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Catholic Tarahumaras of northern Mexico are baptized twice: first by fire, then by water. Ethnographers of this colonized group have focused on fire baptism, dismissing water baptism as “borrowed.” By contrast, in this article I discuss a community where Tarahumara historical discourse claims that each baptism is equally indigenous and necessary. Fire baptism distinguishes Tarahumaras from neighboring non‐Tarahumara Mexicans, whereas water baptism separates them from their “uncivilized” native ancestors. Rejecting both primordial Indianness and modern Mexicanness, these baptized Tarahumara nevertheless partially embody both. Their personhood is composite, rather than totally “fragmented,” and draws on an ethnically coded cosmology in which twice‐baptized bodies are connected to alternating agricultural season.

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Un paysage entièrement moderne : Artaud dans la Sierra TarahumaraLes écrits surréalistes d'Antonin Artaud sur les Tarahumaras du nord-ouest du Mexique se conforment à certaines qualités contemporaines de l'ethnographie postmoderne : une impression que l'observation subjective est politiquement libératrice et une vision globale de l'humanité sans réelles distinctions culturelles. De récentes recherches sur le terrain dans la Sierra Tarahumara révèlent que l'ethnographie d'Artaud a été sérieusement déformée par le primitivisme romantique et par le mysticisme. Cependant, sa tendance à utiliser des métaphores du paysage pour décrire les conditions culturelles a été ( par inadvertance ) retenue par bon nombre de postmodernistes. Plus encore, malgré le fait que les postmodernes aient pour la plupart remplacé l'inconscient universel (et le mysticisme) par une union mondiale en évoquant les - droits •• de co-citoyenneté. ces deux genres d'ethnographie perpétuent le colonialisme culturel en imposant au monde des définitions euro-centriques de l'humanité.A Thorouahly Modem Landscape : Artaud in the Sierra TarahumaraArtaud's surrealist writings about the Tarahumara of Northwestern Mexico adhère to some contemporary qualities of postmodern ethnography : a sense that subjective observation is politically liberating and a global vision of humanity that dismisses cultural différence. Recent Tarahumara fieldwork reveals that Artaud's ethnography was seriously distorted by Romantic primitivism and mysticism. However. his tendency to use landscape metaphors to describe cultural conditions has been (inadvertently) retained by many postmodernists. Furthermore. although postmodernists hâve largely replaced the universal unconscious (and mysticism) with global union through the " rights " of co-citizenship. both types of ethnography continue cultural colonialism through global impositions of Euro-centric définitions of humanity