Etnoarqueología para el combate a la pobreza: la estrategia ignorada por el estado Mexicano
(pp. 195-211; DOI: 10.23692/iMex.19.14)

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Prof. Dr. Sandra L. Lopez Varela

Since 2013, Prof. Dr. Sandra L. López Varela (Ph.D. in Archaeology, University of London, 1996) is full-time Professor at the Department of Development and Intercultural Heritage Management of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a Registered Professional Archaeologists (RPA 15480). In between 2018-2020, López Varela was Secretary of the Archaeology Division of the AAA and section editor of Anthropology News. After serving as President and Vice President of the Society for Archaeological Sciences (SAS 2009-2011) and as President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Alumni Club-Mexico Division (2008-2010), she was elected to the Executive the board of the AAA where she held the Archeology Seat. In between 2015 and 2017, she served as Treasurer of the Mexican Society of Anthropology (SMA). In 2009, Dr. López Varela joined the Mexican Academy of Arts, Technology and Humanities. Her earlier research, focusing on the study of Maya ceramics and ethnoarchaeological investigations of pottery production technologies, led her to adopt a critical and analytical stance towards economic and development growth policies to combat poverty in Mexico. These policies often do not benefit local communities and commonly interfere with heritage preservation. Results from these investigations received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel-Forschungspreis award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2012. Dr. López Varela is general editor of the Encyclopedia of Archaeological Sciences published by Wiley Blackwell in 2018. Her research has been published by major international publishers, such as Elsevier, Academic Press, Springer, American Anthropologist, Wiley Blackwell, Siglo XXI, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Miguel Ángel Porrúa, and by top ranking university presses. She has participated in more than 150 international conferences, and organizes yearly, the Ceramic Archaeology symposium at the Annual Meeting of the AAA. Dr. López Varela has taught more than 80 undergraduate, master and doctoral courses at national and international institutions. Since 2019, López Varela has been a Brain City of Berlin Ambassador.

Alexander von Humboldt (1988 [1811]) describes in his Essai Politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, the landscape of social inequality that existed in New Spain in terms of the distribution of wealth, civilization and soil cultivation during the reign of Charles IV. For more than two centuries, the Mexican government has tried unsuccessfully to revert social end economic inequality through economic growth and development policies. In the following pages, I discuss the tensions caused by the implementation of these strategies at Cuentepec in the State of Morelos. Supported by the use of analytical techniques and ethnographic techniques, the Cuentepec ethnoarchaeological project introduces the theoretical and methodological weaknesses of economic strategies to combat poverty. Findings for its weaknesses reveal that in the absence of an anthropological and archaeological background, indistinct of the capitalist or socialist oriented government that has ruled Mexico, society has never been considered as the cause and consequence of economic growth and development.

La publicación del Essai Politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne (von Humboldt 1988 [1811]), describe el paisaje de desigualdad social que existía en la Nueva España en términos de la distribución de la riqueza, la civilización y el cultivo del suelo durante el reinado de Carlos IV. En este ensayo, Alexander von Humboldt describe “el estado miserable y bárbaro en la que se encuentran los indios de la Nueva España”. Revertir este paisaje de desigualdad ha sido la tarea central del gobierno mexicano por más de dos siglos. A pesar de los apoyos internacionales que ha recibido el gobierno para industrializar su economía, por qué no se ha logrado aminorar la pobreza en México. En estas páginas se discuten los errores teórico metodológicos en el combate a la pobreza a partir de los resultados de las investigaciones etnoarqueológicas realizadas en Cuentepec, Morelos; y cuyos resultados determinan como primer error, el que sus acciones emprendidas por el gobierno capitalista o socialista en turno, no consideran a la sociedad como la causa y la consecuencia del desarrollo; y segundo, la ausencia de la arqueología mexicana para reorientar teórica y metodológicamente el sentido de bienestar que prevalece en el gobierno mexicano.