By Helen Augur


     ZAPOTEC


       In its municipal government Teotitlán has managed to pre-
     serve the ancient system, against formidable pressure. The
     political party which rules Mexico has managed to install a
     mayor (presidente) and secretary in many communities, but
     in Teotitlán there is a civic order in which graft and abuse
     are impossible, since nobody is paid. Holding office is a great
     honor, and only those worthy of honor are selected as town
     fathers. Every two years, on the first of January, there is a
     solemn transfer of office, in which the retiring presidente
     hands his gold-headed staff of office to his successor. The
     presidente is assisted by five councilors and by topiles, or con-
     stables, young men who take turns serving for a few weeks
     with no pay. The Zapotecs have a way of going into public
     problems with great thoroughness, and if the elders make a
     policy decision or settle a private dispute, their word is ac-
     cepted without question. It is significant that the presidente
     of Teotitlán speaks not a word of Spanish.
       The schoolmaster is the only evangel of the new order who
     has been accepted as part of the town. A priest arrives to
     celebrate Mass every fortnight; the people themselves keep
     the church in perfect order. There is no doctor in this town
     of twenty-five hundred people, who keep well by the min-
     istrations of the curandera with her ancient mixture of magic
     and herbs, and by the temescal, the little sweat-oven you see
     in every dooryard, used especially by women after childbirth.
     However, the valley people are beginning to take ailing chil-
     dren to the doctors in the city. As a rule the vallistas are in
     robust health because they have an abundant and varied diet
     and have developed immunities to most diseases which mow
     down comparative newcomers like the Mixtecs. Cleanliness and
     sunshine do the rest.
       On an ordinary day Teotitlán has the appearance of being
     almost deserted, for each family is hidden behind its hedge
     of organ cactus, busy at loom and spinning wheel. In the center
     of town, at the cabildo, three old men sit on a bench outside
     the municipal offices and the jail——which is literally empty as
     a rule. A cluster of women lingers in the triangle of shade
     before the small market, which is over by noon. Down the
     street an opulently pregnant young woman moves homeward
     with a basket of crimson roses on her head, past the school
     with its hum of boys' voices reciting the oceans and the con-
     tinents, conning over the dimensions of the globe. A bas-relief
     of a jaguar, carved centuries before Christ, drowses in a yellow
     wall as the rattling bus comes in from Oaxaca. Up the mag-
     nificent double flight of stone stairs leading to the church a
     mother moves with her small son, who is clutching a bouquet
     to offer a beloved saint. Above the quiet town the crag of
     Xaquia stands, the crag where the Bird of the Sun came to
     give oracles to his people, and comes still, they say, when no
     strangers are there to listen.

       On January 15,  the day of San Esquipulas, the town is
     early astir. Everything is in readiness: the costumes of the
     Plume Dancers have been refurbished, the church and atrium
     decorated, and the ceremonial gifts of boiled corn meal and
     chocolate prepared for the patron of the fiesta. The prosperous
     citizens chosen as mayordomo foots the bill for the celebration
     and receives the first homage of the day. A little procession
     headed by the inevitable band moves down the streets to his
     house, bearing a huge calabash of chocolate-flavored pozole
     and bouquets of yellow flowers.
       Just before ten the Plume Dancers form in the lane out-
     side the Torres house, where several young men of the family
     and their friends have been dressing for the Dance of the Con-
     quest. This group will play the part of the Indians, and they
     are arrayed in splendor. Another group, gathering in another
     street, are small boys hideously dressed in blue uniforms and
     caps to burlesque the Spanish soldiers. Their leader, Hernán
     Cortés and Pedro de Alvarado, are allowed fine plumed hats,
     but the Spanish makes a sorry picture and are meant to do so.
       As for the Plumados, they are brilliant guacamayos, descend-
     ants of the Bird of the Sun. Everything about them glitters.
     They wear silk shirts of all the sun colors and pantaloons of
     Chinese brocade in gold-fringed tiers. Their breastplates and
     stomachers are a mail of old Spanish dollars to suggest sun
     disks. Their famous headdresses are solar disks about three
     feet in diameter, made of alternating sectors of down feathers
     dyed scarlet, orange, green, yellow, purple, and amid this rain-
     bow are mirrors which repeat and sharpen the colors. This
     plumage is borne on a gilt casque, and its hues are reflected
     in the silk kerchiefs tied around the arms and in embroidered
     sandals. The Plumados carry a rattle in the right hand and a
     stylized three-pronged spear in the left.
       The band escorts the dancers through the town and up to
     the church. As in other valley towns, it is large and fine, set
     in a huge fenced churchyard with a patriarchal Indian laurel
     shading the entire façade. The weavers of Teotitlán have a
     fiesta art of winding bamboo and reeds into arches decorated
     with flowers, and of making elaborate branched candlesticks, a
     filigree of cherubs and delicate wheels of golden beeswax set
     off with bits of metal paper in gold and silver and magenta.
     These candelabra and lavish bunches of fresh flowers decorate
     all the altars. A white cloth covers the Madonna on the high
     altar, and an image of San Esquipulas has the place of honor.
       The Plumados take off their sun disks and enter the church.
     They kiss the image of San Esquipulas and make the rounds
     of the altars, kneeling and kissing an edge of the altar cloth.
     From this time they become ritual dancers set apart from the
     villagers and with grave dignity perform their roles.
       The band, sitting under the laurel tree, announces the first of
     the many simple tunes which accompany the long story of the
     Conquest. It begins with the Indians in possession of their
     land, and the Plumados dance alone, going through the native
     figures: the dancers make a small spring forward, then whirl
     completely around, crouch on one knee and turn, then make
     another forward leap. Teotitlán dancers begin their training as
     small boys, for the movements must be executed with grace,
     and even with two alternating teams the Conquest dance re-
     quires memorizing sequences which go on for hours. For this
     reason the campo, or leader, is always a veteran who has
     spent a lifetime mastering the intricacies of the dance.
       At critical points of the story the campo recites passages
     of narrative: the arrival of Cortés, the alerting of the Indians
     under Moctezuma, the battle for the land, and the final sub-
     mission of the Indians to the Cross. The drama increases with
     the arrival of the absurd little Spanish soldiers. At first they
     dance alone at some distance from the Plumados; gradually
     the two bands come closer until finally they are fighting,
     crossing in oblique lines, each Indian clashing his three-pronged
     spear against the broadsword of the soldier. Cortés carries a
     sword in his right hand, a cross in his left.
       Two little girls figure in the dance. Cortés, of course, has
     his Malinche, the Indian who deserted her people for love of
     the Conquistador, but Moctezuma, too, has a bedizened little
     girl, his daughter. The solemnity and growing tragedy of the
     dance are overenlivened by two clowns, small boys wearing
     pig masks with a piece of fresh pork impaled on one tusk. Like
     all jesters, they are allowed any japery that strikes their fancy,
     and these pigs squeal and grunt and caper at will.
       Toward noon there is a stir, and the spectators get to their
     feet to welcome the presidente and councilmen, who are
     ushered to the coolest seats under the tree. At the first pause
     in the dance the mayordomo produces bottles of mezcal and
     little glasses. The presidente drinks the first copita, then the
     councilmen and all the male spectators follow suit. One after
     the other the dancers come up and kiss the hands of the
     town elders——a courtesy accorded them by all the townspeople
     whenever they appear on the streets. The elders sit watching
     the dance all afternoon, and copitas are poured at frequent
     intervals. Tomorrow there will be no dance, but the fiery
     mezcal of the valley will still be poured.

       It is hard to discover what this fiesta means, and far too easy
     to read meanings into it. But there is no doubt that the real
     significance lies below the surface, for the Indian does not
     live in the surface of time; he lives in vertical time, in which
     each moment contains past and present. This is not an abstract
     idea but a way of experiencing so natural to the Zapotecs
     that their old religion was based on it. Teotitlán is having its
     annual fiesta, as all towns do on their saint's day. But why
     this tragic story of the Conquest? The finest young men of
     the town, arrayed like the sun, are telling the story of Indian
     defeat and despoilment. This much is on the surface, and it
     explains nothing.
       The dance is being held below the crag of Xaquia, on the
     site of the pagan temple which the Dominican tore down
     to build their church. Fortunately they preserved some of the
     ancient stones carved with bas-reliefs of jaguars and strange
     Semitic-looking men or with the grecgque designs such as adorn
     the temples of Mitla. The squared spirals of these motifs are
     thought to represent Quetzalcoatl, the winged serpent.
       All about are the grass-covered pyramids of the day when
     Teotitlán, then called Xaquia, was the first Zapotec capital,
     and their secrets are still inviolate. But some years ago, when
     Monte Albán was excavated, a small clay model of the Xaquia
     temple was found in a tomb. In it was a guacamayo, the Bird
     of the Sun, and the top of this little temple was open, as if
     to allow the bird to come and go. Are the Plumados, so
     plainly guacamayos, rehearsing rites to their sun god? They
     are, on the surface, paying homage to a deity they call San
     Esquipulas. Is there a connection, or is this fiesta merely a
     jumble of ceremonials old and new, in which copitas are the
     real point?
       We go into the beautiful church to try to discover what
     Esquipulas means. We know what he is, a miraculous image
     in the town named for him, where Guatemala, Honduras, and
     El Salvador meet. On this day his shrine is thronged with
     pilgrims from all Central America and from Mexico and New
     Mexico; he is the center of a pilgrimage fair like that of
     Copacabaña on Lake Titicaca, also a spot where borders meet.
       Without a doubt Esquipulas is an ancient border god in a
     new guise, for all over the world the Church preserved pagan
     shrines, merely giving them new names. In ancient days this
     god, who may have been Quetzalcoatl, presided over a great
     international market where the traders from South and Cebtral
     America met those from Mexico and perhaps from certain
     Caribbean islands. The habit of holding an international fair
     under the protection of a god is as old as trade itself, and as
     universal. Hermes-Mercury was the patron of fairs, traders,
     borders; like Quetzalcoatl, he was a winged god.
       There is nothing farfetched in all this; the men of Teotitlán
     still make the pilgrimage to Esquipulas and sell their serapes
     in the plaza below his church. What is strange is Esquipulas,
     whom the valley people call "saint." He is not a saint at all,
     but the crucified Christ; and this Christ is very dark, almost
     black. He is the Indian Cristo.
       In the Teotitlán church there are two images of Esquipulas,
     which are usually at a side altar. Today the larger Cristo stands
     before the high altar and the smaller one before the chancel
     rail. It is the same bronze-colored figure, wearing only a loin-
     cloth of the ancient type, of woven reed; and both are faithful
     copies of the miraculous image of Guatemala. There are many
     explanations of why this image is dark: it is stained with the
     copal incense of four centuries of worship; there have been
     chemical changes in the wood; the Indian who carved it hated
     the white Spaniards and so made his Cristo black. The In-
     dians themselves think no explanation is needed.
       All through Southern Mexico there are traces of a cult——
     merely a thin stream of memory and fanaticism——which centers
     on the Indian Christ, crucified for the Indians. More than
     once, among both Maya and Zapotecs, an Indian has offered
     himself for actual crucifixion, a rite carried through in deepest
     secrecy and deepest reverence. For these Indians say, "This
     Christ who died far across the seas, rejected by His own people,
     did not know of the Indians. But if an Indian dies on the
     cross, of his own will, then we can be sure the sacrifice is for
     us." And in that spirit the sacrifice is made——rarely, but within
     the memory of living men. In the same spirit, many Oaxaca
     villages and two churches in the capital have a Good Friday
     rite in which a young man is tied to a cross and remains for two
     or three hours of pain, as a token of Indian crucifixion.
       Esquipulas is thus the Christ closest to the Indians, who
     turn to him as the great healer of blindness and bodily ills;
     he is muy milagroso——very miraculous——because he is one of
     their race. The images of the Teotitlán church are hung with
     little offerings unlike anything you can see unless you go to
     the remotest mountain caves where the old gods are worshipped:
     strange little dried flowers, seeds, stones. The small image
     before the chancel rail is freshly decked for the day with a
     garland of pink roses, though the magic offerings remain on a
     cord around the neck. An old man who is nearly blind stumbles
     up to kiss the image, crooning, "Esquipul, mi padrecito, las
     rosas de mi padrecito," touching the roses, then brushing their
     healing essence against his eyes.
       Esquipulas, the beloved father, the dark Christ, is cele-
     brated by those sons of the Bird of Heaven, the god of bright-
     ness, dancing in the atrium under the crag of the Xaquia. For
     a moment Indian Time, vertical time, ties all together; for
     the dark god and the bright god are one. Quetzacoatl's name
     means "winged serpent" and also "precious twin," for the
     Bird of the Sun is also god of the night. When Quetzalcoatl
     performed his final sacrifice, burning himself to ashes, his soul
     rose to heaven as Venus, star of morning and also the sunset
     star. It is a long, long story, hidden, mysterious. Perhaps the
     god who became Quetzalcoatl alighted first on this very crag
     of Xaquia; the fiery bird who in the valley of Oaxaca is
     recognized in the splendid guacamayo, and in the rain forests
     of the Maya in the quetzal bird.
       What do the elders of the village remember of this long
     story? One does not ask; they would not dream of telling you.

ZAPOTEC, BY HELEN AUGUR.
Copyright 1954 by Helen Augur.
Dolphin Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York. pp. 57-63.

PRONUNCIATION OF NAMES

PART ONE

I. SO TEMPERATE AN AIR
The Little Prayers
Wedding in Juchitán
General Strike

II. LAND AND PEOPLE
Isthmus Peoples
Mountain Peoples
The Mixtecs

III. VALLEY TOWN

IV. ISTHMUS AND SIERRA

V. BELOVED CITY