Crossing the Plaza de la Danza, on my way to the market this morning, I saw stilt people!
The all-male stilt dancers of Villa de Zaachila were waiting to perform the Danza de los Zancudos at the 22nd conference of the Oaxaca-Centro Alcoholics Anonymous. Once they took the stage there was much cheering and good-natured catcalls from the 75% male audience
The Dance of the Zancudos originated in the San Pedro neighborhood over 100 years ago and is one of the few places the dance can still be found. The origin of the Dance of the Zancudos is in a promise the inhabitants of Zaachila made to Saint Peter. The story behind it states that an old man encountered an apparition of Saint Peter who asked the community build a church in his name. The apparition appeared each day until it was captured by the local people and enclosed in a small church. Guards were posted at the entrance with rifles and machetes. However, the next day, it was discovered that the saint was no longer there, and he appeared again to the old man who had originally seen him, indicated that God had sent him to protect the village. Eight days remained until the feast of Saint Peter, and the saint asked that the villagers form pairs on stilts to dance. On the feast day, the men danced on stilts while the women surrounded them with candles and incense. The dancers arrived at the foot of a hill where an image of the saint was found, which was brought to the San Pedro neighborhood where a church was constructed for it. [Wikipedia. Retrieved, 11/10/2013]
They performed several dances and, to the cries from the audience of, “Otra, otra, otra,” they were ready with an encore. Baskets that had been tied to their costumes were thrown into the crowd (a la La Guelaguetza) and they exited stage right. By the way, getting down off the stage on stilts requires a lot of help from your friends. But once that complexity is navigated, you get to stroll over to a ledge high above everyone’s head, and have a seat.
Reason number 521 to never go anywhere in Oaxaca without my camera!
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View From Casita Colibrí 
They ARE different
Posted in Culture, Economics, Education, Politics, Protests, tagged education, educational reforms, graffiti, Mexico, Oaxaca, photographs, photos, political commentary, protests, street art, Teachers union, United States legislation, wall art on October 11, 2013| 13 Comments »
Expats and Mexicans alike, are watching in amazement at the nonsense (as in, making NO sense) taking place in the hallowed halls of Washington DC. And, since many of the expats are retired, we are holding our collective breath over the possibility social security checks will not be forthcoming in November and a tanking stock market that flushes our nest eggs away. Of course, Mexico is in the middle of its own mess, “educational reforms” and economic proposals that will hurt Mexico’s working class and rural populations the most.
Wall in Oaxaca city.
In a New York Times article two days ago, Carlos Puig explains the reality of the material conditions that have forced the teachers of Oaxaca to take the drastic action of abandoning their classrooms to lead massive and extremely disruptive protests in Mexico City against the “No Child Left Behind” style reforms that the Peña Nieto led government has proposed and passed. (Read a critique of the US education “reform” by Diane Ravitch, former “No Child Left Behind” proponent, here.)
Oaxaca is 500 kilometers from Mexico City, yet the real distance is much bigger. The state’s G.N.P. per capita is one-quarter the average for the country. Oaxaca ranks second-to-last among all states in infrastructure. More than half its population lives in towns of fewer than 2,500 people.
Being a teacher in Oaxaca means sometimes having to travel for an entire day to reach your school in a tiny community, teach for three days — to children of all grades — and travel back home for the weekend. It means having to deal with children who speak more than 20 different dialects.
Being a teacher in Oaxaca means operating in a different universe — and under different rules.
Banner hanging in front of a school in Oaxaca city
However, as in the USA, the incomprehensible words coming out of the mouths of the 1% and their elected representatives are mind-boggling in their obliviousness to the adverse consequences their behavior and policies cause. And, we scratch our heads in amazement… McClatchy journalist, Tim Johnson, has repeatedly blogged about the exceedingly “bad” behavior exhibited by Mexico City’s rich and powerful directed at those they consider “below” them — most recently, Las Ladies, episode 7. And, just last week in Oaxaca, most were aghast to read that an indigenous woman, in the advanced stage of labor, was turned away from a hospital and forced to give birth on the hospital lawn.
Daniel Goleman had a revealing piece in the New York Times a few days ago that helps explain where this lack of empathy the ruling elite exhibit, that results in callous social policy, comes from. He explains in Rich People Just Care Less that, by necessity, “the poor, compared with the wealthy, have keenly attuned interpersonal attention in all directions…” And that, “A growing body of recent research shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to those with little such power” and, “In politics, readily dismissing inconvenient people can easily extend to dismissing inconvenient truths about them.”
Okay, now we know why the rich care less, so what are we going to do about it?
Part of a mural on Niños Heroes in Oaxaca city.
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