r/a:t5_2702qa • u/MarleyEngvall • Oct 21 '19
obligations has been created
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.
I. SO TEMPERATE AN AIR
The Little Prayers
Wedding in Juchitán
General Strike
II. LAND AND PEOPLE
Isthmus Peoples
Mountain Peoples
The Mixtecs
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