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Sons of the Shaking Earth: The People of Mexico and Guatemala--Their Land, History, and Culture
"Wolf drew on anthropology, archaeology, history, and geography to mold a magnificent, sweeping, and beautifully written synthesis. With style and deep personal engagement he unraveled the complexity of Mexico and Guatemala's past with its multiple ethnicities, many languages, and environmental diversity. . . . Armies of graduate students have challenged many of the details, but the book stands as a monument to a time when social scientists were able to think large thoughts and write elegant English"— Foreign Affairs , Significant Books of the Last 75 Years.
303 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
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180 people want to read
About the author
Eric R. Wolf
27 books77 followersAnthropologist, best known for his studies of peasants, Latin America, and his advocacy of Marxian perspectives within anthropology.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 14, 2022
Older survey of Mexican/Guatemalan history still shines
About 60 years ago I took some courses in Latin American history in college. One was about Mexico. I bought “Sons of the Shaking Earth” for the course and read it. It remained on a shelf for the next many decades until recently, having forgotten the tenor of the book entirely, I took it down again. Perhaps it struck me back then as “just another textbook”; one of many we had to read, but now I realized that this study of the history of what Wolf calls “Middle America” (Mexico and Guatemala) is amazingly well-written. Perhaps it’s because I’ve read a lot more books in the last sixty years! And many were about the same area, but few were as well done.
Instead of just moving from civilization to civilization, summarizing what we know about each, Wolf starts out with geography, then moves to (now outdated) knowledge about the racial/ethnic makeup of the peoples of the area and even has a chapter on the complex linguistic situation. From there he traces the rise of agriculture, which replaced hunting and gathering, then goes on to the beginning of towns and cities. While earlier civilizations seemed to have a more religious orientation, though battles must have been endemic even then, between 790 A.D. and 900 A.D. the ethos of Middle America changed to a far more militaristic one, which lasted till the arrival of the Spaniards in 1519. Conquest states arose, the Maya went through a decline and revival, and the Aztecs—something of an aberration, but a powerful one—rose and fell quite rapidly, thanks to their predation of other peoples, who were only too glad to cooperate with the European invaders. After the fall of Tenochtitlan, Wolf describes the nature of the Spanish occupation and the development of a hybrid culture in Mexico. “Hybrid” here means a culture that was neither Indian nor purely Spanish, but based on Christianity and western ways of making a living, leaving islands of Indian culture strewn around Middle America. Mestizo culture is the last main topic of the book.
I found, that though DNA was still not a research tool, many archeological finds were yet to come, and the Maya script had not been solved, this book is perhaps one of the best for an overview of the civilizations of the area. The writing is intelligent, but not at all academic. You will not find the likes of “privileged post-structural gaze” here. It often seems almost poetic.
“If it’s into Mexican civilizations you want to pry, why don’t you give Eric Wolf a try?”
About 60 years ago I took some courses in Latin American history in college. One was about Mexico. I bought “Sons of the Shaking Earth” for the course and read it. It remained on a shelf for the next many decades until recently, having forgotten the tenor of the book entirely, I took it down again. Perhaps it struck me back then as “just another textbook”; one of many we had to read, but now I realized that this study of the history of what Wolf calls “Middle America” (Mexico and Guatemala) is amazingly well-written. Perhaps it’s because I’ve read a lot more books in the last sixty years! And many were about the same area, but few were as well done.
Instead of just moving from civilization to civilization, summarizing what we know about each, Wolf starts out with geography, then moves to (now outdated) knowledge about the racial/ethnic makeup of the peoples of the area and even has a chapter on the complex linguistic situation. From there he traces the rise of agriculture, which replaced hunting and gathering, then goes on to the beginning of towns and cities. While earlier civilizations seemed to have a more religious orientation, though battles must have been endemic even then, between 790 A.D. and 900 A.D. the ethos of Middle America changed to a far more militaristic one, which lasted till the arrival of the Spaniards in 1519. Conquest states arose, the Maya went through a decline and revival, and the Aztecs—something of an aberration, but a powerful one—rose and fell quite rapidly, thanks to their predation of other peoples, who were only too glad to cooperate with the European invaders. After the fall of Tenochtitlan, Wolf describes the nature of the Spanish occupation and the development of a hybrid culture in Mexico. “Hybrid” here means a culture that was neither Indian nor purely Spanish, but based on Christianity and western ways of making a living, leaving islands of Indian culture strewn around Middle America. Mestizo culture is the last main topic of the book.
I found, that though DNA was still not a research tool, many archeological finds were yet to come, and the Maya script had not been solved, this book is perhaps one of the best for an overview of the civilizations of the area. The writing is intelligent, but not at all academic. You will not find the likes of “privileged post-structural gaze” here. It often seems almost poetic.
“If it’s into Mexican civilizations you want to pry, why don’t you give Eric Wolf a try?”
July 13, 2010
This is a great short version of the history of Mexico and Guatemala in the eyes of an anthropologist in three fields such as linguistics, archeology, and cultural and maybe somewhat biological. Shows the history of the first movements to America in different waves from the East, and how languages spread, and why/how certain characteristics are similar all across the Americas. How the people in the area used their land and lived together. How they changed with the invasion of the Spaniards. You can see Marxism, Benedict Anderson, Michel Foucault, and Wallenstein all work into how we see these two countries came into being. He raised a new interesting topic of social inequality compared to racial inequality of the North american slave trade. Great read if you are interested in these area.
December 7, 2021
Just amazing book! The author is genius. It needs to be updated, but the truth that it represents has not changed till the present.
This is the second or third time I've read this book; it was the textbook for my class in pre-columbian mesoamerica anthropology class in my undergrad at National Hispanic University in San Jose california. My favorite chapter is the last one, called the "power seekers." Parts of it explain what is the class of men called machistas; it also explains how they came to be such a hateful group of people.
From the chapter "rise of the seed planters", on diet:
"So standardized is this diet and so invariable its adherence to maize, squash, beans, and chili that many observers have concluded that it must produce serious dietary deficiencies. Meat eaters and milk drinkers are, however, apt to pass uninformed judgments on the dietary norms of other cultures. Middle American Indians ate and still eat many foods in addition to the above, foods which may not suit the pallets of people whose taste derived from a tradition of animal husbandry coupled with grain agriculture. Laboratory analysis has discovered considerable quantities of protein, vitamins, and minerals in such middle American foods as axayacatl, a Highland moth, and its eggs (ahuauhtli) a very elegant caviar; in malva, a wild Highland plant which tastes like spinach; in cactus (nopal); in sesame and squash seeds; in peanuts and piñon nuts; in the red and white worms that infest the century plant; in the iguana, the large lizard of the tropical lowlands that tastes like frogs' legs, and it's roe; in turtles, snakes, triatomas (chumil), rats, and many other occasional additions to the daily diet."
They were way more healthy than the Europeans who infested them.
From the chapter "villages and holy towns":
"the earliest representation of such a ceremony [performance of magical rites] that has come down to us is probably the curious relief from a stone quarry in Jonacatepec, morelos. The relief depicts three priests in Olmec style regalia; they hold spades in the air, while a fourth showers the land with his own seed from his erect penis."
🤣
In the chapter called "the power seekers," the author explains how the class of men called "machista" came to be, and what are their personality characteristics:
"This form of prejudice [of the dislike of the in-group for the out group], did not take root in Latin America until the 19th century, and then only briefly in restricted areas of the Caribbean, when the institution of negro slavery was nearing its end. But in Middle america, the prejudice against Castas, as indeed the prejudice against indians, remained social prejudice. If The offspring of a mixed Union gained wealth and standing, he could obtain from the pertinent authorities a legal paper that declared him to be "white" (que se tenga por blanco). Thus the white group quickly became a social, not a racial, group, just as an Indian was any person, whatever his parents, acknowledge to be a member of an Indian community. In like fashion, Castas or mestizos were neither "White" nor "indian," but embodiments of all those interstitial human elements whose social position made it impossible for them to join the other two groupings. What the colonial society feared was not the creation of mixed offspring, but the growth of a large Mass of unattached, disinherited, rootless people in its centers and along its margins. In their fear of the mestizo, men feared for the future of their social order."
This explains why some mexican-americans will pretend to be white, and avoid speaking Spanish, and look down on other members of their family who have darker skin.
"The measure of success is the readiness of others to serve him, to underwrite with their services his conspicuous consumption of time and goods. The outcome of defeat is bondage or death. There is no middle ground: if a man does not wish to be victor, he must needs be loser. Ultimately, all means are legitimate in this battle for personal control of people and things, even violence and death.
This struggle for power was more than a means: as a validation of self and of one's station in society, it became an end in itself. To the mestizo, the capacity to exercise power is ultimately sexual in character: a man succeeds because he is truly male (macho), possessed of sexual potency. While the Indian strives neither to control nor to exploit other men and women, the mestizo reaches for power over women as over men. As the urge for personal vindication through power is continuous and limitless, so the mestizo possesses 'a limitless sexual deficit' which feeds merely upon past conquests. While the Indian man and the Indian woman achieve a measure of balance in their relationship, the mestizo male requires absolute ascendance over women. Thus even familial and personal relationships become battlegrounds of emotion, subject to defeat and to victory.
...Quick to change ends and means, he is also quick to change the tokens of communication. Moreover, he is often unwilling to commit himself to an unpredictable future; to this end he can use language as a strategy in which explicit meanings disguise implicit messages, and a man can speak with two contradictory tongues, to the confusion of the uninitiated. Often, language is not so much a means of communication, of 'putting all your cards on the table,' as the North American would have it, as it is a means of avoiding entanglement."
The "uninitiated"; that's me. While I was struggling to make my marriage with a machista work, all this time I thought it was perhaps due to his having mental illness, that caused me to be frustrated in every attempt to keep my family together and have a semblance of happiness. Meanwhile, I enrolled in this class satisfying part of my requirements for a degree in liberal studies. When we went over this part in class, I looked up, astonished, and said " they're talking about my husband. You mean there's a whole nation of men like this out there?"
😢
Here's another clue to why he hated me so much:
"... In attacking a common national enemy, they can attack also--on the symbolic level -- the inimical forces that threaten their personal well-being. To the middle American mestizo, this symbolic enemy was inevitably first the Spaniard who had denied him his rightful inheritance; but after Independence it would be the gringo from north of the border, whose wealth and self-confident brashness would remain a standing irritant to Middle American pride even after the United States soldiery had withdrawn from the halls of montezuma."
😢
Too bad I didn't know about all this before this machista, father to my two daughters, played the part to court me and get me to fall for his "lies."
This is the second or third time I've read this book; it was the textbook for my class in pre-columbian mesoamerica anthropology class in my undergrad at National Hispanic University in San Jose california. My favorite chapter is the last one, called the "power seekers." Parts of it explain what is the class of men called machistas; it also explains how they came to be such a hateful group of people.
From the chapter "rise of the seed planters", on diet:
"So standardized is this diet and so invariable its adherence to maize, squash, beans, and chili that many observers have concluded that it must produce serious dietary deficiencies. Meat eaters and milk drinkers are, however, apt to pass uninformed judgments on the dietary norms of other cultures. Middle American Indians ate and still eat many foods in addition to the above, foods which may not suit the pallets of people whose taste derived from a tradition of animal husbandry coupled with grain agriculture. Laboratory analysis has discovered considerable quantities of protein, vitamins, and minerals in such middle American foods as axayacatl, a Highland moth, and its eggs (ahuauhtli) a very elegant caviar; in malva, a wild Highland plant which tastes like spinach; in cactus (nopal); in sesame and squash seeds; in peanuts and piñon nuts; in the red and white worms that infest the century plant; in the iguana, the large lizard of the tropical lowlands that tastes like frogs' legs, and it's roe; in turtles, snakes, triatomas (chumil), rats, and many other occasional additions to the daily diet."
They were way more healthy than the Europeans who infested them.
From the chapter "villages and holy towns":
"the earliest representation of such a ceremony [performance of magical rites] that has come down to us is probably the curious relief from a stone quarry in Jonacatepec, morelos. The relief depicts three priests in Olmec style regalia; they hold spades in the air, while a fourth showers the land with his own seed from his erect penis."
🤣
In the chapter called "the power seekers," the author explains how the class of men called "machista" came to be, and what are their personality characteristics:
"This form of prejudice [of the dislike of the in-group for the out group], did not take root in Latin America until the 19th century, and then only briefly in restricted areas of the Caribbean, when the institution of negro slavery was nearing its end. But in Middle america, the prejudice against Castas, as indeed the prejudice against indians, remained social prejudice. If The offspring of a mixed Union gained wealth and standing, he could obtain from the pertinent authorities a legal paper that declared him to be "white" (que se tenga por blanco). Thus the white group quickly became a social, not a racial, group, just as an Indian was any person, whatever his parents, acknowledge to be a member of an Indian community. In like fashion, Castas or mestizos were neither "White" nor "indian," but embodiments of all those interstitial human elements whose social position made it impossible for them to join the other two groupings. What the colonial society feared was not the creation of mixed offspring, but the growth of a large Mass of unattached, disinherited, rootless people in its centers and along its margins. In their fear of the mestizo, men feared for the future of their social order."
This explains why some mexican-americans will pretend to be white, and avoid speaking Spanish, and look down on other members of their family who have darker skin.
"The measure of success is the readiness of others to serve him, to underwrite with their services his conspicuous consumption of time and goods. The outcome of defeat is bondage or death. There is no middle ground: if a man does not wish to be victor, he must needs be loser. Ultimately, all means are legitimate in this battle for personal control of people and things, even violence and death.
This struggle for power was more than a means: as a validation of self and of one's station in society, it became an end in itself. To the mestizo, the capacity to exercise power is ultimately sexual in character: a man succeeds because he is truly male (macho), possessed of sexual potency. While the Indian strives neither to control nor to exploit other men and women, the mestizo reaches for power over women as over men. As the urge for personal vindication through power is continuous and limitless, so the mestizo possesses 'a limitless sexual deficit' which feeds merely upon past conquests. While the Indian man and the Indian woman achieve a measure of balance in their relationship, the mestizo male requires absolute ascendance over women. Thus even familial and personal relationships become battlegrounds of emotion, subject to defeat and to victory.
...Quick to change ends and means, he is also quick to change the tokens of communication. Moreover, he is often unwilling to commit himself to an unpredictable future; to this end he can use language as a strategy in which explicit meanings disguise implicit messages, and a man can speak with two contradictory tongues, to the confusion of the uninitiated. Often, language is not so much a means of communication, of 'putting all your cards on the table,' as the North American would have it, as it is a means of avoiding entanglement."
The "uninitiated"; that's me. While I was struggling to make my marriage with a machista work, all this time I thought it was perhaps due to his having mental illness, that caused me to be frustrated in every attempt to keep my family together and have a semblance of happiness. Meanwhile, I enrolled in this class satisfying part of my requirements for a degree in liberal studies. When we went over this part in class, I looked up, astonished, and said " they're talking about my husband. You mean there's a whole nation of men like this out there?"
😢
Here's another clue to why he hated me so much:
"... In attacking a common national enemy, they can attack also--on the symbolic level -- the inimical forces that threaten their personal well-being. To the middle American mestizo, this symbolic enemy was inevitably first the Spaniard who had denied him his rightful inheritance; but after Independence it would be the gringo from north of the border, whose wealth and self-confident brashness would remain a standing irritant to Middle American pride even after the United States soldiery had withdrawn from the halls of montezuma."
😢
Too bad I didn't know about all this before this machista, father to my two daughters, played the part to court me and get me to fall for his "lies."
July 1, 2023
I love a good ethnography. I read the first half of this during my trip to Mexico City, and found it really helped me notice things while there I may not have named or noted before. I then took some time off of reading it before completing it early spring, as other books got in my way. Thankfully, an anthropological survey of history and culture like Sons of the Shaking Earth lends itself well to being picked up and put down.
Eric Wolf's Marxist leanings clearly show in his writing, but I don't think that's a bad thing. While he pays special attention to class and labor relations, anthropology is inevitably focused on these structures and their affect on culture. Materialism, likewise, is an unavoidable component of understanding how people live in a material world. I recognize that my own bias may have led me to appreciate his focus here, but I did feel he wrote even-handedly. Dr. Wolf does not proselytize and squeeze Meso-American culture and history into a Marxist worldview; he looks at Meso-American culture through a Marxist lens. It's the mark of a good author to successfully keep their opinion from overwhelming the information they are intent on conveying.
I do wish there was an updated piece for the final part of this book. Ending in the mid-twentieth century means that there is now nearly 100 years of culture-making that is not discussed. Yet, Eric ends the work acknowledging that there is no end point of history; that Central America is always unfolding on the road of becoming. In that way, there is never a work that is up-to-date. 4 stars.
Eric Wolf's Marxist leanings clearly show in his writing, but I don't think that's a bad thing. While he pays special attention to class and labor relations, anthropology is inevitably focused on these structures and their affect on culture. Materialism, likewise, is an unavoidable component of understanding how people live in a material world. I recognize that my own bias may have led me to appreciate his focus here, but I did feel he wrote even-handedly. Dr. Wolf does not proselytize and squeeze Meso-American culture and history into a Marxist worldview; he looks at Meso-American culture through a Marxist lens. It's the mark of a good author to successfully keep their opinion from overwhelming the information they are intent on conveying.
I do wish there was an updated piece for the final part of this book. Ending in the mid-twentieth century means that there is now nearly 100 years of culture-making that is not discussed. Yet, Eric ends the work acknowledging that there is no end point of history; that Central America is always unfolding on the road of becoming. In that way, there is never a work that is up-to-date. 4 stars.
December 5, 2017
Wow wow wow. If I could give this seven stars I would. This is one of my favorite books, if not my single favorite.
The great Marxist Anthropologist Eric Wolf provides a Marxist history (as he is prone to do) of Mesoamerica from its original inhabitation to the period after Spanish conquest. The theory: amazing, the analysis: astounding.
And the prose? Oh buddy. Eric Wolf is a poet among Marxists. He is an heir to Marx not only because of his brilliant analysis of historical circumstances, but also because of his utterly captivating and magical style.
The great Marxist Anthropologist Eric Wolf provides a Marxist history (as he is prone to do) of Mesoamerica from its original inhabitation to the period after Spanish conquest. The theory: amazing, the analysis: astounding.
And the prose? Oh buddy. Eric Wolf is a poet among Marxists. He is an heir to Marx not only because of his brilliant analysis of historical circumstances, but also because of his utterly captivating and magical style.
May 4, 2025
Absolutely loved this book, full of knowledge of the development of the Native people of Mexico and Guatemala. My favorite part was the explanation of Catholicism being introduced to the tribes of Mexico along with the ideas behind the original worship and purpose of the native people. I would love to try some authentic pulque and some cacao from this area if I ever visit. Loved the images in this book all throughout! A lot of the food that was derived from this culture hits home for me. Highly recommend this book. Don't care for the Marxist thought at all by the author, read the book simply for the details of history.
June 16, 2022
Good synthesis of precolonial, colonial and pre-independence Mexico.
That said, if you already know that there was no such a thing as conquest (it was more of a political union), that the "indians" adapted christianity and that local overlords rule almost all mexican territories (until this day), then this book is only a reminder.
That said, if you already know that there was no such a thing as conquest (it was more of a political union), that the "indians" adapted christianity and that local overlords rule almost all mexican territories (until this day), then this book is only a reminder.
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October 29, 2021ef
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 22, 2012
easy read, some good info. worth reading
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews