology that brought them economic power.

Configuration of the Social and Ruling Class in the Context of Final Renewal

It is useful to compare the decline and near extinction of the aristocracy as a class in Western Europe and Mexico and by extension in other situations in Latin America where so-called oligarchies survived until the second half of this century. The French Revolution initiated the decline of Western aristocracies as ruling and social classes; but, surprisingly, this event also represents a resurgence of political participation after the near obliteration of aristocracies as political classes with the onset of absolutism. Western aristocracies had lost their ruling predominance by the second half of the nineteenth century, as landed wealth could not compete with industrial wealth, and most aristocrats could not make the transition. As social classes, however, Western aristocracies managed to remain rather unchallenged for nearly another century, that is, until shortly after World War I. This discrepancy is an intriguing phenomenon that cannot entirely be explained; but it is perhaps related to the fact that Western European aristocracies were always numerous in relation to the total population.

The Mexican aristocracy, however, after having significant ruling functions and total social domination, declined drastically in three generations. This can be explained by the absence of factors that made the decline of Western European aristocracies significantly slower.

First, neither in colonial nor in republican times was the Mexican aristocracy the political class of the country, and it never had a firm control over the military (as most European aristocracies did until World War I). This was a serious mistake that made the aristocrats more vulnerable to and less salient among the urban masses, which no doubt feared their ruling power but did not relate to them in the wider social sense. To put it differently, the European aristocracy was always more in the social consciousness of the population at large than the Mexican aristocracy ever was.

Second, the Mexican aristocracy was an extremely small social class; even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the ratio of peninsulares and Creoles to the entire population of Indians and mestizos was much smaller than in subsequent centuries, it never amounted to more than 2 percent. By the time of Independence the aristocracy represented roughly 0.5 percent of the country's population, and it was half that by the 1910 Revolution. Compared to the aristocracies of Western European countries, which ranged roughly from 5 to 9 percent of the population, the Mexican aristocracy was minuscule. Perhaps more powerful at the local level, where they reigned supreme over an ethnically different population, the aristocrats were never as visible and publicly salient at the national level as the European aristocracies were until well into the twentieth century.

Third, the abolition of titles of nobility shortly after Independence was another factor that diminished the visibility and integrity of the aristocracy as a social class. Significantly, such egalitarian developments right after Independence were due to an initial democratic fervor with a tinge of revolutionary zeal experienced by the Creole population, perhaps half of it racially mestizo. By the onset of the nineteenth century this Creole population numbered about a million and constituted the economic life of the cities; and in some rural environments it engaged in mercantile, trading, and manufacturing operations, including the hitherto underdeveloped liberal professions.

Because of the political inexperience of the aristocratic sector beyond the local and provincial levels throughout colonial times, the political vacuum left after Independence naturally was filled by Creoles, aided by the fact that aristocrats, so confident of their power, deemed it unnecessary actively to engage in politics. Thus ensued the tacit covenant that governed Mexico's political system throughout most of the nineteenth century: an increasingly mestizo political class which governed without undue interference as long as it respected the interests of the aristocratic and banking and industrial classes. This status quo was a double-edged sword for the aristocracy: on the one hand, it safeguarded its economic dominance, particularly after the 1857 Reforma Laws, when its landed power reached a zenith; on the other hand, it made the aristocracy vulnerable to political actions that it could not always control.

The net result of these factors and developments was that—predominant as the aristocracy was as a social class until 1910—it was a fragile institution that survived despite its weak mechanisms of control; the aristocracy endured mainly because the promise of democracy generated during the first decade after Independence did not materialize, and Mexico did not significantly evolve from its colonial situation. When Mexico experienced its first popular revolution in 1910, and the mestizo political leadership broke its traditional alliance with the ruling class, the aristocracy received a blow more severe than that dealt to its European counterparts by the French Revolution. Thus the aristocracy's inexperience with politics, its very small membership, and its lack of national visibility and limited vicarious appeal (except locally) are the main attributes that underline the precipitous decline of the aristocracy after 1910 and its inability to secure a stronger bargaining position vis-à-vis the rising plutocracy.

Concentrating on the second half of the twentieth century, what was the position of the aristocracy within the new superordinate sector of the country, which had not yet coalesced into a well-delineated class? The best way to characterize this sector is as an haute bourgeoisie composed of a social class, a ruling class, and a political class, all three in a state of disintegration or formation.

Briefly, the political class is composed of the heirs of the Mexican Revolution, that is, past high officials of the official party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) at the federal, state, and occasionally local level. This is a rather small group that has wielded continuous political power and status since shortly after 1928, including past presidents, important cabinet members, some state governors, large-city mayors, and other assorted high-office holders. The political class of Mexico in the twentieth century at no time had more than 1,500 members, growing roughly at the rate of 150 for every six-year administration. One of the most significant results of the Mexican Revolution was to institutionalize the practice that high executive officers of state cannot be reelected. While this did not apply to nonelective officials, during more than sixty years politicians' careers culminated in a high office to which they could not be reelected: president of the republic, state governor, or mayor of the largest cities. After holding high office, members of this circle continued to have political influence; and over decades a fairly permanent nucleus emerged, fostering stability and enhancing the power of the political class.

In assessing the configuration and position of the political class of Mexico within the global stratification system, perhaps equally important is the universally acknowledged fact that high political office has always been a source of enrichment since colonial times. In the twentieth century some of the largest fortunes in Mexico had their origin in politics—that is, once in high office individuals amass hundreds of millions of dollars. The net result of this form of institutionalized corruption is that sooner or later politicians become plutocrats. As control of the ruling party is coming to an end, and the political system becomes more representative and democratic, politics as a source of wealth is being curtailed. But the role of the political class in the formation of the ruling class must not be underestimated. Moreover, constrained by the populist attitude and "revolutionary" image that went with the role of being members of the political class, politicians-turned-plutocrats were reluctant to engage in upward social mobility. This is changing rapidly, as more and more high-ranking politicians are being integrated into aristocratic-plutocratic circles.

The ruling class of Mexico today (2000) has been in the process of formation since the end of the armed phase of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1919), when the middle-class leadership that precipitated this momentous transformation became the political as well as the ruling class of Mexico, thus ushering in the last renewal of elites. By the late 1920s this plutocracy was in a vigorous process of formation, and by World War II it was already a significant force in the life of the nation.

The Mexican Revolution was the first popular revolution of the twentieth century; but even before the PRI was founded and established in the late 1920s and early 1930s, it was clear that its leadership was not modeling Mexico into a socialist or Communist state, despite occasional deviations from 1930 to 1950. By then the political ideology of the ruling class, the PRI, was a fuzzy combination of socialist ideas and capitalist enterprise.

Whether intentionally or not, the ruling party had become one of the breeding grounds for a capitalistic plutocracy, and many great fortunes were made by politicians in their one term in office. By 1940 the redistribution of land among the propertyless had been largely accomplished, fulfilling the socialistic claim of the Revolution. In other respects, a mixed economy was favored; and with the exception of the nationalization of railroads, the oil industry, and other basic services, the state interfered only moderately in the free-enterprise system. Given this state of affairs, and the fact that the mixed economy was fostered as a means for politicians-turned-plutocrats to invest their ill-gotten fortunes, this moderately laissez-faire type of economy was the breeding ground for a new plutocracy. Partly because of lack of entrepreneurial ability and partly because of government impediments, the traditional aristocracy-plutocracy of the era of Porfirio Díaz did not essentially participate in the formation of the new plutocracy; and today only a minimal number of aristocrats may also be said to be plutocratic magnates. The beginnings of the new plutocracy may be traced to the administration of President Plutarco Elías Calles (1924-1928); and by the last years of President Miguel Alemán's administration (1946-1952) it was exerting a mayor impact on the life of the nation. During the past forty years this new plutocracy has become a ruling class, not only by virtue of its great wealth but because it also includes many former high-ranking politicians.

The political class of Mexico today is directly or indirectly of revolutionary extraction: mostly of middle-class origin or more modest circumstances, once or twice removed from these milieux. More intimately relevant for the problem at hand, plutocrats of nonpolitical origin are mostly of middle-class extraction, considerable numbers are "self-made men," and many have training in the law and other professions. While some of the families of plutocratic magnates in the 1950s were already in control of certain entrepreneurial activity on the eve of the Revolution or shortly after, most of the great fortunes of Mexico today began to be made in the 1930s and 1940s and in a few instances during the years immediately following the armed phase of the Revolution. This period coincides with a significant migration of European, Near Eastern, and a few U.S. entrepreneurs. They came to Mexico with a certain amount of capital and almost invariably with a good deal of technical and financial expertise. All great fortunes were made in banking, industry, commerce, and services, as mining, transportation, and oil had become state enterprises. Most great fortunes were made during the administration of President Alemán and in the early 1970s, primarily in banking and industry.

The relationship between the political class (all high government officials of the administration in power, influential former officials, and the ruling clique of the PRI) and the plutocracy may be characterized as a delicate balancing act, in which the ostensibly socialistic aims and programs of the government are always pitted against the capitalist free-enterprise interests of the plutocracy. Policy and issues are decided so that government (actually the ruling party) is made to look "revolutionary" on behalf of the people's social welfare but without significantly altering or dislocating the free-enterprise system that ultimately serves the politicians' plutocratic interests. Most aspects of the private-public interaction (labor disputes, wage scales, labor-management relations, and so on) are regulated by this unstated covenant; and the occasional drastic actions of the government that seriously affect the free-enterprise system are frequently determined by their effect on the economic interests of plutocratic politicians.

Finally, the aristocracy has perilously managed to maintain a foothold in the emerging social class. To put it in recent historical perspective, the plutocracy, with which the dying aristocracy has been increasingly interacting since the late 1940s, is coalescing into the new social class at the top of the Mexican stratification system. The interaction has been more intimate and sustained with the nonpolitical segment of the plutocracy. Plutocrats of political extraction have been more reticent to acquire the behavior and modes of expression of the traditional aristocracy (by now somewhat filtered and modified by plutocratic accommodations) and remain to a large extent marginal to the main aristocratic-plutocratic circles.

The coalescing of these rather disparate sectors at the top of the Mexican stratification system is largely governed by a process of expressive acculturation. Throughout this book, these strands are analyzed in the following manner. Expressive imperatives of aristocratic provenance—and plutocratic aspirations and the validation of social status—are in the process of coalescing into a single entity spanning the three basic sectors of the Mexican haute bourgeoisie. The final renewal in the upper reaches of the Mexican stratification system is not yet quite complete, but its basic form is evident: the political class is unmistakably embodied in the ruling political party but changing rapidly toward greater diversification; the ruling class is a mixture of politicians-turned-plutocrats and new plutocrats of nonpolitical extraction; while the social upper class is now in the process of rapid change, in which the old aristocracy is at the end of its existence and the new plutocracy is asserting itself.

Position of the Mexican Aristocracy in the Context of the Haute Bourgeoisie

Finally, let us substantively place the aristocracy in the context of the combined plutocracy described above and—with respect to its structural and expressive underpinnings—determine the domains and ambiances in which these sectors of the haute bourgeoisie are influencing each other, becoming homogenized, and innovating on their own. These concluding remarks offer a road map of what to expect and how the description will serve to generate analytical generalizations.

Structural Considerations: The Nature of Interaction, Acceptance, and Rejection

From 1940 onward the interaction between aristocrats (who have lost all ruling influence) and plutocratic upwardly mobile personnel has taken place in the context of expressive acculturation. Structurally, the plutocracy's interaction with the aristocracy was limited to the few aristocrats who had managed to amass fairly large fortunes and were being incorporated into the network of the evolving ruling class. The situation, however, is more complex; it has to be viewed as interaction in a position of equality or subordination of the aristocracy to the plutocracy but also in several domains configured largely by the realms of politics, economics, and the liberal professions.

Self-selectively and customarily, aristocrats did not participate in or were effectively barred from the political process; and from the onset of the Revolution until the late 1950s they did not hold political offices of any significance at the state or federal levels. The one exception to this generalization is that there were never any impediments to aristocrats' holding diplomatic posts. Indeed, because of behavioral and expressive considerations that were lacking among the political class that emerged after the Revolution, aristocrats in considerable numbers assumed diplomatic posts. The situation has become more fluid, and in 1994 there were a significant number of aristocrats who have been elected or nominated to important positions in the administration.

A related source of political rapprochement between aristocrats and members of the political class has been high school and university ties, which have been an increasingly important aspect of the socialization of the generation born immediately before and after World War II. Particularly since the mid-1960s the rapprochement has accelerated; and many political doors have been open to forward-looking aristocrats with low pretensions. Most importantly, these overtures on both sides of the equation have been instrumental in bringing increasing members of the political class into closer relationships with the entire spectrum of the plutocratic ruling class. It is equally significant, however, that the intransigence of many conservative aristocrats and members of the political class has diminished. There are roughly as many aristocrats and politicians in this diminishing intransigent category, who represent the most ideologically committed to remaining pristine aristocrats and true "revolutionaries" and constitute less than half of the social and political class.

In the economic domain, aristocrats play a minor role as primary movers, as so few of them are plutocratic magnates. Thus, in the domain of the ruling class, plutocratic aristocrats occupy subordinate positions; they are not players in economic policy and decision making. Aristocrats also occupy subordinate positions in the enterprises of plutocratic magnates. There are considerable numbers of aristocrats working in banking, industry, and manufacturing who occupy middle and high executive positions, which they achieved by working their way up the executive ladder or by virtue of long-standing family connections with plutocratic magnates. This is an important tie that—together with the few aristocratic plutocrats—has provided the most salient context of aristocratic-plutocratic interaction for more than a generation. It has constituted by far the most important milieu in which aristocratic-plutocratic expressive acculturation has taken place; more than in any other domain, there has been the kind of rapprochement that defines the impending coalescing of the new superordinate class. The effects of intermarriage between aristocrats and plutocrats should not be underestimated, however, as there is a noticeable tendency to enhance the egalitarian nature of aristocratic-plutocratic interaction in the process of ruling-class formation that has been going on in recent years.

In addition to the small minority of plutocratic aristocrats, roughly 30 percent of aristocrats are engaged in banking, manufacturing, and general business activities of medium to fairly large economic importance. Perhaps another 10 percent of aristocratic families engage in farming, cattle raising, and medium-size agribusiness. Altogether, then, the slight majority of aristocratic families are engaged in the liberal professions, most commonly the law, medicine, engineering, architecture, and accounting. Aristocrats have been particularly successful in law and medicine, and they have also distinguished themselves in the public administration of research, science, and art institutes. Thus the economic position of most aristocrats is in the upper-middle sector of the Mexican stratification system, overlapping to a significant extent with the world of business and trade that occupies that important niche below the ruling-class sphere of action in Mexico City. This upper-middle-class milieu is the structural, but not expressive, environment that most aristocrats have come to occupy. Practically every aristocratic family is associated with a small circle of individuals and families that may be regarded as the fringe boundaries of aristocratic involvement.

Until the 1910 Revolution the aristocracy was universally known and recognized by all sectors of the stratification system. By the late 1940s that degree of visibility had shrunk considerably, but it was still recognized as the preeminent social class of Mexico City. Thirty years later, however, the aristocracy's visibility had been drastically reduced to the upper-middle and upper classes, small segments of the population which were able to place the aristocracy as the social elite of the city and the former landed class of the country; and many aristocratic names still connoted their former exaltedness. The aristocracy also receives a modicum of mostly negative recognition from middle-class intellectuals and educated people, who regard it as a reactionary, uppity survival of the past with no functions in a modern democracy, undoubtedly implying that money and power are the only criteria of class recognition and vicarious identification. But despite the fact that the aristocracy today is so small a part of societal consciousness and has been reduced to such a restricted environment, it survives as a distinct social class that still commands expressive influence in the upper reaches of the stratification system.

Expressive Considerations: Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Transfer and Incorporation

Although Western aristocracies have survived many structural transformations throughout more than 2,000 years, their most constant attributes have been a common ideology and worldview discharged in an exclusive expressive array that has remained the model of upwardly mobile aspirations. That is also demonstrated in this book; the Mexican aristocracy, deprived of all political and ruling functions, is still a viable social class on exclusively expressive grounds. The aristocracy will come to an end as a distinct social class when it ceases to contribute to the expressive formation of a superseding social class. Thus this book deals with both the terminal expressive contributions of the aristocracy to a new superordinate class and how this contribution shapes the new structural-expressive order.

Intermarriage between aristocrats and new plutocrats has been taking place since the 1930s. The situation remained fairly constant until the early 1970s, when aristocratic-plutocratic marriages began to increase significantly; and by 1990 they had become common. In the earlier stage, most of the intermarriages were unions between aristocratic males and plutocratic females, a situation characteristic of a class in superordinate social position. This has changed, and today there are as many aristocratic females marrying plutocratic males. The domain of marriage from 1960 onward defines all other expressive domains in interaction and reflects the extent to which these two social classes are coalescing. In this context plutocrats are internalizing many aristocratic traits and complexes, and aristocrats in turn are being influenced by the worldview of plutocrats, the quid pro quo of the process of expressive acculturation. In this respect intermarriage brings together not only the respective families of the bride and groom but widening circles of kin and not infrequently friends. This phenomenon does not affect the majority of aristocratic families; but the milieu of acceptance is there, and only the most conservative are unwilling to contemplate marital alliances with plutocratic families. Given the patrilateral tendency of Mexican society at this level of social integration, aristocratic males' marrying plutocratic females entails significantly more expressive and structural changes biased toward the aristocracy. Conversely, aristocratic females' marrying plutocratic males produces effects that integrate the couple more into the plutocratic milieu but also causes expressive changes that bring together widening circles of aristocrats and plutocrats.

By interaction I mean the contexts in which aristocrats and plutocrats come together due to social, economic, recreational, and political circumstances. Political circumstances have been limited, but economic and recreational environments have been increasingly important since the early 1950s in generating social ties. It was originally in the context of economic ties and interaction that aristocrats and plutocrats came together on an intermittent or fairly permanent basis: first among banking and manufacturing magnates and then in the context of aristocrats working for plutocrats in a wide range of business concerns. For probably two decades this milieu entailed social interaction confined to social clubs to which plutocrats increasingly gravitated, cocktail parties in the context of work, and occasional mutual invitations to dinner parties, balls, and weddings. From the early 1950s to the early 1970s plutocrats learned and began to internalize aristocratic patterns of personal behavior and public display: modes of entertainment ranging from weddings and balls to every occasion in the life cycle; and the niceties of display ranging from collecting and showing fine art to contributing and participating in exhibitions (art, crafts, furniture, pottery, and so on) and philanthropic work. Since the early 1970s all these patterns of expressive acculturation have intensified, and many plutocratic families have become undistinguishable from aristocratic families. These expressive changes have been asymmetric, signaling the thorough aristocratization of many plutocratic families. But aristocrats have not escaped expressive influences in related domains, mainly in the realignment of their inclusive array, signaling the extent to which aristocrats have undergone embourgeoisement.

In the category of personal behavior and demeanor fall contexts ranging from presentation of the self, personal attire, and adornment to body movement, language, and deportment in innumerable social situations. These are the most public attributes of aristocratic behavior, which Western aristocracies have always emphasized as an entry fee in social interaction with nonaristocratic personnel. The allure of the aristocratic mystique has been powerful, and plutocrats have invariably been willing to acquire these aristocratic traits in validating their status as aspiring members of the ruling class.

As plutocrats acquire these behavioral trappings, they become expressively more secure and independent, a factor as important as their power and wealth in acquiring social equality with aristocrats. Trivial as these expressive concerns may seem to outsiders, they are of capital importance in understanding mobility at the upper reaches of stratification. Conditions of the various periods of rapid transition have changed since classical times, but the principles have remained the same; and not even the democratization that society has undergone during the past 200 years has changed them appreciably, as new superordinate classes are presently being formed. Power and wealth, as the sine qua non of a ruling class, do not necessarily ensure continuity of social status: once they are secured, preservation of status becomes an overwhelming end that can only be achieved by expressive means.

The context of kinship and the household presents a different set of considerations, which may be characterized as the aspirations that those vying for superordinate status expect eventually to achieve from those who have had it for a long time. This is particularly the case with the denotation of kinship, which embodies the fundamental principle of Western superordinate stratification. Despite its original Greek etymology ("the rule of the best"), the concept of aristocracy has always denoted the rule of the best-born: that those who can boast of a distinguished lineage are entitled to be considered socially exalted. This is the principle that conditions social mobility in the upper reaches of stratification and in the present case what plutocrats desire as the ultimate validation of their achieved power and wealth—namely, an illustrious lineage that they can pass on to their descendants. Upwardly mobile plutocrats know that lineage, that most alluring and desirable attribute, cannot be learned or purchased—only time can confer it. Nonetheless, it can be symbolically enhanced and synchronically manipulated; hence the aspirations and often active efforts of Mexican plutocrats to marry aristocrats. Thus contracting marriage and kinship relations with aristocrats allows plutocrats to enhance the building of lineage in their own lifetime.

The household domain, however, although an intrinsic aspect of kinship, presents another set of considerations that entail more immediately achieved consequences. From the aristocratic viewpoint, the household remains the last bastion of aristocratic exclusivity. During the past forty years, since the aristocracy lost the last trappings of power and wealth and its visibility declined rapidly, the household is probably the only place where aristocrats can be themselves, vent their rejection of a world that they regard as essentially hostile, and seek comfort from the relics of the past. But even this last refuge of aristocratic exclusivity has changed during the past decade and a half, as aristocratic-plutocratic interaction becomes symmetrical, and economic constraints no longer permit the dichotomization of social life. Plutocrats have been very much aware of this last straw of aristocratic snobbishness, as expressed by many informants, and for them it represents another obstacle to overcome on the way to social predominance.

From the plutocratic viewpoint, the aristocratic household is something to emulate, and here again there has been a fairly high degree of expressive shift. The plutocratic household today is not exactly a replica of the aristocratic household, but it has incorporated many elements that depart from nouveau riche ostentation and often equals the understated elegance of aristocratic households in many respects (the arrangement of rooms, the combination of art and decoration, the subtle combination of colors and materials, the display of fine furniture and rugs, and so on). With respect to the household, but independently of it as well, plutocrats have become collectors of colonial art, contemporary art, pre-Hispanic art, furniture, and other valuables, a practice directly or indirectly learned from aristocrats. Many magnates hire advisors to help them collect and display fine art, including art imported from Europe and the United States. It should be noted that the expressive transformation that the new plutocrats have been undergoing for more than three decades also emanates from other sources, particularly from more established European plutocrats with whom they have extensive economic ties and through other international business connections.

Finally, patterns of entertainment and display are quite ramified contexts; they affect not only the social life of aristocrats and plutocrats but several aspects of the economic and religious life as well. Again, these contexts have been almost entirely asymmetrical in that aristocratic patterns have been incorporated by plutocrats, while there have been few inputs in the opposite direction. The most extensive domains of realization are social occasions in the life cycle, some aspects of the religious cycle, social occasions in the context of business and professional activities, and recreation in the conventional sense of the term. These entail manifold expressive domains that are inextricably interrelated with etiquette, contextual manners, personal behavior, and individual and collective display. Although the plutocrats were inexperienced two generations ago, they have been adept in learning, incorporating, and occasionally innovating. This has been done mostly by increasing contact with aristocrats but also independently in the context of the business and social networks that they have managed to establish abroad.

Throughout this section I have structurally and expressively placed the aristocracy within the context of the Mexican haute bourgeoisie. This road map, as it were, focuses on the regular and expressive ethnography of the aristocracy and its ramifications, which constitutes the substantive matrix in analyzing superordinate stratification.

An Operational Definition of Expressive Ethnography and Sources of Qualitative and Quantitative Data

If one asked ten anthropologists what an ethnography is, one would probably get as many different answers. Mine is the following. Ethnography, like history, is an end in itself: a deeply rooted proclivity, which in Western civilization goes back to the Greeks, to perpetuate the culture of a group—or, to put it more precisely, to preserve for the future the collective deeds and accomplishments of a social group. This syndrome has multiple variations in cultures and civilizations everywhere and has been embodied in written and oral traditions. Although the earliest ethnographies, in essentially the modern meaning of the term, go back to classical times (see Herodotus 1965; Tacitus 1948), ethnographic accounts in Western civilization until the sixteenth century were essentially written, sung, and told in the context of myth, legend, and epic literature. Systematic ethnography begins with the work of the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún (1956), who completed his investigation of the culture and society of central Mexico by about 1570. It remained the most complete ethnography until the onset of the twentieth century; and by the end of this period ethnography had become exclusively associated with the budding discipline of anthropology. Lest I be misunderstood, ethnography is an activity that has always been practiced exogenously and endogenously or both at the same time. Let me explain.

Herodotus wrote about his own culture but also about the practices and customs of several societies of the Mediterranean basin, whereas Tacitus wrote about Germanic peoples. This tradition of doing exogenous ethnography essentially disappeared in Western society until the Renaissance; from then on, due significantly to the expansion of Western European peoples throughout the world, it became the only kind of ethnography, as endogenous ethnography crystallized as various forms of literature. Endogenous ethnography did not disappear, but exogenous ethnography became the core of anthropology as a scientific discipline. Thus if Herodotus is our apical ancestor and something of a mythical figure, Sahagún is the legitimate father of modern ethnographers.

In the Anglo-Saxon world systematic ethnography begins with the work of Australian ethnographers shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century (Voget 1975), and more significantly in the United States with the foundation of the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) and the work of Major John Wesley Powell, Henry Schoolcraft, Lewis Henry Morgan, and several others. The specific aim of the BAE was to record the culture of American Indian tribes, which was rapidly disappearing. Indeed, much of the work of American anthropologists from Franz Boas and his students onward may be regarded as "salvage ethnography," which quickly extended to other parts of the world. For example, this is the case in Mexico, from the work of Manuel Gamio (1922) and Robert Redfield (1930) to the most recent work. This is what I consider the work that I have been doing in Mexico for nearly forty-five years. In a sense all ethnography, by its very nature of retrieving knowledge of culture for the future, is salvage ethnography. In the context of the hot (in the Lévi-Straussian sense), rapid context of change during the past century, however, salvage ethnography has acquired special meaning and urgency.

This motivational characterization of American anthropology also applies to the work of British and French functionalists. The work of Bronislaw Malinowski (1922) and Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (1933) was deeply concerned with ethnography, and the structural-functional approach of Radcliffe-Brown and his students is particularly relevant in assessing the descriptive integrational role of ethnography. It had two quite different components, however: on the one hand, the ideographic aim of extensive and in-depth description; on the other, the nomothetic aim of generalizing on a grand scale by the use of the comparative method. The former resulted in some of the best ethnographies in the anthropological literature, whereas the latter never materialized into Radcliffe-Brown's much vaunted sociological laws. Indeed, E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1949:65) proclaimed that "anthropology is history or nothing." The point is that—regardless of what the motivation to do ethnography has been—its uses and functions have an ideographic, diachronic as well as a nomothetic, synchronic aspect. Thus the ideographic, diachronic aspect of ethnography is an end in itself; and from this standpoint the work anthropologists do is a kind of specialized history.

Anthropology is also a science, however, and ethnography entails synchronic aspects. Although hitherto anthropology has not generated sociological laws, it does have a significant generalizing, ethnologic component in which ethnography plays a determinant role. There are two considerations that justify ethnography as the conceptual fulcrum of anthropology as a science. First is the synchronic testimony of organized bodies of sociocultural data for future testing, in the absence of adequate theories. This is the view of George Peter Murdock (1972), who, after a lifetime of formulating and testing hypothesis on kinship and social structure, came to the conclusion that the main achievement that would survive the labor of twentieth-century anthropology is ethnography. Second, although I share Murdock's position and the view of those who maintain that anthropology has not managed to generate genuine theories, there is no question that ethnography has both interpretive and explanatory roles to play.

Perhaps the best ethnographies in the anthropological literature are those written in the functionalist mold. The reason for this is that ethnography is fundamentally an exercise in descriptive integration: namely, the specification of a corpus of data whose parts are interrelated so that when alterations occur in one sector of the whole other sectors are affected in discernible ways. This, of course, is the classic functionalist position, most clearly specified by Radcliffe-Brown (1952), and a permanent contribution of ethnography as probably the most efficient method to describe a sociocultural system. It entails functional explanation (how a system is put together), but it does not entail linear explanation (how something causes something else). All my ethnographies have been structured on this premise.

From this standpoint, an ethnography is a synchronic construction—frozen in time, so to speak—whose component parts may be ascertained and placed in relation to each other. It is a system that provides actors with rules of behavior and action, which constitutes what anthropologists refer to as "cultural consensus" (see Boster 1986; Romney, Weller, and Bachelder 1986), which gives coherence to a system and characterizes it as a distinct, separate entity. But rules are broken—that is, the behavior and action specified by the rules conflict with those of other parts of the system and must be considered in order to give an account of the global system. Thus a descriptive ethnography is a statement of cultural consensus, a general statement of the rulers of behavior that "ought to be followed" in order to provide for the continuity of the system as a distinct social entity and how it is related to other systems. In other words, a descriptive ethnography is the equivalent of a history, a static account of the way in which the system is dynamically organized—namely, how its component parts are related to one another. Most ethnographies are of this type, and they constitute the basic blocks of data for the generalizations of ethnology.

But there is another type that I would like to call analytical or in-depth ethnography (roughly what Clifford Geertz called "thick description"), which contains endogenous and exogenous dynamic mechanisms that transcend purely descriptive integration. In addition to accomplishing what a descriptive ethnography does, an analytical ethnography accomplishes the following tasks. Endogenously, it specifies the relationship between the components of the sociocultural system—the links that obtain between them—and evaluates their significance in maintaining the system in a relative state of equilibrium, thereby suggesting likely avenues of change. Exogenously, it specifies how the system came into being at a given time, the social and cultural forces that configured it, and how it is embedded in a wider spatial, social, and cultural world. This book, in short, is an analytical ethnography of the Mexican aristocracy.

But why not simply entitle the book an ethnography of this social group? What is an expressive ethnography, and how is it different from an analytical ethnography? And what are the defining characteristics of expressive culture? I include only brief answers to these questions here, because I have dealt with them twice before (Nutini 1988, 1995).

In a nutshell, an expressive ethnography is a special kind of analytical ethnography focused on establishing the expressive culture of a social group. In the case of the Mexican aristocracy, the expressive ethnography was generated from the analytical ethnography; and the data-gathering process was centered on isolating the various kinds of expression. Although there is no model for structuring an expressive ethnography, the intent of the narrative is unquestionably expressive; to make the description more comprehensible, each of the chapters is accompanied by a short expressive analysis, where the most salient aspects of expression are considered. In any case, what has to be addressed in order to justify this approach to ethnography is the nature of expression.

Probably the most characteristic and universal attribute of expression is that it is intentionally noninstrumental—that is, it individually represents an end in itself. The motivation and discharge of expressive behavior are conditioned by the individual's reaction or adaptation to changing aspects of the social structure. It should be emphasized that although expressive behavior is psychologically motivated and individually manifested, it nonetheless has a collective, structured manifestation closely related to the social structure. Thus expressive behavior may be nominally defined as the individual and collective choices that the members of a group can make. By themselves they do not necessarily alter the group, but they express whatever changing conditions the group is experiencing. The motivation of expressive behavior makes it noninstrumental. In functional terms, however, expressive behavior is an integral part of the social structure, as it manifests or exhibits certain diagnostic processes of the social system (see Roberts and Sutton-Smith 1962).

Just as the organization and constituent elements of the social structure vary in space and time, so also do the configuration and form of social expression. To pursue the analogy, social expression needs a technical vocabulary like the one that anthropologists have devised to analyze social structure. Thus far, students of expression (see Roberts and Golder 1970; Roberts and Sutton-Smith 1962) have formulated the concepts of expressive "array" and "domain" as the basic units in the analysis of expressive culture and behavior and isolated several types of expression.

The expressive array is the total of all patterns and contexts in a given group that entirely or partially realize expression. Every well-defined social group or class has an expressive array that is peculiar to itself, in terms of both intensity and the contexts in which expression is realized. Although every expressive array offers a unique organization of contexts, and no two arrays are exactly alike, total content and form show more overlap. Thus the French, Italian, Spanish, English, German, and perhaps even American expressive arrays manifest a degree of content and form that is exclusively their own while sharing the bulk of the array with Western society as a whole. Can one say something meaningful about the proportion of exclusive and inclusive content and form in this macrocontext? The answer is a tentative yes. Observations among Araucanian Indians, rural Tlaxcalans, and Mexican aristocrats suggest that the expressive array of any subculture is about 20 percent exclusive in content and form, while 80 percent of it is shared by all sister subcultures (Nutini 1988:379-382).

Class appears always to have been the compound variable most salient and efficacious in generating differential expressive arrays. The Mexican aristocracy displays an expressive array, for example, that more closely resembles the expressive array of the Spanish and Italian aristocracy than that of, say, Mexican plutocrats or members of the upper-middle classes, despite the fact that inclusively the aristocracy shares most of its expressive contexts in varying proportions with the entire Mexican stratification system. If one takes the expressive array of Mexican aristocrats, the exclusive array is that 20 percent identified above, while the remaining 80 percent is shared in various proportions with all other classes of Mexican society—for they have the same religion, are bound by many social customs, and are constrained by the same political, environmental, and ecological variables. But that 20 percent is what distinguishes Mexican aristocrats as an expressive class in Mexican society and secures their membership in the larger class of Western aristocrats.

One of the most characteristic attributes of expressive culture is that expressive behavior is contextual in the sense that the same content of social practice may sometimes be described structurally, at other times expressively. Therefore expression must be regarded as an individual's epistemological options within the social structure: expressive behavior represents the psychological and social alternatives, the available leeway between structural requirements and individual choices. Expression is realized in three basic contexts: those in which realized behavior is primarily expressive, those in which behavior is at times expressive and at times instrumental, and those in which behavior is primarily instrumental.

The expressive domain is the basic component of the expressive array. It may be defined as the cultural context in which expressive behavior is realized with some degree of semantic unity. The domain is not a fixed unit of expressive realization; it can aggregate to higher levels (broader domains) or decompose to lower levels (narrower domains) according to the needs of the analysis. For example, in all subcultures of Western society sports constitute a major expressive domain. This domain may be broken down into the subdomains of individual sports and team sports; and within these into sub-subdomains such as the individual sports of track and field, golf, and tennis and the team sports of football, basketball, and hockey. Some of these sports can be further decomposed into still narrower domains—track and field into sprints, middle-distance running, and field events, and even further into particular events such as the hundred-yard dash, the mile run, the shotput, and the high jump. Each event has its own expressive configuration, but it also shares some aspect of expression with the sport of track and field as a whole. This notion of a shared semantic field cannot be extended beyond the major domains of a given global system—that is, the expressive array of a well-defined culture, subculture, or permanently organized social segment such as a class.

The expressive array of the Mexican aristocracy includes more than 230 domains, many of which can be decomposed into subdomains. The array includes domains in all the usual ethnographic categories (kinship, religion, the life cycle, political life, economy and material culture, games and play) with different degrees of intensity and saliency. It contains many domains shared with plutocrats in what might be called the international set in Mexico City and with the upper-middle class. Aristocrats also share many expressive domains with all classes in the Mexican stratification system.

In summary, the expressive array of a social class, subculture, culture, or perhaps an entire culture area is the totality of expressive domains and their subdivisions configured in terms of inclusive and exclusive categories with reference to the three basic environments I have enumerated. The breakdown of exclusive and inclusive domains generally identifies the environments of greatest expressive realization and of most universal incidence in the social unit under consideration, for it is the 20 percent or so of exclusive domains of the global array that distinguishes the expressive behavior of the group.

No doubt many different kinds of expressive behavior exist, but so far it has been possible to distinguish five: the "natural" (or "inherent"), "conflictual," "terminal," "palliative," and "vicarious" types. They are more profitably discussed in the Conclusions after the data have been presented.

The adult population of the aristocracy, including married couples and young and old single individuals, is roughly 3,000. From this pool, informants were chosen on a voluntary and opportunity basis. A total of 157 male and female informants, ranging in age from the late teens to the early eighties, were interviewed at least once, and 35 of them at least ten times.

The basic ethnography was generated from twelve key informants who were interviewed at least ten hours each, three for more than one hundred hours. In the present ethnography, as in all my ethnographies of Indian and mestizo Mexico, key informants played the crucial role of providing the initial what-ought-to-be, cultural consensus model of the group under investigation. In this approach to generating a final product, the next step was to investigate how this to some extent idealized account was actually realized (why and when rules were broken), and how this affected the organization and structure of the system. In some domains the initial cultural consensus model corresponded to structural reality to a remarkable degree, that is, to what the average informant knows about a particular domain. In most domains, however, the structural reality departed from the cultural consensus model in various degrees, and the facts had to be ascertained by interviewing specifically knowledgeable informants. Moreover, quantitative data were a necessary complement to determine behavioral variation from the cultural consensus model elicited from key informants.

Group interviewing was another data-gathering technique that produced very good results. The groups were never larger than seven and included men and women of the same age set; they were always of the same sex, given that men and women by themselves were more likely to be spontaneous. Quite often group informants were given an open-ended questionnaire a few days in advance, so that they could think about the questions that were to be asked. As far as possible, I made sure that members of the group did not previously discuss among themselves the questions of the interview.

Interviewing children was another data-gathering technique in eliciting information on the ideational aspects of aristocratic life; I interviewed twenty-five boys and girls, ranging in age from nine to fourteen. Once the children's trust was gained, they became excellent spontaneous informants who often led me to interview adults on the same and related questions. Cultivating child-informants was not necessarily easy and occasionally took a long time, but the information they provided was highly instrumental in understanding the aristocratic worldview and how it is changing.

Quantitative data were gathered by the administration of questionnaires and several other fairly formal techniques. Questionnaires were administered to men and women ranging in age from twenty-five to eighty, who were asked from a dozen to as many as a hundred questions, some of which required short essays to answer. Depending on the task at hand, questionnaires were administered to opportunity samples of as few as twenty to as many as a hundred respondents. The subjects of investigation varied considerably, but the most common were expressive domains and the expressive array; expressive participation and withdrawal; expressive differentiation and clustering; voluntary association and membership rosters; dyadic and relational data on social, political, and economic interaction; career development and differentiation; status differentiation within the group; hierarchization of families and subgroup differentiation; strategies of relative upward and downward mobility; patterns of interaction and intermarriage; and genealogy. Male and/or female respondents ranging from twenty-five to fifty years old were asked to complete short (fifteen to thirty minutes' duration) psychological tests, self-awareness tests, expressive participation tests, triad tests, attitudinal tests, card-sorting tasks, clustering tasks, and identification and correlation tasks.