THE CENTER AT THE PERIPHERY - CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM ON THE NORTHERN MEXICAN FRONTIER

The following discussion of certain modalities of the so-called primit ive accumulation of capital in northern Mexico during the nineteenth c entury is based on ethnographic and archival research in and on former military settlement colonies in the state of Chihuahua. Some experien ces of the residents of one such colony are framed in terms of their h istorical struggle against what were perceived as two forms of ''barba rism;'' Apache invasions through most of the nineteenth century, and c apitalist ''development'' at the century's end. The material presented below provides a basis for questioning both the novelty of postcoloni al identities in the Americas, and the value of forms of analysis of d iscursive representations of dominance and subalternity that fail to g round those discourses in material social processes.