Etnoarqueología para el combate a la pobreza: la estrategia ignorada por el estado Mexicano

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• poverty
• ethnoarchaeology
• economic growth and development
• social impact assessment