Thursday, July 23, 2015

Guelaguetza, Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico, 20 y 27 julio, 2015

Thanks to Emilie and Jim Rogers, we brought a group from Texas down to Oaxaca City 10 days ago to practice Iyengar yoga, learn a bit about ayurveda and Indian dance (thanks to Sreedhara Abhikebbalu), AND attend the Guelaguetza.
The state of Oaxaca has a greater Indian population than any other, and more Indian languages are spoken here than anywhere else in Mexico. The Guelaguetza, or the "Dos Lunes del Cerro" (the two Mondays on the Hill) is a great gathering of villagers from pueblos of Oaxaca who sing, play music and dance their hearts out. The word "guelaguetza" is from the Zapotec language and means "offering". It reminds me of nothing more than the potlatch of the Northwest coast Indians, an annual summer gathering where the bounty of fish, berries, and crafts was shared throughout the community. Here in Mexico, too, we are in the rainy season, fruits are plentiful, the weather is temperate and pleasant--rains usually miss the El Fortin hill where the open air theatre is located, home of the performances on two Mondays each July.

Often the dancers would dance separately, the men in one line or circle and the women in another, and sometimes they would dance as couples. Many times a couple would walk in a stately manner to the front of the stage to welcome the crowd and to  recite a poem in Zapotec, or another indigenous language, and, thankfully for us, also translate the poem into Spanish. One that stood out for me was recited by a supremely energetic and bold-voiced woman who translated the Spanish (I'm paraphrasing): "We are from the clouds and the winds, we have come from far away, our hands are now empty, but we are the root, we are the root, we are the roots."

One village dance is called "La Danza de las Ananas", the pineapple dance, because the women dancers come out in their colourful costumes balancing a real pineapple on their shoulders. What was most remarkable about the end of EACH dance was that baskets were brought onstage from the wings and fruits, baskets, hats, tortillas, and some things that I am obviously forgetting, were thrown out into the audience with great gusto and received BY the audience with great eagerness.

Our row caught nanches (a fruit that can be fermented), a bandana, a basket, a toy broom, and a hat. People near us caught apples, pineapples, bananas and more baskets. It was quite a haul, overall, in our section of the audience. Though I heard that some indigenous groups harbor ill feelings about the festival, considering it too "touristic", the audience seemed to consist of a majority of Mexicans. Perhaps they were from other parts of Mexico and therefore also tourists, I could not tell. But it seemed that when the announcer introduced the dancing groups from the various parts of Oaxaca, there was loud applause from a section of the audience, so it appeared that each village had a fan base in attendance from their hometown.

In any case, touristic or not, we enjoyed ourselves tremendously, and I was carried back to a time I can only imagine. A time of simpler living, collaboration and mutual support rather than competition and back-stabbing, and a time of great exuberance, color, handiwork, music and dancing. Viva la Guelaguetza, Viva Oaxaca!

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