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Preface [Includes Image Plates]
- University Press of Mississippi
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- Additional Information
vii Preface I wandered around the main city square of the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca on an evening in early July 2007. Many sights on this zócalo were ones I’d viewed for a few weeks every year or so for decades. Most of the buildings are a century or two (or more) old, and there has been little turnover in the restaurants, stores, and government offices that occupy them. In the middle of the zócalo still stood the bandstand that I’d seen sheltering brass bands and marimbas so many times in other years, and most of the landscaping seemed familiar. The people seemed familiar as types, even if many individuals were new to me, and although many must have been newcomers to the city. Working-class and rich mestizos (both locals and visitors), impoverished Indians, and a variety of international tourists interacted in customary ways. Tourists are always there, in fact, because this metropolis of about half a million, situated at the confluence of three broad mountain valleys in southern Mexico, presents an attractive mix of colonial architecture and exotic ethnicity, as well as pleasant weather and affordable amenities . Craft stands in customary locations on the square, as well as stores filled with more crafts and signs advertising ethnically based cultural entertainment (especially miniature forms of the state’s giant annual festival, the Guelaguetza), line the square to attract those tourists. Members of the city’s middle and upper classes do have their own exclusive haunts on the relatively affluent north side of the city, including a U.S.-style shopping mall and nightclubs and discotheques where cover charges act as class-demarcating barriers. Nevertheless the nice restaurants on and near the central zócalo remain both a festive family destination and a customary venue to publicly display these families’ continued place at the pinnacle of Oaxaca’s economy and power structure . Thus the local affluent were just as reliably represented as each of the square’s other regular constituencies. viii preface Just one aspect of zócalo demographics surprised me. During my two decades of intermittent observation, I’d always seen some evidence of social volatility in a small, clearly demarcated physical area, evidence of a simmering that was quite transparent and yet seemingly under control . That is, Indians from outside the capital have often camped along one edge of the square, the side with the government palace (so that their camp blocked no businesses, and the generous overhang of that long building protected their sleeping pallets from the rain). During several of my visits, one or another group of campers was in residence, quietly protesting the allegedly false imprisonment of much of the male leadership of their rural village. Something had gone wrong in their community that had resulted in violence followed by mass arrests, most likely an escalating agrarian dispute with a neighboring municipality. The wives and children of many of the imprisoned men, plus a few other relatives, now lived unhappily downtown, their misery in plain view of anyone who took a turn around the square. But such encampments were stable, their residents keeping protests within bounds in the usual circumscribed physical space and in an established etiquette, and were tolerated by the authorities. This July, no such encampment was to be seen, and this absence was oddly disorienting. Instead, dozens of middle-class protesters had tables dispersed among the informal sales booths on the square. These protesters directed their anger not only toward the authorities but also toward the tourists whose financial infusions into Oaxaca were blamed for propping up the repellent status quo. This created a peculiar mosaic throughout this central public area, whereby many Oaxacans explicitly welcomed outsiders as potential customers while a significant minority just as clearly and publicly did not. Most of the salespeople on the square represented families that make crafts for a living, crafts designed to please tourists (for examples of these products, see figures 1 and 2). Their goals are not in any grand political arena but are instead immediate and intimate—that is, to bring home enough money for dinner and shelter, and to do so day after day. Through an ever-evolving, informal, yet meticulous analysis of tourists’ aesthetic and philosophical inclinations, the craftspeople and salespeople try to find common ground between what their family members [35.153.170.189] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:09 GMT) preface ix can make and what the visitors will buy. The amount they...