Zapotec
Guelaguetza for Tourists
A news story in August 2016 indicated that the world-famous Guelaguetza festival of the Zapotec had become so commercialized and made for tourists that the Zapotec themselves were forming alternatives. Called “People’s Guelaguetza” festivals, the alternatives also celebrate in a party atmosphere the Zapotec tradition of sharing and giving but without so many outsiders. A […]
Zapotec Municipality Manages its Forests
A news report from December 2010 explained that about 30 years earlier, the Zapotec municipality of Ixtlán de Juárez had gained the right from the Mexican government to manage its forest resources themselves. Before then, outside interests had exploited the forests for their resources without much thought for the future. With the people of the […]
Cell Phone Service for Zapotec Communities
Commercial firms in Mexico had refused requests from Zapotec villages in the mountains of Oaxaca to provide cell phone service, so one of them decided to do it themselves. An article in New York magazine on November 1 describes the struggles of a Zapotec community in the northern part of the Mexican state to found […]
Visas Denied for Zapotec Artists
The U.S. government prevented two celebrated Zapotec artists from attending the closing reception last week for their murals, displayed for a year in the central rotunda of the Los Angeles Public Library. The Los Angeles Times reported last Wednesday that artists Dario Canul and Cosijoesa Cernas, from the Zapotec street art collective Tlacolulokos, were not […]
Women Foster Changes in a Zapotec Village
The well-known Zapotec rug weaver Pastora Gutierrez Reyes made the news again last week, this time in a New York Times feature. Ms. Gutierrez, a leader for women’s rights in the town of Teotitlán del Valle, in Mexico’s Oaxaca State, was described in Lynn Stephen’s book Zapotec Women (2005) and more recently in a Truthout […]
A Zapotec Renaissance Man
A Zapotec physicist who was originally from Juchitán, Oaxaca, is planning to translate Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, an essential work of western science, into his native language. According to an article in Mexico News Daily, Feliciano Carrasco Regalado is confident that his translation will be useful. In contrast to his detractors who […]
Artists Celebrate Zapotec Culture
The Los Angeles Public Library is celebrating the city’s large number of people from Oaxaca State in southern Mexico, particularly Zapotecs, with a prominent exhibit entitled “Visualizing Language: Oaxaca in L.A.” The exhibit, which has been on display in the central library’s rotunda since September, will remain open until January 31, 2018. It was the […]
A Massive Earthquake and the Women Take Charge
The massive earthquake that rocked southern Mexico shortly before midnight two weeks ago damaged or destroyed thousands of buildings and killed scores of people in the Zapotec city of Juchitán de Zaragoza. The magnitude 8.1 or 8.2 quake was located about 150 miles southeast of the city in the Gulf of Tehuantepec, off the coast […]
Master Zapotec Weaver Visits California
One of the major Zapotec weavers from Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico, is visiting Ventura County, California, this summer and sharing his techniques, traditions, and cultural insights through local workshops. A Ventura County news service last week published a report about the work, and the insights, of master weaver Porfirio Gutiérrez. Gutiérrez grew up in […]
Zapotec Women Strive for Equality
Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza has had a fruitful career over the past 10 years as a successful politician, despite the initial resistance of the men in her hometown. The opposition to her election as mayor of the community made news headlines internationally nearly a decade ago since the town “fathers” had canceled the election results—it was […]
