One of the first things all students of anthropology learn is that the personal characteristics of a person doing ethnography will necessarily bias and distort the information gleaned from informants. It’s a kind of cultural Heisenberg principle in which the gender, ethnicity, and age of the researcher restricts the range of cultural experience to which she/he is privy in a given society. For example, the gentleman scholars of the early 20th century, for all their assiduous attention to detail, nevertheless were not able (and in many cases were not inclined) to access the life experiences and worldview of women and record them in their androcentric trait lists. This idea is is a regular feature when teaching undergraduates about the maze-y ways of fieldwork, but it is less common that we mention counter-intuitive cases like the one Matt and I experienced yesterday.
When we arrived at the spa, we found our female colleagues sitting in the afterglow of what had evidently been a thoroughly relaxing treatment. After exchanging a few languid words (actually, Matt and I spoke in words, answered primarily with sighs and syllables of satisfied relaxation from our colleagues), we were ushered into the room by a friendly lady about 65 years of age who greeted us in English. When we responded in Spanish, she quickly switched, too, and introduced us to Marcela and Manuela, who would administer the treatment.
After our treatment (neither of us quite know how they got the honey and clay out of our chest hair), in contrast to our colleagues’ experience, we found these young ladies more than happy to tell us about themselves in Spanish. They both grew up in small nearby communities and explained that they had learned the healing spa treatment from their grandmothers, adding that this knowledge had become mixed with the techniques and practices of their current employer, for whom both had worked for about three or four years. They had known each other for about the same amount of time.
We were interested to know what proportion of their clientele was Mexican and what proportion were extranjeros. The young ladies replied that most of their customers, like most of the hacienda’s guests, came from countries other than Mexico. Of the Mexicans, they said most came from Mexico City or further north, notably Monterrey, near the Texas border. Both places have a sizable well-heeled middle and upper class population. Apparently, none come from Mérida or the smaller nearby communities like the ones of their childhood.
Finally, we were interested to know how often they were able to enjoy the same spa experiences they provided, half-expecting to hear that this kind of thing was wholly beyond their means. They cheerfully intimated that they get these treatments often, trading off between each other during lull periods when they had no other customers. It was this last detail that gratified us the most, since it is doubtful that they would have the disposable income to make such a thing a regular practice if they had to purchase it with wages. Instead, they access these luxuries through means much more ancient than monetary currency: through reciprocity, the fundamental basis of all human social interaction.
