Transborder Media Spaces: Ayuujk Videomaking between Mexico and the US 9781785335839

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TRANSBORDER MEDIA SPACES

Anthropology of Media Series Editors: John Postill and Mark Allen Peterson The ubiquity of media across the globe has led to an explosion of interest in the ways people around the world use media as part of their everyday lives. This series addresses the need for works that describe and theorize multiple, emerging, and sometimes interconnected, media practices in the contemporary world. Interdisciplinary and inclusive, this series offers a forum for ethnographic methodologies, descriptions of non-Western media practices, explorations of transnational connectivity, and studies that link culture and practices across fields of media production and consumption. Volume 1 Alarming Reports: Communicating Conflict in the Daily News Andrew Arno Volume 2 The New Media Nation: Indigenous Peoples and Global Communication Valerie Alia Volume 3 News as Culture: Journalistic Practices and the Remaking of Indian Leadership Traditions Ursula Rao Volume 4 Theorising Media and Practice Edited by Birgit Bräuchler and John Postill Volume 5 Localizing the Internet: An Anthropological Account John Postill Volume 6 The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama: Religion, Media, and Gender in Kinshasa Katrien Pype Volume 7 Transborder Media Spaces: Ayuujk Videomaking between Mexico and the US Ingrid Kummels

Transborder Media Spaces Ayuujk Videomaking between Mexico and the US

Ingrid Kummels

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2017 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2017, 2021 Ingrid Kummels First paperback edition published in 2021 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available from the Library of Congress British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78533-582-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-80073-019-9 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-78533-583-9 (ebook)

Contents

List of Figures

vi

List of Abbreviations

viii

Acknowledgements

xi

Introduction: Media Diversity in an ‘Indigenous’ Community— Approaches to the Dynamics of Media Spaces

1

1. Tamazulapam–Los Angeles: Media Fields of a Transnational Ayuujk Village

51

2. Ayuujk Audiovisuality Today: Generating Media Spaces through Practices

97

3. Mediatization and “Our Own” Spaces for Development

131

4. Communal and Commercial Audiovisuality and Their Transnational Expansion

197

5. Tama’s Media Fields and the Pan-American Indigenous Movement

261

Conclusion: Media Spaces of an ‘Indigenous’ Community— Comunalidad on the Move

295

Bibliography

312

Index

325

List of Figures

0.1. Transnational Tama’s media fields, 2013–2016. Photos: Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

xviii

0.2. Watching a fiesta video at the Tama market, September 2015. Photo: Ingrid Kummels.

4

0.3. Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala, October 2013. Photo: Ingrid Kummels.

31

0.4. Fiesta videos at the Ayutla market, June 2013. Photo: Ingrid Kummels.

33

1.1. Globalized Tama, 2013–2016. Photos: Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

50

1.2. Candidates for presidente municipal at the nombramiento General Assembly, August 2013. Photo: Ingrid Kummels.

63

1.3. Tama’s Feria Cultural del Pulque in 2012. Photo: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

87

2.1. The public and the occult, 2013–2016. Photos: Victoriano Guilberto and Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

96

3.1. Audiovisual memories and archivists. Photos: Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

130

List of Figures | vii

3.2. Tama’s Espíritu Santo Fiesta, May 1963. Photo: Salomón Nahmad Sittón.

146

3.3. Fiesta musician in front of Tama’s church, early 1990s. Photo: Alberto Pérez Ramírez.

163

3.4. The Danza de la Malinche group, 2013. Tama boy, 2013. Photos: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

172

4.1. Tama’s transnational fiesta, 2013–2016. Photos: Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

196

4.2. TV Tamix, early 1990s. Photo courtesy of TV Tamix.

201

4.3. Oaxacan life in Los Angeles, 2014–2016. Photos: Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

218

4.4. Genoveva and Adolfo recording at the Santa Rosa de Lima fiesta, August 2015. Photo: Ingrid Kummels.

226

4.5. Paisanos/as watching a self-styled video at a Los Angeles birthday party, April 2016. Photo: Ingrid Kummels.

243

5.1. Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala, October 2013. Photos: Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

260

6.1. Xëë/Fiesta. Photo: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

294

List of Abbreviations

ACIN

Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca

AIPIN

Agencia Internacional de Prensa Indígena

AMA

Ambulante Más Allá

AMARC

Asociación Mundial de Radios Comunitarias

AMCIC

Asociación de Medios de Comunicación Indígena de Colombia

ANPIBAC

Alianza Nacional de Profesionales Indígenas Bilingües A.C.

ASAM

Asamblea de Autoridades Mixe

BICAP

Bachillerato Integral Comunitario Ayuujk Polivalente

CAE-K

Centro de Apoyo al Estudiante Kutääy

CAIB

Coordinadora Audiovisual Indígena Originaria de Bolivia

CAYUUK

Comité Cultural Comunitario Ayuuk

CCC

Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica

CCNIS

Consejo Coordinador Nacional Indígena Salvadoreño

CCREA

Colectivo Cultura y Resistencia Ayuuk

CDI

Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas

CECAM

Centro de Capacitación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Mixe

CEFREC

Centro de Formación y Realización Cinematográfica

List of Abbreviations | ix

CIESAS

Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social

CINAJUJI

Centro de Investigación Ayuuk Jujkyajtin Jinma’any— Sabiduría de la Vida Mixe

CLACPI

Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Cine y Comunicación de los Pueblos Indígenas

CNCI

Congreso Nacional de Comunicación Indígena

CNPI

Consejo Nacional de Pueblos Indígenas

COBAO

Colegio de Bachilleres del Estado de Oaxaca

CODREMI

Comité de Defensa y Desarrollo de los Recursos Naturales y Humanos Mixe

CONACAMI

Confederación Nacional de Comunidades afectadas por la Minería

CONAICE

Confederación de las Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Costa Ecuatoriana

CONAIE

Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador

CONFENIAE

Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana

CRIC

Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca

CSUTCB

Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia

CVI

Centro de Video Indígena

DGEI

Dirección General de Educación Indígena

DIF

Desarrollo Integral de la Familia

ECO

Equipo de Cronistas Oaxacalifornianos

ECUARUNARI Confederación de Pueblos de la Nacionalidad Kichwa del Ecuador EMRIP

Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

ENAF

Escuela Nacional de Fotografía

ENAH

Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia

EZLN

Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional

FIOB

Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales

FOCOICA

Federación Oaxaqueña de Comunidades Indígenas en California

x | List of Abbreviations

FOESCA

Fondo Oaxaqueño Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes

FONCA

Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes

ILO

International Labor Organization

IMCINE

Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía

IMEVISIÓN

Instituto Mexicano de la Televisión

INAH

Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia

INEA

Instituto Nacional para la Educación de los Adultos

INEGI

Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía

INI

Instituto Nacional Indigenista

MEXPAR

Manfacturera Mexicana de Partes de Automóviles

Morena

Movimiento Regeneración Nacional

Odrenasji

Organización en Defensa de los Recursos Naturales y Desarrollo Social de la Sierra de Juárez, A.C.

OMVIAC

Organización Mexicana de Videoastas Indígenas

ONIC

Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia

ORO

Organización Regional de Oaxaca

PAN

Partido Acción Nacional

PPS

Partido Popular Socialista

PRI

Partido Revolucionario Institucional

PRD

Partido de la Revolución Democrática

SCT

Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes

SEP

Secretaría de Educación Pública

SER

Servicios del Pueblo Mixe A.C.

Servindi

Servicios en Comunicación Intercultural

SNTE

Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación

UABJO

Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca

UNAM

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

UNICEM

Universidad Comunal Intercultural del Cempoaltépetl

UPN

Universidad Pedagógica Nacional

WDR

Westdeutscher Rundfunk

Acknowledgements

The story in the introduction about my fortuitous involvement in Tama’s multiple media spaces led to ethnographic research that was to last from 2012 to 2016 and stays of altogether ten months in this Mexican village and three months in its satellite community in Los Angeles. The transnational village of Tama became my second home and many of those to whom I express my gratitude have since become my friends. They made my research possible, as did the vibrant academic environments in which it was discussed, one of which is the Institute for Latin American Studies of the Freie Universität Berlin. The Institute hosts the International Research Training Group “Between Spaces,” which generously gave me support and partly funded my journeys to Mexico. Although I owe my gratitude to many people in many places, they are too numerous to mention by name. But I would like to acknowledge those who were most involved. First of all my deepest gratitude goes to the Ayuujk people, particularly those of Tamazulapam del Espíritu Santo, Santa María Tlahuitoltepec, and Los Angeles, all of whom opened their doors to me, hosted me so generously and, above all, shared their knowledge and experiences with me in the long conversations and get-togethers that became the cornerstone of this book. Since these insights have been reworked and refashioned in line with my own interpretations and experiences, I take full responsibility for the content of the book and any errors can only be mine. With regard to the transnational villagers, I am deeply indebted to my first guides and interlocutors for their advice and suggestions and the many stimulating conversations we had, that is, to Carlos Pérez Rojas, Hermenegildo Rojas Ramírez, and Genaro Rojas Ramírez (TV Tamix), and I also thank the mother of the last two, Isabel Ramírez, for her hospitality. Adelina Pérez Mateos played a special role in awaken-

xii | Acknowledegments

ing my initial interest in the topic of self-determined videos during my short stay in 2012. Her sisters, Rahilda Jiménez Marín and Hermenegilda Cabañas Marín, were instrumental in giving me an orientation on the fiestas and Ayuujk society in general during this phase. I am particularly indebted to mediamakers Jesús Ramón García (Video Cajonos), Óscar Rojas Cruz and Jaquelina Rojas Sánchez (Video Rojas), as well as Genoveva Pérez Rosas, Romel Ruiz Pérez, Illich Ruiz Pérez (Video Tamix), and Genoveva’s husband Adolfo Ruiz Cortes, all of whom shared a wealth of information with me on Ayuujk videomaking. Diana Rojas and Erick “Siete Copitas” Rojas likewise provided much information and support. Later I became acquainted with Laurencio Rojas (Cyber Tuuk Nëëm), his colleague Procopio Gómez Martínez (Yin Et Radio), Nemesio Vásquez Narváez (Video Mecho), Ing. Fernando Sánchez (Video Rey) from Guelatao and media pioneers Lourdes Juárez Salcedo und Filogonio Morales Galván from Ayutla, to whom I extend my thanks. Marciano Rojas García also helped this research get off the ground by constantly informing me about points of interest and suggesting who to meet and interview. I owe a great deal to my hosts at the various research sites, including Hermenegildo Rojas, Denisse Amador, and their daughter Isabel “Chavelita”; Josefina García Martínez, Medardo Pérez Ríos, their son Cuahutémoc and Josefina’s mother Camila Martínez Casas; Andrés Hernández Núñez, Amada Jiménez Gómez, and their daughter Roberta; Fernando Aguilar Rojas, and Herlinda Martínez—all of whom taught me so much about the essentials of social life in a transnational village. Cuahutémoc “Temo” Pérez García introduced me to his friends and to media activists in CCREA (Colectivo Cultura y Resistencia Ayuuk), of which he is a member, and greatly inspired this research by helping me to become aware of and pick up on the many leads of wider Ayuujk culture, society, and politics that turned out to be crucial for the topic of this book. Others to whom I am extremely grateful are photographers Alberto Pérez Ramírez, Jorge “El Negro” Pérez Jiménez, and Conrado “Conra” Pérez Rosas, not least for their profound reflections on mediamaking. Daniel Martínez Pérez wrote a thesis on the Ayuujk religion, which is the main thrust of ideas and practices of village audiovisual representation, and generously shared his illuminating insights with me. I also thank Leovigilda Guzmán Lorita, his wife, for her kind hospitality in Oaxaca City. Juana Antúnez Jiménez, Victoriano Guilberto Juárez, Vicente Antúnez López (the latter two from TV Tamix), Eliel Cruz Ruiz, and Noé Aguilar all reflect deeply on these topics from different angles, while Cirilo González López and Agustina Andrade gave me insights into the Ayuujk religion and its rituals, as did Teresa López Domínguez, Ernesto

Acknowledgements | xiii

Martínez Antúnez, and his wife Victoria on the topic of migration and gender issues, and Rolando Vásquez Pérez on politics—I thank all of them for sharing their wisdom with me. Spending time with CCREA members in Tama was always an intense mixture of learning about Ayuujk culture, Ayuujk activism, youth perspectives, and a lot of fun. For all of this deep gratitude goes to Froylita Jiménez Sanjinés, Eutimio “Timio” Antúnez Calderón, Conrado Pérez Rosas, Romel Ruiz Pérez, Luis “Huicho” Pérez, Marisol Ambrosio Martínez, Marcos Vidal and Rey Davíd Vásquez. CCREA gave this research and my stay in Tama crucial support. Interlocutors in Tlahui, such as Rigoberto Vásquez García and Roberta Hernández Jiménez, deserve special mention since they let me in on their ideas on and work with media, generously sharing audiovisual material with me. When my research interest became a full-fledged project and things became more official, I asked for permission and consulted Tama’s municipal authorities. They supported me assertively in the years between 2013 and 2016. Alberto Cruz Sánchez, regidor de educación in 2013, and his wife Agripina Ruiz Ortiz deserve special mention for inspiring this research with stimulating and instructive talks, and constant support. I am grateful to Joaquín Ortiz Aguirre, regidor de educación in 2016, for providing assistance. In 2013, I also made the acquaintance of the regidor suplente de educación, Wilfrido Martínez Martínez, and his wife Olga Pérez Martínez, their daughter Zuleima, and Mariela Marcial Martínez. To them I owe special thanks for sharing their know-how on fiesta sponsorship, allowing me to gain further valuable insights into community life and transnationalization. In this context I would like to emphasize my deep gratitude to an entity that might seem abstract but is quite tangible at the Tama General Assembly attended by up to 800 people: el pueblo. I experienced the people several times, but with particular intensity in August 2016. As an onlooker I was suddenly asked to explain why I had decided to donate a trophy to the patron saint fiesta of Santa Rosa de Lima, since it is not customary to accept this from a foreigner. My contribution fortunately met with the approval of el pueblo. I especially want to thank my Ayuujk interlocutors who live in Los Angeles and shared their experiences and views with me. They also allowed me to participate in their daily activities despite difficult conditions arising from their illegalized status in the United States. I very much hope that in the near future there will be no need to anonymize their contributions with pseudonyms to protect their identities, as I do now given current US migration policies. It is painful to write this at a moment in which the differential illegalization of migrants is being pushed forward in an unprecedented way by the US government, threatening world

xiv | Acknowledegments

peace (February 2017). Part of the invaluable guidance I received during my research phase in Los Angeles was in the activist contexts of Mexican indigenous people who live there. For their great support and the time they gave me I am profoundly grateful to Gaspar Rivera-Salgado of the Labor Center (UCLA) and Odilia Romero (FIOB), as well as to Isaí Pazos and Mauro Hernández (ORO). I also profited immensely from the opportunity to present my work in an advanced stage in April 2016 to an undergraduate course on indigenous media held by Freya Schiwy and attended by students from families of Mexican migrants at the University of California Riverside (UCR). I am indebted to the many colleagues in Mexico who contributed to this study by sharing their perspectives on photography and video as they are practiced in different media spaces. Salomón Nahmad Sittón, an outstanding figure in anthropological research on the Ayuujk people at CIESAS (Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social) in the city of Oaxaca, was kind enough to respond to my queries giving generously of his time, sharing with me his thoughts on his own photographic experience in Tama many decades ago. At CIESAS, anthropologist Alejandra Aquino Moreschi also shared material and insights on Sierra Norte videomaking with me. CIESAS librarian Ramiro Pablo Velasco and the late Gudrun Dohrmann, who managed the library at the Instituto Welte, assisted me regularly and effectively when it came to identifying the relevant scholarship. In the run-up to a tribute in honor of Salomón Nahmad Sittón in 2015 I also met Abraham Nahón and Alfonso Gazga, both professors at UABJO (Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca), who generously shared illuminating perspectives, among other things on photography in Latin America, a topic reflected on in original ways in their journal Luna Zeta. I also profited from the regular exchange on this subject with professional photographers Cristina Kahlo—our paths entangled with Oaxaca always seemed to magically cross—and Judith Romero. Oaxaca City harbors the long-standing independent media center Ojo de Agua Comunicación, where Guillermo Monteforte, Juan José García, Clara Morales, and Roberto Olivares gave me invaluable assistance, not least by sharing and discussing their video works with me. The exchange with the “wider family” of Latin American visual and media anthropologists, some of whom I talked to extensively in Oaxaca City, was extremely helpful. These include Gabriela Zamorano (El Colegio de Michoacán), Axel Köhler (CESMECA-UNICACH) and Xochitl Gálvez (CIESAS), María Paz Bajas Irizar and Margarita Alvarado Pérez (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), Felipe A. Maturana Díaz (CEAVI), and Christian León (UBA).

Acknowledgements | xv

I owe special thanks to Gisela Cánepa Koch (PUCP) for her comments on certain sections of the manuscript and her suggestions on the narrative arc to be pursued. At an EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) e-seminar in October 2015, Gisela furthermore gave me valuable feedback on the role of private archives in land conflicts in a transnational context. I am grateful for the vibrant discussion and diverse commentaries provided there, and in particular I thank John Postill (RMIT University, Australia). My research was further galvanized by my inspiring and demanding work as an anthropology professor at the Institute for Latin American Studies (LAI) of the Freie Universität Berlin, where I have been teaching since 2008 and as of 2015 engaged in broadening research on transnational videomaking. I would like to thank my colleagues there and mention in particular those specializing in Mexico, Marianne Braig and Stephanie Schütze, whose expertise and advice have been vital to advancing this project. Florian Walter and Thomas John, the first a former and the second a current research assistant specializing in visual anthropology, also deserve special mention. They are among those whose perspectives have enriched this research, as are the LAI students who attended the courses on media anthropology theories and approaches. The Institute for Latin American Studies works closely with several Mexican universities within the frame of the International Research Training Group (IRTG) “Between Spaces, Movements, Actors, and Representations of Globalization,” which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). I am deeply appreciative of the Mexican colleagues, who made suggestions to improve first drafts of the research results. Special thanks go to Carlos Alba, spokesman of the IRTG at El Colegio de México. At a presentation at the Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in 2015, comments by Alejandra Leal, Paula López Caballero, and Nitzan Shoshan helped push me in the direction of destabilizing presumed certainties with reference to ‘indigenous’ media activism. I am further indebted to several colleagues at German universities who work on Mexico-United States migration or media anthropology and invited me to present my research. I profited from critical comments by Julia Pauli and Michael Schnegg (Universität Hamburg), Eveline Dürr (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), Karoline Noack (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn), Michael Kraus (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen), Heike Drotbohm ( Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) and Michaela Pelican (Universität zu Köln). This applies in equal measure to Sebastian Thies (Universität Tübingen), who invited me to the thought-provoking workshops he or-

xvi | Acknowledegments

ganized on documentary filmmaking in Los Angeles and Guadalajara. In Germany, I also greatly benefited from the tight exchange on the topic of migration, international border policies and audiovisuality, and their affective dimensions with my colleagues at the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) “Affective Societies” based at the Freie Universität Berlin; a number of them specialize in visual anthropology and film studies. In the final phase of producing this manuscript I am above all indebted to the anonymous reviewers, one of whom commented extensively on the manuscript version submitted. Sunniva Greve did superb work in capturing the spirit of its narratives and reflections in English from what I initially wrote in German—which although not my mother tongue, has more or less become one in the meantime. I am very fortunate that Barbara Belejack, herself an author who lived for many years in Mexico, revised the final version in a way that sustained this approach. I am furthermore grateful for the supportive and enthusiastic editorial assistance of Sasha Puchalski at Berghahn. With a great deal of competence Carolin Loysa and Laura Malagón transcribed the interviews from my field research. Anne Kordaß and Sebastian Bürg were extremely helpful with the bibliography, index and reproduction of photographic material. I am more than grateful to my Tama friends for their immense help during a stay in the Mexican village, allowing me to wrap up this book. I feel honored that Conrado Pérez Rosas produced the photo collages at the beginning of each chapter. Several interviewees read the manuscript parts on their intervention and provided valuable corrections with regard to factual data. My own life is an intersection of multiple locations spread across Europe and the Americas. I am grateful for the friendship of and the time spent with the Rarámuri people in Northern Mexico in the 1990s. My anthropology “internship” with them and first insights into their community life, their migration, and their lives close to the Mexico-United States border allowed me to gain a more thorough understanding of Ayuujk people’s diversified paths to conviviality in times of transnationalism. This also applies to the village of Amorbach in Germany’s Lower Franconia, where I spent many years. Life in both of these places taught me much about social relations and control, as well as about the intense love for land possessions, facets that enabled me to connect to and develop an understanding of comparable processes in transnational Tama. Finally, I would like to commemorate three special people. They too led migrant lives and were innovators and perpetual border-crossers in all senses of the word. They passed away recently or decades ago but remain close to my heart and even seemed to resonate during my stays

Acknowledgements | xvii

in transnational Tama. Manfred Schäfer, my husband then, forever remembered by Genaro Rojas for a joke he told him during our one-day visit to Tama in 1993. Argimira “Millo” Castro, my mother and the percussionist in the Cuban all-female band Anacaona, which played Cuban danzones and mambos that are now featured in the repertoire of Ayuujk philharmonic bands. My father, Karl Kummels, a pioneer cameraman with German television in Latin America, who covered, for example, Salvador Allende’s presidential campaign in the early 1960s, died in Norway during my stay in Tama in 2013. A self-taught 16mm cameraman, he is a constant reminder of autodidactic training and what it means to rely on “our own” media knowledge as a path to professionalism. I dedicate this book to these three creative people.

Figure 0.1. Transnational Tama’s media fields, 2013–2016. Photos: Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

INTRODUCTION

Media Diversity in an ‘Indigenous’ Community Approaches to the Dynamics of Media Spaces

Jump Start Berlin, June 2012. Carlos Pérez Rojas, a young Mexican indigenous filmmaker, had arrived from Lyon to present his prize-winning documentary And the River Flows On (Y el río sigue corriendo) to my course at the Freie Universität Berlin.1 Discussing films of the indigenous media movement in Latin America with filmmakers, colleagues, and students is part of my everyday working life—not unlike many of the visual and media anthropologists who teach and conduct research at film schools and universities throughout the world. University courses and the numerous international festivals with special programs displaying indigenous media, such as NATIVe: A Journey into Indigenous Cinema at the Berlinale, demonstrate the international impact of this cinematic current.2 On this particular June evening, course participants were emotionally stirred. They left the seminar with a sense of solidarity with members of the Nahua social movement of Guerrero whose active opposition to the construction of the La Parota hydroelectric dam threatening to flood their land was shown in the movie. I was also impressed by the professional quality of Carlos’s documentary. He not only operated the camera, but also edited the film. When we sat together afterward for a beer on the terrace of the restaurant next to our institute, I asked him where he had learned the craft of filmmaking. His answer came as a surprise, since I had expected him to refer to a film academy in some major city. Instead, he replied, “My apprenticeship in film was in Tamazulapam Mixe, working with my cousins Genaro and Hermenegildo Rojas.” Immediately, scenes began to race across my mind. I recalled the moment I had met both of Carlos’s cousins over twenty years ago in 1993 in a then remote Ayuujk village in Oaxaca. Along with several other young

2 | Transborder Media Spaces

men, they had launched TV Tamix, the first local television station in an indigenous community. I remembered how Manfred Schäfer and I had filmed this innovative project with our 16mm equipment and then returned to Germany to meet the television editor at the WDR broadcasting company for which we worked. He rejected our report on Mexico’s indigenous filmmakers, deeming the subject to be “too unusual” for German viewers.3 And I suddenly remembered that we had never had a final screening for the people, as was our wont in the past with our other documentaries. On the contrary, we stowed the film rolls away and left them to their fate. Jump cut: Tamazulapam, August 2012. Two months after these unexpected memories first appeared, I traveled to Tamazulapam to present the digitalized film version there and hand over a copy to the local mediamakers. Carlos had already told me he was planning to shoot a documentary about TV Tamix and needed my “lost film rolls”4 to complete it. This was not my only motivation for returning to the village in the Oaxacan Sierra Mixe after so many years. A further driving force was the sense of having a common point in history with these filmmakers, although we had only met for a day more than two decades earlier.5 Shortly after I arrived in Tamazulapam, current and former members of the local television station met at the home of Hermenegildo Rojas to watch my historical documentary from 1993. The group shared vivid memories, some of them sad, and some even painful. TV Tamix was in operation for eight years and can look back on an eventful and paradoxical history: despite its distinction as a shining example (caso estrella; Cremoux Wanderstok 1997: 10) of indigenous media in Mexico and its ranking as tremendously creative and productive, the General Assembly of the village decided to withdraw its support in 2000. It was convinced that the young men in charge had abused the community media project by accepting and benefiting from funds from US foundations. They were also accused of having clearly overstepped their authority. Some former members like Hermenegildo and Genaro still work sporadically as filmmakers, usually on their own personal projects. After this pensive film evening, I remained in Tama (as the village is popularly called) for the fiesta in honor of Santa Rosa de Lima—a gigantic festival lasting up to seven days and attracting thousands of visitors—that had just gotten underway. It is famous in the entire region for its Copa Mixe basketball tournament, a sports event organized on an ethnic basis, which I noticed was enthusiastically documented with camcorders. One morning in the midst of the many market stalls surrounding the festivities I discovered a knot of people around a large television set resting on the open bed of a pickup truck. At that precise moment there

Media Diversity in an ‘Indigenous’ Community | 3

was a showing of the dance from the previous night. At first, I failed to recognize that the scenes had been shot in Tama, since the dancers were not wearing ethnic clothes and the music was cumbia music sung in Spanish. But then videographer Jesús Ramón García from the Zapotec village of San Pedro Cajonos joined me. A larger-than-life festival vendor, he explained why the spectators were having so much fun. They were amused by some of the dancers—many of whom were well-known town residents—and the way they danced, and the constellation of couples, who had either just become acquainted or were long-standing spouses. These comical scenes, lo chusco, are extremely popular. Jesús Ramón remarked that he had edited the ninety-minute film we watched the night before and had burned it onto a DVD in the early morning hours. Noticing my disbelief, he drew back a curtain to reveal the interior space of his pickup truck, which contained his traveling studio: a PC with an editing program, a CPU tower for burning several DVDs at once, and a color printer to produce DVD covers. Jesús Ramón sells his films on the spot to fiesta visitors as fresh merchandise. The films have brief titles like Tamazulapam Del Ezpiritu Santo 2013: Recivimiento (which deals with the fiesta reception) with occasional spelling errors due to their hasty production. In addition, once the celebrations are over, Jesús Ramón uses a local delivery service to send the DVD series of up to ten discs to Tama’s satellite communities. Among the migrants from Tama who have settled in northern Mexican cities like Guanajuato, Celaya, and Guadalajara—as well as in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Milwaukee in the United States—there is a growing demand for images of their now distant home village. As migrants without documents in the United States, these expatriates are—contrary to their desire—unable to return to their hometown for a short visit. Approximately four hundred people from Tama now reside in Los Angeles. As the days went by, I realized that Jesús Ramón was not the only fiesta videomaker working in Tama and other villages of the Sierra Norte region. Several family enterprises in Tama have gravitated to this trade, including that of Óscar, a cousin of the Rojas brothers, and his wife, Jaquelina. During a subsequent stay, I went to their shop with Carlos, who commented with a sense of combined irony and approval, “This is the real Video Indígena.” (Ahí está el verdadero Video Indígena.) The irony stems from the fact that Carlos and others have belonged to a circle known as Video Indígena since the 1990s and see themselves as politically active comunicators (comunicadores)6 who promote the aims of the community without remuneration in the realm of what is called medios comunitarios. They generally draw a sharp line of distinction between themselves and entrepreneurial mediamakers, alleging that prac-

4 | Transborder Media Spaces

Figure 0.2. Watching a fiesta video at the Tama market, September 2015. Photo: Ingrid Kummels.

titioners in the field of medios comerciales are mainly out to make a profit. They also criticize their films for the supposed absence of a narrative and the inability to stimulate reflection on social processes as their primary objective is to please the audience. It occurred to me then for the first time that fiesta videographers might well be excluded for more serious reasons. Perhaps, as the film scenes of the cumbia dance suggest, it was because they focused their lens on motifs that were less “ethnic” and “political,” at least what others understand as such. Consequently, they failed to meet the expectations an audience outside the community—such as the Video Indígena circuit or a university seminar in Berlin—might have of an “indigenous film.”7 The discovery of this local industry of fiesta videos with their “unpolitical” subjects and their transnational audience, none of which are shown at indigenous media festivals or mentioned in media anthropology scholarship, only increased my doubts about a master narrative. So far, the appropriation of audiovisual media, in particular of video, in Mexico’s ‘indigenous’ villages has been studied mainly from the perspective of the so-called Video Indígena. According to the respective master narrative, it is assumed, first, that the decisive impetus for indigenous communities and movements to engage with audiovisual media

Media Diversity in an ‘Indigenous’ Community | 5

emanated from the Mexican government’s indigenismo policies. Hence, the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI)8 and “Transferencia de Medios Audiovisuales a Comunidades y Organizaciones Indígenas,” the program it introduced in 1989 to provide indigenous communities with training, equipment, and organizational structures, was what allegedly motivated indigenous people and movements to adopt a particular concept of audiovisual mass media. Second, current research suggests that film production in indigenous communities is basically synonymous with the Video Indígena movement, which later broke away from the INI. On the whole, this approach draws a homogeneous picture of audiovisual practices and representation strategies in villages and urban settings. From this perspective indigenous media practices are essentially politically motivated: collectively organized teams make documentaries with the sole intent of giving a uniform voice to the local needs and demands of indigenous collectives.9 In contrast to this account, however, I discovered a far more diverse media environment in Tama with regard to the use of photography, radio, video, television, and the Internet. Indeed, some of these media have expanded and continue to do so today without any close relation to media initiatives associated with the indigenist policy framework of the Mexican government. I focus on Tama and its approximately 7,000 inhabitants as exemplifying many of the 570 municipalities in the state of Oaxaca that pursue an independent cultural, social, religious, and political way of life and are externally perceived as ‘indigenous’ Mexican villages.10 An additional 3,000 to 5,000 inhabitants from Tama live in cities in Mexico and the United States and continue to foster ties with their hometown. Despite their geographical dispersal, they clearly position themselves as members of their village of origin and as Ayuujk ja’ay (frequently referred to by the exonym Mixe).11 It was the local inhabitants who first alerted me during my stay to the importance of self-determined media for transnational social relations and the historical depth of village media practices and representations. Even before Video Indígena initiatives were launched, local actors had engaged in photography and videography, adapting them to their daily needs. Toward the end of the 1980s, several village photographers, radio show producers, and videographers acquired skills autodidactically or at vocational colleges, which allowed them to specialize in this type of work. One of the media enthusiasts was Alberto Pérez Ramírez, the father of one of the members of TV Tamix and the first professional photographer in the village. Since then, a number of media actors have been active as small-scale entrepreneurs in commercial photography and videotaping of commu-

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nity social events including patron saint fiestas and family celebrations such as christenings and weddings. In the course of their engagement with mass media, particularly with video, these actors created new genres that focus on the patron saint fiesta and other events. Since genres such as the videos de fiestas stem from and represent the community, some videographers characterize and advertise them as videos de comunidad.12 Diverse purposes are pursued via media and range from the political to business, art, and entertainment interests. One popular motive is the transnational village’s main political organization, the civil-religious cargo system (colloquially referred to as el cabildo) and its annual change of officials on 1 January. This election proceeds according to the self-determined political system (now denominated usos y costumbres13) that has since been officially recognized by the Oaxacan state government. Photography and videotaping have become an integral part of this governance system and are used, for example, to document agrarian disputes with neighboring villages. Yet another cultural-specific use of audiovisuals pertains to Tama’s youth movement, whose members employ sound technology, digital photography, and video in the field of art (arte)—reggae, rap, rock, heavy metal music, graffiti, painting, and documentaries—for a range of purposes, including identity politics. The Colectivo Cultura y Resistencia Ayuuk (CCREA), for example, founded by students of the local high school, takes advantage of several media forms to articulate, spread, and negotiate an avant-garde and hybrid version of Ayuujk identity that embraces Rastafarian philosophy, socialism, and anarchism. Hence, diversity in the village media landscape corresponds to the individual actor’s perspective in terms of age and—as will be shown—gender, education, social class, migration experience, place of residence, and political orientation. The media produced are disseminated locally but also circulated, marketed, and consumed in a transnational context by migrants from Tama who have established satellite communities in Mexico and the United States. Hence the starting point for this study is the diversity, intensity, and historical depth displayed in the cultural-specific use of photography, radio, video, television, and the Internet in Tama and one of its diaspora communities in Los Angeles. One of the assumptions in this book is that people in and from Tama have appropriated mass media for their own purposes based on self-determined concepts of development in the course of migration. They notably use video for transnational community building and as a means of overcoming the restrictive political border between Mexico and the United States. In the course of my multi-sited ethnographic research in Tama and Los Angeles between 2012 and 2016, I gradually realized that the transnational village’s so-

Media Diversity in an ‘Indigenous’ Community | 7

cial relations and mass communication have been interconnected and realigned in this process, an aspect still largely unexplored for Mexico’s ‘indigenous’ communities. Cultural practices, social events, and organizational forms considered characteristic of this Ayuujk community are highly mediatized.14 My approach is informed by perspectives in media anthropology and cultural studies that see the actors themselves as the primary triggers of change and innovation in the means of communication. Spurred by local and cultural needs, they adapt media technology and invest it with such cultural resources as their narratives and aesthetics, thereby contributing to its development in and beyond the community, and ultimately to a general transformation of the media (Dowell 2013; Kummels 2012; Williams 1974). This study focuses on practices, that is, on what people do and say in relation to media (Couldry 2004) and conceives these practices as differentiated and as including discursive practices such as “practices of knowing, explaining, justifying and so on” (Hobart 2005: 26, quoted in Postill 2010: 5). It argues that the intertwined processes of transnationalization and mediatization were set in motion by, among other things, people’s desire to extend their scope for action through school education, a factor that sparked migration in the 1960s. Here, village actors were inspired to overcome obstacles such as the visual divide (see below) by creating innovative media works and opening up new media spaces both in a geographical, practice-oriented, and imagined sense, for the most part on their own initiative and with great vitality. These processes were and remain part of their search for new, modern forms of subjectivity according to their own standards and thus for ways of reinterpreting community/‘home,’ ethnicity, and (trans)nation. Hence my basic research questions are as follows: What needs and desires inspire village actors to use and shape mass media? Which practices and media representations do they resort to? How do the latter influence ongoing relations between indigenous peoples and the Mexican nation? How and in what direction do media actors forge a specific sense of collective identity and belonging? How and to what extent can they (re)position themselves and their demands through media with respect to relevant contexts in the community (the hometown and satellite community), the officially defined multicultural Mexican nation, and, finally, the United States as the target destination of migration? Researchers who have up to now explored the appropriation of mass media in Mexican indigenous communities from the perspective of state initiatives (for example, the launching of radio stations in 1979 by the INI or its “Transferencia de Medios” program in 1989), emphasize the external agency and patronage of the state and the decisive influ-

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ence of nonindigenous filmmakers and anthropologists who worked in these programs (see, for example, Castells i Talens 2011; Cremoux Wanderstok 1997; L. Smith 2005; Wortham 2004, 2005, 2013).15 At the same time, they frequently delve into emancipation processes that indigenous actors initiated by teaming up with nonindigenous advocates to appropriate media for their own purposes. These researchers emphasize this movement’s political success at the national and international levels. Similar to other ethnic minorities across the Americas (Alia 2012; Dowell 2013; Himpele 2008; Salazar and Córdova 2008; Schiwy 2009), Mexico’s indigenous peoples have been protesting against their disadvantaged social position as Others since the 1990s. In Mexico this was due, on the one hand, to forms of social exclusion that had been reproduced since the colonial era and, on the other hand, to a unifying mestizo nation model that up to the 1970s officially promoted the idea of de-indigenizing and assimilating ethnic minorities. They began to pursue their own media projects as a method of overcoming their discrimination in the area of political participation and access to the national public sphere. In addition to achieving full citizen rights, indigenous movements throughout the country sought to assert their cultural rights as pueblos originarios (first peoples) in a Mexican state that was subsequently redefined constitutionally as multicultural. When the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional or EZLN) emerged in Chiapas in 1994, not least due to its use of the Internet, it became the movement with the greatest international visibility and impact. Along with these political efforts, indigenous people from several regions began to train as film directors, camera operators, and sound engineers, and make (analog) video documentaries, which they then disseminated to solidarity groups and NGOs and presented at international festivals. One of their primary objectives was to decolonize the standard portrayal of indigenous people as exotic Others and passive subalterns by replacing these images with self-determined representations (Kummels 2010: 51). The media movement became known as Video Indígena16 and it gave indigenous people a face as political actors, while the use of audiovisual means provided a sounding board for their political messages, which were now beginning to reach Mexico’s national public sphere.17 In response to these developments, the Mexican government granted the country’s indigenous populations the constitutional right to their own languages and forms of social organization.18 In Oaxaca, the appropriation of mass media played a pivotal role in the broad social movement that rose up against the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) governor Ulises Ruiz and corrupt federal and state structures in 2006.19 In spite of its political impact, however,

Media Diversity in an ‘Indigenous’ Community | 9

the notion of Video Indígena itself has remained disputed over the years because of its origins in Mexican state patronage and the connotations of indígena as an othering term (Kummels 2011: 271–72). In contrast, this book looks beyond explicitly political indigenous media activism to more diversified practices of photography, radio, film, television and the Internet in Tama as it expanded transnationally to the United States. It also considers the autonomous driving forces that were harnessed to reinvent these mass media. As the vignette at the outset indicates, the visual landscapes and soundscapes created by Ayuujk people on their own terms as producers and consumers feature prominently in the emerging identity of Tama as a transnational village, and connect it with several transnational circuits. These include the fiesta videographer trade, radio stations bearing the names “La T Grande de Tamazulapam” and “Yin Et Radio,” the youth movement that organizes photographic exhibitions and film screenings, and the documentaries produced by established members of TV Tamix and their young successors that circulate worldwide at film festivals. Numerous actors engage in several of these categories simultaneously and employ diverse audiovisual languages. The present study traces media actors and their practices and thus focuses on the explicit use of photography, radio, video, television, and the Internet for political purposes as well as in the interests of business, art, and entertainment. I contend that this particular approach is fundamental to coming to terms with the dynamics of local and transnational appropriation without the bias that has predominated so far. The study also traces how Tama’s media genres and highly varied forms of production contribute to forging relations between the state and the indigenous peoples of Mexico, which have undergone radical change since the first half of the 1990s, largely due to the influence of the EZLN movement. At the same time, these relations have also clearly been redefined in the context of international migration to the United States, a phenomenon that intensified toward the end of the 1990s. In this book, I argue that Tama’s mediatized social relations and transnationalized media have been an integral part of both processes. In the course of accompanying Ayuujk mediamakers and their audiences, I constantly encountered debates on the role assigned to village media in highly relevant aspects of social life, such as fiestas, entertainment, Ayuujk culture, and community politics. Problems, worries, and unresolved matters of a personal or political nature, referred to in Ayuujk as jotmäj, are the centerpiece of religion, politics and social life in Tama. Many discursive media practices unfold in the context of debates, as in the case of whether local media should serve nonprofit communal purposes exclusively or be permitted to embrace commercial goals. In

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the face of transnationalism, expectations are evolving as to what constitutes a “good” communal way of life, a principle to which everyone refers. Actors involved in media work, particularly comunicadores, adhere to the concept of comunalidad formulated in the 1980s by Floriberto Diáz (1951–1995) and Jaime Martínez Luna.20 Díaz was an Ayuujk intellectual, anthropologist, and political leader from the neighboring village of Tlahuitoltepec. His work bears witness to the Sierra Mixe as a site of self-determined forms of knowledge and their constant development and transmission. Comunalidad refers to the principles of communitarian living as practiced in real life in the broader Sierra Norte region, among them voluntary service as an official of the civil-religious cargo system and participation in communal labor (tequio).21 Ayuujk people consider grassroots self-administration and democratic practices fundamental to the equal distribution of political power in their villages and see it as the basis of their autonomy vis-à-vis the Mexican state. Participants in debates who emerge as comunicadores—and therefore community mediamakers—have an idealized conception of audiovisual communication that is shaped by the notion of comunalidad. They understand this kind of media as endorsed by the entire community and equipped with a funding structure that is independent both of the state and the private mega media conglomerates. Nevertheless, this degree of independence is hard to achieve, since the state offers financial support for media projects via institutions such as the Comisión Nacional para el Desarollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (CDI). In addition, the use of an indigenous language and a focus on local cultural knowledge are considered as defining community-run media in indigenous villages. That said, the demise of TV Tamix in 2000 exemplifies the fact that villagers in general mistrust private or state-sponsored projects and question communal media projects whenever they see their independence jeopardized. Debates in Tama on whether community-based media conform to ideals of autonomy both mirror and influence wider discussions in Mexican society, which challenge the neoliberal state’s privatization of the media and the duopoly of the two main television channels, Televisa and TV Azteca, and their effect on public opinion.22 A range of village media initiatives have, for example, refused to permit the involvement and publicity of Mexican political parties in their purview and have put forward an alternative model. By the same token, they provide space for topics of local and regional interest otherwise ignored by mainstream media in Mexico.23 Yet many village debates on the proper implementation of the communal way of life involve other media enterprises as well, even some that at first glance may seem unpolitical. The production, marketing, and

Media Diversity in an ‘Indigenous’ Community | 11

consumption of social event photographs and patron saint fiesta videos are perceived in particular as being somewhat at odds with the ideal image of indigenous media as synonymous with a political commitment to collective cultural rights and community-based autonomy. Given this ideal, local small-scale entrepreneurs in Tama and the surrounding villages, who earn their living with videotaping, are singled out by the comunicadores as merchants and practitioners of commercial media. These entrepreneurial videographers are viewed skeptically because they allegedly seek personal gain and commodify communal motifs understood to be cultural assets. Although this is accurate, their films—not unlike community-run media projects—use the Ayuujk language (as part of the original sound), depict village culture, and are operated by Ayuujk comuneros/as.24 Conspicuous in the context of migration is the emergence of locally produced series, including up to ten-part DVD documentation of the patron saint fiesta. These fiestas in Tama are held in honor of two important religious village icons, el Espíritu Santo (the Holy Spirit; on Pentecost) and Santa Rosa de Lima (on 30 August). The vast number of activities at these celebrations are organized to a large extent by the residents of Tama and paisanos/as (compatriots) living abroad in their function as comuneros/as. Fiesta participants are either serving in their capacity as officials or carrying out a specific task assigned by a village official; others choose to contribute by partially financing the fiesta. Activities include church celebrations, philharmonic band performances, sports competitions such as basketball and jaripeo (Mexican bull riding), and the provision of free meals for the many fiesta participants and visitors. On the whole, the fiestas have traditionally served as a platform for the entire community to enjoy the commercial and cultural products produced collectively throughout the year. Hence they demonstrate Tama’s hospitality as well as its economic and political power in a wider regional—and now transnational—context. Videographers recording the celebrations in Tama or its neighboring villages have now become a common sight. They have established the fiesta videos as a specific village genre in close alignment with their customers. While these movies are available locally, their principal clientele are the paisanos and paisanas living in the United States.25 In fact, smallscale entrepreneurs based in Tama produce most of the video films in response to US customer demands and purchasing power. As a result of international migration, the debate on comunalidad has now been expanded to include the question of what it means to be a comunero/a in times of geographical dispersion and the role that selfdesigned media should play in the cultural and social relations of this transnational village. Villagers who seek higher education in the Mexi-

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can capital, open taco restaurants in northern Mexico, or cross the border between Mexico and the United States without documents in search of work in construction or as housekeepers are prevented by their absence from participating in the cargo system of their village of origin. Although many of them, notably those of prime working age, leave for extended periods of time, they succeed in upholding ties with their relatives and friends at home in a variety of ways. Their remittances have become a key source of capital for their home village. Despite their precarious situation due to lack of legal status in the United States, migrants generally have more money at their disposal than people who remain in Mexico. They send some of their earnings to their families back home and even invest in the home village itself. Remittances continue to foster new desires there. Migrant donations are invested in communal necessities and village institutions such as the patron saint fiestas, which have enjoyed a major boost in this context. As part of these new developments, the allegedly unpolitical fiesta videos play an increasing role in current debates on the future of the communitarian way of life. As an extension of the patron saint fiestas, the videos themselves are now perceived as new spaces of representation for the transnational village—as popular versions of “the communitarian,” lo comunitario. A debate, which initially appears to be unpolitical, centers on the controversy surrounding the audiovisual portrayal of “incorrect dance couples” in fiesta videos. Public dances, where couples dance to cumbia and norteño music, are filmed as part of the patron saint fiestas. In a transnational setting, these recordings frequently give rise to disputes between spouses, for example, when a husband residing in the United States sees his wife dancing with another man at the public dance in his home village. In this context, not only the couple in question, but also the larger transnational community audience discusses basic questions dealing with gender roles, transnational households, and the upbringing of children in a transborder marital situation. Film scenes like these also provoke controversies about more complex issues, such as morality and social norms and, by extension, the preferred version of Ayuujk culture and identity to be depicted in the village media. Meanwhile, differences have arisen between people living in the village of origin, who simply want to enjoy the public dances “in peace” (that is, without being filmed), and residents of the satellite community in Los Angeles, who rely on the fiesta videos as a means of controlling their partners and other relatives from a distance. Ongoing debates in the transnational village would suggest that community-based entertainment genres such as fiesta videos do in fact have immediate political implications for the social life of the local and transnational population. For this reason, the

Media Diversity in an ‘Indigenous’ Community | 13

study concentrates on the mediatization of these social relationships and their respective political dimensions.26 The research term “mediatization” refers to how “core elements of a cultural or social activity (for example, politics, religion, language) assume media form” (Hjarvard 2007: 3, quoted in Couldry 2008: 376). Finally, debates sparked by the youth movement Colectivo Cultura y Resistencia Ayuuk (CCREA) and its use of media have had a wider social and political impact. Drawn to new experiences, the movement tightly interweaves local elements with globally circulating countercultural discourses. Young people in the village are highly visible as a result of their appearance—like dreadlocks in combination with emblematic Ayuujk clothes such as woven sashes and woolen gabanes (ponchos)—and of their organization of concerts featuring local bands that blend reggae, rock music, and Ayuujk lyrics. By displaying unconventional versions of Ajuuyk culture, they essentially modify and modernize what it means to be Ayuujk ja’ay. The majority of adults in the village take a critical view of this subcultural or countercultural appropriation of their heritage, as a deviation from more “classic” forms of lo comunitario. At the same time, young people are actively engaged in community politics. As an age group with an interest in claiming its own rights, they articulate political demands for their official participation in the village’s General Assembly and its cargo system, whose hierarchy has traditionally been determined by seniority. Although the media expressions and political concerns of the youth movement have been recognized with reluctance, they are nonetheless in the process of conquering new spaces within the community. Besides, youth media initiatives have turned out to fit well with Pan-American manifestations of indigenous culture performed at the media summit Cumbre Continental de Comunicación Indígena del Abya Yala, which took place in October 2013 in Tama’s neighboring village of Tlahuitoltepec (Tlahui for short). As demonstrated at this international event, the directions taken by the youth movement impact current perceptions of what is meant by “the Ayuujk way of life” that go far beyond the village itself.

New Media Spaces and Audiovisual Decolonization The following introduces theoretical approaches that shed light on these debates and on the autonomous drivers of village media produced and consumed in a transnational context. The vignette at the beginning of this introduction indicates how ‘indigenous’ mediamakers operate on local and transnational terrain, a terrain that includes visual and

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audiovisual media forms and has long been marked by asymmetry. Tracing structures of inequality and the strategies to overcome them, the book draws on the concept of “media spaces” as conceptualized in my own work (Kummels 2012) and in that of other scholars like Michelle Raheja (2010), and particularly in the vernacular theories of Ayuujk media theorists.27 This approach allows for the identification of spaces that have been characterized from the outset by uneven access to media technology and organizational structures, circumstances that have severely limited actor opportunities for self-determined representation. At the same time, the concept of “media spaces” refers to spaces that actors have been able to extend beyond their marginal positions in terms of geography, practice, and imagination, as well as their interstices and interrelations. It emphasizes both types of actor intervention “from below” (Smith and Guarnizo 1998), as in the practice of appropriating media knowledge and technology “autodidactically” (or more precisely with self-fashioned standards of professionalism) and transmitting them between generations and within the community. When these actors open media spaces they simultaneously anchor them in local knowledge and practices as a means of converting them into something of “our own.” To cite one example, Tamazulapam’s Ayuujk name, Tuuk Nëëm, appears after logging into the website of a local Internet café to check e-mails or Facebook accounts. The name Tamazulapam (in Nahuatl, “place of the frogs”), which is the official designation of the village, was imposed by the Aztecs and adopted by the Spanish colonialists, whereas the local term, Tu’uk Nëëm (in Ayuujk, “place of one water”) was eventually relegated to colloquial use. Today, however, this hierarchy in the nomenclature has changed: the old, more intimate village name of Tu’uk Nëëm now publicly refers to the new communicative space used by the transnational media community that extends between Tama and Los Angeles, among other places, and defines this space in terms of Ayuujk ethnicity. Given Tama’s current vibrancy as a mediatized transnational community, it may come as a surprise to learn that audiovisual mass media reached the village quite late, with photography adopted locally in the 1960s and videography in the 1990s. A defining characteristic of Tama’s historic course as an Ayuujk community has been the unequal access to mass media technology, organizational structures, and knowledge. This, on the one hand, is closely linked to the colonial and neo-colonial use of photography, video, and television in ‘indigenous’ regions. At the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, anthropologist Frederick Starr used photography to racially stereotype Ayuujk people (Nahmad Sittón 2012). On the other hand, self-determined media now have to

Media Diversity in an ‘Indigenous’ Community | 15

contend with the disadvantages and exclusions perpetuated by nation states in the context of Mexico and the United States, with the latter enforcing a highly restrictive border regime that paradoxically excludes Mexican migrants at the same time that the US economy heavily relies on them. To analyze these situations I introduce the concept of a visual divide, in line with the more familiar term digital divide, in order to capture in a similar manner the uneven access to audiovisual media technology that resulted from educational disparities, geography, social class, ethnicity, race, and gender (compare Macnamara 2010: 80). Those who are able to bridge the divide as a result of the wider distribution of media technology at a lower cost, nevertheless access it with a time delay. Appropriating audiovisual media in their case means investing a singular effort to make up for being latecomers. The concept of a visual divide refers to the comprehensive structures of inequality that people categorized as indigenous have to face in this field: inequality is not inscribed only in representations, but also in the materiality and social practices of audiovisual media, in media training, and in the organization of work. I therefore use the term visual divide to facilitate analysis of the cultural values that are attached to media technology, knowledge, and practices as a result of the coloniality of power (Mignolo 2000; Quijano 2000). In line with the dominant geopolitics of knowledge, ‘indigenous’ peoples have been perceived and represented as the opposite of “Western modernism.” Modern audiovisual technology is understood as late capitalist technology and clearly identified in terms of ethnicity, race, social class, and gender. As several scholars have criticized (see Kummels 2011: 271; Schiwy 2009: 40; L. Smith 2010), ‘indigenous’ according to this matrix is perceived as adverse to progress, having no affinity with modern audiovisual media, and therefore assigned to a different period of time: the premodern era. Actors in Tama’s realm of media production, circulation, and reception see themselves forced to combat these hegemonic evaluations, even in their local milieus. They, too, have internalized them to some degree, a phenomenon that leads to their occasional disparaging of their own contributions to media development. Besides, they are not in the privileged position of being able to seamlessly develop and refine photography, radio, television, video, and the Internet from comparable technology-based audiovisual precursors. As a rule, however, they take a critical stance on such hegemonic appraisals in order to consciously circumvent, dispute, and transform them. The book gives special attention to the new media practices and languages of representation they invest in to this end. Tama mediamakers resort to traditional media such as oral tradition, pottery, costume, live music, and dance performance and

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combine them with appropriated mass media in global circulation, such as photography, video, television, and the Internet, transforming them in the process. In specific locations such as Tama and Los Angeles, these actors set new priorities by means of media practices, forms of collaboration, and self-fashioned representations. They therefore reposition themselves in terms of collectivity, social status, ethnicity, and gender in a way that exceeds simplistic dichotomies and binary codes (compare Kummels 2012: 9). Comprehending these processes of appropriation calls for extending the notion of media beyond telecommunication and mass media, and conceiving it instead in the broader sense of communicative devices beginning with the human body and gestures and leading up to the Internet (Kummels 2012: 14; Peterson 2003: 3–8). Older media traditions and their forms of organization do not disappear but are preserved and combined with new media (Macnamara 2010: 22–29; Stephen 2013: 13–17). In these marginalized media spaces, actors utilize their expertise and creativity to overcome physical borders and social hierarchies, and thus widen their scope for action in terms of geography, practices, and imagination. The locally and transnationally crafted genres they create, such as fiesta videos, officeholder films, land dispute dramas, and political documentaries, are examples of this. When faced with a similar context, Arjun Appadurai (1996: 35) coined the term mediascape to describe deterritorialized, albeit stable, landscapes centered on image-based narratives and based on pre-electronic or electronic hardware, which viewers relate to despite their global dispersion.28 Unlike Appadurai, however, this book places greater emphasis on the local anchoring of comparable media processes. The imaginative space they open up becomes an additional driver to surmount geographical, societal, and political borders in social reality. In Tama’s case, actors who choose educational and work migration as a self-determined path to development also engage as producers and consumers of mass media. They have created spaces of representation in the fields of entertainment, art, and politics, and continue to do so. Simultaneously, they have localized media practices and representations, as demonstrated by the fiesta videos. Notwithstanding their increasing mobility, people from Tama are considerably invested in developing an emotionally satisfying social relationship to their village of origin as a specific place, thereby anchoring their sense of belonging there (compare Morley 2000; Pries 2008: 78). The actors themselves and Tama intellectuals such as Hermenegildo Rojas, Daniel Martínez Pérez, and many others, have long-held theories on this process of decolonization, which they have generously allowed me to share in this book and will be dealt with more extensively in chap-

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ter 2. As part of their discursive practices they reflect on and constantly discuss the importance of the appropriation of mass media for their society and its institutions in the process of decolonization or, more specifically, what I term audiovisual decolonization.29 They seldom use the specific term “decolonization,” but rather conceptualize the inhabitants of Tama (and the Ayuujk people or Ayuujk ja’ay) ideally as a people who have never been subdued, as expressed in the self-designation of “those never conquered” (in Spanish, los jamás conquistados; in Ayuujk, kamapyë). In addition, they distinguish between the practices and representations they define as “our own” (in Spanish, lo propio, in Ayuujk, këm jä’ ) and those they consider to have been imposed upon them. Ayuujk ideas and practices regarded as “our own” are those actively connected to earlier traditional forms and that they have been able to develop in a self-determined manner. This includes oral history, artistic practices of representation, and the religious beliefs associated with the land. Thus “our own” is not an essentializing concept that refers to a static cultural core. On the contrary, it underlines the autonomous way of doing things, while at the same time conveys openness to the new, as expressed in the idea of progress and self-determined development (in Ayuujk, mëjk’ äjtïn, literally, “to be strong, energetic-life-health”).30 In the context of novel media uses, Ayuujk practitioners and intellectuals have articulated the bridging of dichotomies and openness to new ideas in concepts such as sacred space (espacio sagrado), convivial space (espacio de convivencia), and opening spaces (abrir espacios).31 These concepts serve to convey processes of appropriation, such as when transmission airspace is used for the first time or the spiritual practices of the Ayuujk people are extended to urban spaces or those beyond the Mexican nation state itself. Mediamakers partly elide existing media conventions and at times radically break with audiovisual standards acknowledged elsewhere. Yet they also adopt these conventions and deliberately combine them with local traditions, transforming them in the process. In my view, these space-related terms are preferable to other concepts dealing with the appropriation of media in ‘indigenous’ communities, for example, “Indianizing film” (Schiwy 2009: 12–13). In agreement with Freya Schiwy’s approach, the present study focuses on the cultural aspect of video and film production as a technology of knowledge, where actors pursue their own aims by acquiring epistemic power despite continuous structural oppression. That said, I have chosen to refrain from using the term “Indianizing” since, from the perspective of my research subjects, the terms “Indians” and “indigenous” have problematic connotations as a homogenizing supracategory. The concept of media spaces allows for full comprehension of the diversity of the local and transnational media

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actors involved in this process and the fact that they are driven by divergent needs when grappling with and transforming the visual divide in terms of gender, age, education, and other categories of differentiation. Furthermore, the dimension of space makes it possible to examine the simultaneous use of a variety of media. In the particular case of Tama, this applies to the combination of traditional primary media (transmitters and receivers do not use technical appliances) with modern tertiary media (both transmitters and receivers use technical appliances; compare Hepp and Krotz 2014: 8–9). At the same time, these spaces are constituted by discursive practices, through which the participating actors continuously reflect on their actions and occasionally alter their perspective. In Tama, these heterogeneous actors have common points of reference such as the concept of comunalidad or the more popular ideals of lo comunitario and Ayuujk ethnic identity. In their discourses and practices—also in exchange with actors from outside the community—they constantly renegotiate Ayuujk collectivity and what it means to belong to Tama, while at the same time examining the very notion of community. As a result, the particular challenges that women and young people face in this field and the generation gap that contributes to media diversity uses will be explored here in depth. A telling example of this empowering process is Tama’s history of photography (see chapter 3). The huge investment that photography required in the first half of the twentieth century led to a pronounced visual divide in the state of Oaxaca between social groups that could afford the necessary technical equipment, film material, and prints, and those that could not. Up until the early 1960s, the people who took photographs or filmed in remote regions such as the Sierra Mixe were almost exclusively anthropologists, government officials, missionaries, or travelers, while local inhabitants had to be content with their role as photographic subjects. The first generation of Tama rural schoolteachers bridged the visual divide when they began to acquire small, affordable, easy-to-use Kodak Instamatic cameras with a cassette film system. Committed to cultural work, they organized music and dance performances in schools. These performances had been used by regional political leaders in the 1930s as a means of uniting Ayuujk ja’ay for the first time on an ethnic basis (see chapter 2). The teachers enriched the performances with photography, seeing it as the best medium to record and modernize these creative efforts. The time delay in appropriating photography has been recouped with multiple creative processes. An example is the time-honored practice of banning the photography or recording of occult rituals of the

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village religion to safeguard their power and efficacy, in particular rituals dedicated to la Diosa del pueblo (in Ayuujk, Konk ëna’ ). Although villagers venerate the central deity and Catholic saints with equal fervor, the latter are considered to have been imposed by the Spaniards. According to Daniel Martínez Pérez, an Ayuujk intellectual, the deliberate destruction of autochthonous religion and local knowledge during the colonial period led to a counter-strategy of concealing the veneration of la Diosa del pueblo. She is represented in the traditional medium of a stone statue, which to some extent is regarded as an antidote to the medium of photography, since both are believed to have a similar characteristic: the ability to bring their representations to life (see chapter 2). Some contemporary village mediamakers, however, claim the right to visualize former occult cultural practices and to represent and distribute them via audiovisual mass media. They explicitly engage in this effort in order to reassess their own cultural values and extend them into the new media spaces, a process that some describe as “globalizing Ayuujk culture.” Other creative processes deal with the reconstruction of visual memories. Unlike their parents, children and adolescents now grow up with photography and videotaping as standard components of contemporary memory culture. Tama’s villagers are therefore appropriating old passport photographs and portraits of family members taken by anthropologists keen on portraying “representatives of the Mixe ethnic group” for their family albums. By curating and presenting historical photographs taken by local practitioners for the first time in public, members of the youth movement CCREA are increasingly co-determining the visual history of their community. One example of the impact of media actors combining local traditions with new, fresh ideas are the novel professions and consumer patterns that have developed within the scope of the patron saint fiesta video genre. These videos are by no means specific to Tama. On the contrary, professional videographers specializing in documenting social events such as weddings and village festivals are part of a global trend. The wedding videography business, for example, was established in the United States as early as the 1980s with the advent of affordable video cameras (Moran 1996). Yet as communities have distinctive needs, the social event genre (known as eventos sociales in Mexico) had to be reinvented in places like Tama, where it has been adapted to meet local and transnational requirements and has become a standard item since the beginning of the 1990s. The fiesta videos consumed locally and transnationally on DVD give villagers the opportunity to see themselves and their community on television—something denied to them

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by hegemonic television images. Feature films and telenovelas on Mexican television continue to portray indigenous characters stereotypically either as folkloric representatives of an ethnic group or as servants.32 By circulating and screening self-styled DVDs, people in Tama seize the opportunity to present and see themselves and their community’s culture in the Ayuujk language in a version that is neither folkloric nor discriminatory. Tama’s fiesta videos unreservedly combine the cinematographic conventions of documentaries that portray “foreign countries and people” (and stereotype indigenous people) with local performative motifs such as “comical scenes” (lo chusco) traditionally enacted in fiesta dance performances (see chapter 4). With the village genre of fiesta videos, the media actors involved have created ways of seeing that are culturally specific and encourage their audiences to make sense of the images they absorb according to these particular visual languages (compare Berger 1990). Karen Strassler (2010: 18–19), who has analyzed appropriations of photography in Indonesia, cautions against using two opposing approaches. First, technological media essentialists claim that certain media technologies produce universal, standardized, and thus predetermined effects. This not only applies to aesthetics, which the essentialists understand as inherent in the material properties of a specific media apparatus, but also refers to the perception and behavior of human beings who live in the age of a dominant medium.33 Second, contrary to this view, constructionist media approaches overemphasize the malleability of globally circulating media techniques and genres when they are adjusted to local matrices.34 They stress that non-European societies mold media practices, aesthetic sensibilities, and semiotic ideologies according to their own needs, thus altering even the material properties of means of communication. In this book I follow Strassler’s suggestion of steering a course between these theoretical stances, since Tama’s media practices are not only characterized by an autonomous approach but also bound up with globally circulating left-wing political ideas and flows of capitalist production and trade. This book sees a number of village genres, such as fiesta videos, as part and parcel of local and transnationalized media history in the course of which the Ayuujk people have appropriated communication technology such as video for their own purposes based on self-determined concepts of development in the context of migration. So far, remarkably little research has been done on specific histories of the means of communication in ‘indigenous’ villages, their autonomous dynamics and transnational dimensions following migration. Significantly, one of

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the few authors to explore this aspect is Purhépecha filmmaker and artist Dante Cerano, who is himself from an indigenous community. His master’s thesis, “Purhépechas vistos a través del video: Comunicación y nostalgia en ambos lados de la frontera,” addresses the emergence of a new professional field in his hometown of Cheranastico, namely, that of local videomaking (Cerano 2009). In the course of massive migration to the United States since the 1980s, these filmmakers (locally referred to as videopitaris) were instrumental in mediatizing and transnationalizing family celebrations such as christenings and weddings (see also Kummels 2011: 274–277). In their film Cheranasticotown (Cerano and Tomás 2005), Cerano and his coauthor Eduviges Tomás reveal how songs by village music groups dealing with migration to the United States are disseminated via the Internet and foster a sense of transnational belonging. Cerano’s thesis traces the origins of the first video cameras in the town and the migrants who made local media history by introducing them. This particular development occurred prior to the involvement of INI and its “Transferencia de Medios” program in the Purhépecha communities. Several visual and media anthropologists, among them Louisa Schein (2002), have shown how new self-made media formats were created in the course of migration to the United States with a view to cultivating transnational contacts, as in the case of the Hmong from Southeast Asia. With reference to the Andean village Urcumarca in Peru and its diaspora communities in Washington, DC, and Maryland, Ulla Berg (2011) examined the videos de fiestas genre, which records patron saint fiestas and constitutes an “itinerant video culture.” Conflicts arise when immigrants in the United States use these videos as a means of “ocular control” (Foucault 1994) of the hometown residents (see also Berg 2015). Focusing on the Zapotec Sierra town of Yalálag, Alicia Estrada Ramos (2001) studied the use of video for legal purposes, while Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera (2007) explored the affective dimension of circulating videos between the community of origin and Los Angeles. Rebecca Savage has investigated the mediatization of, among other things, marriages in the central Mexican town of San Francisco Tetlanohcan, whose residents regularly migrate to the United States. Her study offers insights into how subjects and the town of origin are imagined and constructed, chiefly by way of locally produced films.35 Laura Cardús i Font (2014), Argelia González Hurtado (2015), and contributions to a volume edited by Freya Schiwy and Byrt Wammack (2017) recently highlighted that Mexican video initiatives by indigenous peoples were not exclusively or even chiefly motivated by state intervention and showed that migratory subjectivities also generated audiovisual practices and representation.

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The present study extends these approaches by investigating the multiple ways in which actors create and inhabit media spaces, carving out their own, at times conflicting, visions and debates on development, modernity, gender, and the meaning of ‘indigenous’ in the twenty-first century. It essentially portrays and analyzes mediamakers in their cultural and social positioning as comuneros and comuneras—in other words, as people who participate on a daily basis in the local and now transnationalized web of culture, religion, economics, politics, and migration, and actively use media as a constituent aspect of these activities. Fiestas are a good example. Community life in the village of Tama—which has been transnationalized to embrace its satellite communities such as the one in Los Angeles—is the principal source from which videographers draw their contacts, expertise, basic material, and particularly their cultural forms of expression, and thus it represents the cornerstone of their work in the media field. Media production in transnational Tama, however, not only addresses the community from the inside. As the introductory vignette demonstrates, its scope is transnational in a twofold way. In the context of Video Indígena, actors like Carlos exploit these practices to claim cultural and political rights on behalf of Mexico’s indigenous population, rights that extend beyond the confines of the nation state to include other global regions such as Europe. When crafting films as a director and editor, Carlos systematically establishes links to an international documentary film sphere: he draws his inspiration from the ranks of international documentarists such as the German Harun Farocki and Mexican Nicolás Echevarría, and places his films strategically on the festival circuits. As an immediate consequence actors like Carlos shape indigeneity through these intercontinental networks. In the case of patron saint fiesta videos, Tama residents and those of numerous satellite settlements interact in a new transnational audience space between Mexico and the United States. Although this space has emerged as a result of disseminating fiesta videos, it already began to take shape during the production process. The sponsors of these videos, who frequently make substantial and ostentatious donations to the fiestas, live either in Tama or one of its diaspora communities. This book examines the extent to which the media community is able to subvert exclusionary forces emanating from the nation states in order to enlarge its alternative space—in the geographical sense, among others—by opening up new dissemination paths on its own terms. One premise of the current study is that actors in this media community extend media spaces by anchoring their products and messages in the many places, practices, and imaginaries of the transnational context.

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Negotiating Ethnicity and Indigeneity in the Audiovisual Field The previous examples suggest that the audiovisual field cannot be understood in isolation from mediatized social relations and that it serves as a negotiating space for different collective identities and belongings in terms of youth, for example, or the transnational community. The interplay of these dimensions of belonging is part of a more complex social reality than Mexico’s standard ascriptions to “indigenous” ethnic groups would suggest. According to such ascriptions, Mexico is divided into sixty-eight ethnolinguistic groups each of which allegedly have a common language corresponding to their culture and territory and consequently a joint political stance. The country’s pueblos indígenas currently constitute almost 10 percent of the population. This division into grupos étnicos influences the hegemonic understanding of what is perceived as “being indigenous.” I will briefly sketch its long history, since it has prevented the recognition of village media practices and genres such as fiesta videos, officeholder films, land dispute dramas, and political documentaries, a topic addressed in detail in the next section. This conceptualization was first and foremost a component of the assimilation policies that targeted indígenas in Mexico of the late nineteenth century. Although officially recognized by the state as citizens after independence, indígenas were treated as Others and only acknowledged as full citizens following a process of castellanización, a public educational policy that for many decades privileged teaching exclusively in Spanish. The Mexican state persisted with this policy of assimilation in the twentieth century within the scope of indigenismo, an ideological current based partly on modernization theory. As late as the 1970s, and in response to the heavy pressure of indigenous movement demands, the government officially abandoned its aim of “integrating” (or more precisely of de-indigenizing; Bonfil 1990: 79) indigenous people into a nation envisioned as a homogeneous mestizo entity. For the first time, the government officially recognized Mexico as a multicultural nation state, whose diversity was essentially based on the country’s native peoples, a process that was intensified in the 1990s after the state had signed the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169 and adopted a neoliberal view of multiculturalism.36 The indigenous movement, which included key Ayuujk organizations, insisted on greater political participation and the autonomy of indigenous communities. The Mexican government, however, responded to their demands by conceding cultural diversity to the country’s indigenous population rather than effectively promoting access to political participation. Ayuujk organizations with a stronghold in Tama’s neighboring

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village of Tlahui, such as the Committee of Defense and Development of Mixe Natural and Human Resources (CODREMI), the Assembly of Mixe Authorities (ASAM), and later Services to the Mixe People A.C. (SER), reached out to regional and national audiences by using selfdetermined media to spotlight their political demands for control of local industries such as coffee cultivation and mining (Cremoux Wanderstok 1997: 114–19, 125–30, 143–60). As part of Mexico’s multicultural reforms, the INI began pursuing a progressive multicultural media policy toward a segment of the population they perceived as an important clientele. In 1979, noncommercial radio stations were set up at INI branches (coordination centers) in the indigenous regions. These stations broadcast in indigenous languages and, owing to their immense popularity, were gradually taken over by professionals from the communities themselves (Castells i Talens 2011). In the 1980s, INI publicly declared its support of indigenous peoples’ engagement in the field of mass media and their efforts to adapt programming to their own cultural needs. State multicultural media policy, however, was a contradiction in itself: as state employees, the operators of INI radio stations were de facto prohibited from voicing their own opinions and pursuing a cultural agenda that deviated from state guidelines. It was thus primarily the indigenous actors themselves who battled for new freedoms while working as employees at these government-run radio stations. Among other things, they ran them with a more communal orientation. During the mid-1990s, for instance, their radio programs took a critical stance against the repressive government policy toward the neo-Zapatista movement and its demands for regional autonomy (Castells i Talens 2009). It should be noted, however, that in Mexico the sphere of indigenous media was and continues to be heavily influenced by the state. This, in turn, has compelled indigenous actors to frequently advance their own objectives and to carry out reforms from within government media institutions. Evidence of this approach can also be found in the “Transferencia de Medios” program, which was established in 1989. The then director of INI, Arturo Warman, a former member of the dissident group antropólogos críticos, introduced the program to encourage indigenous people to take control of institutional resources (Wortham 2004: 364). At the same time, this media project was financed by the Programa Nacional de Solidaridad, a neoliberal anti-poverty program launched during Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s presidency. “Transferencia de Medios” was essentially run by nonindigenous professionals like Alfonso Muñoz, an anthropological photographer and filmmaker who worked at INI, and Guillermo Monteforte, an Italian-Canadian documentary filmmaker still active in

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indigenous media. As stated in the founding manifesto of 1990, the program sought to rectify the unfair access of indígenas to mass media and to support their empowerment (Anaya 1990). Hence “Transferencia de Medios” was by no means fully compliant with INI’s hidden assimilation policies or its asymmetrical power structure (Wortham 2013: 60–65). On the other hand, the management structure of the “Transferencia de Medios” program was itself asymmetrical insofar as indigenous people were not involved. The instructors who defined the political aspirations of the trainees at the first Video Indígena workshops (that is, eight-week crash courses on video technology, including the goal of developing “their own visual language”) were primarily nonindigenous.37 The ambition of the program partly relied on false premises, such as the assumption that indigenous people were socialized outside the influence of mass media and thus remained untouched by the audiovisual codes of television and cinema, as Guillermo Monteforte later self-critically remarked.38 The instructors’ intention of facilitating the emergence of an “open” visual language soon proved to be impractical and incompatible with the idea of circulating the videos on the international festival circuit, which included showing them to a nonindigenous audience. They ultimately resorted to showing anthropological documentary films produced by INI as far back as 1978 as a model for their trainees to emulate. The trainees were thus taught a conventional documentary visual language, which had originated in a cinematic perspective external to indigenous people.39 Genaro and Hermenegildo Rojas from Tama are a highly instructive example of local actors who grafted their interests onto this state media program. The brothers are key representatives of Tama’s community-based media field and now take a skeptical view of the ‘indigenous’ filmmaking efforts of the past and the discrepancy between local and national interests at the time. As members of Tama’s Casa del Pueblo, the brothers had been active in community media before their invitation by INI Video Indígena staff to one of their workshops.40 Due to this early involvement, TV Tamix rapidly became a showcase for the “Transferencia de Medios” program (Cremoux Wanderstok 1997: 10). Indeed, this village collective had a profound effect on the program during its early years. As mentioned above, I encountered TV Tamix in 1993: Manfred Schäfer and I, both visual anthropologists, had decided to do a feature on Video Indígena for German television, as we supported the media empowerment of the ‘indigenous’ people of Mexico. At the INI Audiovisual Department, we interviewed Guillermo Monteforte and Javier Sámano. As the latter remarked, “Video is a tool, or a weapon as some of them [the trainees] call it, to communicate their needs, their problems,

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their anxieties to the rest of society.”41 Monteforte recommended that our documentary also feature the first ‘indigenous’ television channel in Mexico. On the spur of the moment we decided to travel to Tama for a day’s filming and recorded how the TV Tamix collective produced its weekly television program for the village. Around this time, it had begun to make documentaries that were subsequently disseminated in the Mexican Video Indígena circuit and at Latin American film festivals. The film Fiesta animada, which documented the fiesta in honor of Espíritu Santo in Tama in 1994, is particularly striking because its style and concise editing bear no resemblance to the patron saint fiesta videos produced autonomously today. In an interview in September 2013, Genaro and Hermenegildo spoke to me about the gap between the expectations of Video Indígena practitioners and the needs of Tama villagers: Genaro: The problem outside our village was that we used to bring the Fiesta animada film along with us, since the fiesta was our biggest thing. Celebrating a large and genuine fiesta made a lot of sense to us. But when we took the video to the Video Indígena film festivals in which filmmakers from Ecuador and Bolivia participated, they didn’t appreciate it. They asked us, “But what on earth are you fighting for? That’s just partying!” They, on the other hand, had made films about demonstrations, blockades, violent conflicts with the police … Hermenegildo: and respect for sacred sites. Genaro: They were into the very different discourses that were going on. They were into real struggles, while we were in a process of cultural revival and living through our most significant times as an Ayuujk culture. This made sense to us. And we tried to explain it, but failed to find a point of entry into their discussion, because they were more interested in talking about “fighting for a cause” and “autonomy” and, well … they were into a more elaborate discourse. Hermenegildo: That was because they clearly saw video as a tool for the defense of indigenous territory, for the defense of indigenous dignity. Well, video was seen as a weapon. It was certainly established as such. “This is a weapon; we must use it to defend ourselves against the intrusion of the external world.” In our region, Video Tamix did not experience struggles of that kind because of the regional characteristics. There was no heavy aggression against us from outside. That’s why we dealt with the everyday lives of the people in our region, the fiestas, the people themselves. Because of the geographic region and the way of life, there was no enemy to struggle against. That’s why the organizations and the indigenous filmmakers saw Video Tamix as an undertaking that did not serve indigenous causes. And we even filmed a lot of funny things. Like

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a few drunken guys dancing beneath the castillo (“castle”) fireworks. Or guys staggering drunk in the streets and making fun of each other. Other indigenous filmmakers and anthropologists thought that we portrayed indigenous people in a discriminatory manner, since they have often been degraded and portrayed as drunk and ignorant. That’s why we had to explain: “That doesn’t bother us, because that’s the way we live. We have no malicious intentions. And it’s not our intention to portray our people in a negative way. That’s just the way they live.” These were tough debates and we had to defend ourselves … Genaro: And we had to justify what we did using a political discourse. I remember how in one debate I told them, “Well, celebrating a fiesta is also a form of fighting for a cause.”42

Here Genaro and Hermenegildo identify two different perspectives on indigeneity. The affiliates of Video Indígena based their political struggle on the alleged homogeneity of indigenous interests, neglecting the diverse experiences of those taking part in the program in general. Some, for example, were affected by state military operations and state violence, depending on the region. Video Indígena initially failed to recognize that its trainees might choose to portray their living conditions and collective identities in manifold ways (compare Castells i Talens 2010: 84). Its activists were not alone in stereotyping indigenous people, however. Along similar lines, their target audiences called for dignified, solemn portrayals and a markedly political representation of the indigenous movement. Films shown on Tama’s TV Tamix/Canal 12 program counteracted this stereotype and, in accordance with local taste, occasionally depicted community people in popular comic (chusco) situations, for example, drunks quarrelling or village eccentrics wearing threadbare clothes (see chapter 4). TV Tamix was forced to defend its style with political arguments and as a result developed the concept of espacio sagrado. Here the fiesta meeting place was viewed as a sacred space and, moreover, seen as a blueprint for the TV Tamix method of filmmaking and visual language. These multifaceted, ambivalent, and situation-oriented notions of indigeneity had a more difficult time within the framework of Video Indígena than the dominant purist and essentialist versions. TV Tamix nonetheless set its own priorities and carved out a niche with films that diverged from mainstream indigenous media. This channel is thus a significant example of how village media and their grassroots approach impacted on the Video Indígena movement in general. As a village-based media concept, espacio sagrado has furthermore had a strong influence on relations between indigenous peoples and the state above and beyond Tama (see chapter 2).

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Tama’s media fields are equally assertive when it comes to the construction and reinforcement or challenging and modifying of indigeneity, where villagers have clearly tended to oppose state indigenismo. Very few people in Tama use the expression indígena in everyday life to connote the positive political and militant stance of an indigenous movement. Many, in fact, flatly reject the notion of indígena and indigeneity due to its implication of a colonized subaltern status, and virtually no one would describe him- or herself as indígena. On the contrary, the term is commonly used in the spirit of hegemonic discourse, namely, as the opposite of civilización and therefore pejoratively for anything considered uncouth and backwards.43 By the same token, village mediamakers have subverted this dichotomy, since the ascription indígena could well be used to belittle their performance in the field of contemporary media. Consequently, they prefer to engage in media spheres that are beyond the confines of Video Indígena. Romel Ruiz Pérez,44 a village videographer, explained why he understood the association of indígena with Video Indígena as essentially demeaning. He first pointed out the origin of the misnomer indígena: Romel: Well, to my knowledge the term indígenas originates from the discovery of the Americas, since the first conquistadores claimed that we came from India … Ingrid: What do you think of the term Video Indígena? What does it mean? Romel: Well, I think it refers to us, doesn’t it? But Video Indígena is like giving you one point less on the scoreboard, like debasing someone a bit. In the sense of: “They who dared to hold a camera” … To me, it’s something highly derogatory. I think other words should be used. Even the people who defend the rights of the Ayuujk people and other populations always use that word indígena. And I think they’re making a mistake, too. I’ve no idea why they don’t realize that this simple word has diverse meanings, you know what I mean? It offends us in certain ways. But people are not aware of this; they even use it in the affirmative sense of: “I am indeed an indígena.” I think this should be expressed differently. Because indígena even removes us from our own territory … I hadn’t got to know Mexico City yet at the time but when I arrived in Guanajuato, the first thing someone said to me was, “Ah! You’re not from here, you must be from Oaxaca. So you’re an indígena.”45

For Romel, the term Video Indígena implies “they who dared to pick up a camera,” as if the combination of indigeneity and handling modern technology were fundamentally incompatible. This would make their concurrence a rare achievement and, consequently, a surprising

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phenomenon. Indeed, my own scholarly interest in Tama and Tlahui’s self-styled media was repeatedly met with the suspicion that I only found them noteworthy for this reason—in short, that I was misjudging their activities as a “peculiar path of the underprivileged,” failing to understand them simply as participating in a wider, more complex realm of communication means. Faced with this dilemma—and notwithstanding their partly open support for the movement, as in the case of the members from TV Tamix—village mediamakers took a highly critical view of the Video Indígena circle. They criticized what they saw as a prevalent attitude in the nonindigenous world, namely, that an indigenous person holding a camera was instantly romanticized as an artist. The men I spoke to believed that this type of “positive discrimination” applied in particular to female indigenous filmmakers.46 There are, however, specific instances where media actors from Tama identify and align themselves with the broad Mexican and Pan-American circle known as Video Indígena or Cine Indígena. They ally themselves with media organizations such as Ojo de Agua Comunicación in Oaxaca City, Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Cine y Comunicación de los Pueblos Indígenas (CLACPI) in Latin America and many others. In so doing, they constitute a united front against the contradictory policies implemented by the Mexican state in the field of audiovisual media. Up until now, Mexico has perpetuated gross inequalities. In 2006, for instance, the neoliberal state government introduced a series of amendments to the Ley Federal de Telecomunicaciones,47 which granted private mega media conglomerates such as Televisa and TV Azteca, already in control of 80 percent of the market, advantages of such proportion that the amendments were soon coined “Ley Televisa.” Privatization of the media sector led to the introduction of auctions for frequencies in the Mexican radio and television spectrum. Already disadvantaged, communal radio and television stations found themselves with an even greater handicap in terms of license acquisition. Prior to 2006, government radio stations of the state indigenous institute CDI—and its predecessor the INI—had a clear advantage over community-run radio stations when it came to acquiring licenses (McElmurry 2009: 4). July 2014 saw the passing of the Reforma a la Ley Secundaria de Telecomunicaciones, regulatory laws that formed part of the flagship telecommunication reforms of the Enrique Peña Nieto PRI government. Community-run media organizations pushed through a number of improvements to curtail the media monopolies but were ultimately unable to alter the dramatic imbalance of power between state, private, and local media.48 As a result of ongoing restrictive state policies, actors from Tama’s local and transnational media fields have been coerced into a marginal-

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ized position in the informal communication sector. In general, only a small percentage of local radio and television stations have government permission to broadcast. Significantly, no media outlet in Tama has this privilege. Indeed, one of the demands on the agenda of regional and Pan-American indigenous movements is guaranteed access to more attractive transmission airspace via a quota system of frequencies for local media free of charge. Given the role of the alternative media sector in addressing social aspects and key points of interest deliberately ignored by mainstream media, this issue is gathering momentum. Mediamakers in Tama voice criticism of government policies as a matter of course by virtue of their self-determined, illegalized activities in the field. Those with an explicitly political agenda, such as Collective for Ayuujk Culture and Resistance (CCREA), use alternative strategies to counteract the prevailing paths of cultural diffusion and the dominant indigenous images of hegemonic discourse, thereby adopting a critical stance on state power. These media activists choose topics and aesthetic means that are tied to local manifestations and supralocal global youth cultures. An outstanding example is the case of the Cultural Fair for Pulque (Feria Cultural del Pulque), which has been organized by CCREA since 2008. This novel festivity revolves around pulque, the traditional local drink and icon of communal self-sufficiency. The drink is now deemed sacred and imbued with ethnopolitical significance around the concept of Ayuujk sovereignty. In 2013, the festivity also focused on chicha from the Andean region, a beverage that is enjoying a revival in the context of the political idea of Good Living (Buen vivir).49 In the neighboring community of Tlahui, Radio Jënpoj (jënpoj, literally wind of fire) was launched in August 2001. It continues to broadcast in Spanish and the Ayuujk language in a region that extends well beyond the nineteen municipalities (municipios) of the Distrito Mixe and encompasses parts of the adjoining Zapotecan Sierra Norte and Valles Centrales. This local radio station adopted a critical position on national issues such as the controversy over education reform, a further flagship project of the Peña Nieto government.50 These examples demonstrate how village media initiatives deal with and intervene in national policies and, in the course of taking action, explore globally circulating left-wing ideas. This book is interested in how Tama’s media actors align themselves with national and Pan-American indigenous organizations, while simultaneously adopting positions of their own. Tlahui has been a pioneer and bastion of the ethnopolitical movement of the Ayuujk people since the late 1970s, when CODREMI was founded and Floriberto Díaz became a central political figure. It was against this backdrop that a media summit of the Pan-American indigenous movement, the second Cumbre Con-

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Figure 0.3. Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala, October 2013. Photo: Ingrid Kummels.

tinental de Comunicación Indígena del Abya Yala, was held in Tlahui in October 2013. Over a thousand representatives from community-run media, indigenous organizations, and NGOs from Chile to Canada convened at this mass event. Over the course of a week, they debated the need for enhanced access to various mass means of communication and on their alternative cultural and political orientation. The media summit, however, was clouded by an internal conflict that stimulated a lively discussion in the press organs and websites of the indigenous media themselves and among solidarity groups such as Servicios en Comunicación Intercultural (Servindi, based in Peru). The crux of the matter, which had emerged shortly before the Pan-American meeting, was the amount of independence that community-run radio and television stations should maintain—particularly in financial terms—vis-à-vis the current Mexican government. Franco Gabriel Hernández, a Mixtec professor and head of the media summit, had arranged the financing of the event with the Secretaría de Telecomunicaciones, a ministry notorious for its aggressive policy of closing down community-run radio stations that had no government permit.51 In 2002, the ministry had shut down Radio Jënpoj, the local Tlahui station, with the help of the military. In addition, Franco Gabriel had invited the controversial Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto to open the summit, leading to the division of medios comunitarios into two camps. Guillermo Monteforte, a nonindigenous founding member of the influential regional media organization Ojo de Agua Comunicación with headquarters in Oaxaca, rejected

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this proximity to the government and appealed for the exclusive use of “legitimate” funding sources.52 Ojo de Agua Comunicación and several other media organizations from the Americas boycotted the summit, holding Franco Gabriel responsible for their decision. A number of other organizations such as the Colombian Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca (CRIC), which had organized the first summit in 2010, carried on with it. Indigenous representatives, such as Franco Gabriel, who were active in the United Nations, also pleaded for continuation of the summit. The split impacted the media fields in Tama and Tlahui, where the question of legitimate funding at the local level had been a frequent topic of discussion. Furthermore, despite claims that all village media initiatives in the Sierra Mixe would be included, videographers categorized as engaging in medios comerciales were not invited because of their entrepreneurial approach. These episodes at the summit are analyzed in this book since they indicate the alliances that local actors enter with national and international indigenous-related networks and organizations as a result of their own divergent interests and positions, thereby opening up media spaces in a variety of directions.

The Emergence of Locally and Transnationally Crafted Video Genres Certain media genres open up a window of understanding for local and transnational forms of appropriating mass means of communication. In this context, it is useful to remember Jesús Martín-Barbero’s (1987) concept of mediaciones (which he developed with reference to television). He interpreted these “mediations” as sites of production and reception all in one, where viewers actively contribute to generating the meanings of media products through their own culturally defined sensory perception. Stuart Hall’s (1973) notion of the encoding and decoding of images as simultaneously unfurling processes also refers to this interrelationship. Yet how is it even possible to identify a locally and transnationally crafted media genre? This is not an easy task, particularly in my case, where socialization did not include these genre-specific “sets of social practices, aesthetic conventions, and ‘semiotic ideologies’” (Strassler 2010: 18). I was initially unaware of the numerous Tama genres, since I had not been socialized by them and therefore not conditioned to this way of seeing. Having stayed in the region for an extended period, however, it became hard to ignore the increasing popularity of these genres and their success in the commercial sector. In Tama’s neighboring community of Ayutla—”The Port of the Mixe” and a key administrative center—a stroll around the market, for example, reveals not

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Figure 0.4. Fiesta videos at the Ayutla market, June 2013. Photo: Ingrid Kummels.

only fresh fruit and vegetable stalls, drugstores, pharmacies, stationary stores, and flower shops, but also the typical stalls found all over Mexico containing a vast selection of illegally copied DVDs and CDs. In addition to the film genres familiar throughout Mexico—for example, comedias, románticas, nacionales, suspense, and policiacas—Ayutla also sells fiestas (patron saint fiesta videos). Their color-print covers sealed in plastic bear brief titles such as Ayutla la Fiesta 2014, Calenda Infantil, Recepción de las Bandas, or Visitantes. Fiesta videos are also sold in Mexican shops and by distributors, who make cold calls and sell door-to-door in US cities such as Los Angeles, where a large number of Oaxacan migrants live and work—notably from Mixtec, Zapotec, and Ayuujk ‘indigenous’ communities. In addition to fiesta videos, there are at least five other locally and transnationally crafted genres. For the purposes of this study, I identify them as family rite-of-passage videos, officeholder videos, land dispute documentaries, artistic experimental videos, and “classic” documentaries. Each of these genres is produced, and frequently circulated and consumed, in a distinctive way. Land dispute documentaries, for example, are intended for viewing in more intimate settings, while fiesta videos are widely disseminated via face-to-face viewings in Tama and Los

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Angeles homes and across the Mexico-United States border through social media (for example, Facebook). This book explores six (audio-)visual genres in the field of photography, videography, television, and the Internet: 1. Patron saint fiesta videos (fiestas) document celebrations in honor of the village patron saint. They are made by professional filmmakers (videoastas or camarógrafos53) and sold in the village at market stalls or shops and in the surrounding communities. They circulate in the satellite communities of Mexico as well as those of the United States. Other village social events recorded and marketed in a similar way are school graduation celebrations. 2. Family rite-of-passage videos (eventos sociales), which are likewise made by village videographers, show christenings, quinceañera festivities, and weddings. In this case, however, the clients who sponsor them have exclusive rights to the audiovisual material they finance in advance. They determine when and with whom (mostly family members and friends) they will share their film. 3. Officeholder videos record activities that Tama comuneros and comuneras carry out as officials of the civil-religious cargo system, the primary locus of governance in Mesoamerican ‘indigenous’ communities. In the course of their service they fulfill important administrative functions in the municipality associated with the infrastructure endowment of the village (school construction, annexes to the existing market building, water-supply measures, road building, church renovation, and village beautification work), and contribute to village fiestas as officials. They commission photography and filmmaking or perform the work themselves, since recordings serve to legitimize their activities. 4. Land dispute documentaries (luchas agrarias) are commissioned either by the affected parties or by the officials in charge of solving the dispute in question. In the case of disputes over land and/or water resources between villages (such as those that arose between Tama and the northern neighboring community of Tlahui from 1996 to 1998 and between Tama and its southern neighbor Ayutla in 2004 and again in 2015), Tama authorities commissioned both professional and amateur videographers to record the proceedings from the Tama perspective. The films were produced in an observational style or as emotionally charged partisan accounts (as land dispute dramas) and were used politically to mobilize the members of the community against the neighboring village. On the other hand, in the case of internal land conflicts (conflictos de terreno), an affected minority group within the municipality may also employ local photographers and videographers to document evidence of their adversary trespassing on parcels they claim for them-

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selves. In this instance their adversaries are also Tama villagers. Visual evidence can be used by either party to defend his or her claims before the presidente de bienes comunales, the official responsible for settling land disputes. The intention in the above cases is to show the visual material at Tama’s General Assembly, the supreme village body, or as part of presentations to a government ministry or an NGO. 5. Experimental artistic photographs and videos (fotografia y video artísticos) are produced by young mediamakers who use graffiti, mural and canvas painting, photography, video, and the Internet to document countercultural expressions (for example, reggae, rap, rock, and heavy metal music) as well as aspects of village and regional life from a fresh perspective. In new media spaces such as the Feria Cultural del Pulque, Tama’s youth culture movement displays experimental (for example, abstract) and historical photographs in village exhibitions. The genre also includes explicitly political films that address topics such as the school system (critiquing, for example, the absence of additional assistance for schoolchildren with special needs) and environmental problems (brought on by urbanization, which is suspected to have caused the devastating landslide in Tlahui in September 2010). 6. Documentaries (documentales) deal with affairs of a cultural or political nature in a “classic” documentary style, that is, with the claim of documenting real life; they also adhere to an internationally shared visual language of realism. Actors engaged in this field self-identify as comunicadores. They adopted and to a certain degree have modified the work and aesthetic standards taught since 1989 at the film workshops of the INI “Transferencia de Medios” program, later at the Centros de Video Indígena (CVI), and by Ojo de Agua Comunicación, which separated from the INI in 1998.54 In 2012 there was a paradigm shift in indigenous media in Mexico, when national film institutes such as the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC) and Ambulante A.C. began offering inhabitants of rural areas professional film courses that had no ethnic dimension specifically aimed at indigenous peoples.55 The new documentary style imparted at these workshops focuses on individual protagonists and portrays them with emotional appeal in a dense filmic code. Documentaries are produced by highly qualified collaborative teams that work to contemporary professional standards. A sense of group belonging—to the youth community, the village of Tama/Tu’uk Nëëm, or the Ayuujk ethnolinguistic group—is not only forged and reinforced or, alternatively, challenged and ultimately transformed at the level of audiovisual representation. Actors also socially engage in defining collective identities within the framework of the actual practices of media production, diffusion, and consumption. Patron

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saint fiesta videos exemplify how the process of crafting this genre serves to visualize and highlight certain horizons of identity. Many of the fiveto-seven-day festivals revolve around the concept of being a good comunero or comunera. In practice, being a comunero/a implies ownership of communal land and, as part of the civil-religious cargo system, the commitment to voluntarily serve in it every six years. These communal commitments profoundly shape the lives of the individuals concerned. At the same time, they are seen as crucial to maintaining the grassroots political system of the village and ensuring civic equality. It is thus taken for granted that all of Tama’s inhabitants contribute in the form of work and financial donations to the fiesta, which the village in turn uses to showcase its strength to the surrounding region. Self-styled fiesta videos help to create this impression of regional power, since they depict Tama people as active participants of community life and constitutive of the greater collective. The sense of being a comunero/a, however, is not confined to the level of representation. The video filmmakers themselves make an effort to act as good comuneros/as while working in the field. Videographer Genoveva Pérez Rosas, for instance, wears traditional dress while filming and in this way reconciles private enterprise with the communal practices of her village. Migrant members of the village take part in the fiesta from afar by means of financial donations. Fiesta videos and their DVD distribution constitute a medium that renders visible participation as a comunero/a in the transnational context of the hometown and the satellite communities. Hence the local and transnational video industry is inextricably bound up with broadening the horizon of what it means to be a comunero/a in a new media space of transnational outreach. The mediatization of the fiesta and its entanglement with village governance serves to perpetuate these community-based dimensions of collective identity, albeit in their modified mediatized and transnationalized versions. The fiestas and the cargo system are the backbone of the semi-autonomous democratic organization of this ‘indigenous’ village, as well as of other communities throughout Mesoamerica. Upholding these forms of self-government of a longue durée is on the one hand a form of resistance to efforts to integrate indigenous people as one of Mexico’s clientelistic populations. Despite subscribing to multiculturalism, the Mexican state continues to implement contradictory measures that are more in line with the old indigenist policy of assimilation (for example, the 2014 telecommunication legislation reforms described above). On the other hand forms of self-government are an important cultural and political asset for counteracting fragmentation and exclusion promoted by US migration policies.

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Land dispute videos are another example of how priorities set in Tama diverge from the ethnic concept promoted by the Mexican state. Tama productions in this genre address the protracted border disputes with the neighboring villages of Tlahui and Ayutla, using a “visual-warfare” style to mobilize the villagers. Similar disputes about land and water are common throughout the Oaxacan Sierra Norte and partly instigated by cargo officials as a means of social control and of strengthening the fabric of the community (Chassen-López 2004: 444). The fact that the antagonists in these conflicts come from the same ethnic group, in this case the Ayuujk ja’ay, contradicts the ethnicizing logic of the state. Accordingly, land dispute documentaries are designed purely for internal consumption in the village. Indeed, conveying the dispute in a “politically correct” form for a wider audience within the scope of Video Indígena is virtually impossible due to the latter’s assumption of indigenous collectivity and solidarity. As a result, these films are rarely in circulation, remaining instead in the private video libraries of village inhabitants. Bearing this in mind, I will briefly analyze the first video in this genre, which I saw in August 2013 when Hermenegildo was in the process of digitalizing the TV Tamix archive. The recording in question was a spontaneous act by TV Tamix in 1996 during a land dispute that had once again flared up with the neighboring village of Tlahui. The landowners on the Tama side appealed to TV Tamix for help as their community mediamakers when Tlahui residents erected cement boundary stones at a controversial municipality border. A crew of three from this local television station arrived at the site and documented the fresh landmarks in war-coverage style. In line with local “visual warfare” tradition, people from Tlahui began cutting down the trees on a wide strip of land at the controversial borderline to enhance their claims, which the film carefully documents. Vicente Antúnez López from TV Tamix gives a running commentary on camera as though he were a war reporter at the front, accusing the Tlahui cement landmark “commando” of recklessly disregarding the natural environment. Shot at the remote village border, the film was screened at the General Assembly, where it whipped up sentiments against Tlahui. Today, Hermenegildo sees this documentary in a more critical light: along with others I spoke to in Tama, in retrospect he still endorses Tama’s commitment at the time, seeing the rivalry with Tlahui positively as a power struggle “between brothers.” On the other hand, he is concerned that village documentaries of this kind could be interpreted negatively by outsiders as showing discord among the Ayuujk ethnic group and thus be harmful to their image and legitimate political demands.

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Both of these examples illustrate that beyond the Mexican state’s conceptualization of the country’s indigenous peoples as ethnic Others, there are more complex horizons of identity and dimensions of belonging that are negotiated through and shaped by village media.

Structure of the Book This book traces the history of media production and consumption in transnational Tama and analyzes their current situation. Tama stands for Mexican ‘indigenous’ communities that have primarily been investigated from the perspective of the Video Indígena movement, which carries with it the implication that the advent of mass media in this village was due to a tight interplay with the media initiatives of the Mexican state. My research, in contrast, focuses on the autonomous, partly endogenous driving forces that were harnessed to reinvent photography, radio, film, television, and the Internet in a village that has meanwhile expanded transnationally to the United States. The desires that motivate Tama inhabitants to migrate on their own initiative and in the interests of modernizing village life are one such driver. New media practices, innovative genres, and debates evolving around them simultaneously serve to redefine belongings within the Ayuujk village of Tama/Tu’uk Nëëm, the relationship between indigenous people and the Mexican state, and the bond with the United States as a target destination of migration. Chapter 1 gives an insight into the mediatized social life of the transnationally extended community of Tamazulapam–Los Angeles. Its visual landscapes and soundscapes are created by male and female professional photographers and filmmakers, political activists, small-scale entrepreneurs, and by adults as well as youth. Tama played a prominent part in the Ayuujk indigenous movements, which used media at an early stage to spotlight demands for political self-determination. Mass media had in fact been used in a number of contexts even before this development. Community-run, commercial, youth-activist, and artistic media fields are now distinguished, with diversity stemming from the different perspectives of villagers in terms of age, gender, and educational and migration experience. A common feature of the various media fields is their use as a forum for intense debate on wider societal issues. Many current concerns in Tama are associated with the ideas and practices of its people pertaining to the village and the communal way of life (lo comunitario and comunalidad) during this period of international migration. They open up media spaces that challenge both the restrictive

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policies of the United States vis–à-vis job seekers from Latin America and the PRI government policy of fostering private media conglomerates and their top-down control of public opinion. By closely examining the cargo system and its mediatization, I trace the endeavors of the hometown in the state of Oaxaca to incorporate Tama migrants in its communal structures and migration’s synergistic effects. The hometown is thus able to maintain a central socio-political position despite the growing geographical dispersion of its population. By mediatizing social life, community members—including those living in Los Angeles— attempt to put into effect their own grassroots and democratic political understanding. Chapter 2 takes a detailed look at theories that village actors have developed in the field of audiovisual communication. Villagers engage in photography, radio, television broadcasting, videography, and social media with a view to their belonging to the Ayuujk ja’ay, an independent ethnolinguistic group whose way of life is based on precolonial traditions. At the same time, they reconfigure this awareness from several perspectives. Tama intellectuals interpret the current expansion of practices and representations through mass means of communication in their own terms in part by integrating the political ideas in global circulation. They developed the concept of holy space (espacio sagrado), of convivial space (espacio de convivencia), and of opening up spaces (abrir espacios) to encompass these novel media spaces. According to these intellectuals, Spanish colonization denied Ayuujk people their own representations and epistemology. As a result, they resorted to the counterstrategy of concealing vital cultural goods and banned even locals from viewing them. Part of this strategy involved a strict ban on photographing the village’s prime deity in order to safeguard “our own” knowledge. Recently young media activists have begun to question this legacy of the colonial era. Specifically, they engage in audiovisual decolonization by developing proper media production standards and applying them to themes of village interest. Media productions by members of the Colectivo Cultura y Resistencia Ayuuk, which are displayed at novel communicative spaces at the center of the hometown, for example the Feria Cultural del Pulque, tend to adopt controversial positions in these debates. These audiovisual media practices and representations modify and modernize what it means to be Ayuujk, challenging conventional understandings within the transnational village, while interweaving them with globally popular countercultural discourses such as Rastafarianism, socialism, and anarchism. Chapter 3 first explores Tama’s migration patterns and their diversity. Since the 1960s, villagers have augmented their cultural, social, and

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economic capital by means of study and work in places far from their hometown. In doing so, they tread a largely self-determined avenue of development. Migration became a key arena for the emergence, diversification, and advancement of audiovisual mass media, as well as their translocal production and consumption. In the course of migration, people in and from Tama developed new desires for communication and community building across vast geographical distances. Secondary education nurtured a new stage of life, that is, adolescence, which in turn gave rise to new recreational habits. Notably return migrants to the hometown introduced novel media services: they engaged in writing, set up a traveling cinema, and introduced new forms of recreation. One prominent example was the “Ayuujk Olympic Games” initiated by teachers; the games were held at the same time as the patron saint fiesta. Over a number of decades, Tama youth movements have epitomized the interplay between appropriated means of communication, novel patterns of recreation, and shifting social relations—the latter now mass mediatized. Photography was the first visual mass media form to be professionalized by the villagers on their own terms, thereby overcoming the visual divide. A valuable use of self-styled photography and videotaping occurs in the context of agrarian disputes with neighboring villages or in Tama itself. Here, it is especially apparent how and to what extent village politics have been mediatized. One illustration of this is the lienzos, or maps of communal land that were drawn on cloth during the colonial period. Since the 1990s, this medium has been replaced by photography and video, which are used first and foremost to document boundaries and their transgression. Even within the transnational village, being a comunero/a is essentially (re)defined in terms of land ownership in the hometown. Within the wider frame of mediatized community politics, pictures and films serve as visual legal evidence or as an element of “visual warfare” when negotiating land disputes. Photography, videotaping, and their dissemination via social media have thus become vital fields of activity for village governance within the context of geographic expansion into the United States. Chapter 4 addresses the communal and commercial versions of videography in Tama, whose media products are consumed in local, national, and international contexts. First, the case of TV Tamix demonstrates how the production and consumption of audiovisual media are part and parcel of wider debates on critical social matters. At the heart of the dispute that led to the demise of TV Tamix in 2000 was the channel’s unprecedented intervention in the political sphere of the village. At the same time, TV Tamix participated in the broader Video Indígena movement, albeit on its own terms. The local TV station un-

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covered the discrepancies between Video Indígena’s audiovisual language—one that satisfied the demand of external audiences for “indigenous authenticity”—and that of the village, which is geared to the desire of its audiences for “communal reality.” Second, migration to the United States at the end of the 1990s was accompanied by the emergence of a new village media genre: patron saint fiesta videos. Private entrepreneurs, mostly family businesses, made films that were classified for the first time as medios comerciales and for a number of reasons made efforts to reconcile business rationale with communitarian ideals. In essence, they act as comuneros/as and entrepreneurial videographers in one. Indeed, stressing the legitimacy of their new trade and distributing the fiesta videos locally and in the United States as an iconic product is their only method of securing the reproduction rights in negotiations with cargo officials. The popularity of this village genre has sparked important debates in the transnational audience. They deal, on the one hand, with mundane issues such as the risk of being exposed to ridicule in chusco scenes or of eliciting suspicions of infidelity in footage that shows them dancing with someone other than their own spouse. On the other hand, these debates serve to redefine gender roles, transnational family relations, and what it means to be a comunero/a in times of geographical dispersion. Chapter 5 analyzes Tama’s village media from the perspective of a specific section of their transnational audience: the Pan-American indigenous and alternative media movement. In October 2013, the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala, a weeklong media summit of indigenous organizations from all over the Americas, was held in Tama’s neighboring village, Tlahui. Before the summit had even begun, a heated debate arose on the degree of independence that alternative media and notably their umbrella organization should maintain vis-à-vis the Mexican state, in particular financial independence. This same issue is at the center of intense disputes on the commodification of village culture by entrepreneurial videographers, the co-optation of community-based media by the state, and financial subordination to the federal government’s interests. Quarrels, both prior to and during the summit, highlight the search in local media for ways to mobilize resources for media production, dissemination, and consumption that comply with the political aims of autonomy within the nation state. The tension triggered by the summit revealed the divergence between communal and commercial media fields, on the one hand, and between Ayuujk municipalities, on the other hand, as in the case of Tama and Tlahui. Both communities are aligned with national and Pan-American indigenous organizations, while simultane-

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ously adopting positions of their own. In the struggle for recognition of their ethnopolitical demands, Tama and Tlahui set different priorities when it comes to the role of village media and the transmission and promotion of Ayuujk culture. Yet by mutually referring to their communal projects, they ultimately contribute to enhancing the uniqueness of Ayuujk media spaces at national and Pan-American levels.

Notes 1. The film And the River Flows On was produced in 2010 and won the Alanis Obomsawin Award for best documentary at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Canada the same year. The university course in Berlin, which was organized in cooperation with Florian Walter, discussed “Media Spaces: Culture and Representation in Latin America” (MedienRäume: Kultur und Repräsentation in Lateinamerika). 2. Media production in indigenous languages frequently uses amateur video formats. Only a minority of indigenous media practitioners engage in professional formats that target global cinema audiences. The Berlin film festival has become a hub of this international movement. In 2013 the special program “NATIVe: A Journey into Indigenous Cinema” was integrated as a regular sidebar. 3. The Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) program had agreed to broadcast our television report. When we returned to Germany, however, the editor in charge had been replaced. As it turned out, his successor did not share his level of interest in the subject of the film. 4. With this expression Carlos jokingly referred to the case of the Rollos Perdidos de Pancho Villa, which Rocha Valverde and Gregorio Carlos (2003) had dealt with in a documentary. 5. The unedited footage, we archived as “Transferencia de Medios,” is in itself evidence of the exchange between Mexico’s indigenous mediamakers and Manfred Schäfer and me as anthropological filmmakers. 6. The explicitly community-oriented mediamakers prefer to self-identify as comunicadores, not as camarógrafos or videoastas, because the term comunicadores avoids reference to current technology alone. Instead, it emphasizes the historical continuity of the use of media by indigenous people for social ends and free of charge (Servindi 2008: 11–12). 7. Some of media anthropology scholarship points out that different audiences have been instrumental in shaping the messages and images of indigeneity conveyed by indigenous media. With reference to the documentary Dulce convivencia (Sweet Gathering) Laurel C. Smith (2012) analyzes how the different expectations of audiences such as those at film festivals, transnational advocacy networks for indigenous peoples, and the author with his own interpretation (in this case Ayuujk filmmaker Filoteo Gómez Martínez from Quetzaltepec) impact the reception of the film. I basically agree with her approach of mapping these interferences, which contradict a single scholarly interpretation of the video. She refers in particular to Donna Haraway’s cyborgian concept of “diffraction.” Smith, however, does not deal with local community reception, since Dulce convivencia was never shown to an Ayuujk audience in Quetzalte-

Media Diversity in an ‘Indigenous’ Community | 43

8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

pec because Gómez Martínez was afraid of “getting in to trouble” following a political conflict that involved his family (Wortham 2013: 217). Gabriela Zamorano Villareal (2012, 2014) investigated the many different ways in which indigenous mediamakers and audiences engaged with images of indigeneity in self-detemined Bolivia film productions during the first period of Evo Morales’ presidency. She pays special attention to circulation and consumption dynamics, which are also highlighted in this book with regard to the reception and interpretation of videos produced in Tama by the transnational village and the Video Indígena circuit. The INI was founded in 1948 and absorbed by the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (CDI) in 2003. The filmmakers Juan José García (quoted in Wortham 2004: 365) and Carlos Pérez Rojas (2005, quoted in http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/esp/rose/ efrain_c_interview.htm, accessed on 6 June 2013) endorsed this communal orientation. As Erica Wortham (2013: 9) explains, “Video Indígena [is a] specific media categor[y] that [was] deliberately constructed in institutional settings in the 1990s.” Although dealing with Tama as a case study, Wortham does not focus specifically on its media production as part of a wider and diversified media field that at first adopted mass media independent of INI and was later co-opted as part of Video Indígena. The unusually large number of municipalities (570) in the state stems from its linguistic and cultural diversity. In addition to the group of Spanish-speaking mestizos and indigenous people who have recently migrated to Oaxaca, the population is divided into sixteen ethnolinguistic groups, of which the Ayuujk ja’ay (endonym) or Mixe (exonym) with 120,000 people is average in size. The Ayuujk people mostly settle in tightly knit communities in a region northeast of Oaxaca City (Maldonado Alvarado and Cortés Márquez 1999; Torres Cisneros 2004: 47). ‘Indigenous’ is written in simple quotation marks to remind readers that the term is problematic. It unduly homogenizes people according to the historically constructed ethnic category of colonized inhabitants of the Americas and elides much more varied self-conceptions that include differences in gender, age, profession, and locality. In the course of this book, the term indigenous will not always be written in quotation marks, but it should be kept in mind that the inhabitants of Tama widely reject this term as their self-designation. The word indigenous, however, has been appropriated as a political term by some stakeholders and redefined as a positive self-reference. Today, politically engaged actors prefer to self-identify as pueblos originarios, “original people.” In this book, I primarily use the term Ayuujk ja’ay, meaning “Ayuujk people” as a term of ethnic self-designation. When the spoken language is Spanish, the Ayuujk people tend to use the exonym Mixe as a term of self-reference. As a rule, they see it as erroneous rather than discriminatory. Mixe may well have been coined by the Spaniards who derived it from the Ayuujk word for young man, mïx. Ayuujk translates as “language” or “flowery language,” and ja’ay as “group” or “people” (Martínez Pérez 1993: 334). The literature shows diverse notations of Ayuujk like “Ayuuk.” The Tama variant is “Ëyuujk.” Interview with Leonardo Ávalos Bis, Yalálag, 29 April 2016. He characterized videos de comunidad, among other things, as a genre that captures “reality” (lo real) as perceived by its audience, such as by recording events in real time. For

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13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

this reason village videographers desist where possible from editing or manipulating images through animation. The demands of indigenous movements in Oaxaca and those of the neo-Zapatista EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) in Chiapas in 1995 pressured the state government of Oaxaca into legally recognizing the cargo system as so-called usos y costumbres (literally: traditions and customs). The new legislation granted municipalities like Tama the right to self-government according to their own principles, without the onus of complying with the Mexican party system. According to the understanding of usos y costumbres in Tama, each village member is obliged every six years to serve for a year as an official of the cabildo on a voluntary basis. The officials concerned are expected to invest their own money in the one-year term of office (see chapter 1). The alternative to this system involves engagement in the national political parties (that is, the PRI, PAN, PRD or Morena). Conflict and division abide in many villages in Oaxaca between comunalistas who back usos y costumbres, on the one hand, and supporters of the political parties, on the other. So far, this has not occurred in Tama. Usos y costumbres is a contentious term, not least because it characterizes a vital civil-religious institution as static “customs.” Numerous scholars prefer to call it an “internal normative system” (sistema normativo interno). Nevertheless, usos y costumbres is the term people in Tama adopted for the most part, equating it with their notion of comunalidad. Mediatization is used here as a “catch-all term to cover any and all changes in social and cultural life consequent upon media institutions operation” (Couldry 2008: 378). The Video Indígena movement in Mexico during this period of the 1990s has meanwhile been well researched from a media anthropology perspective. For greater detail see Alexandra Halkin (2006), Ingrid Kummels (2010, 2011), Carlos Gilberto Plascencia Fabila and Carlos Monteforte (2001), and José Rodríguez Ramos and Antoni Castells i Talens (2010). Similar to the terms indio and indígena, “Video Indígena” was later appropriated and resignified by the actors involved with a view to their own political interest in self-determination (Wortham 2013: 9–10, 62). An example of this is the use of modern media technology by the EZLN in Chiapas at the beginning of the 1990s. The “cyber guerilla” owed its prominence to the appropriation of technology and the discursive strategies it developed in its Internet communiqués, allowing them to mobilize left-wing activists around the world for their political aims. As a result, the Mexican government saw itself forced to negotiate with members of EZLN at the “Dialogue of San Cristóbal.” In 2001, Article 3 of the Mexican constitution was amended. The amendment affirms that the pluricultural composition of the Mexican nation is based on the specific social, economic, cultural, and political institutions of the indigenous peoples. In 2003, indigenous languages were officially recognized as national languages. Sparked initially by the Oaxaca teachers’ trade union Sección 22 (Local 22), a branch of the national Sindicato Nacional de Trabajores de Educación (SNTE), and its demands for higher salaries for teachers in 2006, the social movement subsequently became a much broader alliance. Over three hundred organizations representing teachers, indigenous peoples, women, students, peasants, and urban neighborhoods joined forces in this movement (Stephen 2013: 3).

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20. The extensive oeuvre of Díaz and Martínez Luna has been published in recent years. See Jaime Martínez Luna (2010, 2014) and Sofía Robles Hernández and Rafael Cardoso Jiménez (2007). 21. Alejandra Aquino Moreschi (2013) collected important contributions on this topic in an issue of the journal Cuadernos del Sur. She emphasizes that since comunalidad refers to the principles of conviviality practiced in the Sierra Norte villages, it even surpasses Guillermo Bonfil’s (1972) then progressive formulation according to which pueblos indígenas are not defined by essential cultural traits, but by the condition of colonization (Aquino Moreschi 2013: 10–11). Several Ayuujk linguists and anthropologists have elaborated on the concept of comunalidad, among them Marcelino Domínguez Domínguez (1987) of Cacalotepec. 22. In the timeframe of my investigation, a movement organized by students of the Universidad Iberoamericana of Mexico City emerged in 2012 and was known as #YoSoy132. Its members used social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as a brand new form of participation in the national public sphere. Following the visit of presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto to the university on what was subsequently referred to as “Black Friday,” numerous protests took place against his denial of responsibility for injustices in Atengo. The misrepresentation by mainstream television of their massive protest prompted students to establish an influential “deliberative audience” via virtual networking (see Villamil 2012). 23. The critical debates following the educational reform implemented by the Peña Nieto government are one example of this. At the national level, the arguments of teachers organized in Sección 22 of the SNTE were increasingly challenged as purely protective of their own political group (that is, the teachers). Radio Jënpoj broadcast extensively on Sección 22’s long-range demands for education. Unlike most mainstream media, they interpreted the demands as part of the teachers’ legitimate struggle to adopt professional standards to meet local needs and to fight against the privatization of education envisioned by the reform project. In 2016 Radio Jënpoj formed part of the alternative media that essentially informed on the events in Nochixtlán on 19 June, in which Mexican federal police fired at civilians in the context of ongoing teacher opposition to Peña Nieto’s educational reform. Seven people were killed. 24. Individuals identify with the village of Tama based on their ownership of communal land and compliance with obligations, including voluntary service as an official. In such cases, they are generally recognized as a comunero/a. 25. Paisanos/as, a Spanish term for compatriot, is mainly used to designate community members living in the United States. Fiesta videos certainly enjoy a large international distribution, something I was able to verify with random sampling in Los Angeles and New York, where ethnic shops for Mexicans specialize in offering CDs and DVDs with video clips, fiesta videos, documentaries, and feature films produced locally in Mexico. 26. The definition generally applied in anthropology conceives the political in terms of processes that are public and at the same time target-oriented. These processes involve preservation, displacement, and reconfiguration of the political power structure of the group involved (Swartz, Turner, and Tuden 1966: 7). Chantal Mouffe’s and Kirstie McClure’s concept of “quotidian politics” also supports this understanding (Rodríguez 2001: 20–21).

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27. Michelle Raheja (2010: 70) uses Edward Soja’s concept of Thirdspace with regard to North America and conceives the so-called virtual reservation as a “more creative, kinetic space where Indigenous artists collectively and individually employ technologies and knowledges to rethink the relationship between media and Indigenous communities.” With help of the term trialectics Edward Soja (1996: 65) describes Henri Lefebvre’s espace perçu (perceived space), espace conçu (conceived space), and espace vécu (lived space) as interrelated spatialities and identifies with them productive thinking that transcends binary models. 28. Faye Ginsburg (1994: 366) is among the visual anthropologists who adopted Appadurai’s concept of mediascape to “take account of the media practices with the local, national, and transnational circumstances that surround them” with reference to Aboriginal media in Australia. 29. Arjun Appadurai (1997: 7) applied the term “visual decolonization” to indicate the wide use of backdrops for “experiments with modernity” for photography in postcolonial settings. Similarly, I extend this term to include the various applications of mass media in Ayuujk society for self-determined development. 30. Mëjk’ äjtïn is a common expression in the context of sacrificing and praying in the Ayuujk religion. 31. Actors use Spanish terms to convey their space concepts to the wider Spanishspeaking, non-Ayuujk audience. 32. One example of the latter is the Televisa telenovela from 2012, A Refuge for Love (Un refugio para el amor), in which the Tarahumara protagonist works as a household maid. 33. With regard to modern visual and audiovisual media technology such as photography and film, early communication scholars like Marshall McLuhan (McLuhan and Fiore 1967) and visual anthropologists like Edmund Carpenter (1972) advanced the understanding that it promoted first and foremost the semantics and viewpoint of the “Western” world. 34. Faye Ginsburg’s (1994: 368) concept of “embedded aesthetics” emphasizes the local mediamakers’ inclination (in this case in Australia) to judge media work “by its capacity to embody, sustain, and even revive or create certain social relations.” That is, the concept refers to the conscious effort of embedding new media in existing communicative traditions. 35. See http://www.docwest.co.uk/projects/rebecca-savage/, accessed on 19 April 2015. 36. With regard to the pitfalls of neoliberal multiculturalism in Mexico see Gledhill (2012). 37. Daniela Cremoux Wanderstok (1997: 70) remarks critically that the initiators of the program had the illusion that “modern technology and a crash course would make it possible to formulate ideas and promote an audiovisual language imbued with the most profound idiosyncrasies of the Mexican people” (my translation). 38. Interview with Guillermo Monteforte, Oaxaca, 21 August 2008. 39. These documentaries were emulated by INI trainees. See also Cremoux Wanderstok (1997: 129). 40. Although INI employees were aware of Tama’s Casa del Pueblo mediamakers, they did not invite them to their first workshops. They were afraid it might be interpreted as taking sides with Tama at a time when it engaged in an intense land dispute with the neighboring village of Tlahui. It was not until 1992 that

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41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48.

49.

50.

51.

several members, among them Victoriano Guilberto, were invited to a Video Indígena workshop in Tlacolula. Interview with Guillermo Monteforte, Oaxaca City, 21 July 2013; see also Wortham (2013: 66). Ingrid Kummels and Manfred Schäfer (1993). For this concept, see also Köhler (2004). Camcorder interview with Genaro und Hermenegildo Rojas, Tamazulapam, October 2013. All interviews cited in this book were recorded and translated from Spanish by the author. Ayuujk individuals sometimes use indígena in the derogatory sense of backwards, as in the following sentence: “Yesterday, I was in a village that was really indigenous (indígena de a de veras). There was no cell phone signal there.” Romel, born in 1988, works in the family enterprise Video Tamix, which specializes in documenting social events audiovisually. This commercial enterprise should not be confused with TV Tamix, the local TV station in operation until 2000 and seen as a community-run media project. The name Romel (with only one “m”) itself subverts simplifying dichotomies. Romel’s father named his son after a Mexican political leader in the Movimiento Antorchista Nacional, a progressive movement that combats poverty and was founded by rural Mexican teachers in the 1970s. Interview with Romel Ruiz Pérez, Tamazulapam, 31 October 2013. Romel has experience as a migrant to the northern Mexican city of Salamanca, where he worked in a taco restaurant. Over a period of two decades, men dominated the Video Indígena movement despite the pioneering role of Teófila Palafox from San Mateo del Mar with her film La vida de una familia Ikoods (1988). It was not until 2008 that numerous women were trained as mediamakers in the workshops of Ojo de Agua Comunicación, one of the most important alternative media organizations in Mexico. The constitutional reform that introduced the Ley Federal de Telecomunicaciones in 1995, promoted privatization of the former state monopoly on radio and television. When the “Pact for Mexico” (Pacto por México) between the political parties PRI, PAN, and PRD was dissolved in April 2012, the federal government reestablished former agreements in favor of Televisa. See the interview with Aleida Calleja quoted in Bräth (2014). Buen vivir or Vivir bién (Sumak kawsay in Kichwa and Suma qamaña in Aymara) are presently key concepts in the constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia and refer to an alternative form of development based on indigenous epistemologies. These terms are also used by Ayuujk activists who prefer to promote their own, locally based concepts of development. The emergence of the neo-Zapatista movement was accompanied by increased circulation in the public sphere of indigenous epistemologies from different areas of Mexico. One concept used by Ayuujk movements is Wëjen kajën, a typical Ayuujk dual expression that derives from Ayuujk education epistemology and translates as “to know and to develop.” Franco Gabriel Hernández is an indigenous movement leader and politician who has been well-known since the 1980s. He presided over ANPIBAC (Alianza Nacional de Profesionales Indígenas Bilingües A.C.) for many years (consult Gutiérrez 1999: 127–132), was president of Mexico’s Comisión Nacional de Seguimiento of the CNCI (Congreso Nacional de Comunicación Indígena), and

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52.

53.

54.

55.

assumed the position of General Coordinator of the Media Summit between 2010 and 2013. Ojo de Agua Comunicación split from INI’s “Transferencia de Medios Audiovisuales” program in 1998. It is now an independent organization that provides support to the radio and video operations of indigenous communities in Oaxaca. It also produces its own films. Not only is videoasta rarely used as an emic term, there is no other comparable term for the profession in the Ayuujk language. This is consistent with the general view that videography basically requires little time and effort and that, on the contrary, it is the images themselves that capture social reality. See the explanations of comunicadores Genaro and Hermenegildo Rojas, who participated in these workshops. The anthropological films that later appeared in the DVD series El Cine Indigenista set the standard for instruction and were emulated by the trainees. The realism filmic code expanded in the 1980s to include the observational mode approach, for example, that replaced the omniscient voice-over (“God’s voice”) with original conversations and comments of the protagonists. In Oaxaca, these novel film courses were organized and conducted in close cooperation with Ojo de Agua Comunicación.

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Figure 1.1. Globalized Tama, 2013–2016. Photos: Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

CHAPTER 1

Tamazulapam–Los Angeles Media Fields of a Transnational Ayuujk Village

The Hometown and Its Satellites The transnationally extended community of Tamazulapam–Los Angeles has its own characteristics when compared with other communities of the Oaxacan Sierra Norte, each of which has tread its specific path to transnationalism. In the course of migration a particular media history was forged as well. Tamazulapam del Espíritu Santo is one of the many villages that have expanded in recent decades to cities such as Los Angeles and Milwaukee in the United States following the migration of its residents. At the same time it is one of 570 municipalities in the Mexican state of Oaxaca; in terms of its language, culture, institutions, and inhabitants’ sense of belonging it clearly positions itself as Ayuujk ja’ay, Ayuujk people. In addition to the 7,000 inhabitants in the village, several thousand others have been living in a number of satellite communities dispersed throughout Mexico and the United States since the end of the 1990s. In contrast to other villages, such as those of the neighboring Zapotecs and Mixtecs, mass migration of the people from Tama began relatively late, that is, shortly before 9/11, so that job seekers faced particularly restrictive immigration policies. The overwhelming majority of Tama migrants therefore reside undocumented in the United States with no hope of obtaining a green card, and can only visit their country of origin at considerable risk. As a means of both overcoming the constraints of geographical distance as well as conserving “our own” culture, people in and from Tama have long taken particular pains to appropriate mass media such as writing and telegraphy (see chapter 2) and now photography, videotaping, and social media and use them for communicating across the international border. Commercial photographers and videographers have thus

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become part of an increasingly diversified business sector in the transnational village; this chapter will describe the wider context in which this new occupational field emerged. While carrying out ethnographic research I rapidly became aware that there is no “original”, static hometown (Cruz 2016). Instead Tama is a translocalized village to which many regularly commute from the capital of Oaxaca, where part of its population lives, studies, and works, since the journey takes just under two hours. Moreover, in many cases Tama residents are former migrants who after many years have returned from the Mexican capital, northern Mexican cities, or the United States. It is against this background that the villagers constantly reflect on the tension between here and there and what is “our own” culture. Youth, entrepreneurial individuals, and intellectuals in particular act upon this tension by engaging in media practices. Their use of radio, photography, videotaping, and social media is often a means of both seeking a new field of business and engaging with the community when reintegrating into their hometown. The following is a description of the home village’s urbanization, its inhabitants’ use of clothing and language, its occupational structure, and the respective characteristics of the satellite community in Los Angeles. These elements are part of the larger picture in which actors carry out media practices while seeking to open new media spaces. Their media practices are often directed toward intervening in internal community affairs and problems, while at the same time they may acquire a transnational outreach. What first catches the eye on arrival in Tama is its modern appearance, one which the village has acquired without adhering to a general urbanization plan, but nevertheless is largely based on its own efforts, among them the substantial investments paisanos/as living abroad have made in their Mexican hometown. Multi-story concrete houses with large windows and satellite dishes on each roof are packed together at acute angles across the steep mountain slope. Tama’s main road is lined with shops: taquerías (taco restaurants), abarrotes (corner stores), cybers (Internet cafés), and stores that sell shoes, clothes, stationery, gift items, video games, and Telcel mobile phones and offer Sky television services. The “Pizza Mixe” restaurant on the main street opened in 2014. This eatery demonstrates the prosperity that many locals have achieved as labor migrants in the food and restaurant sector. As a result of their business acumen, new hybrid foods and recipes are now an integral part of the local daily diet. At first glance the facades seem dominated by the iconography of globalization: manga and fantasy figures adorn the fronts of video game stores, a Firefox logo points to the Internet café, and the shoe store advertises international brands. Young critics

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living in Tama make fun of its highly urbanized center as ugly and the antithesis of the “magic village” (pueblo mágico) image promoted by the Oaxacan Ministry of Tourism with reference to the state’s indigenous communities.1 A closer look, however, reveals numerous local and ethnic accents that point to the fact that despite extensive transformation, the village has simultaneously conserved practices of pre-Columbian origin to a remarkable degree. Ey ko miny, an Ayuujk welcome phrase, is written on the sign above the entrance to the liquor store—I realized later that this is where most of the ritual gifts of mezcal and tequila for newly elected officials and sponsors of the community festivals are bought. Several businesses specialize in poultry of varying colors, age, and size. Here, too, local knowledge is called for to understand their association with sacrifices (called costumbres in Spanish) vital to the rituals performed by the Ayuujk ja’ay in their “own” religion and originating in ancient Mesoamerican notions of renewing life through the offering of blood (compare Pitrou 2011; see chapter 2). Most villagers perform them regularly having consulted a local religious expert, a diviner, on questions of hosting a celebration, health, educational progress, work, (dis)harmony in marriage or the family and, in particular, journeys across the US border. Costumbres are also carried out for relatives who have migrated to northern Mexico or the United States, of whom there is at least one in each household. At the festive meal celebrated after performance of the sacrifices participants make a cell phone call to the absent relative, who financed the costumbre, so that he or she can also be part of the festivity and secure well-being from a distance. What strikes the visitor about Tama is the apparent prosperity of this village in the Sierra Norte region and its modern, globalized image with local accents. In this sense it contradicts the standard Mexican image of indigenous life as synonymous with poverty, backwardness, and existing on the margins of the country’s mainstream development. At the same time, local architecture continues emphasizing the importance of communal facilities as a way of expressing its claim on the long-standing political and religious autonomy of Mesoamerican villages: two L-shaped buildings with the typical arcades of the region constitute the main premises of the municipal government. Facing the municipal buildings is the church, which was extended in 2004 by two new bell towers and a neon green cross on the ridge of the roof. The town’s main plaza includes two basketball courts. The village cargo system, which combines the spheres of the political with the religious, unfurls at this centerpiece of the town: it is closely associated with the organization of celebrations such as the patron saint fiestas of El Espíritu Santo and Santa Rosa de

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Lima. In Tama, all projects of a political, commercial, or artistic nature that make use of audiovisual media are linked to this governance system, which is crucial to the generation of new media spaces. Much of the bustling construction activity of the last twenty years was associated, on the one hand, with ramo 33, the budgetary aid program for municipalities introduced by the federal and state governments in 1986. This policy triggered “the spread, in the whole Sierra, of buildings constructed of gravel and concrete, which now form a landscape of green and grey” (Valdivia Dounce 2010: 284).2 On the other hand, the same period saw a great deal of private construction financed by migradolares. These new houses in Tama frequently contain architectural elements characteristic of Mexican cities (like large windows) or of US suburbs (such as chimneys and attached garages), and as such are typical of the “architecture of migration” (Camus and Bastos 2011). Community members living in the United States build their houses in absentia. Some oversee the work per video, having contracted a local videographer to record the proceedings, on the basis of which they decide on the next construction steps. Money is transferred to relatives in the village, who are delegated to supervise construction. The houses are usually spacious but often sparsely furnished, since they remain uninhabited for most of the year. Ayuujk identity is negotiated constantly in certain aspects of everyday life. Women’s attire is a case in point; considered emblematic of the village, its significance is comparable to that of a national flag. The attire consists of a white huipil (dress-length blouse) with seams trimmed in red, a dark blue ankle-length skirt that is held by the soyate (a sash woven from plant fibers), and a cotton sash tied in layers around the waist. Ideally a woman will wear her hair long, tied at the back and decorated with a bright red, long, woven ribbon called the tlacoyal. They also cover their head with Tama’s characteristic white rebozo (shawl) with its stripes in red, green, orange, and blue. Even though younger women no longer wear traditional dress in their daily lives—in contrast to older women—this icon of identity has been revitalized: it is worn at official functions, indigenous movement events, fiestas, and lately at high school and university graduations. Tania Martínez Cruz, who is a PhD candidate in Knowledge, Technology and Innovation at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, received Mexico’s National Award of Youth in August 2016 dressed in the traditional attire for women in Tama; Marisol Ambrosio Martínez, a founder of CCREA, donned the traditional garb to defend her bachelor thesis in architecture at the Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca (UABJO) in July 2015, the first ever in Mexico in an indigenous language. The dress is not

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only a frequent motif in photographs and locally and transnationally produced videos, but is worn at work, for example, by videographer Genoveva Pérez Rosas as part of her appropriation of mass media (see chapter 4). Even adult men and the younger generation, all of whom dress in the ubiquitous jeans, shirts and T-shirts, use subtle ethnic symbols such as locally woven shoulder bags and, when the weather turns cold, woolen ponchos known as gabanes. The clothes, accessories, and habits of youth in particular bear witness to dynamic processes of globalization and appropriation. Some sport dreadlocks, a sign of their Rastafari faith, and generally black clothes with accents in the Jamaican colors, thus redefining Ayuujk identity (see section below, The Youth Movement and the Media). A further context of negotiation and field of tension is the use of the Ayuujk language. It is common for people to speak in Ayuujk, both in everyday life and at community festivals and political events. According to current statistics, 95 percent of residents speak Ayuujk as well as Spanish. On the other hand, the mother tongue has been displaced from key settings of village life. As a result of policies enforcing the use of the Spanish language (castellanización) state schools in the town center all belong to the educación “formal” system and impart knowledge in Spanish only. Due to the dominance and prestige of the language, many parents continue to educate their children exclusively in Spanish, although they speak Ayuujk colloquially. A growing number of people, particularly youth, understand but cannot speak the indigenous language or are ashamed to do so. Besides, few specialists know how to write in Ayuujk. For this reason the degree of proficiency in the mother tongue is now judged critically. A countermovement in Tama has been lobbying since the 1980s to strengthen the Ayuujk language. In particular, village mediamakers began using it for the first time on radio and television programs, as well as at public lectures. These practices thus successfully paved the way for the current revitalization of the Ayuujk language and culture, which pervades the new media spaces. International migration, too, pervades everyday life and the social structure of the hometown, which at first sight may seem paradoxical given the remarkable continuities displayed with regard to traditional culture. The desire to migrate for the purpose of higher education or work has become so common that a local infrastructure has been created: subcontractors regularly recruit asparagus cutters to travel to Sonora for the harvest months. A coyote team offers various modes of travel to the United States: from the cheap option without documents, which includes several days hiking through the desert, to the most expensive method with forged documents, allowing for immediate travel

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across the border checkpoint into the United States without risking life and limb.3 In daily conversations, young adults regularly talk about a relative, friend, or acquaintance that has recently left and inquire whether the individual has reported a safe arrival north of the border. Young people are generally faced with a dilemma: should they invest in higher education in Mexico or first migrate to the United States to work and earn the money to invest in a business in Tama or elsewhere? This pressure of mobility, however, is nothing new. The majority of villagers have migrated repeatedly in the course of their lives. Young boys and girls born in the 1930s were taken to indigenist boarding schools in Ayutla, Zoogocho, and Guelatao. Some of those born in the 1950s and 1960s migrated to Mexico City in search of work. When in the late 1990s migrants began to look to the United States, they built upon former generations’ experiences with internal migration. Migration to continue education or to work therefore has long been part of the social fabric of Tama. Its current dynamics create imbalances in the composition of the hometown population: there are more women and children than men; many young people complain that significant numbers in their age group have emigrated, for the most part to the United States. Despite this growing mobility and rapid change, many still consider their home village as sedentary and rural as it supposedly was in the past. Farm land and water resources are cherished as if agriculture were still the principal form of subsistence, which it no longer is, especially for those living in the town center.4 Land and water are still at the heart of agrarian disputes, which remain virulent and have been mediatized and transnationalized in the past two decades (see chapter 3). Some remarks on the territory and political organization of the municipality are appropriate here. Tama covers an area of over 63 square kilometers and, apart from the cabecera municipal (which in general is called el centro), includes eight agencias de policía or agencias municipales located at a distance of fifteen minutes to over an hour’s drive from the center— Tierra Blanca, Linda Vista, Las Peñas, Rancho el Señor (Konkixp), El Duraznal, Cuatro Palos, Tierra Caliente, and El Maguey—and the local center (núcleo) Santa Rosa. In the 1940s, the agencias were introduced as a strategic measure to secure the border with the six neighboring municipalities in the wake of land disputes. At the same time, the inhabitants of the primarily agricultural agencias are somewhat secessionist. In some instances they decry the need to practice communal labor (tequio) in the form of road construction, which they see as principally serving the interests of el centro. The status of agencia allows for greater autonomy, since it involves partial self-government headed by an agente municipal and management of separate financial funds.

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This blend of change and continued tradition is also apparent in Tama’s occupational pattern.5 Approximately 30 percent of residents are small business owners. Some still trade in traditional crops such as corn, beans, and locally produced beef; handmade pottery; and traditional handwoven garments. Currently, however, trade focuses first and foremost on industrial products, a “modern” assortment of basic foods and household items, as well as clothing that follows national and international fashion trends and either comes directly from factories in the Mexican textile center of Puebla or is (re)imported from the United States. Trade in local ceramics, the once dominant handicrafts sector, is on the wane; although my hostess was still trading in these goods on a grand scale around the turn of the millennium, many of the small producers have now abandoned their pottery manufacturing businesses. Despite this realignment of merchandise, most traders remain itinerant traders (comerciantes ambulantes), that is, they travel from one market to the next, from one patron saint fiesta to the next, selling anything from ixtle, a rough agave fiber, to widescreen televisions.6 A small number of traders have a fixed shop or a stall at the covered market. A few—no more than twenty-five or thirty altogether—have become entrepreneurs with substantial capital. Most of them sell hardware and building materials. Since the local construction boom in the late 1990s following international migration, the latter have become sought-after commodities. Other, larger traders sell coffee to the international market, a cash crop introduced to the region in the 1930s. Finally, there is the lucrative taquería business. In the 1990s, taqueros began to open restaurants of various sizes, offering their clientele a variety of skewered meats served on small tortillas seasoned with fresh herbs, onions, and sauces. The most successful taco restaurants are found in the migration destinations of Mexico City, Celaya, San Miguel de Allende, San Luis Potosí, Guanajuato, Guadalajara, and Los Angeles. Additional destinations are the states of Aguascalientes, Veracruz, and Chiapas. The most prosperous entrepreneurs in this sector have up to one hundred employees and have created their own brand restaurants. Commercial photographers and videomakers are part of Tama’s business community. The videographers travel in traditional style from one patron saint fiesta to another. Some use their experience and the money they made from selling pirate copies of CDs and DVDs at the local markets to advance their current businesses. Like most of the village’s entrepreneurs they do not follow a purely capitalist market logic.7 Most of them feel compelled to adhere to a pronounced communitarian business ethos and generously participate in sponsoring the village in the context of fiestas, for example. In the past, land ownership and the pro-

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duction of large amounts of corn were considered measures of wealth, as indicated by the Ayuujk terms for affluent, këkaam kënäjx (someone who owns several pieces of land) and këmoojk këxëëjk (a person with large amounts of corn and beans). Today, këmeeny (a person with a lot of money) typically refers to someone rich and has a markedly positive connotation.8 Commercial photographers and videographers, however, are controversial compared to other merchants, since they deal with an unusual good: images of celebrations that could be claimed as the cultural property of the community by, among others, cargo officials. Another professional field in Tama exerting great influence on shaping Ayuujk culture through media practices is the teaching sector, referred to as el magisterio. The approximately 260 teachers now living in Tama are a privileged group compared to the majority of the population.9 In the 1960s, teachers became perhaps the most important internal force in town. Around this time the cargo officials identified education as the gateway to development of the village and the first teachers from Tama were highly successful in developing the local school system (see chapter 2). As employees of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), teachers now work with two school systems, educación “formal” and educación indígena. But regardless of the official differences between these two systems, Tama teachers and other academics such as the etnolingüistas10 have since long set their own priorities. They engage in, among other things, producing elaborate dance, music, and theater performances with their students for school celebrations, large regional events, national holidays, and other occasions. For decades these performances have been forged into an alternative to comparable celebrations, the fiestas on Catholic holidays, and to promote the ethnopolitical renewal of the “nación Ayuujk.” Teachers, as a rule, are class conscious and politically active; they typically argue from an ethnic perspective in discussions. As such they are a significant political factor, one that resonates beyond the borders of the village. They were core initiators of the strikes and the uprising that took place in 2006 to force the resignation of the corrupt PRI state government under Ulises Ruiz.11 For decades teachers have effectively defended their professional interests with regard to local cultural values within the framework of what is today the most important teachers union in Oaxaca, Sección 22.12 As members of Sección 22 they plan and carry out actions in grassroots organizational form at the community, regional, and national level. The use of media is a large element of these activities, so that in general teachers take pictures and make video recordings as part of their political work. But, while the turn to socialist forms of government and education is particularly pronounced at the local and regional level, the structure

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of the national teachers union, Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE), is highly clientelistic at the national level, a stark contrast to the politics of its members at the lower levels. The federal educational reform under Enrique Peña Nieto’s PRI government in 2013 revised and restricted the rights of teachers, considerably undermining the political power of the union.13 Another group in Tama is comprised of small farmers and unskilled workers, whose economic situation used to be the most precarious, because local employment was very scarce in the 1990s. It is they who were mostly drawn to migrant labor with its promise of upward social mobility. Capital acquired in this way enables migrant returnees to invest in a house, a car, and/or a small business. In the meantime, however, international migration has become so expensive as a result of the enormous cost of undocumented border crossing that it has become the prerogative of professional groups with higher incomes. Unskilled workers now more easily find local employment as day laborers (chalanes) at the market, in shops, in restaurants, in the transportation business, or in construction work carried out by the municipality. Several waves of migration to cities in Mexico and the United States have altered the character of the once translocal village of Tama in the direction of transnationalization.14 As early as the 1970s, people from Tama settled in the city of Oaxaca and maintained regular contact with their hometown by fulfilling the obligation to serve as an official every six years. Today the journey from the village to the state capital takes just under two hours. Many villagers travel there frequently to access public services, make large purchases, complete their higher education, visit children who are away at school, or for other reasons. Wealthy people usually have an apartment or a house in Oaxaca and their own car to drive back and forth. For this section of the population, Tama and Oaxaca constitute a continuum. “I come and go” (voy y vengo) is what many say of their commuting; there is no way of knowing in which of the two they are at any given time. Many migrants remain connected to the hometown by means of concrete financial transfers and services. These flows and networks have in particular led to the transformation of Tama’s cargo system into a transnationalized governance system (compare Besserer and Kearney 2004). But this is not the only way that villagers who live geographically dispersed elaborate on their sense of common identity. Today new communicative networks, which are knit with the help of local and transnational media, play a central role in community building. Los Angeles is home to one of the most important diaspora communities, with an estimated 400 migrants from Tama, most between twenty

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and forty-five years of age. This satellite community is constituted on the basis of transborder communal structures, for which the term transcomunalidad seems suited.15 In 1999 and 2000, countless Tama residents migrated to the destination country, the United States, when it was undergoing a period of economic prosperity. Settlement in Los Angeles followed the typical pattern of new immigrants—reliance on the money loans, housing possibilities, and occupational networks of the few pioneer townspeople already residing and working in the California megacity. Due to this pattern of chain migration, people from Tama tend to concentrate either in South Central or in Mid-City. As a rule, women work as housekeepers, men in construction sectors such as plumbing and electricity or in the taco restaurant business. Most Tama villagers who now live in Los Angeles either took their families with them or started new families in the United States. New relationships are formed between paisanos and paisanas (called këkajp in Ayuujk) from the village of origin, but also between people from Tama and other Mexican regions, Latin American countries, or the United States. People from Tama foster a well-knit diaspora community life in Los Angeles, not least because they uphold a self-conception as comuneros/ as of the Oaxacan hometown even from a considerable distance. Yet their diaspora community has its own characteristics when compared to other, similar communities stemming from Oaxaca (for the latter see Stephen 2007; Cruz-Manjarrez 2013). The social, cultural, and political standing they have been able to acquire in Los Angeles must be assessed against the background of their relatively late entry date into the country. Arriving in the late 1990s entailed less favorable conditions than those who qualified for the amnistía, or amnesty, under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, and could therefore legalize their immigration status in the United States. Since almost all Tama migrants lack legal status, they have few possibilities of sociopolitical participation in the host country. Paisanos/as from Tama are not yet organized to the same degree as other indigenous migrant communities from Oaxaca, with formal institutions (hometown associations) and political representation. Instead they mainly socialize by celebrating baby showers, christenings, children’s birthday parties, and weddings and inviting other compatriots to attend. Viewing fiesta videos of the distant hometown as a form of entertainment at such celebrations is an important component of the paisano/a get-togethers in the diaspora. In the sociopolitical realm migrants gravitate to their Oaxacan hometown, despite the fact that short visits or a physical presence there are virtually impossible due to the restrictive immigration laws passed in the United States after 9/11. They have more capital than residents in

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the village of origin—earning as much as five times as much a day— and although they use it primarily for their immediate personal needs, they also transfer large sums of money to assist family members and cofinance community events such as the patron saint fiesta. Their motivations to contribute annually to tequio on demand of the cargo officials and voluntarily sponsor the fiestas more often are manifold (see Kummels n.d.). One of their calculations has to do with the fact that financial contributions to a festival are considered to compensate for the obligation of serving as an official every six years. But other motives are not as straightforward and involve efforts to cope with exclusion in the United States and the feelings of both belonging and not belonging to their Mexican hometown. In any case, along with their engagement in hometown fiestas from afar, migrants long for audiovisual recordings that document their involvement as sponsors of the celebrations. Migrants therefore participate in and shape the now transnationalized and mediatized fiestas and cargo system in their village of origin. How they and the hometown residents act as comuneros and comuneras in the time of migration is a phenomenon that will be discussed in the following section.

The Mediatized Cargo System: Being Comuneros/as in the Time of Migration The media genres that have emerged from Tama villagers’ interest in business, art, and entertainment are quite diverse. Nevertheless, all are linked to an institution of vital importance: the civil-religious cargo system. Participating in the cargo system essentially defines who may claim affiliation to Tama. Expectations are that a “good” comunero or comunera must own and work on communal land and that they agree to voluntarily serve as a cargo official every six years. In the course of migration Tama has found a way, just as other municipalities have in Oaxaca, to “reverse the threat of depopulation—caused by extremely high-rates of out-migration—by incorporating migrants into a source of synergy that assures their cultural, social and economic reproduction” (Rivera-Salgado 2014b: 68). The civil-religious cargo system and its supreme organ, the General Assembly, solicit (or permit) financial contributions as compensation for the traditional service that migrants would otherwise have performed in situ in the home village. In this way they are systematically involved there as sponsors of patron saint fiestas, donating prize money or the silver-plated trophy for the winning team at sports events, for example, as well as decorations and food. They even

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sponsor the castillo, an ostentatious fireworks display. Migrants in Los Angeles want to experience their community participation and therefore commission videographers in Tama to document their donations. Although the videos do not permit viewers to experience the fiesta physically or haptically, they do allow for auditory and visual participation. When video recordings are produced in Tama, the potential viewers in the United States are constantly present in the videographer’s thoughts so that both the process of production as well as the DVD disseminated at its outcome intimates the virtual co-presence of those living in two nation states. This transnationalization and mediatization of Tama’s cargo system will be outlined in the following section. Upholding the civil-religious cargo system is by no means a matter of course in the current climate of migration, transnationalization, and the internal diversification of the population. Some villages surrounding the hometown have opted for novel solutions: officials in a number of municipalities (as in Ayutla and Mixistlán) are now remunerated from state-sponsored ramo funds and no longer obliged to invest their own money; in other municipalities the national system of party politics is gaining currency (Valdivia Dounce 2010). Tama, on the other hand, has at first glance maintained its traditional governance. Internally the municipality is ruled along the principles of the civil-religious cargo system, which the inhabitants refer to as el cabildo (the council) after its headquarters or el pueblo after the unity it represents. The cargo system is both a political and a religious institution with a complex set of interconnected duties in the service of the community. In line with its ideal, the village is governed by the General Assembly of comuneros/as or ciudadanos/as (in Spanish, la Asamblea General; in Ayuujk, Këmuuny kajpxmukp when referring to it as an institution and Kajp Junt when talking about a particular assembly).16 The majority of Tama inhabitants are fierce opponents of any interference by nationally established political parties; instead, local governance is thought to ensure that each villager is able to exert political influence based on such traditional values as seniority and experience. This system of governance orchestrates the basic needs of the village; it guarantees comuneros’/as’ access to electricity and water supplies. In practice most installed officials (titulares) are men, while their wives are expected to perform the attendant religious tasks. Tama’s municipal government consists of ninety-one offices and an additional thirty comité offices (in Ayuujk, këtunk) along a career ladder ranging from the lowest official, topil (now often called teniente), to the highest office of presidente municipal.17 An individual ideally climbs this career ladder by gradually passing through at least five levels before then being eligible for the highest of-

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Figure 1.2. Candidates for presidente municipal at the nombramiento General Assembly, August 2013. Photo: Ingrid Kummels.

fice. Any comunero/a over the age of eighteen, including those who live outside Tama, can be appointed to an office by the General Assembly. Comuneros/as attending this particular General Assembly, which is held in August of each year and known as the nomination (nombramiento), are entitled to propose candidates for office. This (semi-)autonomous cultural and political form of self-government is a mark of distinction that ‘indigenous’ communities in Mesoamerica have fought for in constantly new guises since the colonial era and, in many cases, have essentially preserved to this day. Village mediamakers’ current involvement with the cargo system both as a supporting structure and a major subject of representation points in the direction that actors seek to perpetuate it from their different perspectives. In response to the question of what in fact makes Tama “special,” most people emphasize this system of “serving the people” (in Spanish, servir al pueblo; in Ayuujk, këtunk ajt) and the associated concepts and practices of village citizenship, communal cooperation, and autonomous justice. These very tenets, laid down in Floriberto Díaz and Jaime Martínez Luna’s concept of comunalidad, were claims made vis-à-vis the Mexican state with regard to the principles of self-government and autonomy (Díaz

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2007: 38; Martínez Luna 2010). In 1995, these tenets were recognized by the constitution of the state of Oaxaca as so-called usos y costumbres that gave municipalities the right to self-rule, independent of the Mexican party system. The demands of ethnopolitical Ayuujk organizations, along with those of the EZLN in Chiapas, impelled the state government of Oaxaca in 1995 to accept the cargo system for the first time as a legal form of municipal government. Three-quarters of the municipalities of Oaxaca, including Tama, have in the meantime opted for self-government according to usos y costumbres (Hernández-Díaz 2013: 13). This principle of governance enables both male and female village members to gradually climb the social hierarchy in order of seniority and fulfilment of lower offices. That is the theory. Currently, however, the cargo system is undergoing tension as a result of the different priorities set by social groups in the transnationalized community. In the course of education and work migration, members of this extended Tama experience a variety of living standards; peasants, youth in training, teachers, entrepreneurs, and labor migrants have progressed—also in terms of gender—to multiple avenues of work, social positions, and focal points of residence, as well as to political orientations in the field of ethnopolitical activism. These new social realities pose a challenge to the cargo system, which is in turn adapting to them. One significant dimension of change is mediatization. Governance activities are now increasingly recorded audiovisually and their words and images distributed, also in the transnational context. In similar fashion, discussion forums have emerged as an alternative, as displayed on the Facebook page Reunión de Tama, a virtual General Assembly especially popular with young users of social media.18 Its rival position to the face-to-face General Assembly in the village itself is the subject of heated debate. Prior to exploring these new aspects of mediatizing the cargo system, I will outline the dimension of the cabildo’s face-to-face interaction that takes place in situ in the hometown. A very traditional medium is still in use at the municipal building—megaphones. Attached to the roof, they loudly announce important messages to the community on a daily basis, mostly in Ayuujk and occasionally in Spanish. People are thus constantly reminded of their status and obligations as comuneros/as. Anyone within range listens carefully to the announcements and those a little further away stop talking and try to catch what is being said. The announcements usually refer to meetings of appointees (comisionados) to organize the next fiesta, communal work, primary school or gymnasium committee meetings. They may announce new traffic regulations in Tama, the distribution of state Oportunidades funds, school rehearsals

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for a forthcoming national holiday, youth events at the Feria Cultural del Pulque, and much more. The offices in the one-story buildings of the cabildo are open to the public almost every day of the year. People queue in front of several offices, particularly those of the presidente municipal, who decides on procedures such as community construction measures, the síndico, who is responsible for internal rulings, and the presidente de bienes comunales, who deals with land ownership issues. Fiestas and sports events, including catering for the participants, are some of the important tasks of the highest officials like the regidor de educación. Cargo officials in particular further the mediatization of the cargo system. The infrastructure measures they invest in benefit the village and simultaneously increase their own prestige. Hence officials regularly commission local photographers and videographers with documentation of these procedures and carefully store the results in their private archives. The presidentes de bienes comunales, for example, have a vital interest in photographs and videos as documentation of agrarian disputes (see chapter 3). Since only certain aspects of cargo official duties are documented audiovisually and others are not, the following distinction emerges: the cargo system has a political, public administrative dimension that takes place “on stage” and an occult religious dimension performed “backstage” (compare Scott 1990). Tama villagers refer explicitly to the discretion that is called for when it comes to performing cargo system rituals, something they consider intrinsic to their religion. In Spanish they frequently speak of this religious realm as lo propio and in Ayuujk speak of konk ëna’ kon tëjë (a typical dual expression, which combines the male principle and natural forces in konk ëna’ and the female ones in kon tëjë) to distinguish it from external Catholicism. Jujky’ äjtïn (“our own way of life”) is another way of referring to this proper religious realm. At certain times on certain days the cabildo is deserted: when officials and notably their wives and women officials absolve their tight ritual schedule under the guidance of two diviners (both of them men at present). At the beginning of the term of office on 1 January, the so-called fiscal year (año fiscal), major rituals, seen as crucial to the well-being of the community, abound and are performed one after the other. Officials busy themselves with the task of appeasing the dead at the cemetery and of neutralizing evil supernatural forces like “the devil” (Mëkuuj). Another dense period of ritual performances begins with the agricultural cycle in early spring, which signifies the New Year according to the precolonial ritual year (año ritual). This turn of the year is celebrated by the ceremonious handing over of the stone figure of la Diosa del pueblo, seen as the highest divinity and representation of the village (see chapter 2).

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Those who had assumed an office for the first time often told me how they were able to experience what were otherwise sophisticated occult community rituals to which they previously lacked access. This had allowed them to grasp the Ayuujk religion more fully. Village intellectuals explain the custom of concealment as a protection strategy used against the colonizers and the missions. Furthermore, as a result of their secular orientation state schools ignored the Ayuujk religion, although this policy has sinced changed. Local teachers in particular now support the Ayuujk worldview and religion, albeit as cosmovisión, that is, in an ethnopolitical, scientifically based version, and promote it as an integral part of school instruction.19 This dichotomy between the public administrative and occult religious dimensions of the cargo system impacts the diverging audiovisual strategies of representation and mediatization: the public dimension explicitly requires a large audience and is thus a popular motif for film and photography; the occult, on the other hand, is carefully monitored by diviners, who ensure that only legitimized participants have access to it and that no photographs are taken or films made. The diviners and some of the officials explain the photography and filming ban as a precaution, since rituals might otherwise lose their effect and fail to protect the community. In recent years, however, the ban on viewing and taking pictures has been called into question by several young mediamakers when serving as officials. They argue that the use of audiovisual media enhances documentation and thus benefits the preservation of their own customs. Individual members of the middle and younger generations are instrumental in pushing forward the visualization of dimensions of Ayuujk culture that were once exclusively occult (see chapter 2). The mantle of prestige created by the cargo system is a crucial incentive for Tama villagers to participate. Up until now, most people, even those living in other towns and cities, have been willing to invest considerable time and money to comply with their obligations to serve: an elected person is expected to invest 100,000 pesos (6,250 US dollars in 2015) in the one-year term of office. In some instances this sum increases, notably in the case of religious offices. On the one hand, taking office promises opportunities to shape community life and bring skills, experience, professional know-how, and personal preferences into play. The cargo system is therefore cherished as a field where village autonomy can be put into action.20 High-ranking offices are especially popular as the officials concerned determine the financial affairs of the community and gain prestige. On the other hand, pressure is exerted on people to assume offices, notably in the lower echelons, which in turn tend to be perceived as a burden and associated with considerably less

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prestige. The pressure stems from the General Assembly, which could decide to shut off water and electricity or confiscate land in the case of non-compliance in serving as an official. People often see themselves pushed into this role due to adherence to the ideal of lo comunitario, the communitarian way of life.21 The light and dark sides of assuming an office become apparent when this practice is analyzed from the perspective of the various social groups taking part. These groups engage in media practices in different ways as a means of securing their right to a voice in local and transnational media spaces. Let us begin with women’s decisive participation despite the fact that they are rarely elected as titulares. In reality, it is quite common in Tama for a wife to take office and assume the respective political tasks in place of an absent migrant husband (compare Vázquez García and Muñoz Rodríguez 2013).22 I will dedicate some space here to Adelina Pérez Mateos, a woman in her mid-forties, since she exemplifies such a case; moreover, as a municipal authority she performed central elements of her cargo obligations via the medium of video. As already mentioned in the introduction, the research term mediatization refers precisely to how these “core elements of a cultural or social activity (e.g., politics, religion, language) assume media form” (Hjarvard 2007: 3, quoted in Couldry 2008: 376). I became acquainted with both of these aspects for the first time in September 2012, when Adelina invited me to her spacious house on top of one of the village’s many steep slopes. She is not often found in Tama, since she works as a caterer at large road construction sites in central and northern Mexico. At our first meeting, Adelina was not aware of my interest in village media. Instead, she assumed that I was interested in recording her life story as an anthropologist. Once we had made ourselves comfortable in her living room she began to talk about herself, and with the help of the large framed photographs that adorned her living room walls, she indicated important stages of her life, such as her marriage to her husband and his election as church treasurer (tesorero), a prestigious religious office. Adelina gave a detailed account of her life’s major highlights: in contradiction to one of the living room photographs, which depicts only her husband assuming his office in 2006, she had actually served as tesorera in his place. In other words, she had substituted for him as an interino 23 so that he could continue working as a stock manager for a road construction company. As church treasurer, she supervised the production of a new church bell for the community, on behalf of which she also successfully handled the financial arrangements. Not every official can boast of such an achievement.

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In telling her story, Adelina realized she could show me further evidence of this phase of her life in the form of video recordings documenting the melting of an old church bell from 1956 and the casting of the new one. All of a sudden she asked her son to look for the DVD, and he soon returned with a disc bearing the succinct title Campana. It was then inserted into the DVD player beneath the elaborately decorated television set in the living room, where the family normally watches the news, feature films, telenovelas, and sport shows—in other words, the entire gamut of Mexican television. Here, however, the act of “watching television” was transformed into a kind of ceremony that involved Adelina, her son, and me. Campana is a film of approximately seventy minutes, and it seemed at first to be a detailed documentation of an artisanal procedure. The camera, basically in the role of observer, accompanied two bell casters from Hidalgo and the religious officials from Tama, none of whom were interviewed. Parts of the DVD depicted a three-week period in which the tradesmen construct an oven, melt the old bell, and cast a new one, which they then finally dedicate in the bell tower of the church at a village fiesta. I found the meditative night shots of how the liquid metal found its way into the bell mold especially intriguing.24 Adelina, however, quickly fast-forwarded to one of the climaxes of the film: when the bell was cast, Emiliano, the church regidor, as head of a group of ten people made a speech in Ayuujk. Since those in attendance had gathered behind rather than in front of him, he appeared to speak primarily to the camera. He explained to future officials the significance of the occasion. Adelina also spoke to the camera at one particular moment, albeit briefly. Only much later did I realize how this DVD visualized her progressive role as an official, a realm still dominated by men, in a way that contrasted with the officeholder photograph of her husband on the living room wall. When I asked Adelina why the film was made, she explained: We commissioned that recording to preserve what we were doing, in case there was a complaint about what had been done to the bell that was kept in the church … Here, we’re describing what bell is being melted down and what we are doing so that this information remains in an archive, and that there are specialists who melt bells. We did this so that in the future young people or the people in charge of melting a bell will not be cheated, so that they will have information on how this is done. The specialists can come and do the melting here. They don’t have to take the bell with them from the village.25

Officeholder films like Campana document these activities, while mediatizing officialdom in the process.26 Now, six years later, Adelina was

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using the recording to highlight her performance as former church treasurer. The film successfully conveyed the solemn stages of the procedure, not least because it was specifically orchestrated to give this impression. Hence, the regidor did not give his speech to an audience on-site. Instead, those who were present stood behind him to face the camera—the actual interlocutor and proxy for future officials. Adelina, furthermore, presented the documentary in a distinctive manner, namely, by fast-forwarding to what she explained were key moments. While I was inclined at the time to interpret the video differently—that is, as the documentation of a particular craft procedure—the viewing caused me to reevaluate it on several levels. It illuminated Tama’s civilreligious cargo system and the basis of social prestige. The way the video was shown gave me insight into why Adelina had gained status from her term as an official, why the office was a crowning achievement for her, and why the municipal authorities perceived this event as an ideal film topic. With the help of the DVD, Adelina taught me to interpret the officeholder images in almost the same manner she did and probably others in Tama did as well. This private viewing of the film made it clear to me that officials’ prestige and the mediatization of officialdom mutually constituted each other over the course of the cargo term and the creation of a future historical remembrance. Similar to its use of orality and writing in the past, Tama’s officialdom now operates with the help of digital photography and video as media of evidence and information and tradition and memory all in one; when disseminated, transnational media spaces are created.27 Let us now turn to migrants, who are generally referred to as paisanos/as (compatriots), and their perspective of village governance. The cargo system has been modified to allow for political participation of the many migrants who are absent from the village for long periods or live permanently in the satellite communities of places like Los Angeles. Tama paisanos/as are still regularly elected to offices in their hometown; they are, however, no longer required to fulfill this duty in person. As compensation, they can invest money in their hometown, such as substantial contributions to the patron saint fiesta. The cabildo applies these amounts to the total sum of 100,000 pesos required when assuming the one-year term every six years. As a result of this compensation they are fully accepted as village citizens, ciudadanos/as. Adelina Pérez Mateos explains how migrants and their financial transfers now form part of the cargo system’s mantle of prestige: The young man who donated the castillo fireworks to this year’s [2012] Espíritu Santo fiesta lives in the United States. They cost more than 100,000

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pesos. In my view people who live far from our village are of great value because they contribute to it. Those of us who live here all the time can serve as officials. But those who donate and serve as capitanes are mainly from outside and are working there.28 Why do they do this? That’s how they pay for their freedom, to be free of Tamazulapam for a bit longer. They know where they come from. They know they have to contribute if they want to be ciudadanos of Tamazulapam. They know their community is growing and that it’s thanks to them.29

Valencio Rojas, presidente de bienes comunales in 2015 and an influential local politician, comments on the motivation of Tama migrants to fulfill the financial demands of the community and on the method used by the General Assembly to exert pressure: Now what do those who have emigrated do when they’ve no time to serve as officials because of work obligations? They contribute financially. They’re exempted for five or four years depending on what they pay. There’s an exemption, a length of time taken into consideration: “Well, you already supported us. Well, we will agree not to nominate you for the educational committee.” And the migrant might say again, “No, I’m not available this time either. So I’m going to donate 100,000.” Or “I’ll donate 50,000.” And this is voluntary … If they are nominated as officials and there’s agreement in this assembly, then the assets of the people who don’t comply are confiscated. Their belongings are expropriated. It could be a piece of land or a house, depending on the value. Because the minimum expense of a cargo is 100,000 pesos for a year. That’s the minimum.30

The prestige conveyed by assuming office renders the annual changeof-office ceremony on 1 January a highlight for photographers and videographers (see chapter 2). In answer to my question as to why officials had themselves photographed on this day, videographer Romel Ruiz Pérez joked that they wanted to be portrayed on the happiest day of their office as a precaution, given that they would not be able to count on the same approval by the village at the end of their one year in office. Depending on how they managed financial matters, they are either “celebrated with a piece of Diana music” (despedidos con Diana) or “booted out” (despedidos a patadas).31 Their performance is evaluated at the General Assembly on the budget, which takes place after the end of their term. With all of this in mind, assuming an office is for many a tense and bittersweet moment. Conra (Conrado Pérez Rojas), one of Tama’s professional photographers, remarked on this shortly before he assumed office as teniente on 1 January 2015:

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It’s very moving but at the same time we worry a lot about financial resources, as we have no money for expenses for a whole year. All the same it is quite beautiful. It’s my first year as part of this society, with an office through which I can pay service to the village. And that’s how it’ll be from now on. They’ll probably elect me again in a couple of years. Normally they give you a break for five years and then elect you again. And that’s why the people want to capture that moment, to freeze it. That’s why they have so many photographs taken.32

Let us now turn to local critics of the cargo system. Criticism is directed at its decision-making processes. Although they are democratic in theory, in reality participation in these processes depends on age, gender, and economic circumstances. Youth, women, and migrants consider themselves disadvantaged, which is the reason some are politically active on a Facebook page titled Reunión de Tama in competition with the General Assembly (see below). In various ways, most critics call for reform of the governance system—but rarely for a radical break, such as orientation toward the Mexican party system. One aspect that some criticize harshly is the fact that higher offices have become quite lucrative since the introduction of ramo state funds in the late 1980s.33 Since then, as some claim, so-called small groups (grupitos) that are socioeconomically more prosperous have attempted to obtain political influence through the cargo system and secure financial gains. Complaints that former presidentes municipales embezzled up to several million pesos and at the end of their term of office built a house or bought a plot of land in the city of Oaxaca are the order of the day. In June 2013 there was much talk about movers and shakers in the village, who apparently came together in private circles on Father’s Day (16 June) to agree in advance on the candidates to be nominated in August for the highest offices.34 Certain families are notorious for seeking and successfully attaining political office. Three brothers in the older generation of the Rojas family, for instance, have held the office of presidente municipal. The two Martínez Mireles brothers are another example. Added to this, are a certain social divide and the conflict of interest between teachers and peasants. Teachers are privileged, since state institutions in Oaxaca are fully aware that their employees come from villages where holding an office constitutes the political backbone of their form of governance. Not so long ago, the Ministry of Education (prior to the educational reforms of 2013) granted a staff teacher a year’s leave of absence with a full salary. Teachers are generally alleged to have exploited the advantages of education and the teaching career in their own interests and that of their professional guild. At elections, voters take the occupation

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of the presidente candidates into account. Attendees at the nominating General Assembly adopt a number of counterstrategies against people with exaggerated political ambition. Bloquear (blocking) is one of them. It consists of proposing and electing ambitious candidates for low-level offices during the assembly’s first phase, which automatically frustrates their candidacy for higher positions during the second phase of the nombramiento. Another criticism of the cargo system refers to the efficacy of its bodies in the context of internal justice and the handling of agrarian disputes. In 2012, women voiced their discontent with their discrimination in the context of legal complaints of domestic violence, cases in which high alcohol consumption on the part of men plays a role. They attributed this to the fact that the sindicatura body in charge was occupied exclusively by men. As a result, in 2013 and 2014 the General Assembly made sure that a woman was elected to this body.35 When women fear gender discrimination, such as in legal cases of domestic violence, lack of financial support from the child’s father, or rape, some of them alternatively seek out the Defensoría de Derechos Humanos del Pueblo de Oaxaca, the state human rights office. Likewise in the case of agrarian disputes, some of those affected tend to circumvent the village governance system when they doubt the impartiality of current officials. Hence in many instances women still see themselves subject to treatment that is both unequal and unjust in gender terms.36 Women are in general more affected by poverty than men, since they are de facto financially responsible for their children, as in the case of single or divorced mothers.37 Only in the last twenty years have they achieved political participation in the municipal government on equal terms, which they accomplished purely on the basis of their own educational and migrant experience. The village system of inheritance and ownership—key elements of living and being recognized as Ayuujk ja’ay— had a strong patriarchal bias up to the 1980s: women had no access to land ownership. The legitimacy of this reasoning was that marriage and patrilocal residence obliged women to leave their village, thereby threatening “withdrawal” of land from the family and the village. Without ownership of land they were not regarded as fully fledged comuneras. In the meantime women managed to gain equal land rights essentially on the basis of their wage work and an income independent of their husbands (compare Cruz-Manjarrez 2014).38 The 1990s saw more and more women elected as officials in Tama and in recent years (for example, 2014) to higher offices such as that of presidente suplente.39 At the same time, a woman has never held the highest office. In addition, there is a trend for single women (counted as household heads) rather

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than married women—in other words women who are unmarried, widowed, or divorced—to be appointed to office. For the women concerned this constitutes a paradox, as it involves a multiple burden. Of the ninety-one officials in the cabildo of 2015, only sixteen were women. Nevertheless, these women are exerting more and more influence on local and transnational politics in Tama. They are engaged, for example, in negotiating the terms of land tenure at the General Assembly and on the Facebook page Reunión de Tama. At the nominations for the Asamblea General in 2015, once again no woman was elected presidente municipal, but the verbal intervention of two women was instrumental in discrediting one of the presidential candidates and influencing votes in the direction of the candidate who was finally elected. Another group that sees itself disadvantaged by the cargo system is the youth. Although elected on a regular basis to the lowest offices, such as topiles, they function exclusively as the executive arm of the village, that is, as police. Cuahutémoc “Temo” Pérez, a young teacher, explains: “there is no space here for young people to express themselves, meet one another or become active. There’s no formal political representation like a youth committee, at the community level.”40 Hence youth is not understood locally as a social category whose members are in a position to discuss their problems at general assemblies and demand solutions, based on the reasoning that they have not served in a substantial office.41 Youth is not considered an area of responsibility similar to education or land ownership within the cargo system. As a countermove, young people have become highly active politically in alternative ways. Cautiously linking themselves to the cargo system, they launched forums where they could be heard. Hence they use the Feria Cultural del Pulque for in-depth discussion of subjects dealing with the recovery and fostering of Ayuujk identity, the decolonization of history, and communal organization (see section below, The Youth Movement and the Media). Rarely, if ever, are these topics debated within the framework of general assemblies. As passionate users of social media, young people from Tama, including those now living in the United States, have generated new forms of political engagement in this media space. In the course of 2013, village Internet users were astonished at the sudden appearance of a Facebook page titled Reunión de Tama, a name which immediately sparked a controvery since it had been adopted without seeking permission on behalf of the General Assembly. Burning issues that had been given short shrift at the General Assembly are presented on the Facebook page in a concise objective form accompanied by a photograph. This stimulates comment threads from over seventy regular users, who—contrary to

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the public face-to-face setting at the General Assembly—air their grievances unrestrained and unadorned, and in many cases directly accuse acting officials by name. One such case referred to the construction of an additional market building at the end of 2013.42 The original idea was to build it on a level site next to the church. When this plan was torpedoed by a group surrounding the Rojas brothers, the cabildo set about constructing the market building on a steep slope after short debate at the General Assembly. Excavation for the foundations got underway quickly so that the relevant ramo funds for that year could be consumed. Construction work triggered a landslide, however, threatening the adjacent housing. The proceedings caused uproar on the Reunión de Tama Facebook page: “Where are the architects in charge and the engineers who supposedly conducted the surveys” and “Jail for the directors, architects, municipal advisers, and ex-authorities responsible.” These comments were written by users either under their own name or a pseudonym, although all of them were known to insiders as young members of the community residing either in the hometown or abroad. The page administrator tried to remain anonymous, initially giving the site a semblance of neutrality. Soon, however, the mastermind was discovered: Rolando Vásquez Pérez, a young political scientist from Tama. He had introduced this innovative format on his own initiative, motivated to keep Tama’s migrant population informed on the General Assembly’s political processes. His own political commitment combines both a communitarian orientation as well as involvement in Mexican political parties.43 These examples illustrate, on the one hand, the enormous tension involved in adjusting the cargo system to the centrifugal forces of migration and the current trend toward individualization and youth and women’s empowerment. Actors are motivated by interests that diverge depending on age, gender, education, social class, migration experience, place of residence, and political orientation. They use mass means of communication to gain a voice in and extend media spaces locally and transnationally. To these ends they engage in diverse media fields, which are the topic of the next section.

Tama’s Media Fields As exemplified in the processes of mediatizing the cargo system, the inhabitants of Tama create fields, arenas, or forums when using means of communication to put forward their political positions (compare Postill 2011). Media diversity and complexity plays a significant role in the con-

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stitution of heterogeneity. This book departs from the conviction that a media anthropological perspective allows for deeper insights into the social and political processes underlying plural forms of sociality, since it helps to elucidate media’s role as an integral part of these processes. To be able to analyze transnational Tama’s current forms of sociality, which include mass mediatized strategies of transnational community-building, I favored an inductive approach. As a first step I sought to identify actual social groups in Tama and Los Angeles, such as participants in the Reunión de Tama Facebook page and creators of audiovisual archives, and the fields they shape. In the following I take a closer look at these local and transnational media fields with reference to the actors, organizational structures, networks, and audiences, as well as the various subaudiences they generate. Included is a rundown on their diversity in terms of age, gender, education, social class, migration experience, and political orientation. They address different audiences within the village and beyond. The entrepreneurial videographers, for example, target first and foremost the satellite communities in the United States, such as those in Los Angeles and Milwaukee, while specifically communal media, like TV Tamix and the CCREA youth movement, are linked to the Pan-American indigenous movement. At the same time, the political dimensions of their community-based work and its representations will be elucidated. Internal discourse identifies medios comunitarios and medios comerciales. Despite this distinction and the diversity involved, all of these media actors and media sectors target the community and the consumer market of transnational Tama. Debates on the organizational and conceptual direction of autonomous media, which I will discuss in the following section, evolved in the specific context of preparing for the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala, which took place in Tlahui in October 2013 and was influenced by Tama media actors. The media fields addressed here must first of all be contextualized in the duality of the image landscapes and soundscapes that prevailed in Tama and, second, the fast-paced changes they are currently undergoing. With reference to the first point: on the one hand, inhabitants availed of channels common throughout Mexico, ranging from Televisa and TV Azteca to Discovery Channel and Nickelodeon, which they receive via the private Mexican television provider Sky, which is owned by Televisa.44 On the other hand, life in Tama is shaped substantially by image landscapes and soundscapes produced in a self-determined way. Radio is the medium with the highest profile: most people listen to Radio Jënpoj from the neighboring village of Tlahui, which broadcasts

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in Ayuujk and in Spanish and caters to the political issues and musical tastes of the region. In 2013, Tama set up its own radio station, La T Grande de Tamazulapam. Within a short time, this rival station had a large audience that extended well into the Zapotec-speaking Valles Centrales. Village film productions are part of the visual imagery that is consumed daily. Instead of the usual TV telenovelas, restaurant and shop owners occasionally screen fiesta videos for their own or their patrons’ amusement. Hosts at christenings, birthdays, quinceañera festivities, weddings, and costumbres show DVDs of the last patron saint fiesta or family celebration to entertain their guests. The dimensions of this village media industry are visible in Tama’s “media street,” a section on the main road opposite the municipal building, where the local cyber Tuuk Nëëm, the Video Rojas shop, and the public telephone booth are located, all of which are run by members of the Rojas family. As far as the second point is concerned, my ethnographic research period in transnationalized Tama between 2012 and 2016 was marked by a shift to Internet communication via cell phones. At the beginning of my stay, the use of ordinary cell phones was still gaining ground and replacing the public telephone booths of the casetas telefónicas, the familiar means of long-distance communication that had been in operation since the 1990s. In 2012, the names of people who had been rung up through the public telephone service were still regularly announced by megaphone. But the bell had tolled for the casetas when Tama was connected to the cell phone network in the wake of a devastating landslide in the neighboring village of Tlahui on 28 September 2010. When I first visited the village, women often commented on how the ability to use a cell phone had transformed their lives for the better. The longing for family members who had migrated was no longer so desperate: reasonably priced text messages or cell phone calls facilitated daily contact. At the end of my stay, many young people had switched to affordable sophisticated cell phones and were intense users of the pertinent social media networks and parallel public forums such as Facebook. The importance of Facebook communities and their form of sociality is exemplified by the Facebook page Reunión de Tama (see also chapter 3).

TV Tamix The TV Tamix collective or group of friends is still active today in the local media world, albeit in a different constellation and with a new concept. At the beginning of the 1990s, nine young men between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five played a major role in this pioneer commu-

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nitarian TV initiative.45 Some of them now earn their living in the field of media, such as Victoriano Guilberto, periodically active in the press department of the teachers’ union, Sección 22, and Carlos “Charapa” Martínez, who works on the post production of films for the state organization Desarrollo Integral de la Familia (DIF). The remaining core group consisting of brothers Hermenegildo and Genaro Rojas Ramírez, and their cousin Carlos Pérez Rojas, who lives in Lyon, began in 2012 to work on two projects: the Barras de Color film project and the establishment of a community video archive based on material recorded by TV Tamix between 1992 and 2000. Both initiatives give an insight into recent developments related to the demand in transnationalized Tama for audiovisual memories of the village and its inhabitants. First a look at the audiovisual community archive project. The idea of a future archive is discussed for the most part against the backdrop of a growing demand for family and village photographs and films. It is therefore no accident that the strong desire for pictures of the “old days” (like the 1990s), new images conceptualized as future memories, and the prospect of an audiovisual archive became the starting point for this study, as seen in the vignette at the beginning of the book. I had already stumbled across this topic repeatedly during my first visit in September 2012. Adelina Pérez Mateos, whom I met when I accompanied Hermenegildo Rojas to a birthday party, took the opportunity of the relaxed atmosphere at the table to talk about a matter dear to her heart: the incomparable value of TV Tamix films from the 1990s, not least because young people today had no idea how difficult life in the village was in the past. She herself had walked barefoot as a child and sold tamales to passengers of overland buses to make a living, whereas today young people take the car just to go shopping. Adelina was looking for a picture of her mother, who had died in 1985. The family did not own a single photograph of her and Adelina could not remember what she looked like. She asked Hermenegildo if TV Tamix had perhaps filmed her. The answer proved a disappointment, since they had shot their first videos several years after her mother’s death. Hermenegildo is now used to requests for pictures of deceased members of the community. Children and teenagers often trigger these searches, since unlike their parents they grew up with photography and videography as a standard element of the contemporary culture of remembrance. Elderly residents of Tama in contrast often consider visual remembrances of deceased persons disturbing; prior to the 1960s they did not conserve photographs of them. In September 2013, Hermenegildo found out that a migrant woman from Tama who owned a taco restaurant in Guadalajara was looking for a picture of her late father,

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who had died in 1992 and had once been a senior official and musician of local esteem. Her children pestered her for a photograph of their grandfather. Hermenegildo actually found a splendid portrait of this man in his photo archive.46 It was taken by a teacher from Tama in the 1970s. TV Tamix had also recorded him on video with his mandolin quartet. Hermenegildo handed this material over to the woman concerned and, since he is ambivalent about the legitimacy of marketing visual memories, left unsaid whether they were free of charge. Other photographs, some of them taken by anthropologists as portraits of anonymous “representatives of the Mixe ethnic group,” have meanwhile been retrieved by Tama residents and are newly prized and redefined as a memory of relatives they loved. Hence the interest in photographs and audiovisual material from the past is considerable and refers to the inhabitants themselves as well as to physical aspects of the village and community life. Several historical photographs of the village that residents had preserved in their private albums and archives are now being divulged on social media as iconic souvenirs. This is consistent with the growing public interest in the TV Tamix archive, which contains approximately 150 hours of video material shot by the collective between 1992 and 2000. The history of the archive, which is currently domiciled in the home of the Rojas family, is as paradoxical as the history of the local television channel itself. During the dispute that led to the TV station’s demise, this audiovisual material was not seen as particularly valuable; no one hindered the Rojas family from taking the material home with them for preservation. On the other hand, recent years have seen increased awareness of historical visual documents and their value, not least as a result of the initiative taken by the Rojas brothers to give currency to the notion of a community archive. In 2005, they began to examine the archive and produced Tamix, Recuento de diez años, a short documentary showing the history of TV Tamix in a series of rapid jump cuts. In 2008, three years later, and with the assistance of the media organization Ojo de Agua Comunicación, they set about rescuing the various video formats (analog video, mini-DV, digital video) from an attack of fungus and transferring them to the digital system. Scrutiny and digitalization of the archive gathered momentum in 2013, when Carlos Pérez Rojas received funds from the Mexican Fondo Nacional para las Cultura y las Artes (FONCA) to finance his Barras de Color film project. Since archival material formed the backbone of this film on the saga of the local television station, Hermenegildo devoted several months to sifting through, digitalizing, and cataloging videos. He allowed me to sit and watch their videos for hours, an activity that for me proved to be a phenomenal introduction to and lesson in the

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history and culture of Tama. The Rojas brothers presented the community archive project to the officials in precisely this context. Hermenegildo’s idea was to give the village public access to this material in a room equipped with computers in the municipal building. The officials I spoke to, however, were either skeptical or reserved. This should be seen against the backdrop of the tension surrounding the archive. Some claim the archive belongs to the earlier Casa del Pueblo and is consequently the property of the municipality anyway, despite its storage in the private Rojas house. They are not enamored of the idea of using municipal funds for the conservation and use of these videos. On the contrary, they feel that the Rojas family should bear the expense as a service to the community. The Rojas brothers counteracted this resistance to the archive project by organizing local screenings of historical film material as a form of persuasion. On the occasion of the death of several major village figures, Hermenegildo produced small film portraits of them using stored footage. During the shooting of Barras de Color, selected highlights from the archive were projected onto a huge screen on Tama’s main plaza at the end of April 2013. This one-hour film deals with milestones between 1991 and 2000, such as the introduction of a weekly market in 1991 (a measure that was taken in the context of an agrarian dispute with the neighboring village of Ayutla) and the beginning of the land conflict with Tlahui in 1996. The screening, which was attended by several hundred persons, had the desired effect and triggered enormous interest in the picture archive. As a result officials started paying particular attention to their idea. The Rojas brothers have not yet ventured to present the project to the General Assembly and discuss its content. For this reason, its concrete implementation and modus operandi are still wide open. At the same time, the brothers, in cooperation with Isabel Rojas of OaxacaCine, Guillermo Monteforte from Ojo de Agua Comunicación, and, later on, with Tzutzumatzin Soto of the Cineteca Nacional, pushed this archive project forward beyond the confines of the village. They discussed it at the First Encuentro Internacional de Archivistas de Oaxaca, which was held in August 2014 under the auspices of the Harp Helú Foundation. This is a good example of the typical twofold movements practiced by local media: in the village TV Tamix had highlighted the importance of archiving audiovisual memories for the local audience, while at the conference in Oaxaca they discussed the role it might play as part of an audiovisual archive of all Latin American ‘indigenous’ communities. The First Encuentro was attended by media anthropologists like Erica Wortham and representatives from media organizations in Canada and the United States, who have experience

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with the creation of archives and provided valuable assistance. As far as the TV Tamix archive project is concerned, however, the Rojas brothers see themselves faced with conflicting political interests in the historical video material they preserve at the local and international level. They would prefer to restrict a core section of the archive to village access only, as a communal good (Rojas Ramírez, Rojas Ramírez, and Soto n.d.); meanwhile, potential project donors like those envisioned by Erica Wortham (2016) are more interested in broad Internet access for the academic world and its research on indigenous media. Barras de Color, Carlos’s film project on TV Tamix, also conveys this twofold movement.47 As a result of shooting for the documentary, TV Tamix was locally active and visible as a film team in public for the first time in the spring of 2013 after a long break. On this occasion they worked closely with young mediamakers both from within and from outside the village, and passed on their media knowledge to great effect (see chapter 4). By the beginning of 2015, Carlos had edited a 60minute version of Barras de Color mainly from archival material. This version narrated the story of the young TV Tamix mediamakers and their relationship with the village, which changed before their camera lenses and transnationalized to the United States. The film is likewise a medium through which Carlos and his colleagues reflect on Tama’s media history, work out its local and transnational genealogy, and embed its significance in the context of a wider international film landscape. Carlos systematically links the production of this movie, which he crafted as director and editor, to an international documentary film scene. In March 2015, he discussed the first version of Barras de Color with, among others, Nicolás Echevarría, the well-known Mexican documentary filmmaker, after the first cut was selected for screening as a work in progress at Doculab, a workshop at the Festival Internacional de Cine in Guadalajara supervised by leading national film experts. On the whole, TV Tamix’s long-term engagement with audiovisual media demonstrates that it not only speaks to the village within. In the context of film festival circuits, members exploit media practices to claim cultural and political rights on behalf of Tama and by extrapolation on behalf of the Ayuujk ja’ay in particular and Mexico’s indigenous population in general. They open media spaces way beyond the confines of the nation state to include other global regions, such as Europe. Hermenegildo in the meantime (2016) has crossed the line once again and engages in commercial media in Oaxaca City as well. Together with Erick Rojas from Tama (see below) he now produces a one-hour program on Mexican bull riding (jaripeo) twice a week for the pay-TV channel MVM Televisión.

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Local Soundscapes: Radio Jënpoj and La T Grande de Tamazulapam The timespan covering my ethnographic research was also affected by the competition between two local radio stations, Jënpoj, in operation in Tlahui since 2001, and La T Grande de Tamazulapam, which began broadcasting in Tama in 2013. Back in August and September 2012, I noticed that despite the prevailing rivalry between the neighboring villages (stemming from an intense agrarian conflict in the 1990s), the overwhelming majority of Tama residents listened to Tlahui’s Radio Jënpoj every day as a matter of course. At six o’clock in the morning housewives and employees alike switched on this program. Both the presenters and the contributors speak in the Ayuujk language. Radio Jënpoj (literally, wind of fire) was launched in 2001 as a left-wing student station and in the course of a spirited history, including the shutdown of the then illegal station by the Ministry of Communications and Transport (SCT) with police power, became a beacon on the horizon of the communal media world in Tlahui (a village similar in size as Tama) and the entire Mixe region (see chapter 5). The station is currently run by some of its original founders, such as Sócrates Vásquez, Odilón Vargas, and Rubén Martínez. The young members of the village of Tlahui and students of the small local university Universidad Comunal Intercultural del Cempoaltépetl UNICEM (with some forty students) have meanwhile been incorporated to perform voluntary service there in the spirit of tequio and learn the radio ropes. The municipal government of Tlahui sponsors the station’s premises. In 2012, the listeners I spoke to saw its attraction in the type of music it played and its whole-hearted support for the cultural and political autonomy endeavors of the Ayuujk people. Radio Jënpoj focused on music from the region, such as that of philharmonic bands, local conjunto típico genres, and local and national rock, reggae, and rap bands. Other music genres such as the songs of leftist Latin American trova singers Víctor Jara and Silvio Rodríguez and the station’s discussion programs were evidence of its critical stance toward the Mexican government and its advocacy for Ayuujk autonomy. Educational programs, for example, addressed agriculture and the environment, and advocated adherence to the cultivation of traditional, genetically unmodified corn. Radio Jënpoj and its transmission space, which covers the nineteen municipalities of the Distrito Mixe, contribute to their inhabitants’ Ayuujk sense of belonging. In March 2013, Florentino Martínez Mireles, a prosperous coffee dealer and influential local Tama politician, set up the first commercial radio station in the center of Tama: La T Grande de Tamazulapam. The village and the broadcast audience of Radio Jënpoj were confronted

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with a completely new type of radio program. The major contrast to Radio Jënpoj was the style of the presenters on La T Grande. Erick Rojas, better known as Siete Copitas, spoke in the rapid manner of Spanish presenters, skillfully modulating his voice and adapting it to the concrete situation.48 In this sense, he distinguished himself from the mostly sober unemotional style of the presenters on Radio Jënpoj. Erick Rojas and Noé Aguilar, another popular presenter (and later a diviner, see chapter 2), laced their predominantly Spanish contributions with Ayuujk words in a witty, often politically incorrect manner. Both of them have migration experience in the United States and their carefree style of mixing Spanish with Ayuujk words is typical of many paisanos/as. Other features that contrasted with Radio Jënpoj were the live programs that reported on the popular bull riding (jaripeo) events and the music, which consisted mainly of the fast rhythms of norteño and cumbia music.49 With these features, presented exclusively in Spanish, La T Grande picked up first and foremost on the shift in everyday life in the villages of the Sierra Norte as a result of migration, such as the widespread preference for northern Mexican (norteño) culture. Over time the station dedicated broadcasting space to advertising spots for local enterprises such as Farmacia Trébol, which promoted its parcel delivery service to the United States. The idea was that the station would pay for itself with the sale of advertising space. The presenters would even call up paisanos/as living in the United States and transmit live cell phone conversations. Setting up the radio station also had political motives, such as rallying for community support. Florentino Mártinez Mireles had already launched initiatives in the village media world.50 La T Grande de Tamazulapam soon enjoyed immense popularity. Listeners way beyond the municipality’s borders saw it as innovative and refreshing, and identified it with something of their own. I discovered to my amazement that even in Thalui, the neighboring village whose inhabitants rarely have anything good to say about what comes from Tama, also listened to the station. Nevertheless, acceptance of La T Grande was by no means evenly distributed among the population: it was more popular with men than women. This was due to the tendency of some presenters to banter and assume a machista attitude, as well as to their emphasis on male sports such as jaripeo, an aspect that gave rise to harsh criticism of this local station from women and the left. Siete Copitas is a good example of the interweaving of commercial initiatives, migration, and the corresponding orientation of the radio. A young returnee, he was born in 1986, lived from the age of fifteen to nineteen in Milwaukee, and worked in his free time as a DJ for paisanos/ as. When he returned to Tama, he became a commercially successful

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cultural manager and now heads a professional team of bull riders. Siete Copitas used his job as a radio presenter and chief program planner to make jaripeo a key topic of the radio station. Bull riding is not originally Ayuujk but imported from the north of the country and has become a popular sport in Tama and the entire Sierra Norte region in the past two decades. With its emphasis on these cultural manifestations and the style adopted by the presenters of the radio station, La T Grande de Tamazulapam has renegotiated lo comunitario without explicitly pursuing a political agenda. Its program has opened a media space for a northern life style (a process called nortenización cultural) and thereby has attracted many listeners with migrant experience. In contrast, communal media often prefer to ignore the issue of migration altogether. Rigoberto Vásquez, a longstanding man of action at Radio Jënpoj, explained his critical stance on migration to the United States by referring to it as more than the loss of a labor force for the Ayuujk communities. In his view, a preference for the North reflects acceptance of the capitalist economy, the politics of the United States, and thus a society that deviates completely from the communal model.51 A similar sweeping criticism is common among many communal mediamakers in Oaxaca. They hardly take into account the political orientation of the migrants, who have organized in or sympathize with organizations like the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales (FIOB), which strive to revitalize union politics in the United States and generally take a critical stance toward US politics (with regard to FIOB, see, for example, RiveraSalgado 2016). In the course of 2013, La T Grande became more committed to serving the village and provided a discussion forum for issues such as local education and waste disposal in Tama. As part of this de facto communal orientation, La T Grande occasionally served the village free of charge. This accounts for its response in 2013 to a request by the municipal officials to broadcast the Santa Rosa de Lima fiesta. The radio station was keen to maintain a balance between communal and commercial aspects. When I asked Florentino Martínez Mireles, the owner of the radio station, what motivated him to set up the station, he spoke of ethnic empowerment and upholding communal institutions like tequio.52 At the same time, he saw his commercial initiative in the context of the political rivalry Tama cultivated with the adjacent village of Tlahui. In this sense, Martínez Mireles pursues a media engagement that adheres to the capitalist way of doing business while maintaining key communal values like tequio. Although the radio station closed down in the spring of 2014 due to commercial considerations, Mireles succeeded in pro-

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viding a temporary sounding board for his cultural and political preferences and those of people with similar taste in this new media space of a regional and transnational scope.

Patron Saint Fiesta Videos and Social Events Small video enterprises such as Video Rojas, Video Tamix, Video Mecho, and Video Cajonos are part of the commercial sector of Tama media, as are the professional photographers who take pictures at social events. They position themselves clearly in the commercial field by advertising their audiovisual services in their stores and at market stalls or on signs they set up when recording and taking pictures at the fiestas. These marketing strategies emerged locally in the 1990s as a result of increased mobility and globalization. At the same time this industry has developed from itinerant trading long practiced in the Sierra Norte region, since commercial video enterprises are small family businesses mostly run by a married couple and occasionally supported by one or two grown-up children or a temporary employee. As traveling salespeople they attend up to forty patron saint fiestas a year, capturing each one over a period of several days. Genoveva Pérez Rosas of Video Tamix is right on point when she categorizes her business as “traveling camera” (cámara viajante). These videos live from their topicality. Edited overnight at the fiesta in their mobile studio pickups, they are sold the next morning as fresh merchandise to visitors of the fiesta. In addition they are sold to satellite communities. Fiesta videographers devised market structures in the United States for this purpose, based on transnational family relations. Like all families in Tama, they, too, have a relative living in the north who might act as a distribution partner. The distributors (distribuidores) sell fiesta DVDs door to door on commission or advertise them over the phone to paisanos/as in Los Angeles. Fiesta videos are furthermore a commodity sold at DVD and CD shops catering to the clientele of Latin American migrants in downtown Los Angeles. These networks and shops are an integral part of the ethnic business panorama in Los Angeles; many of them are run by Oaxacan migrant entrepreneurs. They commercialize typical food, clothing, and fiesta videos as iconic items that paisanos/as long for. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the fiestas in honor of the patron saint and other community social events, such as the change of office on 1 January, have become highly mediatized events. They are recorded by professional photographers and videographers, as well as

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amateurs—since 2015, increasingly with mobile phones. Although documenting social events audiovisually is a global trend, the individual case of Tama displays a number of distinctive features. The moments most recorded and viewed have a communal impetus. The photographs and films in question are part and parcel of a profound shift in the local/transnational culture of remembrance and audiovisual representation. As media products they are exchanged among people who are prevented from meeting face-to-face on a regular basis due to restrictive US immigration policies and instead rely on their creation of media spaces to constitute a community. In line with these particularities, villagers often discuss issues that refer to lo comunitario in association with patron saint fiesta videos, even though the latter are produced as entertainment rather than media products with an explicit political content. The manner in which individuals, heterosexual dancing couples, and the community are portrayed in fiesta videos is critically appraised and at times the subject of contentious debate in the transnational setting. Inhabitants of the hometown and those living in the satellite community of Los Angeles hold different opinions. On the one hand, fiesta videos have become the nucleus of a mediatized community, which can be conceived as a form of “community, that in [its] present form relate[s] to media, but for which media communication is not constitutive, as for example with families, friendships groups, and so forth” (Hepp 2015: 209). A social group, in this case relatives, friends, and peers from Tama, appropriate media to keep their dispersed members together, translocalizing their forms of sociality in the process (compare Hepp, Berg, and Roisch 2011: 301). The founders of satellite communities in the United States refer to these videos as “our telenovelas,” as a series that mirrors their microcosm based on the hometown and enables them to take part in the gossip and scandal (chisme) of Tama as if they were actually there in person. Although fiesta videos seem to represent people and events in the hometown they deal with issues that transcend its locality. The locally and transnationally produced fiesta videos in fact contribute to the decolonization of existing audiovisual practices in these contexts. They are shown and consumed as an integral part of daily work and leisure time and are used as an alternative or complement to Mexican or North American television programs. Contrary to the latter, fiesta videos satisfy the desire of the audiences in question to see themselves and their community on television, whereas the dominant television images completely ignore their social reality. The self-styled DVDs reflect community culture, including the use of the Ayuujk language, in a manner that is neither exoticized nor discriminatory.

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The Youth Movement and the Media The Colectivo Cultura y Resistencia Ayuuk (CCREA), organizer of the annual Feria Cultural del Pulque, exemplifies the age-related aims, approach, and media practices of Tama’s youth.53 The collective was founded by pupils from the local high school Colegio de Bachilleres del Estado de Oaxaca (COBAO) in 2006. Other young people in Tama were also involved, such as students of the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (UPN) in Mexico City who had returned to the village. The name of the collective underlines the endeavor to define what it is to be Ayuujk. “Resistance” refers first and foremost to external hegemonic forces, as explained in the program of the Seventh Feria Cultural del Pulque in 2014: “participation in community is a form of resistance … vis-à-vis a politics of penalization and extermination on the part of the dominant State.” In contrast, the Colectivo adopts the motto: “think the communal Ayuujk way and put it into practice” (proponer y accionar el caminar comunitario mixe). In the mother tongue they refer to the “Ayuujk way” as tsëëna’ayën, which literally means to live in the frame of a house or space. From an outside perspective, on the other hand, “resistance” could be interpreted as an allusion to internal community constraints that leave little room for new forms of cultural expression or political participation on the part of Tama’s youth. When the Colectivo began organizing reggae and rock concerts in 2006, Tama’s adult population at first rejected them, because they considered these genres as deviations from Ayuujk culture. As CCREA member Froylita Jiménez Sanjinés explains: Still many people had to come to terms with the fact that no one is part of a self-contained culture. We rather borrow from many cultures and that doesn’t mean that you do not remember your own culture and stop promoting it. These people would tell us: “While allegedly supporting Ayuujk culture you bring in a reggae band to play here? That’s from Jamaica.” … But we can appropriate that music and do not have to sing it in English. Why not use lyrics and topics of the community and in the Ayuujk language? That’s really neat.54

In the following years the Colectivo was able to appropriate a certain latitude in the midst of the village by organizing the Feria Cultural del Pulque as a more popular and inclusive event that takes place on the town’s main plaza. The youth movement still remains marginalized insofar as it receives very little financial support from the cargo officials, unlike established cultural institutions such as the philharmonic band. Young people are therefore obliged to organize these kinds of events, to

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Figure 1.3. Tama’s Feria Cultural del Pulque in 2012. Photo: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

finance them out their own pockets and to manage them independently (by autogestión). The Colectivo was originally composed of five young men and a woman—two additional female members soon joined them—which started out producing fanzines and mural newspapers (as a way of creating an alternative to mainstream amarillista journalism, that is, a journalism focused on sensationalism) as well as organizing local reggae and rock concerts.55 The core group from the initial years carries on, including Froylita Jiménez Sanjinés, a computer scientist; Eutimio “Timio” Antúnez Calderón, a cultural manager; Luis “Huicho” Pérez Agustina, an anthropologist; Marcos Vidal, a student of anthropology; Rey Davíd Vásquez, a cultural manager; Romel Ruiz Pérez, a videographer; Conrado Pérez Rosas, a photographer; Cuahutémoc “Temo” Pérez, a schoolteacher; and Marisol Ambrosio Martínez, an architect. The group members’ musical preferences range from reggae and rap to rock and heavy metal; their political inclinations are even more diverse. This heterogeneity pulls together, however, when it comes to common aims at organizing joint events in Tama. The range of their political and religious ideas extends from the communitarian principles of the Sierra Norte,56 to locally appropriated Rastafari philosophy, some New Age spiritualism, to socialist and anarchist ideas. Despite its somewhat diffuse impression, this broad catalog clearly focuses on global currents

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of thought that are both countercultural and rebellious (compare Ruiz Garza 2014: 118). The youth movement is particularly active at the annual multimedia Feria Cultural del Pulque, an event format they have succeeded in “comunalizing” (that is, they integrated it into communal structures) at the local level since 2008 and that in recent years has had transnational diffusion through its representation on its own Facebook page. This twoor three-day event is based on the model of urban left-wing festivals and markets, and adapted to village conditions and necessities. At the Feria, the consumption of pulque is encouraged at the invitation of the women who produce this local beverage and live in the rural area surrounding the town center. The Feria takes place with the aim of bolstering up village products vis-à-vis industrially produced goods such as beer. Around the promotion of pulque as “an ancestral beverage inherited from our peoples” (bebida ancestral que nos han legado nuestros pueblos) the Feria integrates a range of elements that fosters the communal way of life: academic lectures on the origin and history of the Ayuujk, communality, autonomy, and alternative media; exhibitions of photography and painting that have an artistic and abstract slant comparable to those shown at urban galleries; and a wide range of live music concerts that include traditional string (conjunto típico), trova, and philharmonic band music to local rock, heavy metal, reggae, and rap music. These young actors also make use of media from the global building blocks of alternative movements: at the Feria Cultural del Pulque traditional performative media such as the music and dance of Sones y Jarabes Mixes and the artistic craft of pottery are combined with experimental formats (in the local context) such as the academic lecture, public debate, photography and painting exhibitions, and pop concerts. This heterogeneity is deliberate and based on the active blending of the different tastes and lifestyles pursued by the group of friends that makes up the Colectivo. As a team these young people negotiate how to implement their ideas and convey them in a locally accepted form, evidenced, for example, in the academic lecture format. The lecture itself is not held in a university lecture hall but under the arcades of the municipal building on a stage set up for this purpose. Guest lecturers are almost exclusively well-known local and regional ‘indigenous’ intellectuals such as Daniel Martínez Pérez (from Tama), Juan Arelí Bernal Alcántara (from Totontepec), and Jaime Martínez Luna (from Guelatao). The lectures are designed explicitly as an extension of how history is conveyed between generations in the oral tradition (in Ayuujk, ap mëtyaajk or kajp mëtyaajk = orality, narrative) and regularly recorded on video. This format decolonizes history in several ways: most lecturers are intellectuals who,

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as a result of their command of the Ayuujk language, are in a position to revert to the Ayuujk oral tradition of storytelling, which, unlike external academics, they consider a primary historical source. They have worked out new theories on the origin and precolonial history of the Ayuujk ja’ay and see proof of them in recent findings from Mexican archaeology. The photography exhibition format also seeks to widen spaces of knowledge and dialogue. Up until a few years ago, photography exhibitions in galleries were the privilege of urban contexts. Here, too, the format is adapted to the main community building of the cabildo and its adjacent open spaces. Historical photographs of the village hitherto stored in private archives were presented in public for the first time there in 2008 and reinterpreted as fundamental to the visual history of the community. Contemporary photographs, such as those of professional photographer Conrado Pérez Rosas, portray life in Tama and the neighboring villages—and thus regional Ayuujk culture—for the first time from this new perspective, that is, in an aesthetic form that is both experimental and artistic. The youthful actors address a broad sweep of villagers who are willing to tread paths not taken, such as the visual representation of their own religion, hitherto kept under lock and key. Through these media activities, their aesthetic languages and their political messages, Tama youth are able to network beyond the local level. They have close contact with youth in Tlahui, with whom they studied at educational institutions in the state capital of Oaxaca and Mexico City. Since the 1970s, Tlahui has occupied a leading role in the ethnopolitical movement of the Ayuujk people, which evolved from earlier ethnic-based organizations like CODREMI and the political activity of Floriberto Díaz and other intellectuals. A further milestone was the introduction of Radio Jënpoj in the year 2001, which is now seen throughout Mexico as the community media model par excellence. Timio, Froylita, and others from CCREA are part of a group of friends that includes Rigoberto, Braulio, and Sócrates Vásquez from Tlahui. Well-known beyond their village, the three brothers are leading figures on the Ayuujk ethnopolitical scene. These young adults from Tama and Tlahui worked together closely during the preparation and implementation of the Second Pan-American Indigenous Media Summit (see chapter 5). Tama’s Feria Cultural del Pulque in December 2014 took place against the backdrop of this increased cooperation and international ethnopolitical orientation. The festival consisted of an opening day with a preliminary event for the Third Media Summit to be held in Bolivia in November 2016 and a second day with the actual Feria Cultural del Pulque. Similar to Radio Jënpoj earlier, the youth movement of

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the Colectivo merged to a certain extent on this occasion with the larger ethnopolitical scene. Finally, some remarks on youth commitment in the production of documentaries. The Tama youth movement was instrumental in generating a creative milieu that fosters village filmmaking from a perspective distinct from that of the patron saint fiesta videos. Since 2006, Romel, a member of the Colectivo, has put his self-taught film craft to the test in the youth movement, practicing and refining it with other members of CCREA. He produced an array of films extending from documentaries on the Feria Cultural del Pulque, through political films and music video clips to patron saint fiesta videos. The young people from Tlahui who studied at UPN with Temo founded the Cine Club Et ääw or Cine Libre Mixe in their village. They organize free film screenings in the town center and rural hamlets as an alternative to the political manipulation of mainstream media. Damián Martínez, Estela González, Godofredo Martínez, and Roberta Hernández produce their own documentaries regularly, drawing attention to local issues and irregularities, such as the contamination of water resources or the causes of the natural disaster that led to the landslide in Tlahui in 2010. Damián and Estela, who live and study in Mexico City, were supported by renowned Mexican filmmaker Alberto Cortés while making their film Ayo’on Xaamkëjxp (Disaster in Tlahui). Since 2013, young people have availed of the professionalizing of local film productions with courses provided by the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC) specifically for people who live in the countryside far from such film academies. Finally, Tlahui’s intercultural university UNICEM has been offering a bachelor degree course in Communal Communication since 2013. Students from Tama attend the course to acquire film techniques with an explicitly communal direction. The art of film is taught there according to new guidelines, which were heavily influenced by the youth movement. The field of youth media and the latter’s engagement exemplifies the specific cultural and political messages these actors convey, as seen in their choice of communication means to open up new media spaces: mass media like photography, video, and the Internet are purposefully combined with oral tradition, live music and dance performances, all of which aim to regenerate, promote, transnationalize, and globalize Ayuujk culture.

Notes 1. Since 2001, Mexico’s Federal Ministry of Tourism has been awarding villages official recognition as pueblos mágicos in order to promote tourism. Tama’s crit-

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2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

ics of its current urbanization demand a return to a traditional style of architecture which they consider to be more adapted to the environment and to Ayuujk cosmology. See also Fortino López García (2011: 90), who criticizes the effects of ramo financing on Tama’s cargo system, such as the increased interest of individuals in the higher cargo offices in charge of administering these funds. Coyotes, or smugglers, charge diverse fees for smuggling undocumented migrants over the US border. In 2013–2016, they varied between 3,000 US dollars for simply taking migrants to a less controlled part of the border, and 10,000 US dollars for (false) documentation to pass through border facilities. Wide agricultural areas are rare in the municipality due to the mountainous terrain. Nevertheless, about one-fourth of the municipality’s land is cultivated with the staple crops of corn and beans. Most families have at least one hectare of land, which they use for some degree of subsistence in basic food requirements. Information on the inhabitants’ occupations is based on observations from my interlocutors and on information in H. Ayuntamiento Constitucional Tamazulapam del Espíritu Santo (n.d.: 29). See H. Ayuntamiento Constitucional Tamazulapam del Espíritu Santo (n.d.: 37). The term mercados solares refers to a market system in which the villages of a region, by alternating with their neighboring villages, are legally authorized to hold their markets on a certain day of the week. Tama displays a combination of different modes of production. Family subsistence, mercantile trade based on a regional market system, and, finally, capitalist production and trade for the national and international markets are interlinked (Acevedo Conde 2012: 37). Business and success are an important motif in myths and storytelling: Will, a building material entrepreneur, attributes his commercial success to the fact that he accessed a sacred cave filled with gold on the Zempoaltépetl mountain. Teachers start off with a comparatively low monthly salary of 7,000 pesos (438 US dollars in 2015) and receive regular increases as they advance in seniority. In 1990, three state institutions, INI, CIESAS, and DGEI, created an undergraduate program in etnolingüística, that is, in Amerindian languages, with the objective of training indigenous professionals in this field. Ten to twelve candidates were accepted every year. Several Ayuujk persons graduated, including Alfonso “Poncho” López and Daniel Martínez Pérez from Tama. The social movement that unfolded between June and November 2006 in the capital of Oaxaca was directed against corruption and acts of government repression under the administration of the PRI state governor Ulíses Ruiz Ortiz. Sparked at first by Oaxaca’s teachers’ trade union Sección 22, which forms part of the national SNTE, and its demands for higher salaries for teachers in 2006, the social movement subsequently developed into a much broader alliance including, apart from teachers, indigenous peoples, women, students, peasants, and urban neighborhoods (Stephen 2013: 3). SNTE was founded in 1943 and came to represent all of Mexico’s primary and secondary school teachers. During most of its history, the SNTE has followed the pattern of the Mexican government’s corporatist unions and has remained closely affiliated to the ruling PRI. In fact, it has actively recruited voters for this party. Sección 22, founded in 1983, forms part of the SNTE. However, as

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13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

it has engaged in democratizing the educational workers union organization, Sección 22 upholds a partially independent position within the SNTE. It has developed its own educational guidelines and programs. One peculiarity of the Mexican educational system, which is supported by the SNTE, concerned the practice of selling or passing on teaching posts to family members. Peña Nieto’s major educational reform in 2013 ended this practice by implementing a centralized process for hiring, evaluating, promoting, and retaining teachers based on, among other things, a standardized national teaching test. Sección 22 strongly opposed the reform, arguing that its hidden agenda was to impose new labor legislation. According to Sección 22, the new requirements constituted a plot to fire unwanted teachers en masse and to pave the way for privatizing education. Beginning in the 1970s, Oaxaca and Mexico City became the principal migration destinations. This shifted increasingly to northern Mexico in the 1990s, primarily to the states of Hidalgo, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí, and Jalisco. As of 1999, international destinations in the United States, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, North Carolina, and Florida, became the new migration targets. Comunalidad is not (yet) a political term to which Oaxacan indigenous organizations in California refer to much (see Kummels 2016b). For this reason a new term, transcomunalidad, may serve to convey a search for a common position of ethnopolitical organizations on both sides of the border in the transnational setting. Këmuuny is derived from comunidad and means “community” and kajpxmukp “to talk, to dialogue.” Kajp stands for the village and junt is derived from junta, assembly. The higher-ranking offices often include a triumvirate of a proprietario, a suplente, and a secretario. Eleven officials specifically serve the church. Comité offices deal with education and infrastructure in the community, such as the water supply (see also Valdivia Dounce 2010: 311). The name of the Facebook page is changed. The Spanish terms used to refer to the Ayuujk religion, lo propio and cosmovisión, are used with somewhat different meanings. While lo propio explicitly excludes from the Ayuujk religion those foreign elements introduced by the Spanish Catholic Church, cosmovisión, by contrast, may emphasize the public use of normally occult rituals for the ends of Ayuujk ethnopolitics (in relation to the Pan-American indigenous movement and its interpretation of cosmovisión, see Kummels 2008). For example, the influence of an individual official could be seen with regard to the cultural program hosted at the octava of Tama’s Santa Rosa de Lima Fiesta in 2013. Usually a popular band specializing in norteño music is invited, but, in 2013, the regidor de educación was determined to elevate the fiesta’s cultural program by instead inviting Oaxaca’s well-known singer of traditional music, Susana Harp. The duty to assume an office shapes peoples’ path in life, since every community member must take into account the financial factor that it denotes in their medium-term life plans. Serving the village even influences the decision to marry, since officials (especially men) are expected to have a spouse to support them in fulfilling their ritual duties.

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22. Already in 1986 Isabel Ramírez substituted for her husband (absent due to work in Oaxaca) in one of the highest town offices as presidente suplente. 23. To be able to comply with the terms of their election to a cabildo office, migrants often rely on relatives living in Tama to substitute for them as an interino. Migrants sometimes also pay for someone to serve as their proxy, with 100,000 pesos being a standard price for a one-year period of community service. 24. Bells are power objects in the Ayuujk universe. According to a myth recounted by Cirilo, the Tama women who carried a bell from Candayoc, a pre-Hispanic Ayuujk city, gave birth to the Cerro de la Malinche mountain by magical means. Interview with Cirilo González López, Tamazulapam, August 2015. 25. Interview with Adelina Pérez Mateos, Tamazulapam, September 2012. 26. I later came to learn that the videomakers of Video Tamix Genoveva, Romel, and Illich had produced this film that had been commissioned by the church regidor as one of their first features. 27. Orality is not replaced, but instead this older medium is perpetuated and transformed by means of video. 28. Capitán is a cargo for particular fiestas that entails the obligation of financing the required music for dancing and hosting the participants with meals. 29. Camcorder interview with Adelina Pérez Mateos, Tamazulapam, September 2012. 30. Interview with Valencio Rojas, Tamazulapam, 29 July 2013. 31. Interviews with Romel Ruiz Pérez, Tamazulapam, 12 August 2013, and Hermenegilda Cabañas Marín, Tamazulapam, 11 September 2013. “Diana” refers to a short, fast-paced, and celebratory piece of philharmonic band music dedicated to a particular person or event. 32. Interview with Conrado Pérez Rojas, Tamazulapam, 22 December 2014. 33. Funds from the ramos 28 and 33 consist of budgetary aid for infrastructure and culture that the federal and state governments provide for municipalities on the basis of tax incomes deriving from these entities. 34. This form of lobbying is often successful: candidates who are the first to be proposed at the nominating General Assembly are eligible for office. What counts is who raises their hand first and who is called on first by the presiding table to announce their proposal. 35. After they participated in an anthropological study carried out by a student from the Universidad Iberoamericana on the subject of domestic abuse, Tama’s women raised a massive complaint about the all-male sindicatura, five officials, who deal with legal cases. 36. I conducted extensive interviews with twelve women, most of whom complained about gender inequality with regard to the election of officials and the workloads imposed on them while in office. All of these women had migratory experience and some observed that their insights into more gender equal political participation in contexts away from their hometown could explain their critical attitude. 37. In many cases, young single mothers interrupt or even give up their education after giving birth. They generally do not have an income, receive no child support from the father, and live in their parents’ home. Being elected to an office is more stressful for them than for others. Several women, for instance, confided to me that they were in shock after learning about their election, their thoughts instantly centering on how they would be able to raise enough financial resources for their cargo period.

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38. Particularly women born in the 1950s and 1960s struggled for financial independence. In the 1970s, they still worked for the most part as domestic servants in the cities, where wages were often paid in kind with clothing, food, and board. The commitment of domestic workers for a more just form of remuneration marked a turning point. Informal conversation with Josefina García Martínez, Tamazulapam, August 2013. 39. In August 2016 Tama women attending a workshop dedicated to their participation in the cargo system analyzed why only thirty women have ever been elected as titulares (and only in recent years). Women were mainly considered as eligible for religious offices. The few women who have accessed high-ranking offices like suplente de presidente municipal and agente municipal have exceptional characteristics. Two who served recently were either divorced or married to a non-Ayuujk husband, who seems to be considered less eligible because of his ethnicity. In this case, moreover, the wife is a wealthy businesswoman, which is conducive to her political ascent. 40. Interview with Cuahutémoc Pérez, 31 December 2014. 41. Yet youth participation in cargo offices other than topil is recently increasing. At the nomination General Assembly in 2014 two young men were appointed to secretario offices despite the fact that they were not married. 42. In the first half of 2012, the General Assembly decided that the level area next to the church with the pavilion at its center needed to make way for a new market building. CCREA and the Rojas brothers, among others, protested against this measure. They objected that the subject had not been thoroughly discussed at the General Assembly before the decision was made. The group further contended that an open space needed to be conserved, especially in el centro. They articulated the demand: “No to the destruction of public, social, and communitarian space.” See also Contreras Pastrana (2014: 110–113). 43. Interview with Rolando Vásquez Pérez, Oaxaca City, 15 September 2015. 44. According to the INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía) Censo de población y vivienda 2012, two-thirds of Tama’s households possess a television and a radio. In my observation of television behavior, consumers mostly watch news programs and Discovery Channel documentaries. From a gender perspective more women seem to favor telenovelas, while men have a preference for sports programs. 45. On the history and mode of operation of TV Tamix in the 1990s, see Wortham (2005) and Wortham (2013: 130–173). 46. The Rojas brothers made use of anthropological photographs of the Ayuujk ja’ay/Mixe kept at the Fototeca Nacho López of the CDI. Genaro had claimed them for the village when he met those in charge at an indigenous media event. 47. The film project’s name Barras de Color translates as “TV Color Chart.” Interestingly, it is derived from TV Tamix’s use of a woman’s shawl with characteristic colored stripes as a TV color chart. The television station therefore transformed the iconic attire and community flag into a symbol of the new communication era. 48. He owes his nickname to his father, Siete Copas (Seven Cups). 49. The most popular program was La hora de los compadres (Compadre Time), a typical music-request program where personal greetings were read aloud and frequently commented on humorously.

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50. During his term of office as presidente municipal in 2007, he supported the plan to introduce a local television station in Cuatro Palos, one of Tama’s agencias. Due to financial difficulties it never came into existence. 51. Informal conversation with Rigoberto Vásquez, Tlahuitoltepec, August 2013. 52. Interview with Florentino Martínez Mireles, Tamazulapam, 21 May 2013. 53. The category of youth is defined socially and culturally rather than biologically. In the case of Tama, youth is identified as the phase before marriage, marriage being defined by a couple moving together into the same house. There is an Ayuujk term for youth as a particular phase in the life cycle, wäjtyëjk, which literally means wäj = horn, tyëjk = his/her house, alluding to the adult process of maturation (Jiménez Díaz 2013). When young people are seen as mature they are elected as officials to the cargo system. Yet matrimony is required for fullfledged local citizenship. 54. Interview with Froylita Jiménez Sanjinés, Tamazulapam, 21 September 2016. 55. Informal conversation with Eutimio Antúnez Calderón, Tamazulapam, 2 September 2016. 56. These communitarian principles are: dialogue-respect, collectivity, mutual assistance and reciprocity.

Figure 2.1. The public and the occult, 2013–2016. Photos: Victoriano Guilberto and Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

CHAPTER 2

Ayuujk Audiovisuality Today Generating Media Spaces through Practices

Contesting Hegemonic Knowledge through Discursive Practices of Audiovisuality Photography practices, from taking pictures with a mobile phone to using a professional single-lens reflex camera with an exchangeable lens and filming with camcorders, are commonplace in Tama. These practices occasionally seem as trivial and mundanely motivated as they are in so many contexts around the world. A number of villagers, however, pursue and contextualize their audiovisual activities in order to record and interpret certain aspects of their culture and thereby to systemize their cultural knowledge. Their discursive practices, that is, “practices of knowing, explaining, justifying and so on” (Hobart 2005: 26, quoted in Postill 2010: 5) are an integral part of their production, dissemination, and consumption of self-styled mass media. Through these practices they draw links to their historical traditions, artistic practices, and religious beliefs, to their relationship to the land and their sense of belonging as Ayuujk ja’ay. Several village mediamakers and intellectuals have developed vernacular theories about community media practices, people like Daniel Martínez Pérez, Genaro Rojas, Noé Aguilar, Conrado Pérez Rosas, Cuahutémoc Pérez, and others, whose voices will be heard in the following sections. A pivotal topic they deal with is the extent to which local audiovisual practices contribute to the decolonizing of their own society and that of a wider national and transnational society. According to Daniel Martínez Pérez, the deliberate destruction of autochthonous religion and local knowledge during the colonial period led to a counterstrategy of concealing vital cultural goods. Hence the community’s prime deity, Konk ëna’ or la Diosa del pueblo, was banned from being seen and therefore

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cannot be photographed. While certain social groups in Tama, such as the diviners, tend to endorse maintaining the ban on photography to protect the religious sphere, others such as young teachers and mediamakers plead for visualization of occult cultural practices and their audiovisual representation and distribution via mass media. Consequently the notion of “making culture visible” through mass media or abstaining from doing so has been much debated within the village. Actors do not use the term “making culture visible,” but media anthropologists who have analyzed the Mexican Video Indígena movement ascribe this aim to local media projects (Salazar and Córdova 2008: 40; Wortham 2013: 5–12). Yet they have not broached the issue of arguments over dissenting representational strategies, such as those that either privilege revealing or concealing cultural knowledge, which has been a major issue with regard to Aboriginal media in Australia (see, for example, Michaels 1994; Weiner 1997). The following section sheds light on media practices and their negotiating contexts, where norms and practices of preservation with reference to viewing and by extrapolation to photographing and filming are used to defend “one’s own” religion. That said, many mediamakers— as will be shown—are currently contesting these norms and interpret their boundary transgressions as a conscious process of decolonizing the audiovisual. As part of transforming audiovisual parameters, Tama mediamakers and intellectuals design new concepts and theorems, such as sacred space (espacio sagrado), convivial space (espacio de convivencia), and opening spaces (abrir espacios), all of which express changing norms in audiovisuality. Although actors rarely use the term “decolonization” when theorizing, they do discuss its content, for instance, when they refer to the self-designation and self-concept of people from Tama (and the Ayuujk ja’ay) as “those never conquered” (los jamás conquistados).1 This selfimage is often immediately attenuated by the observation “but we were spiritually conquered” (sí fuimos conquistados espiritualmente) with which they allude to the conversion of the Ayuujk ja’ay to Christianity through the Catholic Church during the Spanish colonial era. Today most Ayuujk people consider themselves Catholic Christians, but simultaneously distance themselves discursively from religious practices they perceive as having been imposed on them by Dominican and Salesian friars. Many believe it is the legacy of colonial violence that drives them to baptize their children as Catholics today, to attend the liturgy performed in the church by the Catholic priest, and to worship Catholic patron saints such as el Espíritu Santo and Santa Rosa de Lima. They regard these elements as imported and forced upon them. At the same time, inhab-

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itants of Tama still practice what they conceive of as their authentic religion. Rarely referring to it as religión, they mostly speak in Spanish of costumbres, lo propio, and lo auténtico, or in Ayuujk of këm jä’, “our own,” to distinguish it from external Catholicism.2 Lo propio and lo auténtico are therefore primordially defined in the realm of religion and by drawing the line at the religious Other and colonial imposition. Tama’s religious sphere will be briefly characterized here: unlike the neighboring villages of Ayutla and Tlahui, this village has preserved a high level of religious autonomy to this day. The fact that, despite numerous attempts, the Catholic Church failed to establish a parish in Tama confirms this; instead, priests and nuns from Ayutla meet the village’s need for their services at mass on Sundays and holidays, and administer the sacraments. Although firmly established in some Ayuujk villages since the 1950s, neither Protestant nor Evangelical churches have succeeded in gaining a foothold in el centro, Tama’s town center. Its inhabitants are seen in the region as outright costumbristas or tutk pootëp in Ayuujk, since they practice their own religion. Their principal ritual consists of sacrifices of complex composition, particularly of fowl’s blood, to Mother Earth (la madre tierra; in Ayuujk, et naaxwi’iny, literally, space-earth-place), primarily in honor of natural sites (the Spanish term here is sitios sagrados) that harbor forces of nature such as wind and thunder. Religious authority in contemporary Tama is divided: those who determine many aspects of life are referred to as xëmääpy (literally, lector de los días-del sol or “daykeepers”; xëë means among other things “day” and “sun,” while määpy translates to “the person who divines”). In Spanish they are known as adivinos or adivinas (diviners, or also as abogados, mediators). When it comes to the sacraments of baptism and matrimony, on the other hand, the authority of the Catholic priest is widely accepted. Most people in Tama, however, credit the diviners with greater powers to influence the well-being and prosperity of the individual and the community. They seek out these religious experts regularly and listen to their predictions on the subject of (dis)harmony in marriage and the family, as well as on health, educational progress, work, and migration.3 The following section first looks at the way in which media spaces are generated in a public ritual: the annual change-of-office ceremony of Tama’s cargo officials. The public realm by definition requires eye-witnesses and a large audience in situ. The media spaces concerned are analyzed by and from the perspective of intellectuals, media producers, and consumers in a transnational setting. Such consensual media spaces are now opened and experienced collectively by many members of the transnational village. Later in this chapter these public ceremonies are

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contrasted with the occult character of most religious rituals. Second, the discursive practices of village intellectuals and mediamakers, both young and old, are given special attention. These practices focus on controversial media spaces concerning the occult. From different angles these actors see self-determined audiovisual transgressions of the occult as significant to their changing society and its institutions and as potentially contributing to the process of decolonization. They challenge hegemonic knowledge whether it prevails within the village or outside of it. In other words they question both elements of traditional knowledge within the community and “Western” epistemology in general. At the same time they strive to document and transmit knowledge via new media spaces.

Mediatizing and Transnationalizing Change-of-Office Ceremonies The annual change-of-office ceremony on 1 January (cambio de autoridades) is a pivotal public ritual that ideally requires the entire community to attend and witness it. Ayuujk terms for this presence are ëxtëp jaayëp, a dual expression for “seeing it and experiencing-feeling it” as well as exmëtá, which translates literally into “seeing-testifying.” As a key performance element of the current ceremony, newly elected officials line up around the main plaza in orderly fashion, framing the rectangular space.4 In the past only officials (titulares) stood in the front row and—as they were mostly men—their wives stayed behind them in the second row. This arrangement was altered in 2011. Husbands and wives now stand side by side in the same row, in official recognition of both as authorities. New officeholders actually assume the position after they have been called out individually on the microphone and step forward to present themselves to the assembled villagers. Serving a cargo position requires an investment in time and money, but the ability of community members to comply with these requirements varies considerably. A great number of villagers gather at the plaza to witness whether each of the ninety-one elected officials actually assumes office, either in person or through a substitute—or chooses to abstain. Stepping forward is a moment of pride for new authorities but also of apprehension due to the financial burden of a one-year cargo and the expectations of the villagers. Assuming office on-site is therefore a bittersweet moment of considerable tension for the individuals concerned, as well as a source of public interest and curiosity for the villagers gathering in the plaza. It is against this backdrop that videos of Tama’s change-of-office ceremony have become a transnational genre. Private video enterprises

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have been producing DVDs of this event for years and send them in large quantities to the United States, where they are sold in Tama satellite communities. As a result of DVD circulation, the geographic space that embraces witnessing the change-of-office ceremony and the attendant community of comuneros/as is extended to Los Angeles—albeit with a time delay. During my research I became familiar with this ceremony, at first through videos that caught the spirit of the event. People in and from Tama tend to acquire change-of-office ceremony DVDs for a variety of reasons. Francisco,5 a man in his early forties who emigrated from Tama in 1999, and has been living in Mid-City, Los Angeles, ever since, exemplifies the migrant perspective on this genre. Like many other paisanos/as he has a vast private archive of patron saint fiesta DVDs. During my visit to Los Angeles in February 2014, he made the archive available to me one morning before he left for work, so that I could view them for my research. He pointed out the film he thought was of the most interest: Cambio de Autoridades 2014 Tamazulapam Mixe, produced by Video Mecho. I was to look at this new acquisition, since it recorded the change-of-office ceremony that had taken place just the month before. Francisco has a special personal relationship to serving a cargo position. Despite the risks and enormous expense involved, in 2005 he returned temporarily to his hometown—his only trip back in his fifteen years abroad. He had been elected to an office the year before, and, apart from longing to see his parents and his village, he was keen to underline his status as a “good” comunero with hopes of immediately gaining prestige by being present at the ceremony. Francisco explained that “people sometimes want to see the person they have appointed in flesh and blood (en carne y hueso). They’re not interested in a substitute (interino).”6 Now he was showing me the DVD of the 2014 change-ofoffice ceremony sent to him by his parents. Here was visual evidence of Francisco’s father stepping forward on the plaza in Tama to assume the office of presidente de la escuela primaria Generación Jóven. In this case, Francisco’s younger brother, who also lives in Los Angeles, had been elected to a cargo and had made arrangements for the father to substitute for him. The film Cambio de Autoridades 2014 Tamazulapam Mixe uses several aesthetic devices to reinforce these moments of tension. Videographer Nemesio Vásquez Narváez (nicknamed Mecho) recorded the changeof-office at a time when he himself had just returned to his hometown after working many long years in New Jersey, in the United States. His choices for the design of the film are thus a reflection of his ability to fully adopt the perspective of the migrant viewer, the film’s target audience. Nemesio condenses the almost three-hour ceremony to one hour.

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Most of the scenes he selected convey the dignity of the ceremony, with the villagers neatly lined up. In slow panning shots Nemesio captures the faces of those in attendance. His use of these stylistic devices intensifies the sense of assembled physical presence and cohesiveness, in short, the sense of lo comunitario. Where possible, he avoids images that disturb this impression.7 Remarkably, the audiovisual representation of this public performance is enhanced by using the original sound of Tama’s municipal brass band playing the song Sones y Jarabes Mixes. This song by Ayuujk composer Rito Marcelino Robirosa has become a sort of national anthem of the Ayuujk people. Nemesio uses it as the soundtrack to long pan shots of the village’s urbanized center, its administrative buildings, and numerous houses. With this signature tune he adds drama to the scenes showing the change-of-office ceremony, in which viewers are particularly interested. When I discussed this film with Francisco afterwards, it became clear how it opens a media space for a transnational audience. Francisco not only took an interest in the images of officials he knew well, such as his father, but also in many with whom he was unfamiliar or had only known as children or teenagers fifteen years ago. This was the case with Teresa López Domínguez, for example, a divorced mother in her mid-thirties who assumed the office of tesorera del comité del Pre-escolar Rey Condoy. She appears in the DVD as a new official, standing proudly with her two daughters in line with the other authorities. Since I had just recently talked with Teresa in Tama, I knew that she had lived for many years in Hermosillo, Sonora, where she had been “stranded” after a failed attempt to cross the US border without documents. When her marriage to a man from the area collapsed, she returned to her home village after many years of absence, accompanied by her daughters. Within a short space of time, and using her migration savings, she became a successful businesswoman and now runs her own restaurant in Tama. Francisco had a different perspective of her, since he had basically known Teresa as a teenager in the 1990s, shortly before she emigrated; at that time it seemed as though she intended to leave for good. In the DVD, however, Francisco saw her for the first time as an official in the village and thus as a full-fledged comunera. More precisely, the film conveyed this to him in scenes where Teresa, proud and elegantly dressed, stands in line with her two daughters on the plaza as one of the annually appointed officials and steps forward as her name is announced. This space of testimony to the inauguration of new authorities and the community building of comuneros/as is extended to Los Angeles through the DVD. I gained more insight into the change-of-office before it was mediatized, that is, when people would simply meet face-to-face at the plaza,

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when I interviewed Daniel Martínez Pérez, a leading Tama intellectual, on the subject. Born in 1952, Daniel studied etnolingüística (ethnolinguistics in Amerindian languages) in Tlaxcala in the 1980s and has since been a key figure in regional Ayuujk ethnopolitics. He then founded the research center CINAJUJI together with etnolingüistas from several other Ayuujk villages.8 In Tama, Daniel is an expert on religion; he wrote his bachelor’s thesis on “Religión Ayuujk de Tamazulapam” (Martínez Pérez 1987). He was repeatedly appointed to senior positions, including that of presidente suplente de bienes comunales in 1998. He also works closely in a variety of ways with young mediamakers.9 The state capital of Oaxaca has been his home for quite some time but he commutes to Tama for important meetings. Daniel explained the significance of the moment of change of authority, both for the participants and the viewers: Daniel: A reception of the new authorities takes place in the village when they assume a cargo and it causes dissatisfaction if they don’t appear on the plaza. That’s because of ritual tradition and all those reasons. Then it’s society itself that begins to see how an authority enters, to observe whether he performs according to cultural requirements. … Ingrid: So the people gathered at the plaza observe whether they are performing the rituals properly and if they really turn up to assume their office? Daniel: It is society that testifies to whether they are doing it right, if they enter well. If some community member dies shortly afterwards or conflicts with other villages arise, then they comment, “Oh well, it’s because these new authorities have violated natural law.” That’s probably how things would be interpreted. Ingrid: The change of authorities seems to be one of the earliest acts captured by local photographers. It’s their very first motif.10 Daniel: Sure, the ceremony is the most important evidence. Because it seems to be the ultimate for the person who receives a cargo. People gather at the plaza and comment: “The way we see them now, that’s how they are going to work in the coming year.” They are judging them. Others might think, “How lovely they look!” And that’s OK up to a point. But there are others who go even further: “The way we see them today, so close together, that’s how we expect it to work out this year.”11

Yet viewers of the transnational audience are more interested in detecting transgressions of this ideal, even through the medium of video. For the nominees, assuming office on 1 January is like walking a tight-

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rope. This is the day when they—and indeed the community itself—are open to public scrutiny in terms of the sacrifices they are prepared to make for the collective good. Photographers and filmmakers visualize the physical absence of certain candidates and the attitude of those present. Highly focused, they not only capture moments of collective harmony, but also flashes of tension. In January 2015 I was able to both attend the ceremony in Tama for the first time and, with my hosts, Josefina and Medardo, watch a screening of the two-hour film Cambio de autoridades Tamix 2015 produced by Video Rojas. They had been unable to attend the ceremony in person on 1 January, because they were visiting their daughter in Oaxaca at the time, and were eager to see the DVD on their return. Videographer Óscar Rojas had recorded the events of the day with his camcorder, from the early morning tête-à-tête at the new presidente municipal’s house to the ceremony at the end of the day at the plaza before the church service. I saw how my hosts had a quick look at the first part of the film, skipped through most of the second half until they finally came to the segment that interested them the most: the roll call of the ninety-one officials lined up at the plaza. They were keen to see whether each was actually present and who would step forward as each name was called. They watched meticulously and constantly asked their son, who had been present in Tama on 1 January, about different people: “Did he arrive or not?”; “Did he assume [the post] or not?” (¿Llegó o no llegó?; ¿Asumió o no asumió?). This was followed by a lengthy discussion about the case of a single mother and teacher, who the year before had refused to assume an appointment to a committee, although the General Assembly had offered her financial support. Although unmarried or divorced mothers often suffer from financial difficulties, their status as heads of household makes them preferred candidates for office. Viewers of change-of-office videos therefore use them to discuss the obligations of the cargo system and redefine what it means to be a “good” comunero/a in light of individual and collective performances at the mediatized change-of-office ceremonies.

The Occult and Colonially Inscribed Viewing The people of Tama speak explicitly of a dimension of the cargo system that is not public, but belongs to their own religion, the occult (in Spanish lo oculto and in Ayuujk ëyuutsy). This separation of the public and the occult is particularly evident in the conflicting strategies used for their respective audiovisual representation and mediatization: since the former is open to and even requires public witness, it has become a pop-

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ular photo and film motif, whereas with the latter domain, diviners take great care to grant access exclusively to active participants and to prevent rituals from being photographed or filmed. Diviners, high-ranking authorities, and costumbristas in general justify the ban on photography by referring to the concept of ëmay, a state of sensitiveness (in Spanish, delicadeza), in which rituals are in danger and bans become a necessity to maintain their essence and effectiveness.12 While religious and political authorities implement the ban as part of their visual politics, respect for supreme beings in general and recognition of their sacredness also play a role in the decision to prohibit anyone from seeing them. A number of village intellectuals explain this approach as a counterstrategy to the deliberate destruction of autochthonous religion and local knowledge during the colonial period. Valuable cultural goods such as the Konk ëna’ or la Diosa del pueblo fall under the ban, making photography and videotaping impossible.13 Personal consultations with diviners and elaborate sacrificial rites performed at sacred sites and in church,14 as well as ceremonies such as la quema del Diablo (in Ayuujk, Mëkuuj kootstëp, literally, offering the devil) are also rarely photographed or filmed.15 Local and transnational video genres that are sold and widely circulated convey the impression of a consensus on banning the occult from photography and film. Videos de comunidad such as the patron saint fiesta videos and DVDs of the change-of-office ceremony never include images of religious rituals guided by the diviners, although they capture those performed by the priest in the Catholic church. According to videographer Jaquelina Rojas Sánchez of Video Rojas, filming religious rituals is typical of documentales (documentaries)—in contrast to the kind of videos local videographers make for the villagers, which display a respectful attitude toward the occult.16 The one-year term of office of the cabildo is structured around a complex cycle of rituals that have been conducted for many years by two elderly diviners. These rituals include a visit to the graveyard, where new officials honor their predecessors who died violently; “blocking the roads” (el cierre de caminos) to the village, and “burning the devil” (la quema del Diablo) at the beginning of January—the latter key ceremonies to protect the village; and performing sacrifices at boundary landmarks of the municipality as part of tequio communal labor in October. While the secular components of these ceremonies and political acts are repeatedly in the eye of local cameras, rituals associated with their own religion are for the most part omitted in local and transnational audiovisual genres. Viewed from the perspective of transnational media spaces these strategies of concealment localize these pivotal religious rituals. Since their images are not

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allowed to circulate, intimate knowledge of and participation in these rituals depend on being on-site in the home village. In the context of religion, photography and film are perceived as controversial. Several of my interlocutors pointed out that anyone is strictly prohibited from ever seeing the Konk ëna’.17 A single woman, usually a widow, is obliged to keep the goddess—represented by the traditional medium of a stone sculpture—in her house for a year and to look after her. (Basically the same power is attributed to the goddess and the Catholic saints; their representations, either the stone sculpture or the statues referred to as imagenes are living objects and for this reason require clothing and food.18) In Spanish this highly responsible religious official is referred to as la cuidadora (the caretaker) or la señora del pueblo (the village lady) and in Ayuujk as këëkajp. She herself is not permitted to see the figure that she keeps in her house wrapped in a shoulder bag and in a large wooden case. Even taking pictures of the goddess in the wrapping is forbidden. People pray for rain to this deity as a means of fostering agricultural cultivation, especially corn. Should the responsible official fail to fulfill her duty to this goddess of corn and, in particular, disregard the ban on looking at her, a natural disaster threatening the entire village would occur—usually a storm with sudden heavy rainfall, lightning, and the risk of landslides.19 Tama is probably the only Ayuujk village that has been able to preserve this specific form of worship of a village deity in a highly elaborate and, for the community, quintessential form deriving from precolonial traditions.20 The change of authority on 1 January is deemed an important but mainly administrative event. From a ritual perspective, however, the elaborate occult rituals involving la Diosa del pueblo are considered even more important and authorities from the previous year remain in office beyond 31 December in alignment with the precolonial calendar New Year. The ritual change of authority then takes place with the handing over of the wrapped figure to the new caretaker. Under cover of darkness, the regidor’s wife carries her from the house of the incumbent to that of the next cuidadora. Only then have the old officials performed their final duty. Local photographer Conra first began to take pictures at the festivities in 2013, but took the utmost care to devise a procedure that would not be regarded as a violation of the photography ban (see chapter 3). He explains: The ban on photography has to do with the respect toward that which you should not take pictures of, because those figures are alive. We give them life and that’s why things aren’t that easy. It’s about a moment when the

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figure is ours alone. People don’t want to see that documented, instead it’s a feeling they experience toward it.21

In discursive practices the ban on viewing and photographing the occult is referred to repeatedly. During the ritual turn of the year in 2014, Medardo Pérez Ríos, a former teacher and Tama’s presidente municipal in 1991, explained to me why no one was allowed to see la Diosa del pueblo by narrating a myth. To clarify the background to the ban, he first spoke about her immense significance for the community: The goddess of the village, we can indeed ascertain that she is 100 percent autochthonous. She is not a saint of this or a saint of that. She was not imposed on us by the Spaniards. She is the ultimate authority; no one is above her, neither the presidente municipal nor the alcalde. She is Tama’s highest representative.22

In his remarks, Medardo typically emphasized the difference between the domain of his own religion and Roman Catholicism as imposed by the Spaniards and Dominican missionaries in particular.23 In response to my question as to why seeing the goddess was prohibited, he then told a story handed down in the oral tradition (in Spanish, cuento, in Ayuujk, ap mëtyaajk). I occasionally heard the same story from young people like the artist Wenceslao, who used to tell it as if the events had happened only recently. According to this narrative the curious and ignorant grandchild of a këëkajp caretaker looked into the bag holding the stone figure. Medardo said he heard the story from his grandmother, who had experienced it personally when she was young, during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas.24 At that time silkworms were still raised on a farm where today a secondary school is located.25 Women used to spin threads with a spindle in a small gourd and make shawls. When the child disobeyed the ban and looked at the goddess, the silkworms wandered off, chained to each other, whereupon this entire branch of production collapsed. The officials responded to the cuidadora’s lapse with a beating. Daniel Martínez Pérez has a long-held theory about the strict ban on viewing and on photography in certain areas of the religion. Together with other local intellectuals he interprets this belief as a legacy of colonialism. In his view, the village fosters to a great extent its own knowledge and culture in secret so as to protect these treasures from external threats and ensure they will be handed down. It developed this strategic device in response to the colonial assaults of the Spaniards:

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Daniel: It is still forbidden to photograph some things. There is another important element. Maybe we could take up this subject another time, it’s still veerry occult. It has to do with the famous këëkajp. Ingrid: You mean the goddess of the village? Daniel: Put that in quotation marks, “goddess of the village.” Ingrid: Ah, what does këëkajp mean in Spanish? Daniel: It literally means “the one who works for the village.” She is indeed specific to Tama’s religion. In the meantime they have included some Catholic elements in her cult. But that only happened recently. In fact all of it was completely Ayuujk. It was something of our own (algo propio). … The idea of the people is that those, or specifically the woman in charge, have been trained not to allow anyone to see her. Otherwise there’s a risk that this tradition will end. That’s the way you could see it. But people couch it in other words. They say that disease will break out, disaster will occur, the harvest will fail, people will die, all kinds of catastrophes. But perhaps I can dare to sum this up as expressing the fear that this belief might be lost—as was the case with much of our own when the Spaniards came with everything. People began to lose ground, those who are no longer here now. Their practices and traditions were lost in the process. And the risk in this case, too, is that it could all be lost in the same way. Like the codices that were lost, only very few survived in this region.26

According to Daniel the existential warnings about seeing la Diosa del pueblo that are handed down orally serve as a metaphor for the perils of cultural destruction that emanated from colonialism. The community used concealment and secrecy to protect itself from the deliberate destruction by the missionaries of its knowledge and the media that served to transmit this knowledge, such as pictographic writing. In this way it was able to preserve its essence and hand it down. Other versions of oral history also highlight this rationale. Cirilo González López, who held the office of church fiscal in 2013, told me that her figure was originally revered in a temple located where the church now stands. When the Dominican friars appeared on the scene in the early colonial era, a woman from Tama wrapped the stone figure in her shawl, hid it under her skirt, and succeeded in taking it to her home. Since then the goddess is kept hidden at the home of a señora del pueblo and protected there.27 I asked Cirilo and Daniel if they thought allowing public worship of the deity was a possibility, given the empowerment of the Ayuujk ja’ay today. Both felt, however, that complete decolonization of these practices was inconceivable. Concealment and the ban on viewing had now become an integral part of lo propio. In sum, according to local intellectuals, the photography

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bans that village mediamakers see themselves facing from the religious domain emanate from the imbalance of power and the suppression of local knowledge and practices during the colonial period. The traditional medium, the stone sculpture that personifies this core community deity, is considered at odds with the medium of photography, since basically the same power is attributed to both. Through religious rituals the object or person represented through these media are brought to life; mishandling them may endanger human existence. Daniel Martínez told me that until the 1980s many villagers were convinced that a camera had the power to remove the soul from a person’s body and “transfer it” (plasmar = to represent, to sensualize) to the photograph.28 In the past this fatal quality was, on the one hand, credited to the act of photographing and, on the other hand, to the photographs themselves. The Ayuujk expression for “taking a picture” is indicative of this feature: ma pujx tyany literally means “what remains in the tool” (pujx means iron, tool, technology). One Ayuujk word for photograph, expäjt, likewise refers to this transfer.29 Expäjt is generally applied to “the symbolic” (algo simbólico) and consequently became the Ayuujk word for photograph. In the figurative sense, expäjt indicates “where something of your own remains and is reflected; where identity is mirrored” (donde queda algo tuyo que se refleja también; donde tú reflejas algo de la identidad). The Ayuujk word for taking a photograph, ëwanaax, literally means “imitating or copying someone.” While traditional religious experts are distrustful of the use of photography in the rituals they perform, practitioners of the Ayuujk religion resort to photographs for several spiritual practices. One of these uses occurs when carrying out costumbres for a family member who lives in the United States. As I was able to experience, a photograph of the absent member is included in the arrangement of sacrifices made at a sacred site such as the Zempoáltepetl mountain; the offering to Mother Earth consists of rows of tamales and figures made of corn dough and eggs, over which fowl’s blood and mezcal are tossed. The person performing the offering talks to the relative’s photograph so that he or she “is able to hear” (para que escuche) and thereby experience the costumbre from a distance (see also chapter 3). As will be illustrated in the following section, young mediamakers in the village have been trying for some time to reform this strategy of preserving culture via secrecy and to relax the bans on viewing and photographing. Instead, they propose visualizing lo propio for a wide audience, even beyond the confines of the community. Mediamakers draw up audiovisual concepts such as “sacred space” (espacio sagrado) as discursive strategies that allow for redefining such boundaries. I will explore some

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of these practices chronologically and analyze them as innovative milestones in local and transnational media history.

Espacio Sagrado, Audiovisual Transgressions, and Innovation Space (espacio) is a key concept in village media epistemology and was invented in the 1990s during the TV Tamix period. At the time, the collective first used the term espacio sagrado in its film Fiesta Animada (1994) to clarify the political nature of its work at an international event, a meeting of indigenous filmmakers in Oaxaca that also included documentary filmmakers from Ecuador (see also the introduction). To summarize the arguments of Genaro Rojas at the time: the fiesta (Tama’s fiesta in honor of el Espíritu Santo), the subject of the film, is the paradigmatic sacred space. People come together respectfully at the fiesta in a demonstration of unity. By giving this concept expression, both the film itself and the local television station transform the fiesta into a lucha, that is, a political struggle for their own culture and their own epistemology. Hence the act of filming becomes a vital component of the fiesta or political struggle. “Filming is celebrating, too” (también grabando se hace fiesta) is the message superimposed at the end of Fiesta Animada. In a recent interview Genaro Rojas, Tama’s local television pioneer, stressed that the term sacred space is not only understood as the land but also the transmission airspace used by the media: Genaro: We have complications in our languages, both in Spanish and in Ayuujk. Since television was foreign technology there was no word for it. For example, how do you say “channel”? That’s hard to translate into Ayuujk. And space is very tied to cosmovision, to which space tends to give a meaning. We saw space most of the time as implying a cosmovision of the universe, of the air, the earth, the stars. If you hear the word “space” in Mexico, most people will certainly think of the universe. And since it is assumed that we are already using space, the air waves, that’s why we said, “Well, these images are flying, wandering through space with the satellites.” But it was like trying to transmit a cosmovisual message and all that, to include everything. It wasn’t about technology alone. Although we used to give a lot of importance to the camera, the broadcasting station, in reality what we were doing was more about space. And as for the sacred, it has to do with people having great respect for it, being solemn. That was the message. Ingrid: And how would you say espacio sagrado in Ayuujk?

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Genaro: I am not really sure how to say that. But here we talk a lot about et naaxwi’ny, which means something similar to the universe. Naax means earth, wi’iny is living on inclined earth, as if we people were clinging to it.30

Sagrado also refers to Ayuujk traditional religion and costumbres. Using the term in the context of local and transnational media may sound like a paradox at first, given that traditionally the sphere of the sacred could neither be photographed nor filmed. TV Tamix repeatedly tested the limits of this restriction and as documentarians succeeded in capturing costumbres audiovisually in several situations. In their documentation of agrarian disputes between Tama and Tlahui, the TV Tamix crew recorded several sacrifices of fowl, guided by the diviners within the context of communal labor and the securing of the municipality borders (with concrete boundary markers) in 1998.31 Images of the diviners and others present at the time reveal that they were by no means dismissive of filming. In the agrarian dispute with Tlahui the ritual sacrifices performed at the boundary markers served as a form of political demonstration, which was reinforced by its capture on videotape.32 Other audiovisual transgressions concerning the ritual to ward off a malign supernatural force called el Diablo or Mëkuuj are a somewhat different matter, since they concern a ritual considered a highly delicate matter. Nevertheless, village actors have already tried to film or photograph it several times. Temo, a primary school teacher, engaged in photography during his professional academic training at Mexico City’s Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (UPN). In 2010, during his first term of office as secretario de la tesorería municipal, he attended the ceremony along with the other officials. He intended to take photographs of “the burning of the Devil” for an ethnographic seminar paper he was writing while pursuing his bachelor’s degree in Educación Indigena. The seminar dealt specifically with the topic of ethnographic photography as a research method. He came up with the idea of recording this cultural-religious phenomenon with images and text as a way of preserving it for the village. He first asked one of the cabildo diviners for permission to take pictures and obtained it without further delay. He photographed extensively and met with no objections, but later on his actions became a source of considerable discontent. Upon returning to his studies in Mexico City, Temo began to have nightmares that always ended up with him at the cabildo, which he saw as a bad omen.33 On a visit to Tama his temporary office substitute informed him that the officials’ wives had complained at an internal meeting, because they feared his photography might have an adverse effect on the whole community. Officeholder wives are generally the authorities most deeply involved in ritual

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work. When a number of male officials came to his defense, the charges against Temo were dropped, but he never completed the seminar paper. This conflict is evidence of the diverging attitudes toward secrecy as a means of protecting what is seen as one’s own religion, depending on the gender and educational level of those concerned. State teachers in particular tend to adopt a more secular attitude with respect to both Ayuujk and external Catholic religious affairs. Yet another area in which Tama’s sacred realm has been brought to the wider public eye is the Guelaguetza festival. Interestingly, the term espacio sagrado was coined in this context in the early 1990s—before TV Tamix adopted it. The occasion was Tama’s first participation in this key manifestation of culture in the state of Oaxaca. Beginning in the early 1930s, the Guelaguetza evolved into both a tourist attraction and a factor in regional integration. The state is represented at this mass event by dance delegations from its eight officially recognized ethnic or cultural regions. With tourism a major economic factor, the Guelaguetza is staged as an enormous folklore pageant and since 1974 has been performed in an auditorium built exclusively for this purpose. Along with Alfonso “Poncho” López García, a member of TV Tamix, Daniel Martínez Pérez conceptualized the performance space of the auditorium in Oaxaca as espacio sagrado. Hence, with this term Daniel and Poncho legitimized performing the village offering rite in which a chicken is slaughtered and its blood offered to Mother Earth as part of the dance performance of Sones y Jarabes Mixes in front of a faraway, non-Ayuujk public. During their performance this sacred act of cutting the live chicken’s neck with a knife was merely imitated symbolically (se hacía un simulacro).34 This cultural and political demonstration onstage at the state capital communicated to a wider audience that the Ayuujk ja’ay and particularly people from Tama had a language, a culture, and a religion of their own. In July 2013, for the first time in history a chicken was actually sacrificed during a performance of the Tama dance delegation at the Guelaguetza Popular35 in the state capital, which meant presenting, or rather confronting, the audience at the Instituto Tecnológico de Oaxaca with a “genuine” costumbre.36 It was considered something of a sensation; the young men in Tama in particular were excited and remarked with approval.37 Many had learned about what had happened through Facebook. Eliel Cruz Ruiz, a young teacher and son of the then regidor de educación, had accompanied the dance delegation and filmed the scene of the blood offering with his cell phone. He then posted the clip on his Facebook page. The four-minute clip focused on Noé Aguilar, the initiator and performer of the sacrificial rite in this novel form. As cul-

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tural director of the delegation, he had rehearsed the performance with the dance couples. Eliel told me that Noé had sought permission in advance from the presidencia municipal and the regidor de educación to perform the sacrificial rite at the Guelaguetza Popular. Together we watched the scene in the film where Noé and his female partner kneel down on the stage floor; tamales, eggs, and a chicken are arranged for the offering. Suddenly he puts a large knife to the chicken’s neck. Many who attended the festival in Oaxaca felt queasy when Noé began cutting the neck, explained Eliel. In the film someone shouts, “No, don’t do it!” Eliel commented sympathetically on the sense of horror in the audience: “They don’t know that’s our custom. And this is the ceremony with all its components.”38 I interviewed Noé about this breakthrough. Noé is a well-known young man in the community and has been a diviner since early 2013.39 He explained that his intention behind performing the blood ritual in the state capital was to gain recognition for costumbres as a religion on equal footing with the Catholic, Protestant, and other world religions. In his view a self-determined media dissemination of costumbres would pave the way for decolonization: Ingrid: I saw on Facebook that a costumbre was performed live at the Guelaguetza Popular this year for the first time ever. How did that come about? Noé: Well, all in all (he laughs) I was the one who intervened in the ceremony. I went to it. I performed it. They had invited me. The issue is that the Catholic religion is proclaimed at the international level and worldwide—its word is spread, right? Protestants declare themselves and the word of God at the international level. Other religions like Buddhism and Islam entered other countries, other nations. Why can’t we demonstrate our religion in other places? Why not? I think I was the person who dared to do so. Well, it has been done before, but so briefly that nobody could really see it. “Here we are, the chicken”—but fast. No, instead I tried to demonstrate that this is my religion! We live with it. We walk with it. We wake up with it. We die with this! This is what we live together. We spend happy moments with the family with this type of religion. Why do I do this? Because I’m interested in showing people, in showing tourists, showing other countries that Catholicism is not the only religion in the many indigenous villages of the state of Oaxaca, and at the national and international level, as in other countries. Instead we have our own form of religion. But we have marginalized ourselves by hiding it. But why, in fact? Because during the Conquest they said it didn’t belong to us, that it comes from the devil, that we should not practice it. But what did our

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grandparents do? They performed their ceremonies at night, when no one could see them. It was forbidden. But then religious beliefs were mixed: the pre-Hispanic religion and what the Spaniards brought. The missionaries intervened with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Trinity. … Now we have statues of the saints. We used to have our own images [stone sculptures]. But they destroyed them, even though our ancestors had hidden them, our grandparents, because they were afraid. That’s why I have this drive to show my religion.40

Noé Aguilar was pointed out to me several times as someone who moved easily between traditional media such as live music and dance and modern mass media, and who had tackled an impressive array of cultural innovations in Tama. In 2013, he became extremely popular far beyond the confines of the village as the presenter of radio La T Grande de Tamazulapam’s La hora de los compadres (Compadre Time). In the role of the fictional character El palomo (the pigeon), he made fun of how migrant returnees spoke, lacing his mostly Spanish presentation with several amusing Ayuujk expressions. Noé, who is a caretaker at a state school, uses his spare time to revive a traditional medium, the comical masked dancing figure matoc and his companion, the tiger. In this context he investigated traditional dances with senior experts who have performed them for a long time. He is also a cantor in the church. And then he became a diviner. Noé’s consultation hours were in such demand that it was difficult for him to find time for an interview. During my regular visits to his house in September 2013, I saw numerous clients waiting their turn in the spacious yard in front of the house of his extended family. During the interview Noé explained that he embodied a new type of diviner: he does not use the traditional divinatory technique of casting maize kernels, but instead swings a pendulum. He sees his activities and cultural inventiveness as part of the trajectory of his migrant life, which included temporarily joining the Pentecostal Church in Florida. Noé had long since felt the calling as a diviner but had repeatedly put it aside because of the immense sacrifice it entailed. When he finally surrendered, he combined his work as church cantor with that of a diviner, something considered impossible up until then. Noé deliberately pursues these new directions, since he sees himself as a cultural innovator and takes recourse to knowledge he acquired during migration. Against this backdrop of experience he brings the occult component of the Ayuujk religion to the public eye and believes this will rescue Tama’s religion from marginalization and make it stronger. In the course of 2014, la Diosa del pueblo was visualized for the first time on a painting, albeit discretely. This first step toward reproduc-

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ing her image in public was triggered by síndico municipal Florentino Martínez Mireles’s call in September for the design of an emblem for Tamazulapam. When the announcement was posted on an official’s Facebook page, six mediamakers from the community entered the competition. They began to debate on Facebook about the symbols they felt were appropriate to represent the village. The designs they submitted tended to emphasize identity symbols such as the frog (derived from the Nahuatl name Tamazulapam: place of the frogs) and water source (based on the Ayuujk name Tu’uk Nëëm: place of one water) or the territorial map of the municipality and its eight agencias, as well as elements referring to lo propio, our own religion and way of life, such as sacrificial offerings of maize dough. When the designs were displayed in the auditorium on PowerPoint slides, the audience of over a hundred comuneros/as engaged in a lively discussion: What represents Tama to the core? La Diosa del pueblo was mentioned as being the supreme representative of the village, but her representation in public, on the other hand, was forbidden. Temo, whose design won first prize, recapped the discussion: Temo: The topic of religion also came up, for example the goddess. Yes, indeed, the goddess of the village had to come up, that’s important because she plays a major role in the community. But the discussion was about that: no, she’s something of our own (algo propio) and that we should not show her in public. We spent time talking about that. Ingrid: And who expressed the opinion about the goddess? Temo: I think they were from Tierra Blanca, I don’t remember their names. He said, “No, she is our own, we must pay her respect, protect her. Things have always been done like that.” Precisely because superstitions arose about what might happen if we break with this tradition. If someone touches her, this might weaken us or some kind of evil might besiege us. In particular superstitions that something of this kind might happen came up. In fact everyone gave their point of view and that was our exercise in dialogue. For my part I explained why. I said it was no coincidence she was hidden and exclusively dealt with in the village goddess’s very own space. It was a reaction to persecution. But if we look at our religion today, it’s very open. Besides, we have freedom of expression as a legal right and the right to preserve our religion, the veneration of Mother Earth, so nobody can take that away from us. We even have support from this legal aspect. I tried to explain that in the end: “Well, we won’t add her or include her in the village emblem.” Everybody present spoke out … Ingrid: And was she included in the village emblem in the end?

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Temo: Well, yes, I believe she has become part of the village emblem, the goddess of the village is now included.41

All these examples of representation avoidance and their current renegotiation and reorientation point to the longue durée of an ongoing “Images at War” (Gruzinski 2001), which broke out during the colonial period between Spaniards, missionaries, and Mesoamerican peoples. The Mixe region was “spiritually conquered” in two waves. The first wave, initiated by the Dominicans in Villa Alta in 1548, saw the massive destruction of the old temples, sites of worship in caves and clay or stone figures of village deities, referred to by the Spaniards as “idols” (ídolos), and the suppression of animal sacrifices at natural sites, such as on Zempoaltéptl mountain (Münch 1996: 36, 37, 42, 44). Parallel to this devastation the friars pushed through their visual forms of religious representation, that is, statues of the Holy Mary and of Jesus on the cross. Yet this “operation of substitution,” as Serge Gruzinski (2001: 39, 47) analyzed, failed to destroy the “material and visual link” between the local inhabitants and their native gods. Instead, the autochthonous population responded to annihilation with counterstrategies and fresh compromises. They either worshipped their gods in hiding or in the Catholic church, where they placed them next to the imposed new icons (Münch 1996: 54, for a nineteenth-century example). During the second spiritual conquest in the 1960s, the Salesians set their sights on the Mixe region, a long-neglected territory from a missionary point of view (Kuroda 1984: 19). They established parishes in Ayutla (1962) and Tlahui (1963) but, interestingly, were unable to gain a foothold in Tama, the community that lay between the two. At that time Victoriano Martínez and Domingo Basilio Rojas were village leaders. These two educated men adopted a highly skeptical, even anticlerical attitude (see chapter 3). For purely strategic purposes, according to Daniel Martínez Pérez, the Salesians relinquished the tough colonial attitude that saw autochthonous religion as devilish. Leopoldo Ballesteros, a Salesian who has been active in Tlahui for decades, exemplifies their modus operandi, which now is to exercise tolerance in the face of local ideas and practices. He studied anthropology and in his writings addresses the compatibility of Catholicism with the culture and religion of the Ayuujk ja’ay. But the people of Tlahui have a different point of view and enjoy telling the following story, which highlights their religious competence and their final triumph in the war of images: Leopoldo Ballesteros once wanted to reorganize worship of the patron saint Santa María Asunción of Tlahui to that of María Auxiliadora, the patron saint of the Salesians. “He took María Asunción’s holy statue from

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the niche on the altar and put María Auxiliadora in its place,” Roberta Hernández Jiménez from Tlahui told me one evening as we relaxed in a pub in Oaxaca.42 Ballesteros suddenly became very ill. Although he opposed them at the time, he consulted a diviner because he was well aware that the latter could heal him effectively and he himself feared for his life. The diviner then gave him the diagnosis: “If you don’t want to die, you must remove your holy statue” (Si no quieres morir, vuelves a quitar tu imagen). Ballesteros took his advice, and recovered. Thus as an ‘indigenous’ community Tama currently pursues its decolonization of the imbalance of power originally instituted by the colonialists, both within the home village itself and in the transnational context. Its example shows that this process of audiovisual colonization was more complex than numerous histories of photography and film with a Eurocentric/US-centric bias would suggest. Part of this scholarship unilaterally interprets defensive attitudes on the part of autochthonous populations as a reaction to their bad experience with colonial and neo-colonial anthropological research.43 Yet multiple factors contribute to an ongoing war of images. In 2002, for example, Pope John Paul II beatified two Zapotec converts and religious officials who had denounced their fellow residents of San Francisco Cajonos for practicing idolatry in 1700. Even today this issue remains controversial in the village itself. Although the newly canonized local saints are celebrated, some villagers are opposed to the word “idolatry” to categorize the religion they had renounced. In their opinion, the converts were traitors to their own people rather than saints.44

Denied Spaces, the Youth Movement, and Decolonization As has already been mentioned, Tama boasts a gamut of youth cultures that revolve around the musical genres of reggae as well as of rap, rock, metal, and trash metal. Their members sport special clothing styles, in addition to piercings, tattoos, and dreadlocks. They frequently organize concerts called tocadas (among others during the patron saint fiestas as a parallel event) that attract youth from the state capital. This strong presence of youth culture is exceptional in the Sierra Norte villages, and recent anthropological theses have focused on its expressions in Tama and neighboring Tlahui (see Contreras Pastrana 2014, 2016; Jiménez Díaz 2012). For the past two decades Tama’s youth have been in the process of significantly transforming their local and transnational community. One reason is their increased geographic mobility in terms of higher education and income opportunities. Furthermore, they take

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advantage of new possibilities compared to earlier generations, since tertiary education currently leads some of them not only to Mexican and North American cities, but even to South America and Europe. Living outside their hometown opens new doors to experience, both positive and negative. On the positive side, they describe the vast range of cultural and educational opportunities—which now specifically reflect indigenous realities and promote indigenous peoples. Among these are the bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in Sustainable Agriculture offered at the Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo, those for Educación Indígena introduced in 1982 at the UPN, and courses recently offered by intercultural universities in various parts of Mexico. On the negative side is the immediate discrimination as ‘indigenous’ people that the younger generation sees itself confronting—often for the first time— when studying outside the village. Racial discrimination against the indigenous as subaltern Others, which dates back to the colonial era, is still prevalent in everyday life in Mexico and among Mexican migrants in the United States. People categorized as indigenous with reference to phenotype, language, cultural signifiers, and social position are stereotyped, for example, as short, backward, or poor. Although internalized discrimination of indigenous culture also exists in Tama, such as seeing the Ayuujk language as a “dialect” (in comparison to the Spanish “language”), in general no one is discriminated against for their cultural difference/ethnicity.45 In contrast, those who study outside Tama risk being labeled as Oaxacos, for instance, which is used synonymously with “indigenous” due to the state’s large indigenous population. Even members of rich Tama families who have adopted an urban lifestyle find themselves facing racial discrimination.46 Tama’s youth have adapted the discursive strategies and practices of diverse countercultural religious and political ideologies they find in cities to their need to create their own spaces. They feel attracted to these movements as a counterweight to discrimination. This holds true for the Razteca movement in Mexico City, which has elaborated its own version of Rastafarian philosophy. It criticizes the consumerist Babylon, countering it with the values of a nature-oriented life that strives for the restoration of cultural roots and harmony with Pacha Mama or Mother Earth (Contreras Pastrana 2014: 81). The youth in Tama have shaped their own current since the end of the 1990s, and their specific cultural expressions include reggae and rap music sung in Ayuujk. The lyrics sung by local groups such as Sound System Ayuuk ja’ay redefine and revitalize icons of Ayuujk culture (for example, the beverages pulque and tepache and sacred sites like Zempoaltépetl mountain) from the perspective of youth. Anarchist and libertarian ideas that stress the auton-

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omy (and “primitive communism”) of indigenous communities are yet another strand. Ricardo Flores Magón (1874–1922), a noted Mexican activist born in Oaxaca (Eloxochitlán), is seen by pupils and students in Tama as a role model given, for example, his concept of village life as comunalidad (although this term was not coined until the 1980s). This ideological vein is also closely linked to a range of alternative leftist educational movements in Oaxaca, as in the field of higher education with Unitierra (initiated by Gustavo Esteva) and Colegio Superior para la Educación Integral Intercultural de Oaxaca (initiated by Benjamin Maldonado). Youth from Tama have therefore integrated cultural tastes and political ideologies once seen as external into their media practices. They have created a version of Ayuujk culture that deviates from the village mainstream and is thus a source of internal conflict. Reflecting on these processes, young mediamakers often refer to the concept of “opening spaces” (abrir espacios). Most of them have undergone the experience of periodic separation from their home village in the course of education and training in Oaxaca and Mexico City, as was the case with the founders of Colectivo Cultura y Resistencia Ayuuk in Tama and Cine Libre Mixe Et ääw in Tlahui, discussed later in this chapter. By observing and reflecting on their community and way of life from afar they developed a new appreciation of the Ayuujk language and culture. Some, like photographer Conra, experienced this individually (while working in a taco restaurant and during his photography training in the capital); others, like the young women and men from Tama and Tlahui who studied indigenous education at UPN in Mexico City or communication, computer sciences, or architecture at UABJO in Oaxaca, organized themselves as a group of friends, integrating members of several Ayuujk villages to work out joint initiatives. Conra describes this experience: When we’re here in Tama, then we definitely feel it, we live it and we’re not surprised, because self-government (usos y costumbres) has been impressed on us since childhood, as well as religion and all of that. … Then at some point lots of us left. Many went to work in Mexico City, others to Oaxaca, and other guys went to the United States. But when you’re outside, then you gradually become aware of what you have. When you’ve left, you look back and become aware: “No, this is all missing here.” But when I’m here in Tama it is so normal to see and live with all of this day in day out, so nothing surprises you. Looking at it from outside you notice that things are disappearing, you aren’t aware of that when you’re right here. From the outside you say, “What’s going on? What’s happening to these things? I think they’re disappearing because they’re no longer

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appreciated.” That’s when we decided: “No, we have to do something.” And because of reggae and rock music and all that, we’re part of all this movement, of this sense of recovering something of our own. We try to understand that what we have is precious. So we shouldn’t just get on with life and that’s it; instead we have to realize that part of it is disappearing. That’s why we young people have to develop these activities and get involved.47

Tama and Tlahui students at UPN extended Ayuujk media practices to urban spaces by addressing the target audience of young indigenous migrants, successfully bringing them together for the first time. This venture was based on their new life experience as students in the colonia popular Santo Domingo in Mexico City. The Ayuujk migrants who had settled there in the 1960s and usually work as tradespeople and domestic servants had long established ethnic forms of organization, but the students saw a need for a unique forum to assemble migrants of their own age.48 In 2010, they organized an urban fiesta for this purpose, an “Ayuujk-Mixe Convivial Dance Event” (Baile de Convivencia Ayuujk-Mixe). They resorted to a method of organization commonly used by migrant communities and created a fiesta-like gathering, where the Ayuujk language, dance, and music could be enjoyed, and where cultural and ethnopolitical issues could be discussed. At the same time, admission fees to the dance would generate a financial cushion for political activities. Instead of the traditional philharmonic band, they invited the popular Tama dance band Los Kiwas, who play cumbia and norteño music. The Spanish term espacio—usually with the additional term convivencia rather than sagrado—was the key expression they used within the framework of these activities. As explained by the poster that Temo, a UPN student at the time, designed for the Baile de Convivencia Ayuujk-Mixe on 18 September 2010: The organization of this event is the result of conversations, suggestions, experiences, and considerations by compañeros and compañeras, men and women from everywhere, with the idea, interest, and necessity of organizing, and organizing as the Ayuujk people of Tamazulapam (mostly), since, as is well known, in this neighborhood of Santo Domingo, Coyoacán, Mexico City, many community members live, work, and study, boys and girls, young people, Ayuujk (mixe) men and women from Tamazulapam, and as far as we know also people from Ayutla, Tlahui, Cacalote[pec], Tepantlali, Zacate[pec], Atitlan, Alote[pec], Quetzal[tepec], San Isidro [Huayapam], and so on.49 They’re everywhere, in every neighborhood, and so are we. In general the aboriginal or indigenous people, all of us

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live in Mexico City: Triquis, Huaves, Purépechas, Raramuris, Zoques, Zapotecos, Otomíes, Mazahuas, Mixtecos, Tzeltales, Choles, and so on.

The significance of holding this dance event in the Santo Domingo neighborhood was the “lack of space for Ayuujk communal life” (por la falta de espacios de convivencia ayuujk), a reference to the experience of having to pay for a room and a physical space in the city, something they do not have to do in Tama because of communal land tenure. The idea was “to create sociocultural and political spaces in an organized, selfdetermined, autonomous, and communal (intercultural) form” (de abrir espacios socioculturales y políticas de manera organizada autogestiva, autónoma y comunalitaria [intercultural]), since this kind of space is virtually unavailable to the Ayuujk people in the city. At this event, however, Ayuujk culture was highlighted as manifesting the diversity of Mexico’s indigenous peoples and apparent in their dance, music, and artisan cultures, expressions of which were linked to political demands for autonomy. Using their new experiences, migrants from this group, who commute to Tama and Tlahui or have permanently returned, joined with young people who never left and transformed their village of origin. One palpable aspect of this transformation in the media is the emergence of new businesses established by young professionals in Tama. Froylita Jiménez Sanjinés, for example, opened a serigraphy and computer shop in Tama in 2014, catering to new demands. She is currently the spokeswoman of the Tama youth organization CCREA that set a new trend in 2006. In addition, CCREA member Marisol Ambrosio Martínez opened a new space for the Ayuujk language and epistemology in the academic sphere beyond the village by writing her bachelor’s thesis in her mother tongue. As an architecture student at the UABJO, she wrote about her project to construct an Ayuujk cultural center. In July 2015 her thesis became the first ever in Mexico to be written and successfully defended in an indigenous language. At the annual Feria Cultural del Pulque these young people created a new space for artistic photography in Tama that absorbs global trends and relates them to Ayuujk culture and identity, which are reinterpreted in the process. Temo explains how this type of photography and locally established work transforms lo comunitario, with less emphasis on the kind of realism typically represented in the videos de comunidad: The displays we set up adhered to the style used in exhibitions in cities and urban galleries. We used solid moveable walls and attractive framed images, creating a space that departed from existing schemes. That’s how this project of setting up an exhibition came about. And we wondered:

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“What are we going to exhibit? What do we have on hand? And who can join in?” Around the time of the first Feria del Pulque we had that photographer friend Rigoberto Morales from Quetzaltepec. He had recently had an exhibition in Oaxaca, I don’t remember where, but we contacted him. … He was very willing to come: “Right on.” He accepted the invitation. He arranged his photographs so that they took on a different perspective, more artistic, or another format. It was not the communitarian style (lo comunitario). He would suddenly capture the base of a basket; he’d photograph a tree or flowers and always focused in a certain way. But it wasn’t the fiesta motif, the people, or the peasant. No, it was a different format. And of course we said, “We should include him because he has his own ideas.”50

This and other photography exhibitions during the Feria Cultural del Pulque broke with traditional patterns. Motifs from everyday life in Ayuujk villages were photographed from a particular angle with a certain aesthetic and selected for exhibition. In general, in urban contexts curators are nonindigenous people who organize exhibitions by nonindigenous photographers of indigenous motifs.51 Through their practices in organizing spaces of art hitherto denied to them, such as their own photography exhibitions, these young people from Tama and Tlahui counteract and transcend the stereotyping of indigenous people as Others based on binary distinctions of traditional versus modern and artisan versus elite art. Within the space of Feria Cultural del Pulque, Tama’s youth decolonize the way in which the community deals with its cultural heritage of photography as a visual culture of memory. In Oaxaca and Mexico City, photographs taken decades ago by highly acclaimed photographers Adolfo Mexiac and Juan Rulfo are acknowledged first and foremost as historical photographs representing the Ayuujk ja’ay. Their pictures have been collected and archived, and prized as historical documents in books of photography, such as Oaxaca (2009). In Tama, on the other hand, valuable private photographic archives are kept at home by local photographers and up to now have seldom seen the light of day. It was therefore something of a novelty when historic images were displayed at the village center in 2008 during Feria Cultural del Pulque that had been taken by local pioneers of photography such as former teacher and handicrafts dealer Josefina García Martínez. As blow-ups on large partition walls with professional lighting—not unlike arrangements at urban photography exhibitions—they gained more appreciation. This led to recognition and discussion of Ayuujk visual media history as a public issue. Since the 1970s these village pioneers have been captur-

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ing motifs such as the change-of-office ceremony, los Negritos dance troupe, the village’s main street and its inhabitants, as well as members of their own families. The exhibition triggered consideration of the dynamic change the community has undergone in recent decades. Temo, the curator, reflects on the creation of a media space of a new temporal dimension: The power of photography is commemorating or remembering, and if possible reclaiming this part of our lives. We have to go back and see ourselves in the past to understand ourselves in the present. And I think this is an exercise that should take place in spaces. In fact, as community members we want to know what is happening nowadays. And that’s how we understand if we’re doing well and what our weaknesses are, our problems, and how to deal with them, how to make ourselves stronger. I think that’s the task many people tackle and photography helps us in this. … Many young people and children who have been leaving Tama for generations don’t have access to these images. Well, obviously times have changed, but these photographs allow for retrospection, and for people to look back at themselves: “Oh, that’s what we used to be.” The older the photograph, the more the desire to identify something of one’s own arises: “Look at this, look what it used to be like then.” “And how this has changed and goes on changing.” So I think that one great strength of the image is exactly that: to cause emotion and generate part of our identity, allowing us to reclaim or recognize ourselves in the process. It’s a historical process, although a short one. There are no photographs to show us what things were like two hundred years ago. We have to be content with much more recent photos, those we can recover, and to which we should return to strengthen our identity, because this is what we want to reflect on: images of times gone by.52

Cine Libre Mixe Et ääw is a traveling cinema project that serves Tlahui and the hamlets of the community free of charge. With reference to their film club movement (cineclubismo), the organizers engage with the concept of space, as evidenced by the name they chose for their project—Et ääw, which literally means space. The space they strive to extend has a political dimension and is conceived as paving the way for an alternative to the dominant media. Cine Libre Mixe Et ääw produced a magazine in the Mexican capital in 2013 entitled Revista Cultural Bilingüe Ääw-Ayuujk, which details their work as follows: Young people in Tlahuitoltepec are trying to consolidate a cinema club aimed at stimulating and sensitizing to a different way of seeing and of

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accessing televisual, cinematographic, and multimedia language. Besides, there are other ways of seeing and thinking, “since individualism has become a problem in the communities, encouraged by political parties and religious confrontation. Cinema is an educational and inclusive factor,” they declare, … and emphasize: “We think that free cinema can be presented in a free manner and that’s why it is open to children, young people and adults, who should not drown in the river of supply and demand, in the fraudulence of a life of non-existent commodities and fantasies communicated by the main TV stations in our country.”53

Thus Et ääw sees itself as creating more than just a new leisure activity and rather as opening a more inclusive space for dialogue (espacio de diálogo), where local youth and young adults are encouraged to produce films and set up networks, including with the regional media organization Ojo de Agua Comunicación. From 2010 to 2013, Et ääw produced a series of films, among them a twenty-five-minute documentary titled Ayo’on Xaamkëjxp (Disaster in Tlahui) on the devastating landslide that took eleven lives. It premiered in October 2013 as a parallel program to the Media Summit in Tlahui (see chapter 5). As a dialogue space, Et ääw fosters close links with international movements. When forty-three student teachers at the Escuela Normal Rural in Ayotzinapa were disappeared in September 2014, Et ääw uploaded a short film on the website of the Guerrero human rights organization, Tlachinollan. In this two-minute clip UPN students expressed their solidarity with the disappeared in their respective indigenous mother tongues: Chol, Nahua, Tsotsil, Ayuujk, Chinantec, Tseltal, and Zapotec (“They took them away alive! And we want them back alive!”; ¡Vivos se los llevaron! ¡Vivos los queremos!). In this sense Et ääw serves as a forum for young indigenous people who bond via audiovisual practices and thereby engage in the international struggle against the fatal entanglement of government, police, and drug cartels in Mexico.54 These examples show how young actors exploit the change of perspective from their home village to their remote places of education and work to create new media spaces. These spaces are defined by novel forms of organization as well as practices and languages of representation. They destabilize prevailing dichotomies between indigenous and nonindigenous, traditional and modern, and backward and progressive by tackling and entering geographical spaces such as urban space and US-American space. They resort to novel techniques and languages of media representation such as easel painting, video, and the Internet, and aesthetic forms such as abstract styles previously denied to Ayuujk culture—even within the village itself. In this process they design and

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practice a new version of Ayuujk culture that, although not fully accepted by the community, has considerable influence at the local, transnational, and Pan-American level.

Notes 1. The origin of this concept of self-identification, which is indicated by the term kamapyë in the Ayuujk language, is unclear. According to Sigüenza (Orozco 2007: 170), the expression “those never conquered” (los jamás conquistados) was coined when the Mixe/Ayuujk people were stereotyped as such at the Oaxacan Guelaguetza festival. Yet the expression could also originate from an emic concept. Alicia Barabas and Miguel Bartolomé (1984) point out the consistency with the Ayuujk peoples’ resistance vis-à-vis the neighboring Zapotecs, who were unsuccessful in their attempted conquest. The myth of Rey Cong Ëy alludes to these precolonial conflicts. 2. Daniel Martínez Pérez (1987) is one of the few academics who emphasizes in his ethnolinguistic thesis that the Ayuujk people have an independent religion. He uses the Ayuujk term jujky’ äjtïn (our own way of life) to distinguish this realm from the imposed Catholic religion (Martínez Pérez 1987: 28). The use of the term “customs” (costumbres) instead of “religion” (religión) calls to mind the juxtaposition of “dialect” (dialecto), used popularly for indigenous languages, and “language” (idioma), employed with regard to Spanish. In both cases a binary hierarchy is created. The classification as dialectos suggests that they are not full-fledged languages and lack an inherent grammar. 3. The beliefs and practices of divination in the neighboring municipality of Tlahui are extensively dealt with by Araceli Rojas Martínez Gracida (2013). 4. In the 1960s, the change-of-office ceremony still took place at a natural spring, where the incoming officials would take a ritual bath for spiritual cleansing (interview with Daniel Martínez Pérez, Oaxaca, 4 April 2014). This ceremony is documented in the film Primer encuentro estatal de Casas del Pueblo from 1990. 5. I use pseudonyms for Tama villagers living in the United States to protect their identity. 6. Interview with Francisco, Los Angeles, 25 February 2014. “A veces la gente pues quiere ver a la persona que nombraron en carne y hueso, no, pues a veces como que no valoran mucho al interino.” 7. In general, the videographers avoid capturing the many other photographers and videographers who also record the ceremony, since they disturb the ideal ceremonial order. A viewer of the film can occasionally catch a glimpse of them in the middle of the village’s main plaza. Yet Nemesio recorded these other mediamakers unintentionally. 8. CINAJUJI is the acronym for Centro de Investigación Ayuuk Juijkatin Jinma Any, which means “Research Center Wisdom of Ayuujk Life.” See also Chapter 4. 9. Daniel Martínez Pérez has been invited to deliver lectures on Ayuujk origin mythology at the Feria Cultural del Pulque. He currently collaborates with photographer Conra Pérez Rosas in a project chronicling the history of Tama’s municipal philharmonic band.

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10. I refer here to an early black-and-white photograph taken by Alberto Pérez Ramírez. 11. Interview with Daniel Martínez Pérez, Oaxaca City, 8 April 2014. 12. Ëmay is a complex term and refers among others to sensitivity in women during pregnancy as well as the necessity to abstain from certain comments and from sexual intercourse with regard to rituals. I personally experienced exclusion from la quema del Diablo in January 2015. Though I assured the new municipal president that I had no intention of taking photographs there, he nevertheless denied my request to attend it. As he explained, “The diviner is very jealous of his ritual and does not allow any visitors since the ritual’s effect is jeopardized.” (El adivino es muy celoso de su ritual y no permite visitantes. Se pone en peligro su efecto). 13. Konk refers to a sacred force and ëna’ to thunder; these religious ideas are not fully conveyed by the Spanish translation la Diosa del pueblo which means “the goddess of the village.” 14. Fowl blood is a central element of the sacrifices, though the latter have a much more complex composition. The diviners dictate the exact numbers and precise mixture of the elements to be offered. These include poultry of a certain color, size, and age, and symbolic food such as tamales and maize dough figures. The offerings are gathered according to numbers related to the Mesoamerican calendar. 15. Individuals consult a diviner in case of health problems, trouble with his/her spouse or with the family, and when they desire to be successful at work, in their education, and during migration. The religious specialist presages opportune dates for tackling problems or undertaking an action by casting a particular set of maize kernels onto a Tama striped shawl and interpreting the way in which the kernels fall. On this basis, the diviner explains the holy places in nature where sacrifices of fowl must be made. Humans and nature are conceived as united, and illnesses and other misfortunes arise from not having paid respect to, or having offended Mother Earth. At the beginning of my stay, I was still unaware of these ideas. While I filmed at a personal costumbre after I had received permission to do so, I noticed afterwards that none of the participants were ever interested in seeing these images. 16. Informal conversation with Jaquelina Rojas Sánchez, Tamazulapam, March 2013. 17. My main interlocutors on this subject were Noé Aguilar, Medardo Pérez Ríos, and Cirilo González López. 18. Similar to the goddess, the Catholic saints’ clothes are washed and changed regularly, in the latter case once a year before Easter. When this is carried out the saints are protected from view as to respect their intimacy. 19. According to Cirilo González López, the fiscal official in 2013, the female figure corresponds to the pre-Hispanic goddess of maize, Centéotl. Interview with Cirilo González López, Tamazulapam, 23 September 2013. 20. Cirilo González López also referred to changes in the deity’s veneration: Once she was venerated in a temple on the site where the church now stands. Part of her essence is believed to still reside there in the earth next to the saints, but her stone figure wanders according to the cuidadora in charge. 21. Interview with Conrado Pérez Rosas, Tamazulapam, 8 August 2016. 22. Informal conversation with Medardo Pérez Ríos, Tamazulapam, 19 March 2014.

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23. The photographer Jorge describes this dichotomy between the proper religion and Catholicism as follows: “For us [the Ayuujk ja’ay], nature comes in first place and in second place stands religion. That’s why when we complete our personal costumbres, we first go to the sacred sites and only after that visit the church.” Interview with Jorge Pérez Jiménez, Tamazulapam, 21 September 2013. 24. Interview with Medardo Pérez Ríos, Tamazulapam, 27 March 2014. 25. According to Hernández and Zafra (2005: 240), silkworms were cultivated in the Sierra Mixe. 26. Interview with Daniel Martínez Pérez, Tamazulapam, 19 September 2013. 27. Interview with Cirilo González López, Tamazulapam, 23 September 2013. 28. For the Ayuujk concept of the soul (anmajää’wën), consult Castillo Cisneros (2010: 90). The idea that photographs and film, as recordings, allow for existential control over the person represented is universal. 29. On these questions, my interlocutors were Conrado Pérez Rosas and Cuahutémoc Pérez. Etymologically expäjt is derived from ex = to see (a further variation is ext = mirror) and päjt = the object. They translated expäjt into Spanish as “fixed image” (imagen fija), “photography” (fotografía) and “icons” (íconos), but also as “where the photographed remains” (donde queda algo grabado), “where a memory is kept” (donde dejas un recuerdo) and as “something archived” (como algo que archivas). 30. Interview with Genaro Rojas, Tamazulapam, 2 January 2015. 31. See chapter 3. TV Tamix incorporated recordings from these events into their film from 1999, Këdung Ajdk. 32. Anthropologist Etsuko Kuroda (1993: 521) had noticed in the early 1990s “in the case of land limit conflicts the sacrifice is used as a political manifestation.” (author’s translation) 33. Nightmares are perceived as presaging illness, trouble, or misfortune and are a reason for consulting a diviner. 34. Interview with Daniel Martínez Pérez, Oaxaca, 8 April 2014. 35. Since the 2006 social movement in Oaxaca, Tama no longer participates in the festivities organized by the state government. It engages instead in the alternative Guelaguetza Popular celebration, organized by the teachers’ trade union Sección 22. It is significant that practicing a genuine costumbre was initiated in this alternative Guelaguetza, which encourages a more democratic participation and self-determined cultural expressions, and not at the Oaxaca state Guelaguetza at which a nonindigenous “Commission of Authenticity” decides on what “authentic” cultural expressions are or are not. 36. “Genuine” is written here in quotation marks, since, until this moment, the practice of discretion was widely considered to be part of the authenticity of this ceremony. 37. I was not personally present at this performance, but rather informed about it on different occasions in conversation. 38. “No saben que es nuestra costumbre. Y esta es una ceremonia con todos sus elementos.” Informal conversation with Eliel Cruz Ruiz, Tamazulapam, 23 September 2013. 39. He had been a member of TV Tamix as a young man in the early 1990s. 40. Interview with Noé Aguilar, Tamazulapam, 25 September 2013. 41. Interview with Cuahutémoc Pérez, Tamazulapam, 31 December 2014.

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42. Informal conversation with Roberta Hernández Jiménez, Oaxaca City, 5 April 2014. 43. See Thomas Theye (1989) and Michael Wiener (1990). 44. See http://www.proceso.com.mx/187950/los-beatos-de-cajonos-martires-o-tra idores. 45. The majority of the Tama population consists of Ayuujk people. There are also a minority of mestizos, Zapotecs, and Mixtecs who have moved to the village mainly due to marriage or work. While the members of these ethnic minorities are not discriminated against, they are nevertheless expected to assimilate culturally, especially women who are married to Ayuujk men. 46. Villagers from Tama experience discrimination in Mexican cities when they are called Oaxacos or indios/as in a derogatory sense and treated as such. They constantly experience poor service at restaurants or are suspected of being potential shoplifters in stores. Another form of discrimination is victimization: a young man from Tama who chose to study at a private university in Oaxaca as a means of avoiding being discriminated against experienced humiliation when his professor presented him to the class as a person in need of particular care from his fellow students. Pino, one of Tama’s rich taqueros who owns several restaurants in the tourist area of San Miguel Allende, told me that he often experiences discrimination when visiting expensive restaurants, clubs, and discotheques, which are part of his lifestyle. 47. Interview with Conrado Pérez Rosas, Tamazulapam, 22 December 2014. 48. Migrants from Tlahui who organized the philharmonic band “Rey Condoy Mixe” in Mexico City are portrayed in Yovegami Ascona’s film Sones mixes en la ciudad from 2011. 49. These are villages of the Sierra Mixe and Mixe Media region. 50. Interview with Cuahutémoc Pérez, Tamazulapam, 31 December 2014. 51. Nevertheless, in Oaxaca City Francisco Toledo, the famous Zapotec painter and cultural promotor from Juchitán, broke with this tradition. He founded the Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo in 1996 and in many cases curated the expositions himself. 52. Interview with Cuahutémoc Pérez, Tamazulapam, 31 December 2014. 53. The magazine Revista Cultural Bilingüe Ääw-Ayuujk, Voces y Palabras analyzes the different semantic layers of the term et ääw and explains: “et aäw is a word in Ayuujk language. Et: Assigns a place, a space, a landscape, the earth, and nature. Ääw: Is an open space that serves to introduce oneself in a place; it is the mouth through which the voice goes out, the word. Ääw, furthermore, is an opening that belongs neither to the outside nor the inside. Et ääw: Is also a single word which designates “the tunnel” (window of nature).” (author’s translation) 54. See http://www.tlachinollan.org/video-corto-en-apoyo-a-ayotzinapa/Pueblos Originarios: Su dolor es nuestro #SomosAyotzinapa.

Figure 3.1. Audiovisual memories and archivists. Photos: Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

CHAPTER 3

Mediatization and “Our Own” Spaces for Development

The History of Migration and Mediatization In the course of my research, I discovered that the nexus between migration, mediatization, and community building was by no means confined to the 1990s, when, for example, the patron saint fiesta videos emerged. This chapter departs from the hypothesis that innovations in and the diversification of media uses have long played an important role in reshaping community under conditions of translocality. In contrast to the common portrayal of Mexico’s indigenous communities in earlier anthropological research as “closed corporate communities” (Wolf 1957), the high geographic mobility of Tama residents has for decades been an integral part of the social change and openness that in many ways was set in motion by their own efforts. They engaged in various types of migration for a variety of reasons such as a desire to accumulate financial, cultural, and social capital before ultimately returning to their hometown (albeit not always doing so in reality). In the 1960s, the prospect of new sources of income and particularly their (or their parents’) desire for education was the driving force behind the flows of migration. These followed certain economic cycles: prior to Tama’s link to the road leading to Mitla, it was mostly the male inhabitants who pursued an itinerant life throughout a vast region extending from the coffee plantations around Zacatepec to the nearest market centers, such as the Zapotec towns of Yalálag, Mitla, and Juchitán, and Oaxaca City. By the end of the 1950s, many people from Tama had already migrated to the coffee plantations of the Mixe Media and Mixe Baja in order to escape internecine strife with the neighboring village of Cacalotepec. With the establishment of a state school in Tama at the beginning of the 1960s, new career opportunities arose and migrants targeted the mes-

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tizo milieus of Oaxaca and Mexico City with a view to staying there for quite some time: women worked there as domestic servants, while men found jobs in taco restaurants, on building sites, or in industry. The Mexican government was likewise a driver of migration flows: it provided work on road construction; on the vast dam project begun in 1947 and headed by the Comisión del Papaloapan; and in 1968 on the extensive deforestation of the region around Jaltepec de Candayoc in the Mixe Baja for the introduction of cattle grazing (Nahmad Sittón 2003: 153–154). In the 1970s, the search for jobs shifted to Mexico City and from there extended during the 1980s to cities in northern Mexico. The end of the 1990s saw migration gradually moving in the direction of the United States, a development that was further linked to aspirations of experiencing the “American dream” (sueño americano; compare Aquino Moreschi 2012). In many cases, temporary labor sojourns eventually led to permanent settlement. As a result, migrants from Tama came to form a series of satellite communities, beginning in Oaxaca City and extending as far as Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the United States.1 The strong communal ethos that people in transnational Tama are currently emphatic about has thus been shaped by high mobility and the movement between cultures, in which both men and women have participated since the 1960s. With media initiatives and practices, diverse actors endeavored to establish ties between the hometown and its inhabitants, who had dispersed for work or education. On the one hand, incumbent cargo officials and political leaders keen to enhance social cohesion and the regional union of Ayuujk villages appropriated exciting new forms of media use and communication. Líderes, cargo officials, and young teachers excelled at applying music, dance, and “Western” sports to counterbalance the centrifugal forces of migration. On the other hand, migrants experimented with new mass media based on writing, sound, and images, which allowed them to play a part in their hometown and transform it. En route they forged the music of philharmonic bands, patron saint fiestas, and basketball tournaments into identity markers of the Mixe people (or Ayuujk nation as they are called today), who simultaneously became identified with the contiguous territory of the Distrito Mixe created in 1938. As a result of the communal approach to life into which Tama inhabitants are socialized, they combined the quest for a self-determined modernization of their hometown with the opening of new media spaces that would widen geographic reach as well as practices and imaginations. Hence they used media to open their “own” spaces for development. In line with the concept of modernization taught at school, people from Tama refer to such migrant efforts in Spanish as salir ade-

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lante, “bettering themselves.” When they speak Ayuujk, on the other hand, they define these same efforts either as nyëpëjtëjkëp (“looking for fortune”), or—with regard to assisting the family back home—nyëpëkëk (“mutual assistance”). This concept points to a twofold intent: on the one hand, villagers who migrate seek to adapt to external urban milieus, set up networks, and acquire new social, economic, and political capital. At the same time, they will invest a substantial portion of their income in the home community, such as financial contributions to family members, communal institutions and fiestas, and construction of their own homes. Rather than a unilinear emigration of individuals, migration is perceived here as an outflow of people that will trigger synergistic effects in the interests of developing the home village (compare RiveraSalgado 2014b: 68). In the course of periods of study and/or work far away from their hometown, migrants often adopted new cultural practices such as writing letters, sending telegrams, going to the cinema, watching television, taking photographs, and making videos as part of their everyday life. When returning to their village of origin some made the conscious decision to bring their capital and newly acquired expertise back home and in the process became media innovators. In the context of migration, both the returnees and the residents who had remained in the home village began reforming social conditions in a way that reflected new personal, family, and communal aspirations. Religious sacrifices (costumbres), for example, were no longer mainly performed for the sake of a good harvest, but also for success at school and in new careers. In the cities villagers absorbed new cultural and political currents. The growing autonomy of young people, as well as the transformation of intergenerational and marital relations contributed to this process and produced a desire for new recreational activities. A returning migrant from the Mexican capital was the first to introduce traveling cinema to Tama and the surrounding villages at the end of the 1970s. In the same vein, a returnee from Mexico City established professional photography there in 1988. The group of young men that launched the first radio programs in 1991 and subsequently the local television channel Tamix/ Canal 12 in 1993 was also shaped by student migration, drawing the political inspiration to set up a media enterprise in the hometown from this very experience. Moreover, these young men were active during a period of ethnic renewal of the Ayuujk people. With their media activities, they proposed a vision of community life that was modern and at the same time assertive of Ayuujk identity. Local and transnational media and the mediatization of the cargo system play an important role in the extension of the communal way

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of life to a transnational context and, as this study will show, also serve as a kind of centripetal force that counteracts the dispersive effects of migration. The interwoven processes of migration, mediatization, and transnationalization are reflected, for example, in the systematic participation of migrants in the United States as sponsors of Tama’s patron saint fiestas. Among other things, they donate money for sports competitions, trophies, decorations, food, and even the ostentatious castillo fireworks. Migrants, for their part, long to see the visual evidence of their community participation, and even to experience it, in order to reinforce their bond with their hometown. These endeavors are based on migration as having a function beneficial to the collective, the family, and the community. This idea comes across in the words of gratitude expressed by a presenter at the fiesta in honor of Santa Rosa de Lima in 2015, who repeatedly addressed absent migrants and their contributions to the fiesta: “We thank our compatriots who are now in the United States in search of a future for their families.”2 The following section focuses on periods marked by reform projects emerging from the interdependence of migration, mediatization, and the modernization of village life. Mediatization is understood more specifically as “a category to describe a process of change” with reference to actors’ construction of meaning via communication (Hepp and Krotz 2014: 3). In the present case study both migrants and those who remained at home reinforced social cohesion on the basis of cultural performances and sporting events in a translocal space organized on an ethnic basis. These performances are conceived here as media in the broad sense. These periods therefore represent phases of both mediatization and a pronounced “ethnic renaissance” of the Ayuujk ja’ay. The multifaceted migration history of this now transnationalized community has not yet been documented in written form. Similarly, little research has been carried out on this aspect in the case of other Ayuujk villages or the entire Mixe region.3 In outlining the processes for Tama, I rely on narrative interviews I conducted with selected returned migrants both of the older and the younger generations, whose voices are heard in the quotations that follow.

Regional Leadership and Ethnopolitical Media Strategies Discursive practices are a first point of entry to the concept of political leadership in Tama; this leadership has been closely combined with the use of media practices in music, dance, and sport since the first

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part of the twentieth century. Villagers still narrate myths or traditional accounts of history using oral transmission as a medium to emphasize their sense of belonging to people who live in and originate from the Mixe region. The myths about Rey Kondoy (actually Konk ey, literally, “good sacred force”) are pivotal here. Many conceive him as a heroic male figure and mythical ruler of the Ayuujk ja’ay. His birth alone testifies to his unusual nature: he hatched from an egg. Other narrators emphasize that he acts alongside his sister Tajëëw or María. Konk ey traveled and reigned over the entire region around the holy mountain of Zempoatépetl as far as Valles Centrales. The oldest source from the seventeenth century situates his leadership of bitter struggles against the Zapotecs in the late post-classical reign of Zaachila I (Barabas and Barolomé 1984: 73–83). Although the Zapotecs pursued Konk ey up Zempoatépetl mountain and set it on fire, he managed to escape into a cave. The vivid stories still told today about the powerful man who was capable of unifying an ethnic group are an expression of the myth that conceives of the Ayuujk ja’ay as “those never conquered” (los jamás conquistados). At the beginning of the twentieth century two líderes or caciques,4 Daniel Martínez and Luis Rodríguez, tread, in a manner of speaking, in Konk ey’s footsteps. The stories about the two líderes, who were personally known to elderly members of the village, are likewise very much part of the collective consciousness today. In the 1920s, Daniel Martínez extended his rule beyond his community of Ayutla, just as Luis Rodríguez did in the 1930s, extending his rule beyond his home village, Zacatepec, to large parts of the Mixe region. At times they competed in armed struggle. As historian Benjamin Smith (2008) has elaborated, Rodríguez in particular acquired the rhetoric and methods of indigenismo, which was crucial to the policies adopted by the Mexican federal government and the state of Oaxaca. His local version of indigenismo enabled him to gain a remarkable amount of political influence and a measure of independence from the state. In 1938, Rodríguez was granted permission to create the Distrito Mixe, which became the only government district of Mexico to be defined by ethnicity (Münch Galindo 1996: 62–73). Luis Rodríguez thus succeeded in transferring the ascription of the Ayuujkspeaking population from the district of Ixtlán as well as that of Villa Alta, founded in 1527 and the region’s first Spanish outpost during the colonial era, to this new administrative unit. The nineteen municipalities of the Distrito Mixe—including that of Tamazulapam del Espírito Santo—subsequently took a more independent path than other Mexican districts during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940). Cárdenas resolutely pursued a corporate state model and sought to in-

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tegrate Mexico’s indigenous population by making them a fourth pillar of the Republic in addition to the three existing sectors: the workers, the military, and the urban lower classes (sector popular). In states like Chiapas, nonindigenous Cárdenas supporters imposed this political structure and exploited indigenous communal forms of organization in the interests of the state (Rus 1994: 267). Elsewhere local caciques operated as the organizational arm of the corporate state and facilitated ejido land distribution. In the Mixe region, on the other hand, the two Ayuujk caciques succeeded in exploiting state discourse on indigenism for their own ambitious purposes: imitating policies of the state of Oaxaca, Luis Rodríguez introduced music, dance, theater, and sporting events to the villages, alleging—despite their novel character—they were genuinely Ayuujk. In 1938 he achieved state recognition of the Distrito Mixe precisely by exploiting culture for this ethnic renewal movement. Adopting a top-down, authoritarian ethnic policy, Rodríguez prevailed for over twenty years both externally over the state and internally—at times with hardened violence—over numerous Ayuujk villages (Smith 2008: 216). This section describes the career of both líderes in more detail with specific reference to their media policies. They set the course in the region, which Tama politicians like Victoriano Martínez Casas later relied on and developed further (see below, Gendered Paths of Mobility, Education, and Modernization). Similar to other regional caciques of that period in Mexico, Daniel Martínez owed his position of power to the political influence he gained during the Mexican Revolution. He emigrated from Ayutla to pursue a career as an itinerant merchant like his father before him and returned with a good command of Spanish and Zapotec: he used this cultural capital for his political aims. During the Revolution, Martínez recruited troops from Ayutla, Tama, Tlahui, Yalálag, and Juquila, and took an active part in battles fought in areas as far as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. In this way he successfully crushed a revolt led by General García Vigila, a Madero supporter (Kuroda 1984: 16). Based on these wartime alliances, Martínez consolidated his influence in large areas of the Mixe region in 1923. He launched a range of progressive initiatives in the transport, communication, and education sectors with the aim of advancing and opening up the region: in 1927 he built the first boarding school in Ayutla. As early as the 1930s, Martínez planned the construction of a road from Mitla to Ayutla and the installation of a telephone wire (Beals 1945: 33–36; see also Laviada 1978; and Münch Galindo 1996). Luis Rodríguez from Zacatepec competed with Martínez and surpassed him in regional influence in the 1930s. He held sway in six major municipalities, including Tama and Tlahui (Greenberg 1997: 323). By

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resorting to cultural displays and performances he advanced the territorial and political centralization of the Ayuujk ethnic group to a far greater degree than Martínez. Key to this policy was his close cooperation with the Ministry for Public Education (SEP) and with local teachers who became highly active in regional politics. By creating new cultural representations, Ayuujk history and culture were reshaped in the sense of ethnic ‘nationalism’. The performances Rodríguez organized on the occasion of state governor Anastasio García Toledo’s visit to Zacatepec in February 1936 were a characteristic expression of this. In plays, skits, and musical pieces, students, teachers, and other residents enacted how the Ayuujk ja’ay had preserved their precolonial stature, thereby highlighting their legendary reputation of never having been conquered by the Spanish. Shortly after this visit, the Oaxaca press made mention for the first time of the plan to create a district encompassing all of the Ayuujk-speaking villages of Oaxaca (Smith 2008: 219). Rodríguez’s push for regional independence was inspired by the elites from the Oaxacan central highlands, who had advocated for autonomy from the Mexican federal government during the Revolution. Following the removal from power of Mexico’s Oaxaqueño president, Porfirio Díaz, the Oaxacan elites suffered disadvantages vis-à-vis the northerners, Mexico’s new governing elite, who now controlled the presidency (Poole 2012: 46). In the wake of the Mexican Revolution, Oaxaca’s relationship to the nation state remained ambivalent and cultural initiatives expressing the independence of this state proliferated. Against this backdrop, 1932 saw the celebration of the elaborate Homenaje Racial (Racial Homage) on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Oaxaca City (Lizama Quijano 2006: 107–22; Sigüenza Orozco 2007: 164–72). This gave rise to the annual event known as the Guelaguetza, which became a key cultural expression of the state and is today both a major tourist attraction and a regional integration factor (Kummels and Brust 2004: 479). The same year also witnessed the introduction of the idea of having five dance group delegations represent the state by symbolizing its five subregions through music and dance (their number was later increased to seven and, more recently, eight). As one of the first dance groups to perform at the Homenaje Racial, the Mixe/ Ayuujk ja’ay played a remarkable pioneer role. They were portrayed in the press as the prototype of the combative indigenous people and marched into the venue at Cerro del Fortín carrying a banner with the words “Los jamás conquistados.” It remains unclear how much of this self-image was of their own making.5 Rodríguez encouraged forms of music and dance that were performed in the Distrito Mixe capital of Zacatepec. His commitment to

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the philharmonic bands and their music is particularly striking. Although the Spanish had introduced the village bands to the Mixe region in the eighteenth century, it was Rodríguez who contributed to their visibility and fame (Smith 2008: 222). Today this music, which is played by bands with over fifty musicians, is one of the centerpieces of community identity and politics and is perceived as the hallmark of the Ayuujk ja’ay. At the beginning of the 1940s, the famous composer Jesús Rasgado from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec directed the Zacatepec philharmonic band. Rasgado composed a hymn to the mythical founder of the Ayuujk people, Rey Konk ey, with whom Rodríguez personally identified.6 In 1943 Rodriguez had his pistoleros whisk away composer Rito Marcelino Rovirosa (author of the emblematic banda piece Sones y Jarabes Mixes) from Cacalotepec to Zacatepec to compose “traditional indigenous songs” (Smith 2008: 215).7 He also knew how to make use of basketball to impress Oaxacan state politicians. The Ministry of Public Education had introduced basketball after the Revolution as part of its rural education reform program to encourage the “integration” or assimilation of indigenous people throughout Mexico. In the Mixe region, however, the sport never gained traction. Impressed with the basketball tournaments held elsewhere in the state of Oaxaca, Rodríguez set about building basketball courts in the 1940s, forcing people throughout the region to contribute with communal labor. He pushed for acceptance of this new sport with the assistance of schoolteachers. In 1939 he had summoned teachers in the region to a “First Grand Convention to Unite Communities of the Mixe Race” (Primera Gran Convención de Unificación de Pueblos de la Raza Mixe). The Regional Mixe Peasant Confederation was founded on this occasion with Rodríguez as chairman; most members were teachers (Smith 2008: 221–22). The politics of both líderes had an extremely abusive and intimidating side, which was directed at the local population. Many elderly people from Tama still talk about the fear and terror these regional caciques unleashed: they had no qualms about coercing male members of the community into action with the help of pistoleros when it came to implementing their projects. Luis Rodríguez, for instance, once ordered Tama cargo officials to dispatch fifty men from the village for road construction. Those who did not comply on the spot were thrown into prison along with their wives and children.8 Smith (2008: 231) attributes these violent forms of political repression to the fact that although cultural performances may have dazzled state politicians and officials by conveying a semblance of ethnic unity and administrative control, they were not the most efficient method of unifying the fragmented Ayuujk

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communities. With this mixture of violence and ethnopolitical media strategies, Daniel Martínez and Luis Rodríguez shaped the liderazgo or cacicazgo style of rule in the region for several decades: strong men were the rulers in many Ayuujk communities during this period, since only they were seen to possess the assertiveness required to cope with the conflicts between the villages that occasionally arose over land and water rights. Among the bones of contention were village borderlines, in frequent dispute since the colonial period (see below, Negotiating Land Conflicts in Transborder Media Spaces). Líderes also came to power in Tama in the 1950s and opened media spaces in a manner similar to Martínez and Rodríguez. Victoriano Martínez Casas and Domingo Basilio Rojas were among the few men in Tama with secondary school education and thus a good command of Spanish and the administrative procedures of the state. Their language and cultural knowledge enabled them in conflict situations to negotiate with the opposing party as well as with state and federal government officials. They furthered expansion of the educational sector in Tama and promoted media such as writing and cultural performances as political demonstrations, which had an impact internally on the village as well as externally on government officials.9 The next section illustrates how actors concretely linked migration, mediatization, and community building, taking the case of Victoriano Martínez Casas’s career and that of his sister Camila as an example.

Gendered Paths of Mobility, Education, and Modernization Tama in the first half of the twentieth century was a village primarily shaped by agriculture. Gradually, however, it was drawn into the new coffee-trading sector, the region’s “gold.”10 Coffee had been grown on a grand scale since the 1920s in the Mixe Media; in the Mixe Baja it was grown on family farms. Contrary to neighboring regions, such as the Chinanteca, a mode of production under the dictate of hacendados never gained a foothold in the Sierra Mixe (Kuroda 1984: 16). Most of the men at that time worked as coffee load carriers for wealthy merchants from Mitla (the Zapotec town approximately fifty kilometers south), while a minority made a living as itinerant merchants and muleteers. Men from Tama moved in a vast region stretching from the Zapotec Sierra Norte to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Women, on the other hand, were prevented from participating due to societal norms. According to the gendered division of labor women worked exclusively in nearby fields and at home; one of their tasks was to prepare totopos,

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large dry tortillas that keep for months, which the men used as light provisions on their frequent journeys. The family still constituted the hub of socialization. These coordinates changed radically, however, when new openings for education and work emerged at the end of the 1950s, mostly as a result of the villagers’ own endeavors. Three members of the Martínez family, José (ca. 1880–1950) and his children Victoriano (1923–2008) and Camila Martínez Casas (born 1924), exemplify how local actors utilized their mobility to tread new career paths. They brought media innovations such as the written form of the native language and community cultural performances for political purposes. The careers of the two siblings indicate that opportunities to act in the context of migration and education differed greatly in gender terms back then. Yet not even the biography of Victoriano Martínez Casas, a key líder in Tama for many years and whose portrait hangs in the regiduría de educación of the municipal building, has been recorded in written form. In the following section I rely on interviews with Victoriano’s son Jaime and sister Camila, as well as on accounts by anthropologist Salomón Nahmad Sittón. Camila is an intellectually active woman in her early nineties and speaks excellent Spanish. She herself told me her life story when I visited her with Marciano Rojas, who was her pupil in the early 1950s. Before our conversation began, Camila cautiously inquired whether we had enough time (her interview took three hours). José, her father, was described by both Jaime and Camila as typical of the early Tama itinerant merchants: he traded in fabrics and agricultural implements, and brought home from Oaxaca and Mitla such cherished products as salt, dried fish, and shrimp. José used to buy coffee and dried chilies (chile pasilla seco) in Zacatepec and pumpkin gourds (jicaras and bules) in the Mixe Baja and Media, which he exported south. To a lesser degree he also traded in coffee. Since there were no roads at the time, José covered the distance on foot, using donkeys and mules as pack animals on the paths known since the colonial period as el Camino Real. He traveled from Coatzacoalcos in the Gulf of Mexico as far as Juchitán on the Pacific coast and acquired the necessary cultural skills for trading purposes. Camila said that her father spoke both Zapotec and Spanish, albeit in somewhat basic versions (compare Nahmad Sittón 1965: 63–64). During the Mexican Revolution barter was almost always used in trade, since inflation constantly threatened to devalue bank notes. Jaime emphasized that in the course of José’s regular trade contact with the Zapotecs, who were then the leading merchants in the region, he became familiar with the state education system in their villages and admired it. At that time there were no such services in Tama.11 Most

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men from Tama and the nearby village of Tlahui worked as load carriers, shouldering fifty-kilo sacks of coffee from Cotzocón to Mitla for Zapotec traders. The ethnic hierarchy of the time was primarily shaped by their dependence on the more prosperous Zapotecs, whom Tama residents referred as ëkats, a derogatory term for Others (ëkats is currently used to designate outsiders/mestizos/urbanites in general and not only Zapotecs). For their part, the Zapotecs stereotyped the Ayuujk ja’ay as barbaric have-nots and drunkards.12 Load carriers lived in a state of semi-slavery. Their exploitation by the merchants meant that they were constantly indebted to them. José was convinced that “education was the only way out” (educación es el único remedio) for the next generation of Tama inhabitants if they were to escape their dismal situation of abject poverty. Only with education would the Ayuujk ja’ay be able to achieve the economic independence and prosperity of the Zapotecs. Camila confirmed this attitude, recalling her father’s greatest wish: “When my daughter becomes a teacher one day, I’ll go with her and won’t be carrying any more loads.”13 José made sure that his children, Victoriano and Camila, were among the first to attend the rural school in Tama, founded in 1934 during the presidency of Lázaro “Tata” Cárdenas. In the second grade, Camila changed over to primary school in Ayutla, where the SEP had founded an indigenous boarding school (internado indígena) in the late 1920s. Geographically strategic, Ayutla was closest to the market center of Mitla and the road to Oaxaca. Schoolchildren from the neighboring villages of Tama, Tepantlali, and Tepuxtepec were all sent there.14 Here it should be added that in Mexico indigenous critique of the boarding school system is not as harrowing as the one that native people in the United States and Canada express—despite the fact that the Mexican regime also systematically alienated the pupils from their families, communities, and cultures. Mexican indigenous people take into account that often indigenous teachers themselves—though after having been indoctrinated in castellanización—imparted instruction at the boarding schools and were able to advance their careers. Parents suffering severe poverty would “voluntarily” hand over their children (primarily their sons at first) as a means of guaranteeing that they would have enough to eat with the free meals served at the schools (Kummels 1988). A comparison of the careers of Camila and Victoriano reveals that although both were pioneers in their village, they acted under different, gender-specific conditions. Victoriano is still a well-known figure today, a respected local politician and government official. However, Camila achieved great things with little or no public recognition: she was briefly employed as a state teacher and then worked her way up to

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become a major pottery trader in the 1980s, not least because of her good command of Spanish and her amenability in dealing with foreigners. During the economic boom in the 1990s she sold vast amounts of locally produced pottery to intermediaries from the United States on a regular basis. This business ground to a halt in the wake of 9/11 and the tightening of US immigration and import regulations. Until the early 1950s, villagers had substantial reservations about sending girls to school. According to the custom of the time, what mattered most to parents was making sure that their daughters married “well,” in other words, into a prosperous Tama family. Endogamy was the ideal, since it guaranteed the cohesion of land ownership in the village. As a rule, the parents of a young man took the initiative and looked for what they saw as a good match; girls were married from the young age of twelve and up. The young couple had no say in the matter; in many cases they had never even met. Prior to the marriage the parents usually consulted a diviner, who predicted the potential compatibility of the future spouses according to their Ayuujk calendar birthday.15 Indirectly, the coeducational rural schools threatened this kind of marriage. According to Camila, parents feared that their daughters would go astray, have premarital sex, choose their own partners without parental permission, and “be kidnapped”16 (fears that were not unwarranted, as it turned out). There were other reasons why the indigenous boarding school in Ayutla was frowned upon when Camila attended it with the support of her father at the age of twelve: Camila: Yes, I think the children did like school but suffered under the many threats. They were frightened because people used to say they’d be rounded up there and eaten as stew. Marciano: It was also alleged that they would be stewed to make airplanes, yes really, airplanes. “These people are coming to get you because they want to build more airplanes.” It’s true. Children weren’t keen on going to school back then.

A great many pupils fled the boarding school as a result of these rumors, which cannot be dismissed as “mere superstition.” Rumors are also employed by inhabitants of ‘indigenous’ villages to voice criticism and articulate their disadvantage compared to the country’s majority population, which had brought forth institutionalized education and airplanes, and at that time controlled them.17 Once she had completed the second grade in Ayutla, Camila proceeded on what turned out to be a highly adventurous school career. Her accounts cast a critical eye on the experimental nature of educa-

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tion policies during the presidency of Cárdenas. The boarding school in Ayutla decided to only teach boys after discovering that several girls at the school had become pregnant despite strict supervision. All of the girls were taken by train to an indigenous boarding school in Galeana, Morelos, four hundred kilometers away. Camila still remembers the painful farewell to her family, the march on foot to Mitla, and her first train journey. She experienced the start of the school term in Galeana as “entering like ants, only women, because we were three hundred women” from twenty-nine federal states in Mexico. There were, however, only two other schoolgirls from the entire Mixe region. Camila particularly remembers the hot climate and the mosquitoes. As she describes it, the boarding school was soon “like a hospital, everyone was sick and had to stay in bed. So how on earth could anyone study? The government was defeated by malaria. It was forced to invest more in medicine than in anything else.” After less than two years the indigenous boarding school for girls was transferred to the malaria-free area of Toluca, Estado de México, more than 2,600 meters above sea level. It provided a broad education, including career-oriented lessons and workshops. Similar to all post-Revolutionary schools, however, it pursued a course of “de-indigenizing” indigenous people. Speaking indigenous languages such as Ayuujk was seen as the epitome of backwardness and consequently forbidden. Yet Camila did cherish one dimension of school life: instruction in sports and state celebrations (fiestas cívicas), which was considered to be the mestizo habitus and thought to bring indigenous people closer to becoming full-fledged citizens of the nation (compare Sigüenza Orozco 2007: 112). Such celebrations became role models for Ayuujk ethnopolitics. Camila: I remember that Presidente Manuel Ávila Camacho came to our school. Marciano: Oh, the president of the Mexican Republic was there? Camila: Yes, he came on a visit and because it wasn’t that far away they used to take us to Mexico City after that to parade at every state celebration. … [T]hey gave us our uniforms, our shoes, and everything else.

Although it was not encouraged at school, Camila managed to retain her command of the Ayuujk language and kept in touch with her family. For this purpose she and her family experimented with the new media. Her brother sent one of the first telegrams from Ayutla to Toluca to test this new means of communication. Camila wrote letters to her family that often took months to get there, so that occasionally sender and re-

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cipient had already seen each other before the letter arrived. Secondary education at the indigenous boarding school in Tamazulapam del Progreso in the Mixteca region was the next stage in Camila’s career. This meant she was now closer to her hometown. During his travels as an itinerant merchant her father, José, would visit her every three months. Camila was still at secondary school when her father died unexpectedly. Without his moral and financial support she lost the drive to continue studying, perhaps because her hometown still did not value female pioneers in education. By leaving secondary school without a certificate she did not meet the requirements for a permanent teaching position.18 Obliged to earn a living in Tama, she began selling food to visitors and travelers, a common way for women to generate an income. In 1954 and 1955 an exception was made to ensure that the school remained open, and she was allowed to replace her brother as a teacher at a time when he had his hands full with armed clashes between Tama and Cacalotepec (see below). Although she then made efforts to acquire a permanent position, known as a plaza, she was unsuccessful and blames her brother Victoriano. His educational career led him to the Escuela Normal Rural in San Antonio de la Cal and subsequently to Teneria, Estado de México. Moreover, he had excellent contacts with SEP officials in Ayutla. According to Camila he envied her fluent Spanish and thus thwarted her prospects as a teacher. There was, however, another reason that prevented her from pursuing her career. Her mother had arranged a marriage to a man who later became a successful coffee merchant. Despite having been pressed to follow this more traditional way of life, Camila made good use of her schooling in her daily life in Tama: she helped villagers with all kinds of red tape, such as formal and informal letters (recados) and receipts (recibos), thereby opening up this media space for them. She was very much in demand as a secretary, also due to the fact that she did not charge for her services—unlike Domingo Basilio Rojas.19 Many villagers still complain that Rojas monopolized official correspondence for a long time, imposing himself politically and earning a substantial amount in the process. Victoriano, on the other hand, was hired as a rural teacher by education officials immediately after his father’s death. This accorded him a political role in the village, a social privilege women were not privy to in the 1950s. Since he advocated teaching exclusively in Spanish, he did not allow his pupils to speak Ayuujk at school; similar to most teachers at the time, he was convinced that this would enable them to learn Spanish more easily. Born in 1945, Marciano Rojas García still has painful memories of this. Whenever he made a mistake in Spanish and said “ya sabe,” for example, instead of “ya sé,” Victoriano gave him a whack

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or hit him on the hand with a stick, adhering to the maxim “Spare the rod, spoil the child” (sólo por la sangre entra la letra, in Spanish, literally, “blood makes the letter go in”).20 Victoriano advanced to become a kind of mediator or go-between (gestor social ) in the village, a role that called for compliance with traditional aspects of liderazgo and cacicazgo, which meant assuming leadership during violent land disputes with Cacalotepec between 1955 and 1963, during which both sides committed cruelties against their neighbors. Many were murdered during the prolonged strife (see the section below, Negotiating Land Conflicts in Transborder Media Spaces). Victoriano’s term as presidente municipal in 1963 saw the successful end to the long conflict. As a means of consolidating village borders local governance was reformed and an office in charge of land issues was introduced: the presidente de bienes comunales. In 1963 Victoriano revamped Tama’s patron saint fiesta as an innovative instrument for community cohesion and a demonstration of power vis-à-vis neighboring villages and government officials. The following event is a good example of his use of media for the political purposes of community building and influencing state representatives. That year Salomón Nahmad Sittón, a graduate student in anthropology at the ENAH (Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia), had been assigned by the INI to write a preliminary study of the entire Mixe region, which would serve as the basis for the establishment of an INI branch office (Nahmad Sittón 1965). He conducted field research for three months and traveled with Juventino Sánchez Jiménez, an Ayuujk man from Santa María Huitepec familiar with the area and also a member of the Partido Popular Socialista (PPS), as translator. Tama was one of the locations they visited. Although Salomón had not yet met Victoriano Martínez Casas he was overwhelmed by the reception on his arrival in Tama in June 1963: Victoriano had organized a music and dance event in the Guelaguetza style on the plaza in front of the municipal building.21 Schoolchildren and adult residents of Tama performed la Danza de los Negritos, Danza de la Malinche, Danza de los Zancudos (otherwise rarely performed there), and Sones y Jarabes Mixes. Salomón captured the sensational fiesta on color film, which meant investing in what was at the time an expensive commodity. It should be noted that in the 1960s celebrations of patron saint fiestas were usually much simpler than they are today. This particular fiesta, however, featured a variety of dances in the Guelaguetza style not only as a strategy to impress the INI emissary Salomón Nahmad Sittón, but also as part of the effort to bury the hatchet with Cacalotepec and impress neighboring villages with their power.22

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Figure 3.2. Tama’s Espíritu Santo Fiesta, May 1963. Photo: Salomón Nahmad Sittón.

The fiesta became the jumping-off point for a longstanding friendship and alliance between the local leader Victoriano and the anthropologist Salomón, even though the branch office was eventually established in Ayutla and not in Tama. Both were convinced of the enormous significance of education for the advancement of the Ayuujk people. Years later, in 1978, when Salomón Nahmad Sittón became head of the indigenous education department of the SEP, he appointed Victoriano Martínez Casas to direct the regional branch in Ayutla. Together they implemented a policy that saw widespread employment of Ayuujk teachers, including people who had merely completed primary school, in order to improve educational services in even the most remote hamlets. They thus paved the way for an extensive educational infrastructure in the Mixe region, with Ayuujk teachers in a strong political position. The “Guelaguetza performance” in Tama testifies to Victoriano’s skills in opening media spaces. He used his connections to establish a primary school there, which contained all six grades by 1967. Up until then, students who had completed the third grade, particularly boys, were forced to attend boarding schools in either Zoogocho or Guelatao. In 1967, the first generation of pupils completed primary school education in Tama (López García 2011: 181). Enticing girls to attend these schools continued to pose a major challenge for a long time due to the stubborn opposition of most parents. They were successfully recruited,

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however, when the municipal officials began to exact a fine of twenty centavos from parents for each day that girls were absent from school. As part of his effort to open up the village, Victoriano advocated for roads and other means of communication. The 1960s marked a significant milestone when the Mitla-Ayutla road finally reached Tama. Construction of the road began in 1962 at Santa María Albarradas and reached Ayutla and Tama in 1966. Ayutla was then praised on a sign at the entrance to the center as “The Port of the Mixe” (El Puerto de los Mixes) (Kuroda 1984: 19). On the other hand, Victoriano did not unilaterally open the village to external forces. He also selectively closed it to elements he considered harmful. Together with other teachers he adopted a decidedly anticlerical attitude and prevented Catholic priests from settling in Tama. Launching a so-called second spiritual conquest in the 1960s, the Salesian order had quickly established six parishes (parroquias), including one in Ayutla (1962) and one in Tlahui (1963). In Tama, however, their efforts were in vain. Another church skeptic comparable to Victoriano Martínez Casas and Domingo Basilio Rojas was Hermelindo Rojas, Domingo’s son, who now lives in Los Angeles. He told me that his attitude was the result of his socialist education at the boarding school in Zoogocho introduced under Cárdenas. He rejected the priests, since they simply taught catechism and, unlike state schools, failed to impart skills that would eventually lead to jobs. Another argument against the settlement of the Salesians was their expectation that inhabitants would build the required parish infrastructure and—just as important—provide food. Hence those in opposition advised the priests emphatically (possibly under threat of violence) to remain in Ayutla and only come to Tama when their services were required.23 As socialists they were likewise critical of their own Ayuujk religion. Resistance to the establishment of a Catholic parish in Tama, however, had the unintended side effect of paving the way for greater freedom to practice “our own” religion, the so-called costumbres, than was the case in Ayutla and Tlahui. Particular village actors such as the diviners combined this with a ban on photography and filming of occult rituals as an efficient protection strategy for conserving the autonomy of the Ayuujk religion.

Traveling Cinema and New Patterns of Leisure The local primary school and the link to the road network revolutionized mobility in Tama, noticeably expanding the horizon for youth, particularly for girls and young women. With their teacher’s encouragement,

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young people looked for paid work once they completed school: load carrying was no longer an attractive option. Buses traveled the MitlaAyutla-Tama route once every day. Oaxaca and Mexico City, where the economic upswing had led to a boom in the construction industry, were the main targets of migrant workers. Young men from Tama worked in construction, factories, and the Mexican postal sector (see also Jiménez Díaz 2012: 34). My hostess Josefina García Martínez, who was born in 1956, was one of the Tama girls who began working in Mexico City for the first time as a domestic servant at the age of eleven once she had completed primary school. A girlfriend from the neighboring village of Tepantlali had arranged the position. She began working for a family in Colonia Roma who treated her well but only gave her money when she traveled back to her hometown. Her wages consisted mostly of bed and board and the “good” clothes she was given to wear at work. But she and others enjoyed their newfound independence. Back home they would have had to work in the fields, as well as in the household, which may have motivated them to initially accept labor exploitation in cities.24 Boys and girls in Tama were not granted space for youth in the sense of free time or their own lifestyle. The city, on the other hand, promised freedom, if only on Sunday. Josefina was attracted by urban media practices that symbolized status and modernity, such as photography, and became a pioneer woman photographer in her hometown (see further below). Such was the experience of an entire generation of men and women born in the 1950s and 1960s who encountered life and work in the big cities of Mexico for the first time. Some settled in Mexico City, notably in the Santo Domingo quarter. They became familiar with and were enthusiastic about modern leisure activities: Latin American trova music, rock music from the United States, the Beatles, couples dancing, photography, television, and cinema. On their return to Tama they brought the first television sets, cameras, record players, and latest styles in music and dance along with them. Some based new business ideas on these acquisitions, which their income had permitted, creating new media uses and cultures en route. Although they are not from Tama, I will briefly describe what the married couple Filogonio Morales Galván from Ayutla and Lourdes Juárez Saucedo from Mexico City achieved with one of these typical migrant business initiatives. Several Tama residents pointed out that the couple had introduced a traveling cinema and consequently the local culture of film consumption in the Sierra Mixe. Given the visual divide (see the introduction), this was a first. From 1978 until 1983, Filogonio and Lourdes regularly showed 16mm films on weekends in Ayutla, Tama, Tlahui, Tepuxtepec, and Tepant-

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lali.25 At the time many inhabitants were familiar with movies from their experience at boarding school. Medardo Pérez Rios (born in 1950), for example, first came into contact with and learned to appreciate Mexican comedies with actors like Viruta y Capulina, Mexico’s Laurel and Hardy, as a pupil at the indigenous boarding school in Zoogocho in the 1960s. But back to Filogonio and Lourdes: they met and fell in love in Mexico City, where they both worked in textile factories. When they visited Ayutla after their wedding, Filogonio was taken by surprise when he was appointed to a cargo position as secretario in Ayutla, an office commonly awarded to educated people with a good command of Spanish. This was a classic strategy villages employed to lure migrants back to their hometowns. Filogonio chose to stay in Ayutla and carry out his office conscientiously—deterred by the alternative of having to pay a large sum of money for a substitute. In the meantime the couple began to think about ways to earn money. First, they opened a shop that sold beer and mezcal and provided a megaphone, a vital medium in Ayuujk villages of the 1970s to broadcast messages to the community. Their customers paid ten centavos for a message, such as asking for information about stray cattle. Songs were also broadcast by megaphone, like “Las Mañanitas” for birthdays or love songs requested for a sweetheart. As cinema enthusiasts, the couple then came up with the idea of a traveling cinema, a business venture that, contrary to expectations, turned out to be quite a challenge. They were quickly able to acquire the necessary equipment: a 16mm projector that had once belonged to the indigenous boarding school in Ayutla. Negotiations with municipal officials about this new recreational pursuit, however, proved more time-consuming than expected. Filogonio presented his idea of showing movies once a week on Saturdays in the villages of Tama, Tlahui, Tepuxtepec, and Tepantlali. In Tama the ideal location was the music school (escoleta), where children, teenagers, and adults assembled to practice in the philharmonic band. The respective cargo officials, however, spoke to Filogonio of their fear that cinema could inject indecency into village life. They alluded to local moral standards that saw displays of affection like a kiss—especially in the case of unmarried couples—as sinful and “of the devil.” They explained that the villagers were not prepared for certain film scenes. The introduction of cinema to the Ayuujk communities therefore meant negotiating gender relations and the moral standards of society. Filogonio had to tackle a problem that has accompanied cinema from the start: the medium of film was blamed for the slackening of moral standards, to which Mexico responded with a rigorous system of movie categories restricted to graded age groups, and the censorship of particular film scenes (Algarabel 2012). In the

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Sierra Mixe case Filogonio simply gave cargo officials his word to exclude indecencies of any kind. He rented feature films belonging exclusively to category A (children and youth) from distributors in Oaxaca City. The most popular movies with Tama audiences, (primarily boys and young men) were Mexican “Westerns” (películas vaqueras with stars like Pedro Infante and Luis Aguilar), Tarzan films from Hollywood, comedies with Mexican celebrity Cantinflas, and finally martial arts films starring Bruce Lee. The latter epitomizes the underdog who compensates for his lack of height with a mixture of Asian warfare ideology and body control. As a result of these screenings, Tama’s male youth was so enthusiastic about the Asian martial arts hero that for quite some time afterwards they practiced karate and kung fu. The itinerant cinema enterprise showed two movies at their events. Children not only paid 50 centavos for each performance but also bought sweets. After all, one of the best things about going to the cinema was eating popcorn and goodies like gelatina, a jello desert made by Lourdes and sold at intermission. It was perfectly normal at the time for children to earn their own money by looking after cattle; hence they could afford the price of admission. Following their initial skepticism, the officials changed their minds: they pressed for this type of recreation, which they now considered “healthy.” At weekends and particularly at patron saint fiestas, where feature films were also screened, adults consumed far more alcohol, notably mezcal, than is the case today; watching films created a space specific to youth, where the young in the community could enjoy themselves away from this vice. Lourdes stressed that the overwhelming majority of the audience was male. One reason was that girls were not granted access to recreational activities such as playing in philharmonic bands. According to Filogonio, parents were afraid that movie screenings would provide their daughters an opportunity to meet boys. As a result, the occasional father or mother dragged their daughter out from a performance. When the problems increased, Filogonio and Lourdes gave in and began to exclude girls from the showings. In the early 1980s, prosperous villagers bought their first television sets and video recorders. When the traveling cinema audience began to decline, the couple rented out an extra room in their house, where they installed a television set and a video recorder. In 1983, they gave up this business and focused on their stationery shop. They had succeeded for a while in establishing a cinema culture suited to the Ayuujk villages and adapted to geographic, cultural, and social factors; these new forms of appropriating audiovisual media were now replaced by mainstream

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Mexican television and later by the local television station and patron saint fiesta videos (see chapter 4).

Sports, Gender, and Ayuujk Nation Building In 1966 and 1967 the road was connected to Mitla and the first generation of primary school graduates left Tama thus causing major changes in the village. One contributing factor was a group of young teachers who had just completed their training at the Escuelas Normales Rurales. They presented Tama’s General Assembly with an unusual plan: the town was to be the first to organize a Campeonato Regional Mixe, an ethnically based basketball tournament aimed at uniting the Ayuujk people. Invitations were to be sent to all twenty-one Ayuujk municipalities, those of the Distrito Mixe and two others. Among the proponents of this sports event were the passionate coaches and athletes Marciano Rojas García, Ezequiel Robles Jiménez, and Victoriano Guilberto, who were all in their early twenties at the time. Among those who later joined the original group were the teachers Gustavo Guzmán Ortiz and Daniel Martínez Pérez. In 1976 Hermenegilda Cabañas Marín became one of the first women in Tama to play basketball. The following accounts are based on interviews with four people from this group and short historical accounts written by Marciano Rojas García (1975) and Atilano Esteban Jiménez (2015).26 The Campeonato Regional Mixe took place from 1967 until 1985, and was organized in rotation by different Ayuujk villages: in 1967 Tama, 1968 Ayutla, 1969 Zacatepec, 1970 Juquila Mixe, 1971 Huayapam, 1972 Tlahui, 1973 Tepantlali, 1974 Totontepec, 1975 Tama, 1976 Zacatepec, 1977 Tlahui, 1978 Ayutla, 1979 Tierra Blanca, 1980 Atitlán, 1981 Estancia de Morelos, 1982 Quetzaltepec, 1983 Tama, 1984 Huayapam and, finally, in 1985 Juquila Mixe. The first games, which coincided with the patron saint fiesta in the respective village, were a modest affair. In 1967, Tama organized basketball competitions exclusively for male teams from eight communities. Inspired by the idea that they could help bring about peace between the villages, which were constantly at odds over land issues, and contribute to the unification of all Ayuujk people, each year they added new sports. In 1972 at the tournament in Tlahui it was decided to add volleyball and track and field, including short- and long-distance races up to 10,000 meters, as well as long- and high-jump events. In the 1980s swimming and cycling were added. In 1975 in Tama it was agreed to include women in all sports at the “Mini Olympic Games” (Daniel Martínez Pérez). By that time girls were more

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active in sports at school. Cultural performances of music, dance, plays, and poetry in the Ayuujk language were soon included in the program as well, blending sport and culture in a unique Ayuujk way. This annual event was consequently renamed Campeonato Regional Deportivo y Cultural Mixe. Almost all villages in the Mixe region participated.27 Marciano Rojas García explained what had motivated him and others to promote this elaborate event, which in those days was unique among Mexico’s indigenous groups: We realized that our compatriots used to confront each other; there were conflicts, agrarian disputes, and social problems as a result of caciquismo. And back then villages were divided. There was no form of living together communally; there was no unity … Fiestas were hosted, they were always organized, but only a few sports teams from the agencias and rancherías went there. None from other municipalities. … That’s when we young people began to look for a way to encourage people to live together as a community and promote friendship between the villages, and their coexistence. We debated this, pondered over solutions as to how and with whose support we could unite the communities … “Let’s hold a sort of tournament, a competition, and call it Campeonato Regional, let the administrative centers of the municipalities participate. Because Ayutla doesn’t agree with Zacatepec and Zacatepec doesn’t get on with Juquila, and Zacatepec is squabbling with Cacalotepec.”28

In a paper he wrote in 1975, Marciano described the factors that motivated the founding of the tournament: “Worry and uneasiness, the lack of true harmony and peace between the Mixe people, the lack of contact and communication and the search for ways for youth in our communities in the Mixe region to get together.”29 In short, the founders were concerned about what they had diagnosed as “the distancing and lack of union of the grand Mixe family.”30 The initiators of the sporting event were keen on overcoming internal division within this “grand Mixe family” by establishing a secular alternative or complement to the patron saint fiesta. The fiestas can be seen as a traditional medium that the Catholic Church employed to its ends by promoting worship of the patron saint in the church and in processions. When the teachers introduced the games, the Salesians, who had begun to establish parishes in the Mixe region in the early 1960s, were confronted with a massive event that the Ayuujk people organized independently. Athletic competition was also meant as a device to counteract division within the villages caused by the missionary activities of a range of Evangelical religious groups since the 1940s, notably the Seventh Day Adven-

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tists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Other factors likewise played a role: the Olympic Games, which Mexico hosted in 1968 for the first time, served as a model for the regional games. In this case the point of reference was not the Mexican nation but the Ayuujk ethnic group. Prior to the games, basketball play-offs called Campeonatos Relámpagos were held as part of the patron saint fiestas. Admission to these Campeonatos was less regulated; for example, it was open to teams and players from adjacent Zapotec villages. The Campeonato Regional Mixe, in contrast, targeted the Ayuujk ja’ay exclusively. Over the years, the nomenclature and the concept of what constitutes the “Ayuujk nation,” as it is called today, have slightly changed. While it was conceived as a “gran familia Mixe” in the 1970s (Rojas García 1975), the term “Pueblo Mixe” as used in the designation of Services to the Mixe People (SER), a Tlahui-based organization founded in 1988, has been popular for decades. Currently the use of “nación Ayuujk” (coined in the 1990s) is gaining momentum, especially as a form of resistance to the educational reform implemented by the government of PRI President Enrique Peña Nieto.31 Ayuujk ethnopolitics and the sense of belonging to an ethnic group have been fostered precisely by means of basketball tournaments, since basketball is the “sport most practiced in Mixe villages, even the smallest and most humble” (Rojas García 1975).32 Today more than 120 basketball teams parade onto the basketball courts on Tama’s main plaza at the Copa Nación Ayuujk. They carry the Ayuujk flag, the Ayuujk national anthem is sung, and finally the Ayuujk Olympic fire is ignited. All these elements are part of a ‘national’ symbolism that has been gradually adopted in the entire Mixe region since the late 1970s.33 It should be noted here that the term “Ayuujk” itself has been unified in this process; according to the Tama variant of the language it would normally be written as Ëyuujk, but for the purposes of unity the term Ayuujk is now used. At the Campeonato Regional Ayuujk ja’ay identity was based on local and regional identity. Participants had to provide evidence showing that both parents came from the same Ayuujk village. They also had to prove that they had command of the Ayuujk language. As Marciano Rojas explains: Marciano: In the case of the Campeonato Regional, verification of identity takes place because people have documents, so we ask them for their birth certificate and voter identity card. Ingrid: Did the participants of the Campeonato have to come from the region? Did they have to be Ayuujk ja’ay (mixe) as well?

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Marciano: They had to be from this region and only pure Ayuujk ja’ay (puros mixes) were allowed to take part. People from other regions and other ethnic groups were not accepted. Ingrid: And what if the person came from the village but wasn’t Ayuujk (mixe)? That is the case with some people. Marciano: No, they had to speak Ayuujk (mixe). That’s how we recognized them. If somebody seemed to be a stranger, then they were asked for documents. Control was more rigorous then. And if it turned out that someone who had come first in a competition wasn’t Ayuujk (mixe), they were punished. Their prize was taken away from them.34

The elaborate Campeonato Regional flourished in the 1970s. The participation of up to twenty villages, each with several teams for various sports, meant that the hosts had to provide food and accommodations for more than 1,000 athletes. In this era prior to the use of radio stations for diffusion, the organization was accomplished by the system of convoking (convocar). The village cargo system was key. Once the General Assembly had accepted hosting the Campeonato Regional, it took on the task of writing invitations to the participating villages. The invitations were delivered by the lowest-ranking officials, topiles, who at that time essentially acted as messengers and transmitters of official letters. The games were not reported in the newspapers in Oaxaca; their impact was directed exclusively toward the regional level and the villages themselves as a means of fostering social cohesion. They demonstrated a form of Ayuujk ‘nationalism’ based on sports, designed by Tama teachers in collaboration with teachers from other towns, particularly Tlahui. For the most part, the committee officials who organized the games were teachers from Tama. Sports-based ‘nationalism’ was constituted from the very beginning as a gendered discourse, as is the nationalism of nation states (compare Kummels 2014; McClintock 1993). With the decree in 1975 that admitted girls and women to the games and promoted gender equality, the Campeonato also had repercussions on daily life, for example, by providing space for a phase of life (youth), which had hitherto been denied to local girls and young women. The athletic career of Hermenegilda Cabañas Marín, born in 1960, is a good example. Following the 1975 decree, she played passionately as a secondary school student on the women’s basketball team coached by Daniel Martínez Pérez. She had a hard time escaping household chores forced on her by her mother and the rest of her family, and also finding room for sports. Hermenegilda speaks of the spaces she managed to create:

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Hermenegilda: For those of us who went to school, training began at four o’clock in the morning. So we had to be on the basketball court at four and we left again at seven to have breakfast and go to school. We used to go back at four in the afternoon for training and stop at six. … It was highly demanding. But I liked sports. Here at home they were always giving me the business. Yes, my mother used to scold me a lot and say, “Why do you have to go to basketball?” and because I was her oldest child: “Get on with making the tortillas,” “Wash your brothers and sisters’ clothes.” So I did those chores and on Saturdays she even demanded, “When you get back you have to do the grinding.” And indeed the nixtamal (cooked corn) was waiting for me. So I used to come home at seven and grind. And make tortillas (she laughs). Ingrid: And did the women and girls have any experience with sports before, that is, before they were invited to participate in the regional games? Hermenegilda: No, not here, women were criticized back then, you know. They were criticized all the time.35

Sports altered gender relations in several ways. When Daniel Martínez Pérez began to train Tama’s first female basketball team in 1975, he saw himself faced with unusual tasks for a coach. Tama’s cargo officials instructed him to impose a 10 pm curfew when his players attended the baile serrano at the Zacatepec Campeonato Regional, where local bands played as couples danced. Despite this precaution, one of the female players from Tama fell in love at the dance event with a young man, who “kidnapped” her away on the spot, that is, married her without permission from her parents.36 Turbulent episodes like this notwithstanding, girls and women gradually gained recognition as team players and athletes at the Campeonato Regional. They also contributed to advancing a new form of Ayuujk culture at the evening events held at the games. Hermenegilda has a happy memory of the Ayuujk theater performance of a traditional healing by a diviner in which she played the mother of the ailing son, a part performed by the young Genaro Rojas. Hence practices such as traditional healing—frowned upon by state-sponsored indigenous institutions with their biomedicinal health programs and combatted by Catholic Christians and Evangelicals alike—were proudly presented to the public at the Ayuujk Olympic Games. Although the games collapsed in 1985 when the village of Alotepec ultimately rejected hosting them the following year,37 regional sports were revitalized two decades later, again inspired by Ayuujk ‘nationalism.’ This time the scope was wider, both geographically as well as in the sense of practices and imaginations. In 2003 the games were re-

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vived in a new format and with a permanent base in Tama. Once again a young generation of teachers sought to resurrect the huge sports event, now renamed Copa Mixe and primarily involving basketball and football. The Copa Mixe (renamed Copa Nación Ayuujk in 2016) now takes place annually as part of Tama’s Santa Rosa de Lima fiesta. Tama has thus created a modern, distinctive version of the patron saint fiesta based on its experience with the Campeonato Regional. This blend of fiesta and sports competition has proven particularly suited to integrating migrants from translocal and transnational satellite communities, which meanwhile organize their own Copa competitions such as the Copa Mixe Bajío competition that unite teams from Tama satellites in central and northern Mexico. With the revitalization of sports competition, the Santa Rosa de Lima fiesta has become a mammoth event covered by local and transnational media, contributing to the mutual reinforcement of the self-styled media and Tama’s geographically dispersed communities (see chapter 4).

Village Photography as a Field of Tension: Ways of Seeing and Generating Knowledge To what extent is a distinctive “way of seeing” (Berger 1990) cultivated in Tama? To what degree have people relied on locally established “endogenous” semiotic ideologies and aesthetic approaches when appropriating new audiovisual technologies and practices? Photographers and videographers living in the transnational village adopt new ways of seeing and new aesthetic standards during their training at film and photography programs in urban academies. They acquire standards that are also demanded of them when they engage, for example, at regional or international indigenous political meetings in which people who have grown up with different visual languages meet. Moreover, village mediamakers have to grapple with the visual aesthetics of “el estilo Disney,” as they refer to it. Ayuujk children also grow up with the constant supply of Walt Disney film characters of princesses and masculine heroes and emulate them as children do in other parts of the world. Village photographers were the first to call my attention to how greatly visual languages within their community differ due to tastes attenuated by age, gender, education, social class, migration experience, place of residence, and political orientation. These professionals address several audiences and thus excel in working with more than one visual language. This applies to twenty-nine-year-old Conrado “Conra” Pérez Rosas, currently earning his living as a professional photographer in the village.

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Another Tama photographer is Jorge Pérez Jiménez, nicknamed “El Negro.” He works full-time as a teacher but, like Conra, takes pictures at an array of social events and sells them. Jorge learned the craft of photography from his father, Alberto. Conra, on the other hand, trained as a photographer in a self-financed four-month course in the Mexican capital. During this time he became familiar with the span of “universal” photography and took courses on studio photography, photojournalism, and social event photography. He took a liking to black-and-white photography because of its striking light effects. With the intention of making a living from his craft he then returned to his hometown, where he found adequate demand: at the time (2011) it was standard procedure for villagers to have their picture taken at school graduations and family celebrations, patron saint fiestas, and change-of-office ceremonies. Conra applied the full range of what he had learned to his work, even suggesting black-and-white portraits to his customers. This “experiment,” however, was not greeted with enthusiasm. His customers made fun of him by asking, “Can’t you handle color yet?” (¿A poco todavía no manejas el color?). In their view, color prints were more realistic and hence far more attractive. They also complained when people were not photographed in their entirety, that is, as a full-length portrait showing them from head to toe. Since Conra was determined to make a living in the village from professional photography, he began to work with basically two separate aesthetic languages: he now takes photographs that satisfy local customers, such as full-length portraits of fiesta participants in front of the church (see below, Taking Photographs in Two Audiovisual Languages, figure 3.4.). Pierre Bourdieu (1990: 83) ascribed this principle of frontality to deep-seated cultural values in peasant societies,38 whereas Conra explained it as an emic requirement of seriousness: The bit about working on social events, I’d say people try to strike their best pose. They know that this moment will be frozen in time. That’s why people try to avoid making a face or moving. “I want to see my whole front body,” that is, “my portrait from head to toe.” The person tries to show all that. It’s as if their reality is transformed into their posture. That’s the way we are: as Ayuujk people or people of Tama, we’re very serious about our sayings and our way of life.39

At the same time, Conra also shoots images he refers to as fotos artísticas, which are both pleasing to him and fall into this universal category. Consistent with international standards they focus skillfully on mood, light and shadow effects, composition, and particular details, inviting

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the international viewer to take part. He sells pictures from the first category in Tama but keeps those from the second in his private collection, regarding them as a record (registro) of Ayuujk culture and his community, which contributes to preservation rather than purely art for art’s sake. Conra seeks to retain Ayuujk knowledge with the art of photography, to interpret it in this manner and conserve it for the future. His current work concerns philharmonic band musicians from Tama and other villages in the Mixe region, and fiestas in Tama involving la Diosa del pueblo—a motif hitherto rarely photographed and certainly not systematically.40 These images in the second category have not yet found their village audience, although Conra is constantly opening up new spaces for them: since the change-of-office ceremony on 1 January 2014, he has organized exhibitions of his artistic photographs as highly visible events. As a founding member of the Colectivo Cultura y Resistencia Ayuuk, he contributed to a new trend in photography. How did local professional photography arise in Tama and how was it appropriated? After a review of the beginnings of amateur photography in the village in the 1960s and its subsequent professionalization, I will describe the career paths of two Tama professional photographers, Alberto (born in 1950) and Conrado (born in 1986), and look at current practices in the field.

Beginnings of Amateur Photography in Tama As late as the 1960s, it was primarily anthropologists, government officials, travelers, and tourists who photographed and/or filmed in the villages of the Mixe region. Village residents, for their part, had to be content with their role as photo subjects. In scholarship, the hostile attitude of local people to photography is frequently attributed to its abuse as an instrument of power on the part of external actors, such as explorers and scientists. Yet anthropology did not always use photography to further colonial and neocolonialist interests; its usage of photography depended on the particular actors involved, place and time period.41 The Mixe/Ayuujk (for example, in Ayutla, Tama’s neighboring village) were portrayed in the late nineteenth century by travelers and photographers like Frederick Starr as backward “racial Others” (Nahmad Sittón 2012). In contrast, the history of photography and film in Tama, in particular, shows that for writers and anthropologists active in this field from the 1950s, including Juan Rulfo and Salomón Nahmad Sittón, cultures had to be understood on their own terms. As practitioners of photography they displayed sensitivity and respect. Elderly villagers who

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remember Salomón well found nothing derogatory in his engagement with photography. On the contrary, today they hold his pictures in high esteem as evidence of a time when photographs were both a rarity and a luxury.42 Tama was difficult to access by road and therefore was not a target for tourism. Beginning in the 1950s, however, the village frequently attracted outside experts (for example, within the framework of the state development project Comisión del Papaloapan), Catholic and Protestant missionaries, journalists, anthropologists and students of anthropology, and craft dealers from the United States, all of whom stayed for a short period, took photographs, or made films. Added to this was the fact that local inhabitants had not developed the custom of keeping photos in a private archive such as a photo album. At the time, they did not perceive a social need for photos as a means of documenting significant events. The oral tradition and writing were still their primary methods of recalling and passing on information about historical events. In fact, when a family member passed away, it was customary to burn all his or her belongings, including writings and, as the case might be, photos, as to avoid having the dead person’s ghost search for them and disturb those still alive. The situation changed abruptly in the mid-1960s, when the first inhabitants of Tama began to work as teachers at rural schools in the Distrito Mixe following graduation from primary school. With the aid of the SEP, graduates found positions in indigenous regions, including the Distrito Mixe. Marciano Rojas García and Medardo Ríos Pérez, who belong to the first generation of Tama rural school teachers, and those who came after, such as Josefina Martínez García, overcame the visual divide. They acquired small, affordable, and easy-to-use Kodak Instamatic cameras with a film cassette-system. Committed to cultural work, they organized music and dance performances in schools and saw photography as the visual medium best suited to record these creative efforts and modernize them. One example is Marciano Rojas, who was born in Tama in 1946 and started working as a teacher after he finished secondary school in 1969. Having secured a regular income as a teacher in Xilitla, San Luis Potosí, he bought his first camera and began taking pictures of his activities in this Huastec community. Inspired by indigenist educational policies, he and his wife also engaged in modernizing the village outside the classroom. Marciano captured visual images of these endeavours: of his wife instructing schoolgirls in embroidery and of the villagers paving the basketball court to promote this sport. By 1967, together with other Tama teachers, he had initiated the ambitious “Ayuujk Olympic Games” described earlier in this chapter. Marciano keeps his pictures in two carefully compiled photograph albums, one of which is labeled “Evolu-

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ción de Tamazulapam.” The album records the visual history of village events such as tequio communal labor and of the gradual urbanization of el centro. Josefina Martínez García, introduced earlier in this chapter, began to work as a domestic servant in Mexico City at the age of eleven. As a young girl, the idea of the city was more appealing than life on the rancho Linda Vista, where she helped her parents in the fields and tended the livestock for her father, a coffee dealer. Mexico City conjured up visions of speaking fluent Spanish, wearing elegant clothes, and becoming modern. It was there working as a maid in the Colonia Roma that she came across photography: Josefina: It was 1970 when I was working in Mexico City and they gave me the little camera (la camarita) as a present one Christmas. I had that camera for years and used it to take photographs of any kind of event that came up. Even if it wasn’t an important one I still loved doing it. But later on I bought another little camera. When was that? I think it was 1976. A doctor sold me that camera, so then I had two and went on taking pictures with both of them—just for fun. Ingrid: What were your favorite motifs? Josefina: Well, everything cultural, dancers. I loved dancers and drunks at the fiesta, anything really. I found that sort of thing interesting—drunks dancing. And sometimes they used to buy my pictures when they saw what I was doing. Since I had an instant camera, they used to ask me to take a photo and I did a bit of business. I photographed everything, a couple standing around in some way or other, a bit of everything. Ingrid: So if somebody wanted the photograph, you sold it? Josefina: The instant ones sold very well, because no one had a camera in those days. Or rather some people did have cameras but developing the pictures took a long time. Ingrid: So you mostly took pictures at fiestas? Josefina: I preferred fiestas because there were a lot of things going on and a lot of people there. But when I went to the small ranchos I took my little camera along too. I’d see some family like my own and take their picture. I loved playing with both my cameras. It was like a game, I didn’t take it seriously. Ingrid: And how long did you go on taking photographs? Josefina: My husband kept trying to stop me. He used to get very annoyed when I took my camera with me. I don’t know why, but it made him extremely angry, even jealous. He’d say, “No, that’s enough of that.” And I

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continued with my clients, but in another field of work. It wasn’t dancers and drunks anymore. I began to photograph my products as part of my pottery business instead. I used to fax the images as a catalog to other countries, especially the United States. That was quite different. It wasn’t just playing around anymore; it meant looking for a market. So people abroad became familiar with handicrafts from Tamazulapam. That was different altogether. Everything changed once people wanted to buy pottery from me, and that’s when I connected with many, many people, yes, foreigners like you.43

Josefina’s career is exceptional. Despite an early marriage and a first child at the age of fifteen in 1974, she obtained a position as a primary school teacher at the INI. For many years she worked outside Tama in the ranchos of neighboring villages such as Tepuxtepec—away from her husband, who was also working as a teacher. In 1988, Josefina left her teaching job once she had established a more lucrative business selling pottery, which she still runs today. Throughout these different phases she kept up photography as a means to earn extra income. She describes how the image of dancers and drunks, whose movements are relished as comical (chusco), had fascinated her early on as a subject. In the 1980s her Polaroid instant camera allowed her to immediately fulfill requests for souvenir fiesta pictures. Josefina delighted in the prospect and the attitude of being a photographer as such—something her husband, also an amateur photographer, could not accept. His opposition was so forceful that she gave up taking pictures altogether. This may have been a prevalent male attitude, given the very few women who practiced photography at the time. In the course of education and work migration, however, women like Josefina were instrumental in making photography a village medium to record, systemize, and accumulate knowledge of everyday life—and an enjoyable pastime besides. The exhibition of her photographs at the Feria Cultural del Pulque in 2008 returned Josefina to local public attention as a female pioneer in the field of photography.

Professionalism without a Photo Studio: Alberto, el Fotógrafo The name “Alberto, el fotógrafo” is frequently heard in Tama. Following a long period of work in Mexico City, Alberto Pérez Ramírez returned to Tama in 1987 and became the village’s first professional photographer, offering local customers his services for thirteen years. In the year 2000 an eye disease forced him to abandon his craft. I first came across Alberto’s photographs in the private photo collections and albums I had

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asked various Tama villagers to show me. These albums usually contain a combination of pictures they took themselves and those bought from professional photographers. This was evident from the difference in style, image detail, and aesthetic devices, as well as the size of the photo paper. When I asked who had taken the pictures with the professional touch, more often than not they replied, “Alberto took that,” adding, “he was a brilliant photographer.” Most of the images showed cargo officials at celebrations and primary or secondary school students at graduation. The pictures always look professional and in terms of quality and format are fairly similar to those taken by professional photographers in Oaxaca City during this period. Yet Alberto’s photographic motifs and their presentation have their own distinctive features. None of the images, for example, were studio shots. Studio in this case means a workspace to take pictures, equipped with props, backdrops, and technical devices, such as lighting. Alberto, in contrast, photographed in the open air in broad daylight (see figure 3.3.). Even here he never created an artificial photographic space with a backdrop, for example. Whereas in other cases props and backdrops were commonly used as a visual strategy to upgrade the status of the person portrayed.44 When Alberto withdrew from the business of professional photography he devoted himself to agriculture at his rancho Piedra Larga. I first contacted his son Jorge, who not only works as a teacher in Tepuxtepec, but also as a seasonal photographer at patron saint fiestas. Before I was finally able to interview Alberto, I learned much about him from Jorge, who admired his career and gave considerable thought to the social role of his father as a village photographer, which is why he followed in his footsteps. Jorge furnished me with the following details: Alberto belonged to the first generation of youth in Tama to graduate from primary school. As frequently occurred in those days, he had enrolled in primary school at a relatively advanced age and therefore graduated in 1970 in Guelatao at the age of twenty. After graduating he followed his brother to Mexico City in search of work. As a result of its flourishing economy young people were taking to the capital in scores for the first time. While girls worked as domestic servants, the prospects for young men like Alberto were more promising: he found a job on an assembly line at Manufacturera Mexicana de Partes Automóviles (MEXPAR). Alberto had always been interested in photography and had a photographer take his picture in elegant clothes in front of a canvas backdrop. The backdrop with the image of the virgin and the inscription “Souvenir of La Villa” (“Recuerdo de la Villa”), taken during his pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the outskirts of Mexico City, was a classic motif during this period. A photograph at the pilgrimage

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Figure 3.3. Fiesta musician in front of Tama’s church, early 1990s. Photo: Alberto Pérez Ramírez.

site often served as evidence to prove to the relatives who had financed the journey that one had indeed been there. Alberto himself began taking pictures with a Kodak Instamatic. He was one of the first villagers in the 1960s to photograph the change-of-office ceremony in Tama. But it was not until mid-1980 that Alberto invested in a photography course at a private photography school. Beyond the idea of studying the art of photography, Alberto had a plan to set up his own business when he returned to his hometown. He applied the typical migrant strategy of exploiting his experience and knowledge as an urban migrant to start a better life in Tama. As in the case of many returnees, Alberto’s reappearance in Tama was prompted by a classic event and the attendant community pressure: during his absence he had been elected to the office of presidente del

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comité de educación primaria. He found that in the twenty years he was away not a single photographer had set up business in his home village. This led him to invent a new local profession. According to Jorge, Alberto’s career as a village photographer began with a family tragedy, something that Alberto later omitted in his interview. Jorge pointed out that because of the expense involved cameras were still a rarity in the village, even in the late 1980s. Furthermore, people were far more hostile to photography than they are today. Almost immediately after his return to Tama, Alberto took pictures of his family, including his sister holding her newborn son. Shortly afterward the infant died. His sister accused him of causing her son’s death by photography; according to local belief this medium has the power to remove the soul from a person’s body. Alberto was obliged to pay her financial compensation but did not give up his craft. Jorge explained that although Alberto’s sister was devastated at the time she eventually dropped the accusations. When I was finally able to interview Alberto in October 2013 he chose the topics that were important to him in this context. At first he emphasized that after finishing primary school, he immediately migrated to Mexico City in search of a job. Later on at the automobile parts factory one of his work colleagues urged him to enroll at the photography academy he himself was attending. Alberto stressed that he took the course despite his poor background, which had driven him—like so many young men and women of Tama at the time—to the capital in the first place. Alberto: Well, indeed, when I began with photography I was living in Mexico City. I took it up when I was working there. I had to wander around, look around for work as a means of survival. I was a blue-collar worker. I worked with a guy who told me about the course and was already studying to become a photographer. Both of us were blue-collar workers. We began talking about it. And he insisted, “It’s not difficult at all to learn photography, it’s easy. You struggle while you’re studying and then you can open your own photo studio.” So that’s what I began to do. I liked photography very much anyway. Ingrid: Really? Alberto: I liked looking at photographs. I watched how others took them, like journalists. They used to focus their lens to take them. In those days I began with a little camera (una camarita) that was quite simple. It was a Kodak. I bought my little camera. And my desire to study photography blossomed from there. I started to take pictures and liked it very much, so I inquired about where to take a course. And then I did those classes,

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about three hours a week, if I remember rightly. They were held on Saturdays only. And we paid for them. I don’t remember how much, but we used to pay a lot for the course. So that’s when I became aware of photography. And I liked it a lot. They began to explain how to take photographs, how to prepare to take them, everything! And how to develop them ourselves, because in those days you developed photographs, it’s not like nowadays. There was equipment for that. That’s how I started. … The film rolls we used were black and white only. They showed us how to take photographs, what camera to buy to take infantil-sized photos,45 all that kind of stuff. And some classes on they began to teach color photography. Then they asked us to buy our cameras. So I bought one, because it was required. I wanted to better myself, right? (Quería levantarme, ¿no?) But later on when we were nearly through with the course, they gave us the whole list of what we were supposed to have. We were supposed to own a house and keep a large room for taking photographs, everything! (I laugh while Alberto describes the required photo studio in a tone of voice that suggests utopia.) A laboratory, a photo studio, all that! Well, it requires a lot of money is what I thought. And I can’t come up with it. But as an aficionado I started taking photographs in Mexico City.46

Alberto started taking pictures in the capital and selling them there. He invested in an expensive single-lens reflex camera, a Canon AE-1, and he also invested the little spare time he had in practicing his new skills. But he soon met with obstacles, including the photographers’ trade union, which restricted access to prized subjects, such as churches, to union members. This also motivated him to reinvent the photography trade in Tama as a craft practiced without a fully equipped photo studio and photo lab. According to Alberto, in his hometown things were easier: “I was free. Nobody told you what to do or what not to do.” With his comparatively small amount of capital first he met the local need for photographs, for example, for ID cards. Before Alberto, people in Tama had to travel to the state capital to have their pictures taken. Villagers soon discovered that with Alberto, for the first time they had a local photographer who was an Ayuujk person, spoke the language, and knew the culture. They used this opportunity for a more ambitious approach to photography. They inquired about services that had not been discussed in photography school, such as photographic evidence where land disputes were concerned: Ingrid: When you came back here to Tama, what motifs did you photograph? You told me that you took pictures at graduations, but what other motifs interested you? What about everyday life?

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Alberto: Yes, I did that too, I took pictures of the village. I used to photograph the place and then people started taking me to land disputes. Ingrid: Oh, really? Alberto: They did. Once I had to scold them, (he laughs) somewhere far away. I even used to go to the places in dispute. Ingrid: What were the land disputes about? Alberto: Well, sometimes someone might take your land away. Or in another case someone might occupy it and you’d have to photograph it. Ingrid: Oh, so you took pictures of where they had cleared the undergrowth? Alberto: Yes, they, the transgressors, cut wood and felled trees. You would have to take a picture of that. Our justice official sometimes requires evidence of whether it’s true or merely alleged. Yes. Ingrid: Did the disputes arise from family arguments? Alberto: Yes, either family members or neighbors. That’s the way things are. It turns into a land dispute. Ingrid: And can the claimants present these photographs to the cargo officials? Alberto: Yes, that’s what the land owners used to do. I just sold them my photographs.

Most land disputes involve siblings or residents close to village boundaries. Clients in the village want the photographer to produce visual evidence of boundary transgressions, photographs that document lawbreakers in flagrante. Jorge intervened at this point in the conversation with more details: land dispute photography is a mixed blessing because the photographer could well be accused of collaborating with the client. He highlighted that such conflicts involve sizeable material assets, which is why he currently demands the princely sum of 100 pesos for a photograph in this higher-end category of “controversial pictures.” He justifies the amount by telling the client that he has a better chance of winning the dispute as a result of the visual evidence. Alberto sparked a wave of enthusiasm for photography among the villagers—much to his entrepreneurial disadvantage. People were soon buying their own camaritas (Kodak 110 pocket instamatics) and taking their own pictures. Finished rolls of film were placed in the accompanying envelope marked with prepaid developing costs. Boxes were ticked to order contact sheets or prints of a certain size for all twenty-four negatives. The late 1980s saw the advent of Polaroid cameras. Capturing

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memories on camera gradually became a widespread social practice. Alberto was always obliged to make tight calculations. He waited until he had shot three rolls of film before traveling to Oaxaca City to have them developed and prints made. The journey was longer and more cumbersome than it is today: the return trip took two days at considerable expense. Alberto’s wife was primarily responsible for selling his pictures. Once the prints had been collected in Oaxaca, she sold them door-to-door in her hometown. Alberto also produced photographs that recorded community events as a remembrance of the village (memoria del pueblo) for his private collection. The majority of this stock, which he kept in his house, was stolen in the 1990s. At the time Alberto found it strange that the burglars had not taken his camera. The theft itself demonstrates the new appraisal of photography at the local level. The value of the photographs emerged from customers’ expectations that photos could increase their own status in the village (compare Appadurai 1986, quoted in Çalıs¸kan and Callon 2009: 386). The growing market value of photography is evidence that it helped trigger a media upheaval in the village and became a new occupational field in which family businesses began to participate. During Alberto’s creative period in the 1990s, professional photography in Tama contributed to elevating the status of the people portrayed, while relinquishing the use of a studio as well as studio scenery, backdrops, and props. Studio portrait photography, as conventionally taught, was a popular format in the more prosperous urban milieus of Oaxaca (for example, in Juchitán in the 1930s; Monsiváis 1983). The people of Tama, on the other hand, requested that the photographer capture rites of passage as they customarily take place—in daylight in the open air, where, according to Ayuujk belief humans and the superior forces of nature interact. Here too, customers sought to increase their status, which in this case they achieved through their full-length photographic representation as vital components of the community. As demonstrated by the case of Alberto this particular visual language and aesthetic of lo comunitario in photography and film was developed locally during the 1990s (with regard to video see chapter 4).

Taking Photographs in Two Audiovisual Languages: Conrado Pérez Rosas, Fotógrafo Ayuujk Conra, as he is commonly known, describes himself on his Facebook page as “Ayuujk photographer” (fotógrafo Ayuujk) and his way of captur-

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ing subjects as an “Ayuujk lens” of “seeing and remembering” (extä’änënexpajtën), asserting the ethnic dimension of his professional approach to photography. The pronounced search for cultural specificity is a hallmark of his practices, his style of images, and his projects. I met Conra through the CCREA network and visited him in his office in August 2013 for the first time. Unlike Alberto, Conra is a digital age photographer who uses a Canon T5i, edits his pictures in Photoshop, stores them on his Mac computer, and admires Mexican photographers such as Nacho López and Juan Rulfo and international photography greats like Sebastião Salgado and Jimmy Nelson. He also exhibits his photographs in international events such as the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala. Nevertheless, in several aspects of his work he relies on village structures for which Alberto laid the foundation: consequently he does not have a photo studio. He, too, is obliged to make the journey to Oaxaca City to print the pictures that he sells door-to-door in Tama. Much has changed since Alberto’s time. Conra, who was born in 1986, grew up at a time when audiovisual mass media were becoming a local institution: the 1990s saw Alberto being commissioned by villagers to take photographs and TV Tamix making analog video films and broadcasting them once a week. Teachers in particular were at the forefront when it came to compiling photo albums as a record of visual memories. Even during Conra’s childhood, however, photographs were still a luxury for many families, as illustrated by the story he told me and others gathered one beery evening at a fiesta in Chuxnabán. One event in his childhood determined his future career: a photographer from Oaxaca came to his school in Tama during the graduation celebrations to take pictures of pupils and teachers and sell them the finished products. He also took a picture of young Conra, and the desire to see and possess a portrait of himself for the first time in his life struck an immediate chord. He urged his mother to buy the picture, a request she denied with unexpected harshness. As a peasant she saw this as purely a luxury and a useless expense. He pestered her with “buy me the photograph” until she finally gave in. When Conra examined the object of his desire, he discovered that a schoolmate he disliked intensely had also been frozen into “his” picture. On the spur of the moment, he took a scissors and cut out the girl’s face. His mother was horrified: the picture had cost a fortune and now her son had destroyed it! In this unpleasant instant Conra decided to become a photographer. It was the only way he would be able to create images of “reality” that suited his own taste. Like Alberto, Contra studied photography in Mexico City, where he faced almost the same experience as Alberto twenty years earlier.

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While working for a living in a taco restaurant, he completed a fourmonth course at the private Escuela Nacional de Fotografia (ENAF), in which he invested the significant sum of approximately 4,000 pesos each month. Despite the high tuition, the academy failed to provide students with cameras. Conra was repeatedly confronted with this type of financial limitation, but ultimately succeeded in borrowing a single-lens reflex camera from a fellow student. He enrolled in a series of courses but found that the quality of the instructors varied greatly, which had implications for his later work. His memory of the studio photography course is particularly unpleasant: Conra: They had lights and all that for a photography studio. But as for a camera and saying, “I’ll lend you one and you can start practicing,” that was not the case. Besides, some of my instructors used to announce tersely, “We’re going to take pictures now.” They had already set up the tripod in a certain way.” “Now it’s your turn, you just press the release. How did the picture turn out?” It was ridiculous, because the tripod was already in place; everything was arranged. And you just took that picture. They wouldn’t let some of the guys that had their own cameras take pictures either. They forced you to use the same tripod. That instructor was quite authoritarian. You stepped in, released, and took that one picture. But you weren’t allowed to do anything else. Instead, some other instructors who specialized in social event photography used to make suggestions: “If you don’t have a tripod, take a bucket or whatever you can find, so you can take good pictures.” … I was never going to learn like this, never. When I met my pals from the photography school in the street I used to say, “Hey, man, how did you figure that out? Why does your photo work out the way it does?” And those guys from the capital are neat. They used to let me in on it: “You have to do it this way,” and “Find out how to do this.” Ingrid: So your fellow students were better teachers. Conra: Thanks to my fellow students I learned something. But I certainly didn’t learn much at the school.47

The photojournalism course was the only positive experience Conra recalled, one that had a marked effect on his career in Tama: The guy I had a course with for a month, it was more or less the same deal and included only basic stuff. The course was on photojournalism. But he was a very good instructor; he was indeed. Because he’d worked with Millennium and I don’t know where else. We had practice there. We used to go out all the time and take pictures. It was a much more practical

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affair. The course was all about: “Take photographs and take expressions, capture the moment.” No, it’s that … it seems like studio photography is definitely difficult for me. Perhaps because of the way they taught us. Photojournalism on the other hand was a more practical thing. You were out most of the time. You didn’t stay inside the school.48

Conra attributes the fact that he never entertained the idea of opening a photo studio to the unimaginative content of the courses. At the same time, he felt pushed to continue with the line of “professionalism without a photo studio” because of his clients’ demands. On his return to Tama, Conra immediately made an effort to harness the knowledge he had acquired in Mexico City to make a living. He applied himself to taking pictures at weddings, christenings, and school graduations. However, he was soon obliged to adapt what he had learned at photography school to fit the demands of his customers: Conra: Well, when I was in Mexico City they taught us the tripartite composition of a photograph, how to compose the image, the takes, and where you should edit them. And when I came back here to Tama I tried to apply all that to social event photographs. So I decided: “I am cutting out that foot, but in aesthetically appealing way …” But people used to complain, “Didn’t that foot make it?” (I laugh.) Or they’d say, “Why is his foot missing?” In my view and according to the aesthetic principles they taught us, it had to be left out. Ingrid: What names were used for those kinds of images at the school? Conra: Like the “medium shot” is one of them. And then I’d say to the client, [here in Tama] “OK, I’ll paste the foot back in.” Or I’d take a new picture. Then I began to offer them black-and-white photographs. I thought, “That’ll be a success.” But people used to ask, “Can’t you handle color yet?” (We both laugh.) Imagine that: “Can’t you handle color yet?” “Yes,” I said. But my intention was to show them a different, more aesthetic style of photograph. What people here really prefer is an image of the entire body and in color as well. They know black-and-white photography, but they want to see things in color because it has more texture and they think it’s more attractive. … They also want to see large depth of field in the images. When I took something focused on the first level with the background out of focus, they complained. They want to recognize the people in the background to see their reactions as well.49

Similar to Alberto, Conra was confronted with requests from his village customers that he had not anticipated. Some were interested in

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portraits of former girlfriends or boyfriends to do magic (magia). This notion of photography saw it as being able to capture the essence of the person portrayed. Some villagers are still convinced that photographs are living objects that have the power—based on symbolic magic—to either harm people or benefit them. It was during an informal conversation in a relaxed atmosphere with fiesta visitors that I first heard about this use of photography. The facial expression of one of my companions suddenly changed to one of despair as he complained about the number of people who repeatedly asked photographers for portraits of other villagers. He sensed that they intended to use the picture to do magic, because “we know how the couple is really getting along” (sabemos como anda la pareja). Almost everyone in Tama knows all the gossip about who is still together and which couple has separated. Requests by a man or one of his relatives for a picture of a former partner may arouse suspicion of intentions of practicing magic. Some customers try to win photographers over with generous financial offers, but they are not willing to profit from practices of this kind in their photography work since “that’s not what it’s for!”(¡Si no es para eso! ). I then asked my dinner companions how magic was performed with a photograph. Luis “Huicho” Pérez Agustina, a local anthropologist, explained, “It’s done the same way as speaking to holy statues. You make a request to the person in the photograph” (Es como hablar con los santos. Uno le ruega a la persona que está representada en la foto). The photographer Jorge told me later that photographs are regularly found in front of statues of saints in the church, placed there as “offerings” to perform magic on someone. Conra developed two audiovisual languages for village photography. On the one hand, he takes pictures of what most local customers want, such as the full-length portrait of the Danza de la Malinche dance group in front of the church (see figure 3.4.). On the other hand, he chooses subjects of a more abstract nature, artistic photographs as he calls them, images that appeal to him personally as well as to other young people in Tama and fit into this universal category (see the lower portion of figure 3.4.). In line with international standards they focus skillfully on moods, composition, and specific details, which they communicate to the viewer. In this context Conra pursues his own photography projects, two of which will be presented briefly. They show how he records and interprets Ayuujk culture with the aid of new aesthetic devices. The first of these refers to the festivities surrounding la Diosa del Pueblo. Not everyone in the community has personally experienced these festivities, as they are part of occult ceremonies conducted at night and attended mainly by cargo officials. They are not designed to be witnessed by the

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Figure 3.4. The Danza de la Malinche group, 2013. Tama boy, 2013. Photos: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

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public at large. It is precisely this otherworldly nature of the ceremonies that Conra is keen on capturing in his images: In many aspects our culture exists since time immemorial. That’s probably why images cannot capture many of the rituals people perform, but as photographers we can capture the sense of it. Rituals are like magic, something that is actually impossible to perceive. But I try to capture those moments. People are aware that these activities take place here, so I take pictures of how they dance. This surprises them and they like my pictures but don’t make any further comment on them. What I try to do is blur the photos, that is, I take them with a long exposure so that everything becomes magical. In other words I don’t portray people as frozen, but rather the way magic works with the spirit moving, just like the cosmos. So that’s how I try to take pictures, how I try to convey images. The idea is to exhibit them here in Tama, but I will have to explain why and how I took them, because you can’t recognize people’s faces. I’ll explain why there’s no full-length portrait of the person. Instead, the faces are somewhat distorted by movement. I’ll try to explain that in future.50

One exhibition of Conra’s experimental images, which diverge from the classic language of lo comunitario, opened on 1 January 2014 at the main plaza in Tama, a prominent location within the context of the change-of-office ceremony. By choosing to exhibit photography he had created in this second artistic language, he managed to cleverly link the exhibition to a key event in the life of the community. I was involved in a similar exhibition in 2015. Shortly before, I had discovered twenty-six historic photographs of Tama taken in 1963 by anthropologist Salomón Nahmad Sittón and made prints. When I showed them to Conra, he immediately came up with the idea of a public exhibition on 1 January 2015, and designed an imaginative concept: the photographs were to be mounted on dark red paper behind glass and clipped onto music stands. Thus, this avant-garde exhibition of photography, using simple but original materials, was set up at the plaza during one of the most important village festivities. Conra had secured financing from the outgoing síndico official who donated 1,500 pesos from the municipal treasury to buy the materials. Officially presented to the public as an element of the change-of-office ceremony, the exhibition was a huge success, resonating loudly with those present and commented on extensively. It was also captured on film by Video Rojas, which recorded it as part of the 2015 DVD of the change-of-office ceremony that was distributed both locally and in the United States.

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At the same time, by anchoring his work in his home village Conra gained access to an international public. In October 2013, along with a number of well-known Mexican photographers, he was invited to show his pictures at an exhibition organized around the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala. The focus of the cultural program at this Pan-American meeting was on the photography, film, music, and theater of the indigenous youth movement. National and international big names such as the Tsotsil rock group Vayijel performed. The summits are negotiating contexts par excellence, where local forms of cultural expression are made accessible to a broader, Pan-American indigenous audience and transformed in the process. Conra succeeded in attracting considerable attention with blow-ups of ten images; his artistic photographs were now seen and appreciated by an international audience. A nonindigenous photographer bought one of his pictures, which depicts maize kernels tossed from a basket against the light. As a result of their Summit experience, Conra and other mediamakers from Tama felt more confident about going their own way.51 On the one hand, Conra does not draw a line between his artistic work and those of nonindigenous photographers he admires like Walter Reuter and Sebastião Salgado. Instead he considers himself a contributor to a universal genealogy of photography. For his artistic photographs he occasionally chooses the same type of motifs as these nonindigenous photographers, even adopting to some extent those of photographers who exoticize the image of indigenous peoples. On the other hand, he emphasizes that there is a fundamental difference between their one-sided distribution networks, which in general ignore the villages and the people they portray, and his own preference to circulate photographs within the village itself and in other Ayuujk communities. His pictures and their distribution therefore imply and are able to convey a more equal relationship to the subjects of his images, as Conra explains: One of those photographers might take a picture of a certain village. When people in the city look at it, they see the motif as something exotic: “That village is amazing!” But because we are part of the village, our task is to do the same kind of work and capture images artistically. But it’s the communities themselves that need to see them, and we have to stop their images from being viewed exclusively from the outside. For people in the city this photograph shows a totally different world. They see it and exclaim, “Those people are working in the countryside.” They think that’s pretty. Work is something beautiful for a peasant too, but it’s also part of

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his real life, a great life. When you’re part of the community you don’t see it as something exotic, but as part of your life.52

Negotiating Land Conflicts in Transborder Media Spaces Land and water disputes in the village of Tama and between Tama and its neighboring communities are audiovisually represented and circulated in Mexico and the United States. Videos about such conflicts constitute a genre of their own in transnational Tama and exemplify how actors in Mexico and in the United States negotiate horizons of identity and dimensions of belonging that are much more complex than the one attributed to them by the ethnicizing logic of the state when they use mass media on their own terms. What astonished me initially was the passion that people still display today when they quarrel about issues of land tenure in their hometown, although migrant livelihoods in particular no longer depend on agriculture. Recent disputes such as the ongoing conflict between Tama and Ayutla over a water source at the boundaries of both villages are discussed emotionally in videography, Internet websites, and via other media, which villagers produce and design themselves. To this day people in and from the village of Tama by definition develop a strong relationship to the land, because only those who have inherited and cultivate agricultural plots are recognized as comuneros or comuneras. Owning land is in turn considered a prerequisite for holding an office in the village governance system. Where land is concerned the lines of conflict can run within the family, between factions of the community, or between villages.

Facebook Debates and Land Dispute Videos I will first relate a controversy that became the subject of heated debate in Tama’s transnational Internet community, because it illustrates the topicality of these disputes. In December 2014, international users of the Reunión de Tama Facebook page posted their comments on an internal land issue in Santa Rosa, one of Tama’s agencias. Young people from Tama, including those now living in the United States, engage in virtual discussion forums that are conceptualized as a transnational extension of the traditional General Assembly, as displayed on Facebook. At the same time the virtual assembly is perceived by some as competing with the General Assembly, since it picks up on burning issues that have been given short shrift and presents them on the website with a text that

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strives to convey objectivity, accompanied by a photograph. As to the internal land conflict in question, first the following breaking news was published on the virtual Reunión wall: Members of ten families from [Tama’s agencia] Las Peñas complained that after having looked after and worked on their plots situated at the level of Patio del Diablo, a hamlet near [agencia] Santa Rosa, which had been disputed in recent years, the authorities of this agencia, urged by a group of self-declared leaders from this locality—whose names we omit for obvious reasons—stipulated that their one-hectare land plots were to be converted into small parcels of 20 x 14 meters each, so they could be distributed to the rest of the comuneros. … They claim they are being harassed, because a few days ago a young man was beaten, threatened, and thrown in jail. He had tried to pull his father away from a brawl with an official from Las Peñas. As a result, they plan to expose the case to the General Assembly of comuneros to be held next November 21 [2014] at the municipal center, so that the community (pueblo) will know about it, analyze the problems, and look for a favorable solution for the parties involved. They do not want people to be driven apart. Finally they emphasized “The land belongs to the people who work on it.”

In the year 2000, families from Las Peñas, another Tama agencia, had been encouraged to resettle close to a contested border zone during the agrarian dispute between Tama and its neighboring village Tlahui. Both villages had come to an agreement and Tama’s cargo officials were eager to secure land allocated to Tama as a result of the intervillage conflict. Only ten pioneer families took up the challenge, moving to the land adjacent to the agencia Santa Rosa. There they succeeded over the years in reclaiming and visibly profiting from its exploitation. In September 2014, however, an internal conflict erupted in the same zone, which was now on the verge of splitting Tama’s transnational community. Once again Las Peñas officials suddenly began to demarcate the land adjacent to Santa Rosa in view of the latter agencia’s plan to erect a school at the site—to the disadvantage of the ten pioneer families. Aiming to secure the land, officials divided it into smaller plots to be distributed equitably among all comuneros/as in Las Peñas. They justified the measure as being consistent with a General Assembly agreement from the year 2000. In November 2014, the posting on the current agrarian dispute sparked a thread of comments on Tama’s virtual Reunión on Facebook. One user in the United States calls herself “Myetsk Neex” (in Ayuujk, “little girl”). Like others, “Myetsk Neex” manifests an Ayuujk identity

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in the user name chosen for Internet communication. Through this micro-practice she inhabits a new media space that leaves an imprint at the level of identity, society, and community. Acting as and presenting herself as an Ayuujk comunera living abroad, “Myetsk Neex” transnationalizes the community with regard to land ownership in the hometown when posting the following comment: “THE LAND BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE WHO WORK ON IT! They are not wealthy, so it’s easy to steal everything they have worked for.” Numerous other users apart from “Myetsk Neex” expressed solidarity with the ten pioneer families, with some blaming the “group of alleged leaders” for the outbreak of the current dispute.53 They pointed out that the group consisted of retired teachers and engineers from Las Peñas, alluding to the social divide and conflict of interest between peasants like the pioneer families and teachers in Tama. It should be noted that since villagers began migrating in the 1960s to seek new educational and work opportunities, a growing number of people in Tama who were once peasants and traders have now become teachers and professionals. Today villagers’ interests diverge in accordance with their professional fields and the opportunities provided. Other Facebook users such as “Ayuujk migrants from Tamazulapam” (Migrantes Mixes de Tamazulapam) picked up on this case to discuss communal land tenure as a matter of principle. Agricultural lands in Tama are owned by the municipality but may be held and worked by individuals (compare Lipp 1991: 3). The apportionment of communal land to individuals with comunero/a status is thus standard practice.54 These parcels of land can be handed down or sold individually. Community rights over these plots are exerted only in cases where the General Assembly decides to punish a comunero/a. For example, should a comunero/a fail to fulfill the required voluntary service as an official every six years, land can be confiscated. In social practice, the communal principle is combined with a free-market approach, in which individuals freely buy and sell parcels. Hence “Ayuujk migrants from Tamazulapam” complained that land tenure in Tama was in practice not genuinely communal and should be thoroughly reformed. No longer in a position to work their own land, migrants are more inclined in this case to take a radical stance:55 First of all we should stop using “plot” and “communal land” as synonyms, because these terms refer to different forms of land possession. And that’s why I think the meaning of what is “communal” has been exhausted. Why not have the land produce in a strictly communal way and allow all of the inhabitants to benefit from its output? We have a young generation of

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engineers, administrators, and architects, for instance, so why don’t we create projects to exploit the soil? Why does “communal land” have to be handed over to individuals?

This spotlight on a sensitive issue calls attention to how rights to communal land are renegotiated in the process of mediatization and transnationalization. Despite the geographic dispersion of Tama inhabitants and their varying interests, land tenure in the hometown is still considered indispensable to a sense of belonging to the village, as illustrated by the Facebook debate. Communal land by no means loses its meaning for migrants; they instead engage in media practices to negotiate their right to access parcels in a factual and material way. Yet they call for a departure from the practice of apportioning land to individuals, who may transfer it provisionally to another person for cash payment, a procedure considered legitimate. In addition to Facebook, land dispute videos are another example of current engagement in agrarian disputes through mass media, which is used as a political device in transnational Tama. Video Tamix is one of the small family enterprises that pursue a broad range of commissioned work. In addition to covering social events they also accept assignments dealing with sensitive issues such as agrarian conflicts. Video Tamix is exceptional in that it is owned and operated by Genoveva Pérez Rosas, a female video pioneer, and her sons Romel and Illich Ruiz Pérez, who work for her. Romel specializes in editing films. When I visited Romel in the Video Tamix shop at the end of December 2014, he showed me his latest land dispute documentaries. They deal exclusively with the internal conflict in Las Peñas, which saw members of the same village, all of them Ayuujk people, in a state of hostile confrontation. Commissioned by the ten pioneer families living in the Santa Rosa agencia, Romel shot ten 18-minute films, each of them named for a particular family and the comunero or comunera representing it. All ten videos have the same structure: the protagonist leads the viewer around the family property and addresses the camera when talking about what they and their family had accomplished with the land over the last fifteen years. Ernestina Hernández,56 for example, points out her impressive production of greenhouse tomatoes. Part of the video consists of pan shots and close-ups that capture the fertility of the soil, with Ernestina’s narrative as the voice-over. The ten pioneer families, however, now felt that the fruits of their labor were under threat of confiscation. In view of the demands of their own agencia they were willing to concede some of their land, but insisted on financial compensation for the investments and years of work that had made their plots

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productive. They planned to present their complaint to the General Assembly in Tama on 21 November 2014 and show the documentaries to the General Assembly audience in el centro, Tama’s urbanized central district, in order to demonstrate the kind of agricultural work carried out in the remote agencia. I asked Romel how the affected comuneros/as had come up with the idea of commissioning these documentaries and he explained: Our video was something like their last resource. The ten families appealed first to the authorities in Las Peñas and said, “Hey, why are you invading our plots? Why don’t we try to reach an agreement?” Well, it seems that the authorities of Las Peñas refused because of an existing agreement and said there was nothing they could do about it now. They [the ten pioneer families] then went to the municipal officials here in Tama, who just said the same thing: “We are not in charge of those plots; we can’t intervene because they have already been distributed and therefore belong to Las Peñas.” So the last resort was to record a video and they explained to us: “We want to file a complaint because they’re taking the land away from us. We want people to see where we live and what we do. We’re not getting rich with the land. We just live from hand to mouth.” … Since the General Assembly is the highest authority they wanted a video to show this, so people there could see and think, “Why is this happening?” They could see exactly how they were affected and say, “Well, if Tlahui took away twenty hectares of land from them, that’s what they should get back.” Just hearing this is not the same as seeing it on a DVD and then realizing: “Oh, it’s true. That’s what really happened!” That’s the reaction they had in mind.57

Consequently video is seen as a key instrument for relaying an auditory and visual experience of the land that attendees of the General Assembly, which is approximately three kilometers away from the plots in question, are unable to verify on-site during a meeting. It bridges geographical and sensory distances in order to mobilize the audience. The Las Peñas comuneros/as not only envisaged showing the film at the General Assembly but also in the state capital of Oaxaca before the government institutions and NGOs that mediate agrarian disputes. I came across land dispute documentaries in a number of archives in Tama: members of TV Tamix, for example, the communal TV station in operation from 1993 until 2000 (not to be confused with the commercial video enterprise Video Tamix), store many hours of unedited footage on the topic.58 In 1996, the comuneros/as and municipal officials involved commissioned a team from this local TV station to document

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what were then critical disputes at the village boundary with Tlahui (see below). Tama’s pioneer professional photographer, Alberto Pérez Ramírez, who began to take pictures of social events as early as 1987, was probably the first person confronted with special requests by village clients who wanted him to capture visual evidence of land disputes, such as those that occurred when alleged trespassers cleared undergrowth and cut down trees. Time and again I stumbled on this genre when I set about looking for historical photographs of village life. Tama’s municipality has not yet created its own audiovisual archive. In reality, former officials and particularly those who were responsible as presidente or secretario de bienes comunales for agrarian disputes with bordering villages or within the town itself are the people who carefully stored photographs (and since 2006, digital video recordings) of these occurrences during their term of office. This discovery inspired me to ask Adolfo Martínez Mireles, who served as presidente de bienes comunales in 2005, about the use of photography and video and their mediatization in the context of cargo offices. Before analyzing Adolfo’s collection as an example, I will briefly contextualize Tama’s ongoing land disputes, which began in the second half of the twentieth century.

The Context of Agrarian Conflicts Land and water disputes, and particularly those with neighboring villages, are of crucial importance to life in Tama: they shape the course of people’s lives as well as their understanding of history and of community. Although no serious or indeed violent disputes took place during the main period of my stay and only flared up again in October 2015, references to them were omnipresent, since almost all adults had experienced or participated in this type of conflict: elderly residents still remember fleeing from their homes because of violent hostilities with the village of Cacalotepec in the 1950s and 1960s; at the end of the 1990s, the male population organized militias in the village to ward off opponents from Tlahui and for weeks performed sentry duty at the contested lands and water sources. The women would supply them with food. In recent years, men, women, and even children were engaged in marking the municipality’s territory. They erected concrete boundary markers, felled trees to clear an aisle through the forest, and cultivated the land there as a measure of delimiting the village border. Photographs and films that chronicle these events revealed to me unimagined dimensions in the lives of many of my interlocutors: they showed some of the extremely peace-loving people I had met in the course of

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my ethnographic research as armed guards stationed at contested areas. Some may even have participated in the destruction of homes and crops belonging to their opponents. As early as the 1940s, Tama began establishing settlements (agencias in Spanish) on its borders as a land procurement measure. For years, tequio, a key communal institution, has been organized on a grand scale each October for the purpose of removing underbrush from the eight-meter-wide border zone that delimits village boundaries. In addition to these defense measures, communal land is sacralized: fowl’s blood offerings are carried out at the boundary markers under the guidance of leading village diviners. The municipal officials of Tama make a point of performing tequio labor with members of neighboring villages to demonstrate the will to cooperate with them. Once the border strip has been cleared, residents of both villages eat and drink together in a display of agreement and celebration of the reigning peace. In the 1990s, tequio was still the primary means of accomplishing labor-intensive tasks such as road construction. In times of peace, however, it is primarily a manifestation of community power and at the same time a highly enjoyable “communal picnic,” as some villagers jokingly refer to it among themselves. Land ownership and service in cargo offices are a prerequisite for comunero/a status. Those who fail to fulfill both criteria are not considered full-fledged members of the village. As late as the 1980s, this stipulation saw most women as second-class comuneras, because family property was passed on to sons. This changed as women advanced as a result of migration, and they now enjoy equal rights to land inheritance. Central rites of passage emphasize the close relationship to the land, knitting together material, symbolic, and religious aspects: after a baby is born, its umbilical cord is dedicated to the place of birth and buried there. The strong affinity to Mother Earth (et naaxwi’iny in Ayuujk) is reinforced regularly in collective rituals, which also serve to mark communal land: people bring offerings to numerous sacred sites located within the municipality boundaries of Tama as instructed by the diviners in consultations on personal difficulties. Hence economic interest in land ownership goes hand in hand with religious feelings of belonging to the land and social recognition within the village. This also holds true for Tama migrants living in the United States who are in the process of building retirement homes in their village of origin and hence on communal land. They invest a substantial amount of income in erecting multistory houses, which they themselves rarely occupy to capacity. On the other hand, these buildings are showcases of their willingness to continue participating in community affairs and village life (compare Pauli 2008: 179). Migrants reset their priorities

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from agricultural cultivation to support of the urbanization of Tama’s town center, seen by some as a paradox. At a paisano/a get-together in Los Angeles, Rogelio a prosperous entrepreneur in the Los Angeles taco restaurant business with a staff of more than thirty people, gave me insights into this paradox. Rogelio said he thought his brother, who was also his business partner, had “gone mad” because he was investing most of his income in a large house in Tama he will probably never be able to visit. “Why does he need a house in Tama? He should build his house in Los Angeles,” was his opinion. As our conversation proceeded, however, Rogelio made comments that indirectly explain migrants’ eagerness to invest money in Tama. He told me that his life in the United States resembled living in “The Golden Cage” (La Jaula de Oro) just as it is described in the famous song by the band Los Tigres del Norte.59 Although Rogelio now earns a considerable amount of money, he avoids traveling by plane or buying expensive cars, luxuries he could easily afford. The fear of attracting the attention of the US authorities and of being arrested and subsequently deported is so overwhelming that he sees no possibility of fully enjoying his wealth in Los Angeles.60 Intervillage land and water disputes and their tendency to flare up once in a while have a long history in this region. Their persistence calls for clarification. Some scholars claim that intervillage conflict in Oaxaca can be traced back to the Spanish colonial government’s imposition of its forms of organization and administrative units on the autochthonous population. These ran counter to local social entities and their boundaries (Dennis 1987; Santibañez 1995, quoted in Nahmad Sittón 2003: 126–27). Other researchers, however, point out that internecine strife over land cannot be blamed exclusively on the legacy of the colonial era. Purely economic motives likewise fall short of the mark. Cargo officials may choose to instigate conflict with neighboring villages to strengthen communal solidarity and use it as a form of social control within their village (Chassen-López 2004: 444). Tama residents argue accordingly and often allude to agrarian disputes positively. In their understanding the five villages of Ayutla, Tama, Tlahui, Tepuxtepec, and Tepantlali are “siblings.” Local history as recounted in a myth has it that five brothers founded the five villages at the dawn of time, a unity that many villagers regard almost as a natural given (López García 2005: 26–27).61 In 1712, during the Spanish colonial era, these five villages (cinco pueblos mancomunados) were granted a common land title.62 Several researchers have remarked, however, that this common land title became the source of vicious quarrels between the five towns concerned, which have escalated ever since the title was confirmed by post-revolutionary Mexico’s Departamento de Asuntos Agrarios y Colo-

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nización in 1975 (Beals 1945: 18; López García 2005: 28-30). When disagreements arise because individual comuneros/as have sold or acquired parcels at village borders, deciding which village the land belongs to is a complicated affair. There were no unequivocal boundary markers within the mancomunidad, as each landowner used natural landmarks, such as mountains, rocks, rivers, and even trees, to define the boundaries of their land. As a result, agreement on the precise border is not always forthcoming; what one village sees as the “invasion” of its land could well be regarded by another as a “legitimate use.” The protracted land disputes still crop up in everyday conversations. One case repeatedly brought up by middle-aged residents alludes to the border disputes between Tama and Tlahui that took place from 1996 until 2000. When people from Tama and Tlahui in their midthirties or forties meet today they usually refer jokingly to the old enmities. At the same time, these men had once been in a village militia themselves and learned that land is something worth fighting for with weapons. Land seizures by individual comuneros/as around the border area of the future agencia Tierra Caliente triggered this particular conflict. Tlahui villagers had settled across the border in Tama, while people from Tama did likewise on territory claimed by Tlahui. These activities were encouraged by the respective cargo officials. According to the Tama version, the dispute gained momentum when Tlahui villagers began in a concerted action to erect concrete boundary markers to “cement” their land seizures, which Tama inhabitants considered illegal. In 1996, the landowners affected on the Tama side appealed to TV Tamix for help as their community videographers.63 As briefly described in the introduction, a crew of three from this television station arrived at the site and documented, among other things, how people from Tlahui began cutting down trees on a wide strip of land at the controversial borderline to enhance their claims. This form of clear cutting (called brechear) can be categorized as a traditional form of “visual warfare,” because the forest aisle is meant to cause great pain (“seeing that hurts” or duele ver eso, as several of my interlocutors remarked) and humiliation to those affected, even when seen from a great distance. TV Tamix, for its part, escalated this “visual warfare” through video. The images recorded at the remote village border, were also screened at the General Assembly, with the intention of mobilizing Tama’s population in general against Tlahui. Consequently the TV Tamix film team by no means adopted the role of objective documentarians. On the contrary, their attitude was biased in favor of their fellow villagers and their recordings were instrumental in whipping up the sentiments of other community members. Since they acted as the executive arm of the bienes comunales

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officials, the filmmakers received the same recognition and respect as the officials in charge of managing the dispute. TV Tamix functioned as the “fourth estate” in the village and attained a position almost on a par with that of officials. In 1998 Tama and Tlahui each set up militias to control their borders, thereby giving warning that should the need arise, they intended to defend the land they claimed as community property with armed violence. The residents of Tama eventually committed an act of violence and burned down the house and plantation of a Tlahui family that had settled on what they perceived as Tama land. The state government urged both villages to enter into negotiations at an agrarian tribunal held at the General Ministry of the State of Oaxaca. The year 2000 saw bilateral agreement on a new boundary line between the two villages, which considered and offset the land seizures in question. The most recent case concerns an ongoing dispute that began in 2004 over a water source at the border with Ayutla. While Tama pleaded for equal division of the source, Ayutla claimed it in its entirety. Despite several negotiation attempts, the conflict spiraled to the stage where inhabitants of Tama occupied the land where the water source is located. In retaliation Ayutla blocked access to the main road to Tama from the south for months. This meant that the villagers were cut off from their primary connection to the state capital and forced to make wide detours to obtain processed food and other basic items. When both parties occupied the water source armed with rifles, the governor of Oaxaca sent in the state police; the federal army was sent from Mexico City. Cargo officials from both villages subsequently sat at the negotiating table of the Junta de Conciliación Agraria, an agrarian tribunal, and reached a temporary agreement with promises of further negotiations. To this day, however, Tama and Ayutla have failed to reach an agreement. Four of the cinco pueblos mancomunados have meanwhile mutually agreed on their boundaries and dissolved their original union. Due to the ongoing dispute over the water source, Tama and Ayutla have not been able to demarcate this last piece of their border. Although no one was seriously injured in the 2004 dispute with Ayutla (nor the one that followed in October 2015),64 mutual provocation and hostility led to a great sense of bitterness that exists to this day. One example is Ayutla’s vilification of Tama using graffiti on vast wall spaces: abusive slogans were painted over the classic patterns and colors of the shawls worn by Tama women, which many consider as the community’s flag. This also constituted a form of “visual warfare” waged by the respective villages. Interestingly, the dispute prompted the organization of Tama’s satellite communities and the solidarity of young people with the home village. Students at the UPN in Mexico City collected food

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and clothing at their cultural events for distribution at home. Even migrants in faraway Los Angeles began to organize in reaction to their irritation at Ayutla’s roadblocks in the (distant) Sierra Mixe. A comité (that is, a hometown association) was set up for the first time in the satellite community in Los Angeles specifically for this purpose. Up until then the approximately four hundred migrants from Tama had not established a community with formal institutions and political representation to the same extent as migrants from other Oaxacan indigenous communities.65 The analysis by Francie Chassen-López (2004) of how intervillage conflicts are exploited to strengthen internal solidarity in Oaxaca could also be applied in the transnational context to the social cohesion that officials—and mediamakers as their allies—are able to achieve by means of agrarian disputes.

Audiovisual Archives and Political Power The analysis of Adolfo Martínez Mireles’s private audiovisual archive demonstrates how agrarian disputes have been mediatized through photography and video recordings for the ends of political power. In the course of this process land dispute documentaries became a local and transnational genre. It is typical of political actors like Adolfo to systematically use and store them as political instruments. Born in 1963, Adolfo was a community leader and the first person in Tama to exceed the traditional one-year term of office when he became presidente municipal in 2010 and again in 2011. Given that his parents were both vendors with no school education, he embarked on an unusual career. He studied law in Puebla and as one of the few local lawyers specialized in land issues is now highly sought after across the Mixe region. Similar to many members of Tama’s prosperous educational elite, he is domiciled both in Oaxaca City and in his home village, and commutes on a regular basis. When I asked Adolfo if he had perhaps kept audiovisual documents from his term of office, he immediately referred to the year 2005 and his office as presidente de bienes comunales. In his house in Tama one afternoon in September 2013, he spread out an array of photographs and DVD camcorder recordings that he keeps in his office in Oaxaca City. He had commissioned the videos for a significant event: in 2005 the villages of Ayutla, Tama, Tlahui, Tepuxtepec, and Tepantlali decided to dissolve their political and territorial union as cinco pueblos mancomunados. Three agreed to demarcate the borders of each municipality individually. With the help of photographs and DVDs, some of which we watched on his laptop, Adolfo explained the individual demarca-

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tion procedure in detail, which only in the case of Ayutla has not been carried out due to the ongoing water source dispute. He explained that he had carefully collected this audiovisual material because he firmly believed it might one day be crucial to resolving the dispute with Ayutla. Since the material is not used for other purposes, it is not in normal circulation. Adolfo first explained to me that the residents of the five communities had basically been reluctant to accept individual border demarcations: many were still convinced that these agrarian disputes were precisely what had strengthened intervillage cohesion. Adolfo disagrees and sees the cinco pueblos mancomunados as a structure imposed by the Spanish. For this reason, while serving as presidente de bienes comunales, he pushed for the individual survey of community boundaries. According to Adolfo: I think the mancomunidad was introduced much later. Beginning with the Conquest of Mexico, the Conquistadores began to merge communities for greater control. I think that’s how it happened, but other people say mancomunidad stems from the Ayuujk ja’ay having defended their land boundaries against other communities that were inhabited by Zapotecs. So that’s the other point of view. But the historical origins were based on a primordial land title and those who generated that recognition as land possession were clearly the Spanish authorities.66

Most of the audiovisual material Adolfo spread out on the large table is unedited footage of negotiations and conciliation talks between Adolfo as the highest authority in Tama on agrarian issues and his colleagues in Ayutla. Shortly before he attended these conflict-ridden meetings with representatives of the neighboring village, Adolfo (in his function as presidente de bienes comunales) asked local camcorder owners and teachers to capture these negotiations on tape. In his remarks on this type of audiovisual documentation, he stressed that it was notably situations of tension, disunity, and conflict that demanded audiovisual recording. Ingrid: How are decisions taken by the bienes comunales office recorded? Adolfo: It used to be done in verbal form and decisions were not recorded in an archive. Up to the 1960s, almost everything was declared orally. There were no files then to record who had possession. People were simply usufructuaries. But there weren’t that many disputes then either, because the population was smaller than it is today. When the population grew, bienes comunales officials saw the need to record the apportionment of land and find solutions to individual problems. That’s why an

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agreement is recorded. Those participating in the agreement sign it, the record of possession is passed on to the beneficiary, and everything is kept in the bienes comunales archive to maintain some kind of order. Ingrid: Are photography and video used in the work of bienes comunales, too? Adolfo: Well, when conciliation is based on good will and mutual comprehension, there is no need for the media. But if the case is controversial, if a quarrel arises, then in certain instances photography is used. Why is this the case? Because if land plots are invaded, then there is this medium that captures images and you begin to use video cameras, photographic cameras, and cell phones. In the case of more serious conflicts, let’s say when one party invades someone else’s land or when the authorities of bienes comunales delimit land plots, then they use this sort of media.67

Adolfo was also in possession of two films with nonpartisan descriptive titles: Agrarian Activities: Tama–Tepuxtepec–Tepantlali and Construction of Boundary Markers: Tama–Tepuxtepec–Tepantlali. Both films capture the consensus reached on these village boundaries. Besides border measuring, inspections and the construction of boundary markers, they also record the celebrations that concluded the long weeks of work on these measures. The films testify to the significance of fiestas as a traditional medium, where dissenting parties can meet on neutral ground and talk to each other, and also demonstrate how fiestas set a seal on the fresh marking of each village boundary. Apart from this modern audiovisual material, Adolfo’s agrarian dispute archive also contains a reproduction of the medium with which communities recorded their land during the colonial era: a photograph of the painted copy of a lienzo stored in the archive of Tama’s bienes comunales office. The original lienzo portrays the territorio mancomunado of the five villages. Lienzos are documents that inhabitants of Mesoamerica drew on canvases, using hybrid characters and images to outline the geographic boundaries of their village and its ruler genealogies. These “maps” were often produced for the purpose of suing for community land rights at Spanish law courts during the colonial era.68 The writing and visual imagery were thus “streamlined for Spanish eyes” (Terraciano 2001: 19). Tama’s lienzo, which measures approximately two-by-two meters, depicts a mountain landscape traversed by a water system that flows down into the lower left corner. Five churches slightly apart from each other take up the middle section and represent the five pueblos mancomunados. According to Adolfo each of the five villages secured a painted copy of the original lienzo, which is reported to be stored in the Archivo

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General de la Nación in Mexico City. Each village added their own written explanations to its lienzo, such as name of the village church, interpreting and complementing the lienzo to meet their own needs. The copy of the lienzo stored in the Tama office of the bienes comunales is not disseminated in public; it is used in rare community rituals as an emblematic symbol and a ritual object. At one time it was at the heart of a special village ceremony held annually in February. As a “primordial land title,” the lienzo was placed on a woven mat on the ground. The rites performed on this occasion served to protect the village boundaries and ensure their observance. A fixed number of sacred offerings of maize in a specific numerical and symbolic amount were placed in five positions on and around the lienzo, and sixty-five chickens sacrificed (López García 2011: 92–93). Following a concept once described by James Frazer (2009 [1890]) as “sympathetic magic,” the lienzo stands for the actual land of the village itself. The faded color print that Adolfo keeps of a photograph showing the copy of a lienzo, the original of which is inaccessible, indicates how existing visual media have been incorporated in emergent media such as photography and transformed in the process. In other words, the lienzo reworkings are evidence of the longue durée of Tama’s mediatized politics. People in the community also base their land claims on a photograph that refers to a now elusive original. In today’s “age of simulation” (Baudrillard 1994) the signs have become detached from the signified and are “without reference.” This even holds true for such a tangible area as village land ownership and territorial borders ascribed to “time immemorial” (tiempos immemoriales). On the whole, Adolfo Martínez Mireles’s private archive bears witness to the significance of agrarian disputes for village usage of photography and video, and to the creation of a novel film genre due to political interest in representation of the topic. The aesthetics of these photographs and videos enhance the (almost palpable) materiality of the land, its products, and it use. There is a heightened awareness in some segments of Tama’s population that private archives can serve as political instruments, such as in the case of people who have served in important offices, teachers, and community leaders in the United States. A great deal of photographing and videotaping (increasingly by cell phone) is informed by this concept of an archive’s political usefulness. Its target audience once consisted of the Tama General Assembly and a more inclusive circle of officials. In the course of the village’s transnational expansion, however, land dispute photographs are also circulated on the Facebook page Reunión de Tama. It therefore serves to document political events in an alternative way, while at the same time it competes with private collections of photographs and videos as a

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political tool. This virtual assembly is in some aspects less inclusive than the face-to-face assembly (in terms of age) and more inclusive in others (with regard to the place of residence of comuneros/as). In the latter case, audiovisual evidence of land quarrels is designed for internal community use and not disclosed lightly to outsiders, because the content is considered a sensitive issue.

Conveying Agrarian Disputes to an International Film Audience In 1999, interestingly, the local television station TV Tamix and Hermenegildo Rojas in particular produced the film Këdung Ajdk (Servir al pueblo/Serving the People), which addresses the internal topic of agrarian disputes for an external international audience. At this time TV Tamix was part of the Video Indígena circle and hence not only made films that served local uses and tastes, but also adopted Video Indígena’s “classic” documentary language in films like Fiesta Animada (Animated Feast) (1994), Maach (El machucado/The Meal) (1994) and Moojk (Maíz/Maize) (1996). When the TV collective was awarded grants from the Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations in 1996, it resorted to unedited video material of the Tama-Tlahui conflict initially recorded for strictly local use in order to make this documentary.69 From an outside perspective, Këdung Ajdk treats this topic in a somewhat obscure manner, because it appears for the most part to be a film about the cargo system (këtunk is the Ayuujk term for a cargo official). The protagonists are the presidente de bienes comunales in 1998, Hermenegildo’s uncle Victor Rojas García, and his vice-president (presidente suplente de bienes comunales), Daniel Martínez Pérez. On camera, the latter speaks in great depth about the cargo system and the duty to serve and perform communal labor on a voluntary basis. The second half of the film deals with the controversy between Tama and Tlahui, where Daniel explains the problems that stem from the common land title of cinco pueblos mancomunados from 1712. Here a number of communal labor scenes show men, women, and children from the village as they clear, prepare, and plow a vast strip of land as a demarcation. Traditional conjunto típico music of a cheerful and an evocative nature forms the soundtrack to these sequences. Insiders can read these scenes as an adaptation of traditional “visual warfare” to the medium of video. They enhance the palpable determination of the work carried out and the massive community participation involved, testifying in turn to the strong will to defend communal territory. The documentary culminates in scenes of poultry sacrificed along the border and the construction of a life-sized concrete boundary marker at the border with Tlahui bearing the inscription “Tama 1998.”

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Primarily designed for an external audience, TV Tamix submitted the documentary to the Native American Film + Video Festival in New York in 2000. Media anthropologist Erica Wortham (2013: 169) discusses its critical reception by the film festival jury (of which she was a member). Since most of the jury members failed to grasp its meaning (“other selectors ‘didn’t see it’ and found the program hard to follow”), it was not selected. The film treatment of the dispute among the Ayuujk communities is not straightforward. It chooses instead to emphasize that “serving the people” (that is, community service as a cargo official), is a cornerstone of the Ayuujk way of life. Hence viewers who are unfamiliar with local conditions and the intricacies of land tenure and agrarian disputes might indeed occasionally wonder about the point of all this activity involving so many people. Despite its “failure” at international festivals, the film Këdung Ajdk is nonetheless a courageous—yet at the same time very partisan—effort to explain to an outside audience for the first time the complexities of an intervillage conflict from an emic point of view, based on the deepseated relationship of the villagers to their land. The film was distributed in the Video Indígena circle, where it is held in high esteem. Given the communication endeavors of TV Tamix, it is paradoxical that in Tama itself Këdung Ajdk remains almost unknown today, although it was screened there after its completion. Since this militant movie threatens to bring painful memories to the surface, TV Tamix has no intention of distributing it at the village level. In this sense Këdung Ajdk fits into the local category of agrarian dispute documentaries, which serve for mobilization during the conflict and which villagers prefer in times of peace to leave well enough alone in their private archives. In sum, videographer activities surrounding the production of land dispute documentaries and dramas, both as a local and an international genre on the Video Indígena circuit, extend beyond the village of Tama to the United States and further afield. Traditional media such as orality, lienzo “maps” and the “visual warfare” used to evidence territorial limits and their violation, all of which convey the emotionally appealing qualities of the land and villagers’ relationship to it, have been transferred to and/or combined with modern mass media such as photography and videotaping, as well as social media like Facebook and YouTube. These processes involve the (re)mediatization of core elements of the cargo system and specify land tenure within the context of the village’s new geographic expansion to the United States. Within the wider frame of mediatized community politics, video and photography have become vital fields of activity in negotiating agrarian disputes with neighboring villages, as well as in Tama itself as part of transnational community

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building. Despite the constraints that migrants endure as a result of prohibitive US border and immigration policies, they have nonetheless been able to (re)define ‘home’ as a social relation to a concrete place, to land in the village of origin. Ayuujk people in and from Tama have even succeeded in establishing land ownership as the distinguishing characteristic of a transnational comunero/a.

Notes 1. These diaspora communities have different characteristics according to their location. Only in specific cases, such as Mexico City neighborhood of Santo Domingo, have Tama people settled forming a concentration there. 2. “Le agradecemos a aquellos paisanos que están en la Unión Americana en búsqueda de porvenir para su familia.” 3. Most of the literature on Ayuujk migration was written as a graduate thesis by students from the Mixe region, including Lilia Héber Pérez Díaz (2006), Saúl Ramírez Sánchez (2010), and Telmo Jiménez Díaz (2012). 4. There are different views in the region as to whether they should be described as líderes or caciques, a term with a negative connotation. Marciano Rojas emphasized that Luis Rodríguez was not a cacique, describing him as “a young man who tried to improve Ayuujk communities by getting them to cultivate coffee, breed sheep, and fight for roads because at that time there was no road. He wanted schools and doctors.” Interview with Marciano Rojas, Tamazulapam, 17 May 2013. 5. Both Jesús Lizama Quijano (2006: 117) and Salvador Sigüenza Orozco (2007: 170) point out that this stereotype was forged in the 1930s by the Oaxacan urban elite rather than the Ayuujk people themselves. In my opinion, however, the Ayuujk ja’ay may have developed this self-image earlier and accordingly influenced the Guelaguetza. They use expressions such as kät jyët mäy, “they were never conquered,” and kamaypyë, “the unconquered,” as part of traditional historical accounts that underline Ayuujk sovereignty. Interview with Daniel Martínez Pérez, Oaxaca City, 8 September 2015. 6. Compare the staging of the Rey Condoy at the Homenaje Racial (Lizama Quijano 2006: 113). 7. Smith (2008) refers succinctly to Rodríguez’s actions as “inventing tradition at gunpoint.” 8. Informal conversation with Jaime Martínez, Tamazulapam, 5 October 2013. 9. Informal conversations with Jaime Martínez, Tamazulapam, 5 October 2013 and Salomón Nahmad Sittón, Oaxaca City, April 2014. 10. I refer in the following to interviews with Daniel Martínez Pérez, Tamazulapam, 19 September 2013; Adolfo Martínez Mireles, Tamazulapam, 14 September 2013; Camila Martínez Casas, Tamazulapam, 13 March 2014; Salomón Nahmad Sittón, Oaxaca City, 11 April 2014; and an informal conversation with Jaime Martínez, Tamazulapam, 5 October 2013. 11. As early as the 1930s, children were taught in small schools in Tama and its agencia El Duraznal. After completing the first grade, however, pupils were transferred to Ayutla. Interview with Daniel Martínez Pérez, Tamazulapam, 31 December 2014.

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12. Daniel Martínez Pérez claims that Zapotec people used the expression “pants on backwards” (pantalón al revés) when referring to the Ayuujk ja’ay. Yalálag Zapotecs still stereotype the Ayuujk people as excessive consumers of alcoholic beverages in la Danza de los mixes. 13. “Ay, cuando mi hija sea maestra, yo voy a andar con ella, ya no voy a cargar bultos.” 14. School inspectors who visited remote villages in the 1920s claimed that the inhabitants were “people who live in a primitive state for lack of a society” (gente que vive en estado primitivo por falta de sociedad) (Sigüenza Orozco 2007: 163). Boarding school was to bring children closer to civilization. 15. Diviners tested the compatibility of potential marriage partners by establishing their xëë or calendar name, basically a number that classifies a person as either as stronger or weaker, according to the Mesoamerican calendar. 16. The Spanish term robar, literally “to steal,” is used in the case of a couple’s elopement. 17. So-called robachico rumors about strangers being a threat to children are still recurrent in the Mixe region. In some cases, strangers are suspected of kidnapping children for organ harvesting. A rumor of this kind circulated, for example, in Tepantlali in March 2014. 18. Since Marciano himself had begun his teaching career under difficult circumstances, he asked Camila specifically about her quest for a permanent position as a teacher (in Spanish, plaza) during the interview. The DGEI at the statelevel Ministry of Public Education later made an exception for indigenous regions with low educational infrastructure: in the 1970s they employed people there who had merely completed primary school. 19. Domingo Basilio Rojas is reported to have earned a good living from his work as the village’s official secretario. 20. See also Kummels (1985). Marciano claims it was because of that traumatic experience that later—and with the best of intentions—he and his wife taught their own children only Spanish; they were to lead a better life than they had. When the couple spoke to each other in Ayuujk and the children asked them what they were saying, they lied: “We’re arguing.” Considering it to be a “language of arguing,” their children never learned to speak Ayuujk, something their parents regret to this day. 21. I first heard of this Tama “Guelaguetza” in a lecture held by Salomón Nahmad Sittón at a conference on “La Guelaguetza y los pueblos indígenas: un acercamiento crítico” in the Centro Cultural San Pablo in Oaxaca City on 24 July 2013. 22. Rosendo Ambrosio, born in 1947, confirmed the unusual nature of the 1963 fiesta in an interview in Tamazulapam, 1 January 2015. Rosendo, who danced the Zancudo as a teenager, declared that numerous dance groups performed on that occasion marking the end of the conflict with Cacalotepec. The aim of the fiesta was to demonstrate power in a regional context. 23. Informal conversation with Hermelindo Rojas, Los Angeles, 26 July 2015. 24. Informal conversation with Josefina García Martínez, Tamazulapam, 9 September 2013. 25. The following account is based on the interview with Filogonio Morales Galván and Lourdes Juárez Saucedo, Ayutla, 24 March 2014.

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26. Interviews with Marciano Rojas, Tamazulapam, 17 May 2013; with Gustavo Guzmán Ortiz, Tamazulapam, 2 September 2013; with Hermenegilda Cabañas Marín, Tamazulapam, 11 September 2013; and an informal conversation with Daniel Martínez Pérez, Oaxaca City, 10 September 2015. 27. Each year, however, there were villages that did not participate, possibly because the new cabildo officials no longer granted travel expenses to the athletes. 28. Interview with Marciano Rojas, Tamazulapam, 17 May 2013. 29. “La intranquilidad, la carencia de una verdadera armonía y paz entre los mixes, la falta de acercamiento, convivencia y comunicación entre los jóvenes de nuestras comunidades de la región mixe.” 30. “el distanciamiento y la desunión de la gran familia mixe.” 31. In the wake of massive protest against the events in Nochixtlán on 19 June 2016, in which Mexican federal police fired at civilians in the context of the ongoing opposition of teachers to Peña Nieto’s educational reform, Tama and Tlahui allied in a march on 22 June 2016. The marchers demanded solidarity and autonomy as part of a nación Ayuujk in protest against the federal government’s violation of cultural and human rights. 32. “el … deporte que más se practica en los pueblos mixes, por humilde y pequeña que sea la comunidad.” 33. CODREMI had the walls of the municipal building in Tlahui decorated with a key motif of the Ayuujk people, Cong Ëy hatched from an egg, for the purpose of ethnopolitical Ayuujk symbolism (Barabas and Bartolomé 1984: 74–75; Contreras Pastrana 2014: 42–43). Tlahui also created an Ayuujk national anthem, broadcasting it on their radio station. Other Ayuujk villages meanwhile use the anthem at school celebrations and sporting events. 34. Interview with Marciano Rojas, Tamazulapam, 17 May 2013. 35. Interview with Hermenegilda Cabañas Marín, Tamazulapam, 11 September 2013. 36. Informal conversation with Daniel Martínez Pérez, Oaxaca City, 11 September 2015. 37. My interlocutors analyzed the reasons that led to the demise of the Ayuujk sports tournaments and emphasized that the necessary infrastructure for the Campeonato Regional had become too costly for the host villages or competed with their patron saint fiesta. Alotepec is famous throughout the region for its fiesta in May dedicated to El Señor de Alotepec. This village found it too difficult to combine both events and host their respective guests (see also Esteban Jiménez 2015: 3). 38. Bourdieu (1990: 83) writes with regard to peasants living in his hometown Béarn in France and their relation to photography: “In short, faced with a look which captures and immobilizes appearances, adopting the most ceremonial bearing means reducing the risk of clumsiness and gaucherie and giving others an image of oneself that is affected and pre-defined. Like respect for etiquette, frontality is a means of effecting one’s own objectification: offering a regulated image of oneself is a way of imposing the rules of one’s own perception.” 39. Interview with Conrado Pérez Rosas, Tamazulapam, 7 August 2013. 40. Philharmonic band musicians have long been a classic motif of photographers and filmmakers visiting the Mixe region (see, for example, Cristina Kahlo’s photographs in Centro de Capacitación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Mixe or

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41.

42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53.

54.

55. 56.

CECAM (2007)). It may therefore be considered a form of empowerment that village mediamakers have now made this particular theme their own. Karen Strassler (2010: 6) points to the fact that the history of colonialism has evolved differently depending on the elements of time, place, and local interaction. Michael Kraus (2016) emphasizes that the motives and practices of individual scientists and photographers from colonizing countries must be evaluated in detail and cannot be sweepingly categorized as contributing to “mediatic colonialism.” See also the interview with Salomón Nahmad Sittón, Oaxaca City, 7 April 2014. The Tama audience’s appreciation of Nahmad’s photos of the 1960s was evident at the exposition organized by Conra on 1 January 2015. Interview with Josefina García Martínez, Tamazulapam, 4 January 2015. With regard to the development of studio photography in the capitals of indigenous regions, see Sotero Constantino in Juchitán (Monsiváis 1983) and Baldomero Alejos in Ayacucho (Fischer, Noack, and Ziehe 2008). The props and backdrops of appropriated studio photography were essential vehicles for negotiating status and modernity (see also Pinney 2003). Photos tamaño infantil are identity photographs of 2.5 x 3 cm in size. All quotations from this section are taken from the interview with Alberto Pérez Ramírez, Tamazulapan, 5 October 2013. Interview with Conrado Pérez Rosas, Tamazulapam, 7 August 2013. Interview with Conrado Pérez Rosas, Tamazulapam, 7 August 2013. Interview with Conrado Pérez Rosas, Tamazulapam, 7 August 2013. Interview with Conrado Pérez Rosas, Tamazulapam, 22 December 2014. One insight that Conra and other artists and musicians from Tama had at the Media Summit was that simply emulating successful mainstream models would not allow them to appeal to an international audience. They recognized, instead, that cultural specificity is a valuable resource and asset. The success of the rock group Vayijel from Chiapas, which performed rock music in the Tsotsil language at the Media Summit reinforced this insight. Soon after, Tama’s rock band Adamantys, which typically sang in Spanish, began writing lyrics in Ayuujk for the first time. Interview with Conrado Pérez Rosas, Tamazulapam, 22 December 2014 See the comment posted by Pueblo Mixe: “As always happens, those who pretend to be defenders of the peasants are the ones who most exploit the rights of the poor. Those who agitate against the authorities and exploit the people of Las Peñas include the retired teacher [name omitted by author], the family of [ditto], the engineer [ditto], the engineer [ditto], among others. LET’S CALL THINGS BY THEIR NAME.” (Translation by author.) As local historian Fortino López García (2005: 100) remarks: “A comunero is understood to possess a building plot, agricultural land, a house … and to have been bequeathed in front of the communal authority … When a person reaches the age of eighteen or older and did not receive his inheritance from his parents or does not meet any of the above criteria, he is not a comunero and cannot function as a village authority.” (Translation by author.) According to another user, “tamazulapam mixe is the most expensive place to buy land after Cancun and Acapulco … and it’s supposed to be communal land” (Translation by author.) I use pseudonyms for individuals personally affected by land conflicts.

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57. Interview with Romel Ruiz Pérez, Tamazulapam, 23 December 2014. 58. For more on the history of TV Tamix, see Wortham (2004, 2005, 2013). 59. The song written by Enrique Franco in 1983 deals with Mexican migration to the United States: “For what good is the money, if I’m like a prisoner in this vast prison. I even cry when I think about it. And although the jail may be made of gold, it’s still a jail.” (Translation by author.) 60. Informal conversation with Rogelio, Los Angeles, 25 July 2015. I use pseudonyms for Tama villagers living in the United States. 61. The original myth is as follows: “As is known through transmission from the mouths of our ancestors and their descendants, Ayutla, Tlahui, Tepuxtepec, Tama, and Tepantlali stem from the same parents, who produced five sons. They provided or bequeathed to them the land or villages of these five communities.” (López García 2005: 25; translation by author.) 62. Consult José Bernabé González Camargo (2005). The land title of the mancomunidad is kept in the Archivo General de la Nación, 2 August 1712. The mancomunidad form of land tenure is highly unusual, since there are only two other cases in the state of Oaxaca. 63. My sources are the films that TV Tamix made on this conflict in 1996 and in November 1998 and the discussions about them with Hermenegildo Rojas in March 2013. TV Tamix had been commissioned by the bienes comunales officials, including Daniel Martínez Pérez, to document the trespassing and the construction of land markers by Tlahui. These recordings were shown at the Tama General Assembly during the conflict. 64. On 13 and 14 October 2015 a large group of villagers from Tama and Ayutla tried to assert their respective views about a controversial borderline with the traditional means of clearing a forest aisle (Ayutla) and erecting concrete border markers (Tama). 65. This hometown association in Los Angeles disbanded, however, due to accusations of corruption against one of its founders. 66. Interview with Adolfo Martínez Mireles, Tamazulapam, 14 September 2013. 67. Interview with Adolfo Martínez Mireles, Tamazulapam, 14 September 2013. 68. “Maps” is written here in quotation marks because lienzos did not align with European cartographic conventions. 69. Guillermo Monteforte, the founder of Ojo de Agua Comunicación, played a decisive role in procuring these grants for TV Tamix. Interview with Guillermo Monteforte, Oaxaca City, 21 July 2013.

Figure 4.1. Tama’s transnational fiesta, 2013–2016. Photos: Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

CHAPTER 4

Communal and Commercial Audiovisuality and Their Transnational Expansion

Tama and other villages in the Sierra Norte generally distinguish between communal and commercial media.1 Dual categorization takes into account initiatives and projects that employ the mass media of radio, photography, television, video, and the Internet at the local level as well as within the context of the transnational community. This dichotomy assumes an underlying tension and incompatibility between interests that unite the village and those that predominantly benefit individuals and their personal advancement. In ideal terms, as Antoni Castells i Talens relates (2011: 134), community-run media are “assembly-based and collective, have programs dealing with social topics and revenues that are completely independent of any public or commercial institution; they should be in harmony with local traditions, radically democratic, in agreement with human rights, and horizontal.”2 Communal media projects have an explicit political agenda: opposed to the asymmetrical media structures of the Mexican state, they seek to visualize and promote indigenous life-worlds by means of mass media. They are committed to audiovisually representing villages as collectives that act consensually and speak with one voice. Private initiatives, in contrast, are primarily identified as commercial media since they provide services in exchange for financial compensation. In assessing the raison d’être of communal and commercial media and the quality of their audiovisual representations, the transnational audience normally applies separate standards. There are instances, however, where community mediamakers and private entrepreneurs such as patron saint fiesta videographers are evaluated along similar criteria. This “equal treatment” of community and commercial mediamakers shows that the two circles are in reality closely interrelated and partially overlap.

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TV Tamix is an excellent example of fluid boundaries between the two media fields. This grassroots project initially emerged independent of government media programs for indigenous people and was inspired by, among other things, new experiences arising from educational and labor migration. Until 2000, it functioned as the official village media center. Although the channel was consistently productive in a variety of ways during this period, it became the topic of controversial debates in the village. Following its closure, the members of TV Tamix continued to play a pioneering role and contributed to the emergence in 2001 of a local and transnational fiesta video industry. Hence the history of TV Tamix provides an insight into Tama’s transnationalization with reference to the United States and the mediatization of its transborder social relations. Focusing on this television station allows for tracing the different points of view on vital issues discussed between Tama and Los Angeles: what role should self-determined media play in the transnational community given current geographical dispersion? How can a communal way of life be maintained and represented audiovisually across a restrictive international border?

TV Tamix The Shining Example of Indigenous Media in the 1990s TV Tamix is a pioneer of community mass media, not only in Tama, the Sierra Norte, and in Mexico, but also beyond. For this reason, the station has received a great deal of attention in scholarship, most of which refers to its contribution to the Video Indígena movement of the 1990s.3 In the following section, however, the focus lies on the active role of TV Tamix up to now, both in and for Tama, which has become increasingly transnationalized since 2000. Close attention will be given to the balancing act this grassroots institution orchestrated between the village, on the one hand, and Video Indígena as a media movement with national and international appeal, on the other. Tama was forced to negotiate its mass communication needs within the frame of an asymmetric power position in the national Mexican and international context, which extends to the United States. It is remarkable against this backdrop that the TV Tamix crew and its body of work succeeded in gaining recognition well beyond the local scale. Its films from the 1990s are now seen as pioneering works and screened—also in versions with English subtitles—at film festivals and conferences that focus on Mexico’s Video Indígena, including Fiesta animada (Animated Feast) (1994), Maach (El Machucado/ The Meal) (1994), Moojk (Maíz/Maize) (1996), and Këdung ajdk (Servir

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al pueblo/Serving the People) (1999). Although these documentaries are distributed via Oaxaca’s independent media organization Ojo de Agua Comunicación, they have yet to be seen by a wider audience in transnational Tama itself. Indeed, very few people are familiar with them. This is merely one indication of the fine line TV Tamix has tread between the diverging interests of its own heterogeneous community and those of the Video Indígena circuit. Although TV Tamix has been identified with the INI program “Transferencia de Medios Audiovisuales a Comunidades y Organizaciones Indígenas” and was closely associated with it from 1992 onward, local audiovisual activities were initiated earlier. Its precursor was Casa del Pueblo, which was founded in Tama by a group of young teachers.4 In the mid-1980s, this teachers’ group returned to their hometown after completing professional training in various parts of Mexico.5 Their goal was to stimulate creative potential in schoolchildren via performative culture programs, while simultaneously mobilizing this adolescent generation to renew Ayuujk culture. Their methods were partly inspired by the liberation pedagogy of Paulo Freire. Teachers Genaro Rojas and Vicente Antúnez tried out cultural forms that were new to the Mixe region and performed dances with their pupils to the sound of Fandango Mixe. They also introduced boxing and soccer. Teachers Daniel Martínez Pérez and Alfonso “Poncho” López García completed their CIESAS undergraduate degrees in Amerindian languages (etnolingüística) and conducted studies on key aspects of Ayuujk culture.6 In 1989, they founded the research organization CINAJUJI along with Ayuujk intellectuals from neighboring villages. At regional meetings, they sought to strengthen Ayuujk culture by working out, for example, a method of writing in the mother tongue. CINAJUJI is an acronym for Centro de Investigación Ayuuk Jujkyajtin Jinma’any—“Research Center Wisdom of Ayuujk Life”—and stresses the significance of an independent Ayuujk epistemology.7 These initiatives were launched parallel to the Ayuujk “ethnic renaissance” movement that attracted nationwide attention.8 Alfonso Muñoz, director of the INI program “Transferencia de Medios,” traveled to Tama to make a film about Casa del Pueblo on the occasion of its opening ceremony in 1990. Local teachers and media actors had already begun shooting videos to document their own performative cultural activities and those of their village. The story of TV Tamix’s first video camera in 1990 is quite instructive and demonstrates the entanglement of village media, migration, and the innovation of communal practices. According to Raymond Williams (1974), it is precisely this broader social change that triggers the actors’ need to develop and appropriate communication technologies.

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The members of TV Tamix set their sights on the fiesta in honor of el Espíritu Santo as a significant event and an essential part of their selfunderstanding as comuneros. They saw the fiesta as the first “natural” film subject to be captured on tape.9 The patron saint fiesta itself is a platform for music and dance performance aimed at representing the village at its best, a showcase to be absorbed in a regional context. Using the then novel medium of analog video, the collective set out to capture these traditional media productions. Around that time, the first Tama villagers had begun to migrate to the United States, a development partly spurred by their awareness of the scores of people from neighboring Zapotec villages wandering to the north. Returnees to Tama brought VHS video cameras back from the United States to record their children growing up, very much in line with US home movies. Inspired by the idea of filming the Espíritu Santo fiesta, Genaro commissioned Fortino Lucio (a paisano who lived in Los Angeles and is the father of Jesús Ramón García, the Video Cajonos entrepreneur mentioned in the introduction) to purchase Casa del Pueblo’s first video camera.10 In 1990, Lucio brought an analog video camera back to Tama to record the costly castillo fireworks he had sponsored that year for the Espíritu Santo fiesta. (The “castle” consists of multiple figures such as the patron saint that are ignited in an elaborate display.) He thus used the camera to document his financial success as a migrant for relatives and friends in the United States and Mexico. It should be remarked here that the members of TV Tamix were socialized in television and cinema in their youth, despite the limited access to mass media in their hometown. Their media literacy had an unmistakable influence on their later work. Genaro remembers his enjoyment in childhood and adolescence of popular films of the Mexican wrestler El Santo, the comedian Tin-Tan, and Tarzan movies, all of which had been brought to Tama in the late 1970s when Filogonio and Lourdes from Ayutla set up a traveling cinema in the Sierra Mixe region. Genaro spent his vacations with his father in Oaxaca City and like many other Ayuujk children was equally familiar with television blockbusters such as El Chavo del ocho and Siempre en domingo.11 During his teacher training at the Escuela Normal Rural Mactumatzá in Tuxtla Gutiérrez in the state of Chiapas, Genaro came across documentaries produced by left-wing movements, which promoted the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua and supported the Frente Farabundo Martí in the civil war in El Salvador. He was also greatly inspired by the documentaries of left-wing Mazatec activist Renato García Dorantes (1946–2004), whom he had met and worked with during his first teaching job in Huautla de Jiménez in 1987. He chose this indigenous filmmaker as a role model for his audiovisual work in Tama.12

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Figure 4.2. TV Tamix, early 1990s. Photo courtesy of TV Tamix.

In its first year, TV Tamix was comprised of nine young men who were basically a group of friends. The group included the brothers Genaro and Hermenegildo Rojas, Vicente Antúnez López, Tito Antúnez Núñez, Victoriano Guilberto Juárez, Alfonso “Poncho” López García (a key figure as an etnolingüista), Aureliano Martínez Núñez, Rafael Juárez Martínez, and Jorge “El Negro” Pérez Jiménez, the son of Alberto, the local pioneer of professional photography. Their integration into the national Video Indígena movement first occurred in 1992, when two TV Tamix members (Victoriano and Aureliano) were invited for the first time to an INI film workshop in Tlacolula.13 These nine young men subsequently formed a collaborative film and broadcasting team.14 In 1990, the collective began working closely with Jaime Martínez Luna, one of the spiritual fathers of the comunalidad concept. Luna traveled frequently from Guelatao to Tama to organize radio, music, and painting workshops and performed there with his band Trova Serrano, which at the time was popular with the Left throughout Mexico. TV Tamix documented these activities, but also filmed daily life and village milestones in Tama’s barely urbanized center and its rural hamlets. In 1991, for instance, it recorded the inauguration of a weekly Sunday market, which had been established to compete with the nearby market of Ayutla. It also captured tequio work on the construction of new roads. Particular attention was paid to large village fiestas: the fiesta in honor of el Espíritu Santo and the Semana Santa or Holy Week ceremonies

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were recorded on video.15 The unedited material reveals TV Tamix’s close link to individual cargo officials in charge such as the presidente municipal in 1989–1990, Víctor Rojas García, the uncle of Genaro and Hermenegildo. With Tama villagers as their target audience, the station’s collaborators left most of its video tapes uncut, since local audiences preferred to follow the filmed events in real time. In 1992, the team began to operate the local television station and therefore called itself “Radio and Video Tamix.” The story of how this came about is indicative of the autonomous forces that triggered media innovations under conditions of broad social change in the village. The collaborators managed to install and operate an abandoned transmitting antenna, initially earmarked for Tama by IMEVISIÓN (Instituto Mexicano de la Televisión) and what was then TV Azteca. Victoriano and a technician from the regional TV channel in Oaxaca got the station up and running. From then on TV Tamix broadcast self-produced programs on their Canal 12 (Channel 12) every Saturday at 4 pm. The idea of using media in an ethnopolitical field with both practical and entertainment-oriented goals in mind was new. Genaro and his colleagues had designed an alternative to the linguistic approaches of ethnopolitical movements of the time, as Genaro explained: When I returned to the village, there was all this movement among the indigenous peoples; our own anthropologists had emerged, people like Daniel Martínez Pérez or Maestro Daniel, as we prefer to call him. Alfonso López was there, too, along with other fellow countrymen who were preparing themselves for the indigenous struggle to defend the language and our own autochthonous culture. I also became aware of how the anthropologist Floriberto Díaz and others were engaged in this struggle … they defined basic concepts of autonomy and self-determination. We noticed that our paths to liberation somehow coincided. Floriberto and I corresponded in our application of the models and teachings of Paulo Freire … We in Tama chose a more cultural approach that was even artistic. We were more practically oriented and saw no need to pass through the filter of reading and writing. We took a direct path and that had a huge impact as, for example, when I made an animation video about vowels in the Ayuujk language. We presented it at a seminar, where it made a big impression16 … There they said, “We talk a lot here but don’t produce anything. They, on the other hand, have already produced something.” There were indeed many works. From today’s perspective they would be seen as valuable. Like the songs of my uncle Poncho [Alfonso López García], may he rest in peace, they were easy to relate to. He also

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had a good understanding of media. Without much discussion, we said, “Let’s put things into practice.” I think that helped us a lot. In the end, we all had the same vision.17

The programs were largely guided by presenters such as Genaro and Vicente who made a name for themselves as eloquent and humorous program hosts in both Ayuujk and Spanish.18 TV Tamix members broadcast from prominent places in the village, such as the roof of the municipal building, where they appeared in their workaday clothes. They thus developed a locally adapted television aesthetic that emulated existing models but gave them a unique spin. When engaging as reporters they would conduct interviews with villagers at their daily tasks or during ceremonial activities. In these question-and-answer sessions, TV Tamix members confronted villagers with a microphone and a running camera for the first time, to which they responded awkwardly and selfconsciously at times, but they also demonstrated curiosity and a willingness to engage in this new medium.19 The interviews were an example of village empowerment in media space. For the first time, people saw themselves on screen both as television producers and as subjects of their own broadcasts. Televisa and TV Azteca programs, in contrast, completely obscured real indigenous life, at most showing aspects deemed to be of national interest to tourism or folklore. With this approach, TV Tamix effectively implemented audiovisual decolonization. It should be noted that not all villagers had equal access to TV Tamix facilities. It was first and foremost the young teachers mentioned earlier who distinguished themselves as television producers, and not members of other occupational groups such as peasants. The TV station’s activities, on the one hand, were widely availed of by school children. On the other hand, access to media technology and knowledge in particular was not shared with everyone, especially not with many women.20 The fact that Genaro, Hermenegildo, Alfonso, Victoriano, and their colleagues now occupied prominent positions in Tama’s new media space and that their commentaries were disseminated each week did not sit well with everyone in the village. Indeed, this dissatisfaction would figure in the decision of the General Assembly to withdraw its support for the TV station in 2000, a development to be discussed in greater detail below. While TV Tamix broadcast unedited footage for local viewers, for the most part it produced edited documentaries for the Centro de Video Indígena (CVI) in Oaxaca City, a branch of INI’s “Transferencia de Medios” program headed since 1993 by the Italian-born Canadian documentary filmmaker Guillermo Monteforte. Later, the TV collective worked closely with the organization Ojo de Agua Comunicación,

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which was founded by Monteforte and his coworkers, including Juan José García21 and Sergio Julián Caballero, when they parted from INI following differences over the political guidelines to be pursued by Video Indígena. Hermenegildo joined the CVI in Oaxaca City for a year in 1994.22 TV Tamix acquired two major grants through these networks and invested them in the production of Fiesta animada (1994) and Këdung ajdk (1999).23 The collective made the twenty-two-minute documentary Fiesta animada as one of its first edited films. It used raw footage of the fiesta in honor of el Espíritu Santo from the year 1993, which it had recorded in its role as the community’s television station. In an interview with Hermenegildo and Genaro Rojas in 2013, they explained to me why Fiesta animada was not a patron saint fiesta video in the current sense of this genre. At the time Victoriano, who had graduated from the INI workshop in Tlacolula, instructed them to edit the documentary strictly according to film festival standards, which prescribed that a short film should not exceed twenty-two minutes in length. This parameter, however, did not deter them from incorporating all the important aspects of the patron saint fiesta in compliance with village taste. They integrated short scenes of the fiesta’s market stalls, visiting bands and their concerts, the basketball game, and the awards ceremony. Due to this montage style, they made the film “fast”—albeit unintentionally at first. When they screened Fiesta animada in Tama, the local audience was somewhat disconcerted by its concise editing. From their perspective, it left much to be desired, since everything they considered attractive at the fiesta was captured in fragments only.24 On the other hand, Fiesta animada garnered an enthusiastic and generally positive response via CVI circuits, workshops, and Video Indígena festivals. Indeed, it is one of the TV Tamix movies with the widest audience. Although acknowledged as well-made, Fiesta animada also received harsh criticism. At a meeting of indigenous filmmakers in Oaxaca City, community mediamakers from Ecuador and Bolivia criticized its message as apolitical.25 In an interview I conducted in September 2013, Genaro and Hermenegildo dwelled on the diverging attitudes of the Video Indígena circuit and their village to representations of everyday indigenous life. In Fiesta animada TV Tamix showed villagers in comical (chusco) situations that are popular in Tama, such as bickering drunks or older eccentrics in threadbare clothes.26 These representations were criticized by Video Indígena practitioners as fundamentally denigrating to indigenous peoples. The attempt in Fiesta animada to depict the fiesta in its entirety—if only in fleeting images—was cited as evidence that it lacked a defining narrative. Instead, Video Indígena followers demanded dignified portraits of indigenous people and the representation of clear-cut political

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struggles. TV Tamix was forced to defend its departure from these new stereotypes of indigenous people with a political argument based on the concept of espacio sagrado, which appears as a slogan for the first time in this film (see also chapter 2).27 TV Tamix claimed, on the one hand, that filming was an intrinsic part of the fiesta and, on the other hand, that the fiesta itself constituted a political struggle for the right to one’s own culture. With its perspective of indigenous life as multifaceted and ambivalent, TV Tamix staked out an independent position within the Video Indígena movement. Guillermo Monteforte and others were ultimately convinced, and they themselves adopted the concept of espacio sagrado. This is merely one example of the bottom-up impact of TV Tamix on the Video Indígena movement. Hence the TV Tamix collective occupied an uneasy position between their village and Video Indígena and, depending on the circumstances, wound up vacillating and mediating (or in some instances failing to mediate) between these opposite poles. Hermenegildo emphasized that much of the training at INI and CVI video workshops had been at odds with their alleged goal of allowing indigenous filmmakers to develop their own themes and their own indigenous visual language.28 Instead, the workshops screened documentaries made by nonindigenous Mexican anthropologists as exemplars for their trainees: Hermenegildo: The most important references for Video Indígena were documentaries produced by indigenist videographers like Alfonso Muñoz and—who else?—Óscar Menéndez. He made a film in the Mixe region.29 Ingrid: The videos were recently published as a DVD series on Mexican anthropological documentaries, CDI’s El cine indigenista. Hermenegildo: That’s right. Movies like When the Fog Clears Up, In the Clef of Sol, The Tigers’ Fight were sort of our models.30 You had to see them. Even though they were made by cinematographers who worked in the communities themselves, their vision was totally anthropological. But the trainees stuck to that image: “So that’s how we’re supposed to depict indigenous people.” Ingrid: When they showed you the videos, did they say, “Use these as your model?” Hermenegildo: Sure, of course. Well, I did not adopt them, since I never took one of those courses. They showed those movies because they were the only point of reference. There were no other films of indigenous villages they could show and say, “Look, here are other examples.” They were the most basic examples and obviously a great help since indigenous communities—you have to admit—were going through the first stage of

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getting accustomed to using video cameras. So the trainees copied these films, their format. And they reproduced them in many, many of their videos. Later on, they tended to see them as an example of mistakes we should not have made. A period of discovery was initiated and … they said, “Try out something new. Don’t reproduce the same thing. We need to find new ways of representing community topics.” And that’s what changed the perspective.31

Furthermore, as Hermenegildo explained, films using weird “unprofessional” music were valued in Video Indígena as conveying “ethnic authenticity.” This matched the stereotype of indigenous people common in documentaries at the time. Hermenegildo: We did have intense discussions and I took part in get-togethers and forums, where I questioned traditional music used in documentaries. I said, “The indigenous videographer has found a formula for the soundtrack of his videos: he always chooses traditional music with a flute, violin, or drums.” But many of those musicians are self-taught (líricos) and they’re young. There are a lot of poor musicians. And my impression was that the videographers were looking for precisely those musical fragments where the violin sounds completely off-key! … And then in the discussions they defended the soundtrack: “But that is the music of our people!” … I told them, “Instead of supporting the video it actually gives it a certain dubious quality.” I felt it had been chosen simply to please the audience. Ingrid: I presume that’s what the audience expects, right? That indigenous people play strange music. Hermenegildo: A cliché. Then I said, “What I observe at festivals is that when you watch a Video Indígena film you are already thinking of Aborigines in Australia or indigenous people in Oaxaca with long hair and their music from a solitary little drum.”32

When I began viewing TV Tamix documentaries after this conversation I was able to recognize examples of precisely the style that Hermenegildo had criticized. In 1996, the collective had obtained funding from the state agency Fondo Oaxaqueño Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes (FOESCA). With a grant of 80,000 pesos at their disposal, the crew made the twenty-minute film Moojk, which Genaro presented at the 1997 Native American Film + Video Fiesta in New York. The documentary focuses on local corn agriculture and features an older woman and later on a man, both of whom reveal its significance as they go about their daily task of removing kernels from the cob, and then drying, storing,

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and cooking the corn. The film also discusses the current threat to local corn production as a result of government policies to promote transnationally marketed maize. Wortham (2013: 154) describes the film production in detail and points out that although it was made for the Tama community, it also served “to satisfy outside funders such as FOESCA.” In fact, documentaries that stereotyped the indigenous inhabitants impacted the movies that TV Tamix produced for audiences on the Video Indígena circuits and its film festivals, including the CLACPI and the Native American Film + Video Festival organized by the Smithsonian Institution. Moojk for the most part uses original Ayuujk music like the instrumentals of la Danza del Tigre, although it also integrates the Kronos Quartet’s “Pieces of Africa.” Interestingly, TV Tamix also produced a different style of videos during this period, such as Jaripeo (1992) and uncut footage from Estado de ánimo (published in 2014), which are now seen as precursors of the modern artistic style associated with current youth movements in indigenous communities. In the 1990s, however, their approach was probably too novel to be appreciated. These experimental short films did not find an audience, either in the village or on the Video Indígena circuits. Jaripeo, a film made by Genaro, consists of short scenes on the joy of bull riding, a Mexican form of rodeo that children mimic at play and adults stage with bull figures that serve as fireworks. In Estado de ánimo, Genaro portrays himself and reflects on discarded objects he collected during a period of depression. Carlos Pérez Rojas, who rediscovered these video tapes in the TV Tamix archive, saw the subjective approach in both films as the antithesis of Video Indígena productions in the 1990s with the sole emphasis on “indigenous people speaking with a collective voice.”33 In its village television programs and screenings for the Tama General Assembly, TV Tamix, in contrast, used a different visual language to captivate the local audience. Land dispute documentaries had particular appeal (see chapter 3). The collective produced and showed these videos at the General Assembly during a period of conflict between the villages of Tama and Tlahui, thereby opening up a media space for public awareness of the highly volatile situation. During filming, the crew conducted reportage-type interviews with the authorities and the people concerned. In response, the latter treated the filmmakers with considerable respect and in land disputes of this kind TV Tamix was perceived as a powerful “fourth estate” in the village, which later became a cause of discontent among the villagers in general and was one of the reasons why the General Assembly withdrew its support for the community-run media project in 2000. The conflict came to a head when TV Tamix received substantial grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and

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the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to finance their film projects. The members of TV Tamix were later accused of personally enriching themselves with project funds and the sale of images that in reality belonged to the community (see also Wortham 2013: 163–64). TV Tamix presented a financial accounting to the General Assembly but was ultimately unable to explain precisely how the grant money had been spent.34 Many villagers mistrusted the media project, seeing it as lacking communal orientation. They accused the collective of recruiting members on the basis of their family connection to the Rojas clan rather than on communal principles. Although it was not mentioned, the purely male composition of TV Tamix may have factored into the debate. It seems that the social heterogeneity of the village and the diverging interests in this context ultimately contributed to the General Assembly reining in this relatively small group of young men, who had established themselves as the community’s “fourth estate.”

After the Demise of TV Tamix: The Turn to Migrant Media Spaces The closing down of TV Tamix was a hard blow to the mediamakers involved. Allegations that they lacked communal orientation and had personally enriched themselves devastated the Rojas brothers more than anyone else. The accusation has remained a sore point to this day and continues to trouble Genaro, particularly as many hold him responsible for failing to present a precise statement of account at the time. The hiatus that followed, however, paralleled the discovery by the brothers of a new audience and market in the United States and of the Tama migrants who lived there. Once Genaro and Hermenegildo realized that they could no longer work as community videomakers, they began in the early 2000s to seek private commissions. Suddenly a new window of opportunity opened up in the form of video production, which was now linked to the migration of a large number of villagers to the United States. The wave of job-seekers traveling north began to spiral in 1999, a year that saw a boom in the US economy. Twenty people from Genaro and Hermenegildo’s immediate family alone migrated to Los Angeles, where they joined others from Tama who had settled there. Genaro and many others who remained in their hometown recalled trying times: “It was a desolate period. ‘That’s enough,’ we said, ‘and another one went north, fuck!’ Every time someone left we felt defeat.”35 On the other hand, massive migration gave rise to new opportunities for filmmaking: Carlos, a brother-in-law of Genaro living in the United States, contacted them by phone and asked for a video recording of his father in Tama, whom he had not seen for ten years. Carlos promised to pay 5,000 pe-

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sos. In the first video of its kind, Genaro focused on creating a sense of togetherness between Tama and Los Angeles. The challenge, however, was to put this into practice. He realized that his biggest problem was to convince his “protagonists” in Tama that they had something to say to their children in the United States and should express their emotions before the camera. Genaro named the genre video-carta (video letter):36 Efra (Carlos Pérez Rojas) told me one day that they had called him from the United States with a request for a couple of videos for some migrants. One of them hadn’t seen his father for ten years … We went to record the man, who lived up the hill from the TV Tamix building. I found him in his house along with his wife and family and I said, “Look, this is a camera. Your son Carlos wants to see you. Say a few words to him, because he wants to see you on this tape, which I will be sending to the United States.” “Oh sure, thank you, I feel fine.” And that was it. I kept pestering him, because this statement was not enough for a video. “Your son really wants to hear how you’re doing.” “Oh, I’m fine,” he said, “here I am.” How on earth do I get him to act a little? So I asked his wife, “Señora, how has your husband been? What’s life here like?” “Well, that’s where we live.” They gave short answers only … Then I remembered he was serving as a religious official, as a church fiscal [and asked how that was going] “Those sons of bitches! They keep attacking me, they accused me of doing this and that, but I’m not going to give in to their accusations!” And that’s how he finally started talking … So the difficult thing wasn’t managing the camera, but getting this man to say something that came naturally to him. He finally spoke out and that led to a message. I began telling these stories and called them video-cartas. Why the hell not? Let’s call them video-cartas, right? After all, we’re sending letters to migrants. Back then, we were so concerned about local issues that we hadn’t even noticed that our migrants needed those messages badly.37

Genaro and Hermenegildo received their next commission from a woman in Tama, whose husband had just died on the desert trail following an attempt to cross the border into the United States. The recording was prompted by the woman’s lawyer, who intended to file a lawsuit for damages in a US court. When the brothers had finished shooting the interview with the widow, they felt so sorry for her that they refrained from charging a fee. “We’re screwed,” (Estamos jodidos) was what Genaro thought back then. As a former communal mediamaker, he saw himself condemned to providing his expertise free of charge. In 2001, however, Hermenegildo finally engaged in commercial videomaking when he began producing patron saint fiesta videos for Tama’s

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satellite community in Los Angeles. He became aware of their enormous appeal to a vast migrant audience and in the same year took advantage of an invitation to the Native American Film + Video Festival of the Smithsonian Institution in New York to visit Los Angeles and look up relatives who had settled there. During his visit, he showed videos that TV Tamix had produced, including a recording of Tama’s Espíritu Santo fiesta in 2000. Members of the satellite community in Los Angeles were not only enthusiastic about the film but also became highly emotional on seeing familiar faces on screen as well as the village itself. Much to Hermenegildo’s surprise, the huge demand among migrants for this recording showed no signs of subsiding during his month-long stay.38 His visit gave him a more positive perspective on migration and he “no longer saw it as a defeat, but rather in terms of its profitability. Migrants from here made a lot of money there.”39 For Hermenegildo, this favorable response fueled the idea of producing Tama fiesta videos for the satellite community in the United States on a professional basis. A first step in this direction was a commission from the adjacent village of Ayutla. When he was contracted by its officials to document their patron saint fiesta, Hermenegildo relied less on the style of his previous work with Video Indígena than on Video Líder’s production methods, which pioneered the filming of patron saint fiestas in the Sierra Norte region. Ingeniero Fernando Sánchez, a Zapotec businessman living in Guelatao, had just a few years earlier set the standard and defined the expectations of the genre with his company Video Líder (which he later renamed Video Rey). Sánchez, who had learned the art of filmmaking thanks to a course he took in Los Angeles during a stay as a migrant laborer in the 1970s, had initially made documentaries with classic Oaxacan motifs such as El espíritu de Monte Alban and Days of the Dead in Mexico. Their style is modelled on travelogues that portray ‘foreign countries and people’ (precursors of Discovery Channel documentaries). These were prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s and appealed to a wide audience of potential tourists who planned to visit specific regions of Mexico. The narrator in these films takes the viewers on a simulated trip. Sánchez sold the first films on VHS tapes and later on DVDs in a series he titled Patrimonios de la humanidad (Human Heritage). Later he began to tap into the fiesta videos as a new market, calling the movies “La fiesta de mi pueblo—(followed by the name of the particular village).” The videos adopt an observational style and in part accompany the festivities in real time. Based on his own criteria rooted in the “classic” documentary, Sánchez had quite a negative opinion of the fiesta videos, including his own.40 Although Hermenegildo had never spoken to him personally, he nonetheless

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paid close attention in Ayutla to Sánchez’s method of filmmaking and emulated him. Notwithstanding this precursor, Hermenegildo and Genaro had to reinvent the patron saint fiesta video for Tama. One day Hermenegildo told me the story of how they achieved this. Due to our shared interest, we spent time exchanging our knowledge, news, and gossip referring to media in Tama. But it was not until September 2013 that Hermenegildo revealed his involvement in this genre. My impression is that he had previously chosen to omit this phase of his career because he considered it unfitting for a communal filmmaker like himself. Our conversation gathered momentum when I told him that Jaquelina of Video Rojas had just complained to me that her brother-in-law, Nemesio, had copied her successful business model with his new enterprise Video Mecho. Hermenegildo then remarked that Video Rojas should not be complaining, because they had once appropriated his successful business line. According to Hermenegildo, it all began with his stay in the United States, where he became more acquainted with DVDs and with how paisanos/as tried to get hold of the new technology. This dovetailing of experiences during his trip proved critical. With a view to attracting migrants as consumers, Hermenegildo envisaged producing videos he would later call “Annual Fairs” (Ferias anuales): Hermenegildo: It all started because I didn’t have a job. I wanted to go on making films. The only equipment I had was a laptop with a DVD burner. Genaro had his own video camera, so I said, “Lend me your camera, I’m going to record the fiesta and see if it’ll sell, but in DVD format.” “OK, here’s my camera.” So I devoted myself to recording the fiesta over four days, selecting certain moments only. I would record specific details. Then I wrapped two DVDs together in one package. I designed a cover and sold them with the help of Óscar [Rojas]. I left my DVD packages with him and said, “Sell them at your store at 50 pesos a disc.” It was a bit expensive, right? At that time it was a high price and people thought it was expensive. … The reason I planned to commercialize my production, the fiesta video, and include the villagers as well was because I saw Video Rey doing it. And you know why? In 1992 the municipal president of Ayutla, a woman, invited TV Tamix to record its fiesta. So we went there, took our cameras along with us, and recorded the fiesta. We gave the municipal president an unedited video cassette of what we had recorded and left it at that. She financed the work; we still have it in our archive. But we didn’t have the technical equipment to duplicate it. So that was it. But the following year, 1993, or maybe it was 1996, they asked Video Rey. And Video Rey arrived with his little truck.

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Ingrid: Yes, his motorhome. Hermenegildo: Exactly. And he brought his cameras, his projector, and a large television set. And then they recorded and the deal with the village of Ayutla was that they were to leave one package with the municipality and the rest was to be sold to the attendees. Since they were VHS cassettes, he used to duplicate them with a device he brought with him. But then I had the idea to do all this with DVD. I bought my own equipment in 2001. That’s the year I traveled to Los Angeles. When I came back I had my computer, a DVD burner, software, everything. So that’s when I came up with the plan to get into this type of business. I had never commercialized films, you know. So my problem was not knowing how to commercialize them. … Commercialization was not a TV Tamix ideal, not in the slightest. TV Tamix never thought about selling to people. We focused on transmitting images on television. Ingrid: So your visit to Los Angeles influenced you. You must have talked to your relatives there about all this, right? Hermenegildo: They had a lot to do with it because I had brought videos from here with me. Videos we made with TV Tamix, like classic documentaries, and I brought them with me in the VHS version. But people in Los Angeles had already moved on to the DVD fad. Here in Tama, we had hardly ever seen a DVD or DVD burners because they were expensive in Mexico. All my cousins started pushing me. They said, “Hey, send us more videos. What the people want to see here are fiesta videos. Find a way of sending them.” And the solution was this guy with a delivery service (paquetería).41 That was the most effective way of sending them. … I talked to my father [who lives in Los Angeles] and asked him to finance the equipment, that is, a laptop and a DVD burner, because that was a way I could work and have an income.42

Migration to the United States and the subsequent demand for videos from the hometown meant that Tama fiestas were celebrated in a grander style than before, giving them greater prominence. The village gave absent migrants or returnees a central role as sponsors. They could now support the celebrations with considerable financial contributions to food, decorations, prizes for sports competitions, and even the expensive castillo fireworks. In Hermenegildo and Genaro’s film of the fiesta in honor of el Espíritu Santo in 2002, Genaro pointedly asks a leading official—in the characteristic Tamix TV reportage style—about his plans for migrant donations to the celebration. The official, Dominguini Rojas, describes in detail how the money donated by paisanos/as is used at the fiesta. This extended the audience envisioned by local film

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producers to include viewers in the United States and, at the same time, transformed the hometown fiesta with a storyline staged explicitly for a transnational audience. The high demand among migrants for these videos inspired Hermenegildo shortly after his return from the United States to set up his own commercial venture in Tama, Pata de Gallo. Between 2001 and 2005, he produced fiesta videos annually, with special emphasis on the fiesta in honor of el Espíritu Santo. He sold them through two main channels: to paisanos/as residing in Los Angeles via an intermediary, and to Tama residents through his cousin Óscar Rojas, who sold mainstream DVDs and CDs in his local store. Hermenegildo explained that insufficient profit drove him to give up the business in 2005. He is certain that his middlemen cheated him by copying and selling his DVDs without his knowledge.43 Convinced that he was not shrewd enough for this line of business, he left it in the hands of others. To summarize the discussion so far: from a film aesthetic perspective, the patron saint fiesta genre evolved in Tama with the local appropriation of documentary films in the style of travelogues on ‘foreign countries and people,’ on the one hand, and the departure from the “classic” Video Indígena political documentary, on the other. They thus represent a village reworking and further development of the “classic” documentary. These findings proved surprising. When I first encountered fiesta videos, members of the Video Indígena circle, including Hermenegildo, explained that they were the work of self-taught filmmakers. Apparently lacking knowledge about film craft and film aesthetics, these videographers had recorded their footage without adherence to conventional filmmaking standards. Instead, they let their camcorders on for hours at a time and recorded the overall scene in long shots from the same position. As it turned out, however, community mediamakers were instrumental in creating this genre, which in fact has its own professional standards (see below, Fiesta Videos and Their Aesthetic Devices).

Practices of Transferring Ayuujk Media Knowledge between Generations The current activities of TV Tamix members center on the film project Barras de Color, a full-length documentary on the history of this grassroots television station (see also chapter 1). They provide insights into the role village media pioneers play today in transferring Ayuujk media knowledge to the next generation. In 2012 and 2013, Video Indígena went through an important period of transition. In the 1990s, both INI and the institutions that broke away from it, such as Ojo de Agua

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Comunicación, still had a leading influence on their approaches to “indigenous-style” documentary filmmaking. They advocated and implemented collective forms of film production, the treatment of political issues, a realist documentary style, and a specifically “indigenous visual language.” For all the criticism of this approach, which the previous chapter explores, Tama mediamakers nonetheless have a great deal of respect for Ojo de Agua Comunicación. They value it as an empowering institution that offered people from indigenous villages free instruction, loaned them film equipment, and connected them to international circuits, in part through invitations to workshops, political meetings, and film festivals. Tama mediamakers continue to work closely with Ojo de Agua Comunicación, which is now a global player on the Pan-American indigenous media circuits. Within the framework of CLACPI, it also fights for more legal rights for alternative media projects in indigenous communities, such as guaranteed access to transmission airspace free of charge. The film styles that have been taught since 2012 to budding cinematographers from indigenous villages are more pluralistic. Documentary production is no longer regarded as the only avenue; workshops also develop the art of making feature films. Initiatives exist at both the local and national level. Filmmaker Luna Marán, for example, who is the daughter of comunalidad theorist Jaime Martínez Luna, launched the “Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante” program, which organizes an annual three-week course in the villages of the Sierra Juárez. The goal is to “open up a space for dialogue between art, cinema, and comunalidad.” (abrir un espacio de entre el arte diálogo, el cine y la comunalidad). The Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC), a prestigious Mexican film academy, offers cinematography workshops (as part of the “El CCC con patas” program) in cooperation with Ojo de Agua Comunicación with the goal of specifically reaching out to Mexico’s rural population. They bring virtual training in the art of filmmaking to the doorstep of these villages. During one of their workshops in San Luis Beltrán, Oaxaca City, in September 2012, I had the opportunity of personally experiencing how they work: the team of trainers—all nonindigenous filmmakers and producers—was keen to convey a “universally” accessible documentary film style to their indigenous trainees. Their concept saw the trainees focusing on a protagonist (el personaje) and his or her individual perspective. In addition, they were to concentrate on how something was said rather than what was said. Trainees learn to visually translate this how by capturing a personal “universe,” that is, the sounds and images of the protagonists’ immediate surroundings, their facial expressions and gestures, and their favorite objects. Unlike earlier

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Video Indígena work, this approach advocates portraits of individuals and their inner lives, in keeping with a “universal” film language and artistic approach that appeals to the viewer’s emotions. During my participant observation at the CCC film workshop in 2012, I witnessed the development of a short film (later entitled Putsk: El ombligo) by trainee Yovegami Ascona from Guichicovi in the Mixe Baja. Born in 1989, he was one of the stars in the group of aspiring cinematographers between sixteen and thirty years of age and won his first prize in 2012 with the documentary Sones mixes en la ciudad (2011).44 In March 2013, I experienced firsthand in Tama the convergence of national and local realignments of indigenous media. Carlos Pérez Rojas had received funding for his documentary project Barras de Color from FONCA in Mexico and Tribeca in the United States. His plan was to relate from an insider perspective the history of the local television station (of which he had been a member), probably the first ever in a Mexican ‘indigenous’ village. Carlos and Hermenegildo were involved most in the project and excitedly pitched a number of ideas to each other, which we often discussed together. A key element in shooting the project was their effort to collaborate with Ayuujk professionals like filmmaker and cameraman Yovegami, who had been referred to them by Ojo de Agua Comunicación. At the same time, Carlos and Hermenegildo made a special effort to involve village mediamakers like Conra for stills and Romel for DVD production. Since this documentary about TV Tamix portrayed a cornerstone of village media history—albeit one that had meanwhile fallen into obscurity in the hometown itself—the shooting process triggered a vigorous exchange between two generations of mediamakers. On his first day of shooting Carlos managed to assemble most of the former members of TV Tamix, who had not met in this constellation for years. At the end of the day’s work, the almost exclusively male circle—I was the only female present—shared countless anecdotes from their pioneering days, which Yovegami listened to with rapt attention. In a manner resembling war storytelling they recalled, for example, their commitment as a local TV station during the land dispute between Tama and Tlahui. Apart from these conversations, the day-to-day practice of filming brought to the surface the fact that Tama had its own independent media history, and that this knowledge is passed on within the home village and transnationally with its own resources. I was reminded of my first meeting with Carlos in Berlin in June 2012, when he told me in response to my question that he had learned how to make films from his cousins in Tama. At a get-together after the first day of shooting, Tama veteran mediamakers found great amusement in talking about his internship

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with them. Carlos was a teenager when he first came to the Ayuujk village for an extended period. He grew up in Veracruz due to his mother’s emigration and does not speak Ayuujk. After a failed attempt to migrate to the United States and a stay in Tamaulipas, he made his way to Tama in search of a job. An uncle of his had just opened a new bus line there to the state capital. Carlos earned his first pay as a bus conductor. “If we hadn’t trained you, you would still be a bus conductor,” Vicente Antúnez joked causing much laughter at the party. This was his way of acknowledging what Carlos, one of their own, had achieved as a professional. With films like And the River Flows On he can boast of a film career crowned with international awards.45 As for the intergenerational dissemination of self-determined media knowledge, it is worth remembering that Genaro from TV Tamix also received training from a village filmmaker, Renato García Dorantes, a Mazatec from Huautla de Jiménez.46 Yovegami incorporated insights from this exchange into his own efforts to trace the history of the Ayuujk people’s visual representation and their mass-media knowledge. At the time, he was in the process of writing his undergraduate thesis on “Cinema and Videomaking in the Mixe Region” as part of his studies in communication science at Universidad Veracruzana and Universidad Autónoma Metropólitana. He conducted a baseline study on films on and/or authored by Ayuujk people and analyzed their role as stepping-stones to a self-determined visual history. At the same time, and parallel to working on Carlos’s film project, he completed his own film Putsk: El ombligo (The Navel). The protagonist is Bonifacio, an Ayuujk artist who hails from San Isidro Huayapam in the Mixe Media and now lives in a suburb of Oaxaca City. In this fifteen-minute documentary, Bonifacio as the narrator expresses his thoughts on his hometown and his longing for it. The documentary shows the painter at work while he reflects on his oeuvre’s relationship to his hometown. Yovegami’s sensitive film conveys the tension between “here and there” through Bonifacio’s dialogue with his remote, yet constantly present hometown. I happened to be present when the idea for the film title was born: Yovegami asked a young returning migrant in Tlahui why he had returned to his hometown, to which he replied, “Because of the damn navel!” (¡Por el pinche ombligo!). Ayuujk people frequently use the word putsk (navel or umbilical cord) as a metaphor for their close bond to the land and the village of their birth.47 The year 2013 in particular saw brisk production of documentaries by young indigenous filmmakers who focused their lens on individual protagonists using an aesthetic that conveyed this perspective. They were all funded by grants and film prizes, which covered only the most basic costs

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for making a documentary. The local audience in Tama was given the opportunity to watch these productions one evening in October 2013, at the youth venue in the bar run by Timio, Don Kos. It promised to be a night to remember. Movies by Carlos (Mëjk), Genaro (Estado de ánimo), Yovegami (Putsk. El ombligo), and Isis Contreras Pastrana (Kutääy: Los jamás conquistados) were premiered together.48 It is perhaps not surprising that only connoisseurs in this media field showed up—despite the customary Don Kos publication of the event days in advance via Facebook. Five people in all, the number of attendees barely exceeded the filmmakers who were present. That said, the movies received far more attention and recognition outside the community: Genaro’s Estado de ánimo was selected from nineteen short films at the prestigious Morelia film festival in 2014; Yoyegami’s Putsk. El Ombligo was disseminated via CCC networks across Mexico; and Isis’s documentary Kutääy was distributed internationally via Ambulante Más Allá (AMA) to, for example, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Germany. Clearly, there is still comparatively little interest in Tama in the artistic films of even established village cinematographers like Carlos and Genaro. This observation needs further clarification. When I invited women I knew to the film night—all of who were married and between thirty and fifty years of age—they protested that the event was taking place in a bar. This indicates how village media fields are gauged and, furthermore, that the Don Kos bar is perceived as a venue for young people only. Be that as it may, neither did the village youth come out in droves to the event that evening. Rock and reggae concerts, in contrast, draw crowds to the bar, filling it instantly. The filmmakers ascribed the lack of interest to the woefully neglected diffusion of their productions at local level and even directed some blame at themselves.49 So far, they had mainly presented their work outside the village at festivals, partly as a means of opening doors to sponsorship of their next project. In recent years actors have taken a further seminal step toward transferring Ayuujk media knowledge in their own terms. It is now imparted academically at Universidad Intercultural del Cempoáltepetl (UNICEM), which was founded in Tlahui in 2012 by village teachers and Ayuujk political activists like Rigoberto Vásquez García (see also chapter 1). This self-organized intercultural university offers a bachelor’s degree in Community Comunication with courses in community-run radio and television given by local teachers and guest lecturers. In December 2014, its students (two of whom were from Tama) completed several films dealing with village life, for example, Texykiipyë (Comisión de festejos/Commission at the Fiesta) and Tsa’kääj éxpëj (Cuidando toros/Taking Care of Bulls), which they screened as a side event at the Feria Cultural del Pulque in Tama.

Figure 4.3. Oaxacan life in Los Angeles, 2014–2016. Photos: Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

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Commercial Patron Saint Fiesta Videos Light and Dark Sides of Videos de Fiesta Patron saint fiesta videos are ubiquitous in everyday life in Tama and the nearby villages.50 On market day, they are sold next to the stands that offer fresh fruit and vegetables, as well as in shops located alongside stores selling pharmaceuticals, gift items, stationery, and flowers. At these market stands, vendors offering pirated DVDs classified as “comedy,” “romance,” “Mexican films,” and “thriller,” also offer the category called “fiestas.” Their color-print covers sealed in plastic bear titles such as Calenda, Recepción de Bandas, Quema de Castillo, and Baile. The locals immediately identify them as the different phases of a patron saint fiesta. These DVD discs are also regularly viewed in Tama even long after the fiesta is over. Instead of showing telenovelas, vendors sometimes play the DVDs on the televisions in their shops, both for their own pleasure and that of their customers. The host of a birthday, quinceañera, wedding, or costumbre sacrifices will also entertain guests with the DVD of the most recent hometown fiesta or family celebration. The invitees get in the mood for the impending celebration while watching them, as the hosts in the meantime carry on with their preparations. The fiesta videos, however, sometimes become a source of irritation. When I met Ernesto Martínez Antúnez, a local shop owner, at a quinceañera celebration in April 2014, he raved about the very first patron saint video he had seen when he lived in Sussex, Wisconsin, in 2000 and 2001 and worked at a printing plant. Genaro had sent this TV Tamix video of the festivities for el Espíritu Santo to the United States, where it was passed nonstop from one paisano/a to the next. At that time, the many migrants from Tama living in Wisconsin who wanted to see the recording flocked to the home of the person currently in possession of the one tape. “That VHS cassette was a huge hit,” Ernesto said, but then paused and commented, “These videos have both good and bad aspects” (Esos videos tienen de bueno y de malo). Encouraging him to explain further, he remarked, “What’s good about them is that you can see your pueblo again. What’s bad about them, though, is that you see all the couples dancing together at a dance (baile) and you may see your own wife caught in the arms of another man.” Victoria, Ernesto’s wife, was also sitting with us at the table. She had remained in Tama during the years of her husband’s migratory work. Seizing the opportunity, I asked her whether she might also have innocently danced with someone other than her husband in that period. Remaining silent, she emphatically shook her head. Ernesto then explained that it was okay to dance with male relatives, even for more than one song. What was not

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permissible, however, was to dance with an unrelated man, especially for several numbers: “Men here may seem quiet and serious, but we can get very jealous.” A lot is at stake for the women, who usually stay behind with children. Their husbands, for instance, may decide to cease sending remittances, which are vital for the family budget. Romel from Video Tamix explained to me how disputes arise in this context, in which a large part of the community might become interested and involved: An obvious aspect of the videos is that not everything in them is thought to be agreeable and not everyone accepts you [as a videographer]. To call the problem by its name, that aspect has to do with infidelity. For example, if I’m recording at a dance and there is a man or a woman dancing with someone who is not the spouse, then this appears on the video. But we didn’t focus on them on purpose; we simply recorded everything so that everyone would appear in the images. Well, when the DVD comes out and we send it to the United States or some other place, the spouses view it there and … say, “Hey, why are you dancing with him?” But they do not complain to their spouse, but first of all to us! They say, “It’s your fault that my wife is out there with this son of a bitch.” And we then say, “First of all, we didn’t ask her to dance with that person. Second, we’re not interested in anyone’s private life. As a rule, we just record everything. And if your spouse betrayed you, that’s not our problem. If she has another man, she shouldn’t have gotten near the camera so that everybody could see her, right?” And that’s it. But some people never understand that. Instead, they accuse us of causing divorces, separations, and disputes … “Because of you they’re separating.” They don’t realize that we didn’t focus on them on purpose. Each person is responsible for their own behavior. But they should know that video has already become part of our community. They can’t accuse us of acting outside of the community. On the contrary, video in general is part of the community, because it has become essential. Don’t you see that many people need the DVDs to see how their relatives are doing?51

There are, accordingly, several interrelated questions discussed in connection with the audiovisual representation of “incorrect couples” in fiesta videos. One concerns the role that self-determined media should play for the village in this period of geographical dispersion. Other issues regard what forms of photography and filming are to be considered legitimate and which images are suitable for diffusion to a transnational audience. One day, when I entered the shop of seamstress Rahilda Jiménez Marín in Tama, I overheard a conversation between her and

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Davíd, both in their forties. The latter complained that because of the videos the carefree enjoyment of the dances, which are a highlight of the fiesta, was no longer possible. As part of this form of mediatization of social relations, attendance and behavior at dance events is now no longer assessed only on-site but transnationally, namely, by consumers of fiesta videos in Tama, Los Angeles, and other satellite communities. In these media spaces, gender roles, social relationships, parenthood, and family are increasingly negotiated. Moreover, this all takes place against the following backdrop: many couples consent to periodically split up, during which time one spouse goes to the United States to work and acquires funds to build a house and start a business in Tama. Often, limited time periods of one, two, or three years are anticipated, although planning is fraught with numerous uncertainties. The Mexican-US border regime is one of extreme inequity: migrants pay local coyotes large sums of money for a supposedly safe border crossing, yet, due to fluctuating economic conditions and the contradictory forces that determine US immigration policy, they cannot always count on finding work. Mindful of a certain amount of capital they intend to amass, migrants often see themselves forced to extend their stays by years. Furthermore, despite the geographical proximity to Mexico, they cannot risk even an occasional short visit to their hometown. Meanwhile, gender roles are changing. Women are challenging existing gender inequalities and asking whether they should not also be able to enter into another relationship, given the absence of their husbands (something society has generally tolerated with regard to men), and if men should nevertheless contribute to child support. In general, financial responsibility for raising children still falls on women, especially when there is a marital crisis.52 As a result of alleged visual proof of infidelity, men working in the United States often cancel their remittances to their families back home. The question remains, however: despite their doubts about their partners, why should these men not be responsible for supporting their children? In the case of the dancing couples captured on video, the significance of these issues and the importance of migration as an essential part of everyday life are made tangible. Nevertheless, the fiesta videos have undeniable positive aspects that have made them a popular, top-selling local and transnational genre— one that has evolved into a small industry in a transnationalized Tama. Baile videos also may be used for practicing courtship at a distance in a way that is not publicly questioned. In the discussion above, Ernesto and Romel both point to the significance of the fiesta videos as the representation par excellence of their beloved community. Teresa López Domínguez, now in her mid-thirties, lived for many years in Hermosillo

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and returned to Tama only two years ago. She explained her special connection to the celebrations—without being explicitly prompted to do so—as follows: When I left, I missed my community (pueblo) a lot. That is, I longed for my customs and the fiestas, because here we first celebrate the Santa Rosa fiesta, then the fiesta for Santa Cecilia, then the fiesta for the dead follows … so you never feel time passing and this is something beautiful. I very much like my identity and I love my community dearly.53

The pleasure she alludes to has to do with the rhythm and concept of time imposed by the fiestas: they consist of celebrations that go on for at least five days—not counting the period of preparation and the so-called octava, a prolonging of the same fiesta into the following weekend. To some extent the long duration of the fiesta videos transmits this same pleasurable rhythm and sense of time, now in the context of life in the United States. There migrants from Tama see themselves forced to work for many hours a day and have minimal time for leisure. Due to the pleasure they give to community members—particularly those living far away—the act of representing the fiestas audiovisually has long since become an indispensable part of the fiestas themselves. Now it is not unusual for several private enterprises to film a particular fiesta, such as those honoring el Espíritu Santo or Santa Rosa de Lima in Tama, simultaneously. The enjoyment of the DVDs is also connected to its humorous aspects. At the outset of this book, it was described how a group of people gathered around the large screen TV that was resting on the open bed of the pickup truck of Video Cajonos to enjoy the recording of a cumbia band. Initially, I was puzzled by what the audience found so amusing about the long film sequences. But then I discovered from the comments of the viewers that this recording was special because it documented how a baile with the band Super Klas—which was currently popular throughout Central Mexico because of its hit song “Pobre Corazón”—had taken place at Tama’s fiesta, of all places, just the previous evening! The viewers remarked on the different cumbia dance styles of the various couples. They knew many of them quite well and found the dancers amusing—particularly the possible connection between a style of dancing and the nature of a couple’s relationship, whether they were newly acquainted or longtime partners. The comical or lo chusco—as videographer Jesús Ramón later explained to me—is something viewers like in particular. Moreover, consuming this genre generates a sense of belonging and self-esteem: just as most people do when watching home videos, viewers

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take pleasure in recognizing themselves and other familiar faces from the village. They identify their hometown—even when only represented on the screen—as the dominant field of personal experience and social interaction, and thus as a physical environment they experience as both secure and pleasant (Moran 2002: 61). The pleasure Tama viewers feel, however, is simultaneously tied to the visual divide. To this day, mainstream television—Televisa and TV Azteca—has yet to represent indigenous people as an integral part of Mexican society. Indigenous characters in telenovelas continue to be portrayed stereotypically as servants. In contrast, ‘indigenous’ viewers see themselves in fiesta videos as subjects and protagonists on the television screen, and thus as part of a medium they have appropriated—television. Consequently, practices surrounding the fiesta videos contest hegemonic concepts of what the mass media consider “appropriate” representational subjects. In the following section, it will be shown how issues concerning the ideal or correct representation of the community and by extension the representation of the social institutions upon which it rests—like the comuneros/as, the couples, and the collective—are negotiated by means of the fiesta videos in a transnational space. Influence is exerted by actors living both in Tama and in Los Angeles with their different perspectives as producers and/or consumers and depending on their gender, age, education, social class, migration experiences, and political orientation.

Patron Saint Fiestas in the Flux of Migration Throughout Latin America fiestas devoted to patron saints are pivotal town celebrations that serve as community showcases, factors of cultural and social integration, and religious-political demonstrations of power all in one. In the case of the Mixe region, the Dominicans were the order that imposed the names of specific saints on individual villages and introduced the cult surrounding patron saints in the process of evangelization. The practice of communal devotion to el Espíritu Santo (Holy Spirit), the saint selected for Tamazulapam, has been upheld to this day. The village and its inhabitants continue to identify with el Espíritu Santo as a symbol of authority and spiritual protection that helps ensure village cohesion. Like other villages of the region, however, Tama not only celebrates its patron saint, but also dedicates another major fiesta to Santa Rosa de Lima. As the first Catholic saint canonized in the Americas, her veneration was especially promoted by the Dominicans. Even though el Espíritu Santo and Santa Rosa are thought to have been imposed by the missionaries (in contrast to la Diosa del pueblo; see

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chapter 2), both Catholic saints have been appropriated and are deeply revered. Villagers ascribe to both (and to other saints such as Santa Cecilia) a particular efficacy for assuring a person’s well-being with regard to health, money, and religious-political power. During the fiesta, which is called xëë in Ayuujk—significantly the same word used to designate “day” and “sun”—most believe that the honored saint literally comes to life through the rituals and splendor of the fiesta dedicated to it. Both festivities are celebrated over a period of several days, el Espíritu Santo during Pentecost and Santa Rosa de Lima around August 30. Particular elements have been established for each day of the festival, which lasts from five to seven days. The “Calenda” usually takes place on the eve of the central day of celebration and consists of dancing and parading through the streets of the village. The Recibimiento de Bandas consists of a reception of the philharmonic bands invited from other villages in the region; the visiting bands (two to four are invited) then give a concert at the Audición de Bandas on Tama’s main plaza. Inviting these bands as gozona (on a reciprocal basis) is a traditional form of creating regional alliances. The dance groups la Danza de la Malinche, la Danza de los Negritos, and la Danza del Caballito perform with their own musicians in front of the church. Other activities include the mass honoring the saint, sports tournaments in basketball and/or Mexican bull riding (jaripeo), traditional bailes serranos to the music of the philharmonic bands, and more contemporary dance events. The celebrations therefore reflect a combination of individual events, those that pay homage to the patron saint as well as a more secular-oriented program of activities.54 The Copa Mixe or Copa Nación Ayuujk basketball tournament in particular has an ethnic dimension and offers Ayuujk players from the entire Mixe region a forum for athletic competition. At the 2016 fiesta, a total of 126 basketball teams participated in thirteen different categories. Several thousand visitors from the entire region attend both patron saint fiestas. The celebrations are typically organized and hosted on the basis of communal labor. Several officials are in charge of the organization. This includes the regidor de educación, a title that at first seems to suggest an official in charge of school education. In fact this authority spends most of his or her time organizing the fiestas (which indeed have a didactic dimension because they transmit “one’s own” culture). This official (among others) in turn oversees a whole staff of volunteers who assume a variety of tasks, from presenting parts of the program such as the public performance of the philharmonic bands to the installation of the sound system. Meanwhile, parts of the fiesta have been outsourced to professional managers paid to organize jaripeos and dances, which

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includes hiring bands and procuring temporary stages. The authorities invest some ramo money to carry out these expensive events.55 But to a great extent, the fiesta still depends on the work and substantial financial contributions of the community members themselves. As sponsors (donadores or patrocinadores), short-term officials called capitanes/as and appointees (comisionados), they make sure that certain bands or sports teams are provided with food and drink. This is something they usually finance out of their own pocket. Indeed, the men and women who reside in the village are rarely mere spectators at the celebrations. Instead, they participate either as cargo officials or as individuals delegated by an official to actively organize some aspect of the fiesta. Prior to the celebration a period of intense networking and purchasing goods at the local level takes place, boosting the village economy. Such time-intensive participation is generally perceived and promoted as a great honor. Most villagers are keen to show off their hospitality, prosperity, and power to visitors from near and far in a spectacular way. Fiestas are staged as a time of abundance and renewal. A widely held opinion is that “the fiesta is the moment when people show the best of the year.”56 But given the heterogeneity of the village and the dispersion of its members, comuneros/as have diverse perspectives on both the fiesta and forms of participation. Since the beginning of mass migration to the United States, Tama has had to come up with novel solutions in order to perpetuate traditional communal institutions like the patron saint fiesta. Because a particularly large number of villagers from the ages of twenty to forty-five have migrated north, there is a shortage of people to work for the cargo system and the festivals. As a way to incorporate migrants despite their absence and reinvigorate communal institutions at the same time, they are induced to donate to festivals. This has become a mechanism to compensate for the obligation of serving as an official every six years. Financial contributions to sponsor a basketball team, donate the silver-plated trophy for the winning team, or even sponsor the castillo fireworks—investments that range between 30,000 to 130,000 pesos—are deducted from their year-long cargo service, estimated at 100,000 pesos. It is with this calculation in mind that many migrants donate to fiestas. Their donations may also be sparked by feelings of no longer belonging to the hometown, as well as attempts to renegotiate social relationships (Kummels n.d.). Finally a minority of skeptics and fiesta opponents also exist. Wealthy taqueros are critical of being pushed to invest large sums in fiestas and demand that they be financed by the municipality’s ramo funds. Members of Evangelical religious communities, some of whom live in the agencia Linda Vista, reject fiestas altogether because they oppose the veneration of the saints.

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Figure 4.4. Genoveva and Adolfo recording at the Santa Rosa de Lima fiesta, August 2015. Photo: Ingrid Kummels.

The fiestas themselves are therefore a field of tension and debate, in which different interests are negotiated and novel forms of unifying the heterogeneous community are constantly tested. They have undergone a major transformation and, as a consequence, many villagers complain that religious aspects have been diminished and that the commercialization of the fiestas is on the rise. Longstanding festival events such as the castillo fireworks and the ritual dances (like la Danza de la Malinche) have always had a specific religious meaning. Individuals continue to participate in these labor-intensive and expensive performances to comply with the vow they made to the saint in question. Although these religious dances took center stage at celebrations two decades ago, they have since been marginalized. Now, many consider the Copa Mixe or Copa Nación Ayuujk basketball tournament, which Tama began hosting only in 2005, to be the climax of the Santa Rosa de Lima celebrations. At the same time sponsors of the tournament’s prizes as well as capitanes who host the bands for several days have become more influential. They invest considerable sums not only in the prizes themselves, but also in private celebrations they host in their own homes. As part of their special role, they occupy a place of honor at the tournament, where they arrive accompanied by the banda and thereby interrupt whatever game

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might be taking place at the moment, even a final game. Here it should be noted that since the 1990s migrant women have engaged in acting as donadoras due to their increased financial resources and have thus increased their prestige and position with regard to being comuneras. Similarly, many people at the Espíritu Santo fiesta mainly direct their attention to the bull-riding competitions. Furthermore, the music of the philharmonic bands—which replaced the more traditional conjunto típico music several decades ago—is principally cherished today by the older generation. These philharmonic bands consist of fifty or more musicians who play a wide range of music, from local Ayuujk compositions to mambos or Vienna waltzes. When dancing to banda music, it is customary to see single dancers or couples of quite diverse gender and age configurations: This might include two women, two men, or even a male and female couple with a great age difference, such as grandmother and her grandson; usually relatives and compadres or comadres dance with each other. At dance events called bailes, in contrast, (heterosexual) couples dance together. These events, which feature regionally or even nationally popular bands, are considered to be the main attractions of Tama’s fiestas. Besides cumbia music, música norteña like grupera and banda sinaloense are most in demand at the bailes, given the widespread popularity of the northern lifestyle. Fiesta videos too are part of all of these innovations that have contributed to transforming the patron saint fiesta into a mass event and a demonstration of the transnational village’s dominance. Altogether, the fiestas’ prominence has not simply been maintained, but has increased markedly. As the financial contributions of migrants demonstrate, the patron saint fiesta has undergone a “diasporization.” In spite of the geographic distance from the fiesta venue, the paisanos/as in Los Angeles take part to comply with the ideal of being a good comunero/a. They are also often pressured by hometown officials to make monetary donations to the fiesta. Part of this “diasporization” of the fiesta involves its mediatization and the professionalization of the fiesta video genre, which will now be described in greater detail. Coming to terms with this genre provides a key answer to the question of why migrants who have settled in the United States and started families there still retain a strong sense of belonging to Tama.

Fiesta Videos and Their Aesthetic Devices DVDs of the patron saint festivities are sold locally by small businesses like Video Rojas, Video Tamix, Video Mecho, and Video Cajonos in their shops and market stalls. Other street vendors also offer them on

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market days. These recordings are in heavy demand both in the village itself as well as in Tama’s numerous distant satellite communities. But in general, despite this dissemination, the productions are not widely discussed. Occasionally they are even disparaged by those who consider themselves practitioners of communal media. Members of TV Tamix and others repeatedly indicated to me that the recordings (registros) of the patron saint fiesta cannot be compared to their documentary films (documentales).57 They cited the fact that the films have no narrative (no tienen narrativa); are expressly focused on pleasing the audience (son complacientes); and, particularly because they do not use interviews, do not stimulate reflection (no incitan una reflexión). Indeed, Yovegami Ascona, who at the time was writing his bachelor’s thesis titled “Film and Video in the Mixe Region” (“Cine y video en la región mixe”), asserted that these were the precise reasons that he did not include the fiesta genre. Nonetheless, I would argue that such dismissive opinions are due to the visual divide and hegemonic “universal” standards being attributed to audiovisual media production and professionalism. Instead through the genre of fiesta videos, the videographers create a culturally specific way of seeing and push viewers to interpret the images they absorb according to this adaptation to local and transnational culture. At first glance, the DVD series of the patron saint fiesta would seem to support the view that the videoastas lack professionalism. The DVD covers convey the impression that the films’ narratives are constituted by the actual events of the fiesta itself. Video Rojas’s nine DVDs relating to the Santa Rosa fiesta of 2013 bear succinct titles that mirror the common parlance for various stages of the fiesta including Recepción de Bandas, La Tradicional Calenda (disc 1); Desfile Deportivo, Inauguración de la Copa Mixe (disc 2); Programa Cultural, Baile de Super T y Los Originales de Tlahui (disc 3); Audición Musical, Quema de Castillo (disc 4); 2da Noche de Baile Maike y Sus Teclados Super Uno, Grupo Musical Calenda y Grupo La Sombra (disc 5); Partidos Finales Infantil, Pasarela, Cadetes Femenil y Varonil, Finales de la Copa Mixe 2013 (disc 6); Partidos Finales de Basquet Bol Master, Juvenil, Femenil y Varonil, Finales de la Copa Mixe 2013 (disc 7); Programa de Premiación, 3ra. Noche de Baile Grupo Siglo XXI (disc 8); and Despedida de Bandas (disc 9).58 The discs are between ninety to one hundred fifty minutes long. For anyone watching for the first time and with untrained eyes, they indeed appear to be merely unedited footage that has been strung together. Events are often linked with minimal editing. Moreover, there are no interviews and most of the material consists of long shots. Since the recordings often forego credits and thus explicit indication of authorship, they seem to make no claim to being filmic narratives.59

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A closer look at the films, however, reveals their deliberate design in an observational style that some call lo comunitario and others videos de comunidad.60 The videographers I spoke to expounded on how they purposely created an aesthetic format oriented to the taste of their customers, the local and transnational villagers.61 This is an audience that appreciates videos free of commentary (because the audience prefers to comment while watching) but with original sounds. Unlike viewers of “classic” documentaries, the audience is not interested in identifying with the subjective perspective of the filmmaker or of a main protagonist. Instead, village viewers prefer to undergo a vicarious “real-life” experience where they can adopt the perspective of a ubiquitous fiesta spectator. They value long shots (planos generales) that allow them to appraise the interactions of as many people as possible and decide for themselves what aspects of the recording interest them most. For their part, the videographers have become experts in long shots, which are maintained using monopods that permit changes in perspective when recording. At the same time, they use slow panning shots from a slightly raised position to incrementally record all of the fiesta’s participants. Their crowd scenes emphasize collectivity over individuality in a way that corresponds to the choreography of the patron saint fiesta in real life. They generally try to portray fiesta visitors on film as serious and dignified members of the larger community. Ultimately, each visitor should be able to recognize him- or herself, while at the same time not feel portrayed as an individual, but as part of a collective. On the other hand, they avoid putting the spotlight on individuals, because close-ups can be interpreted as signaling, criticizing, or ridiculing their behavior, not least when dancing at a baile. The videos of the festive performances use pan shots to condense the crowd, partly because the main criterion for a successful festival is that it was visited by many people (fue muy concurrida). They also attempt to render music in real time, editing the music numbers of the philharmonic band, which may last up to one hour, in such a way that viewers do not perceive them as having been modified. The Ayuujk people in general cherish this music. Paradoxically viewers are particularly drawn to comical (chusco) scenes in which people are in fact exposed to ridicule. Several motifs are a traditional source of amusement, including the grotesque body motif in la Danza de los viejitos (borrowed from the Zapotecs) where the dancers are disguised as old men and parody their movements. Dancers, athletes, and drunks are particularly popular. Videographers deliberately try to capture lo chusco, in dances, for example, or clown performances during intermission at jaripeo bull riding. Nevertheless,

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they frequently end up recording comical scenes inadvertently, as will be shown in the next section. Typically fiesta videos capture both “traditional” and “modern” components of the festival. Jaquelina Rojas Sánchez of Video Rojas, who called my attention to this, explained what distinguishes her work as a local videographer from that of nonindigenous documentary filmmakers.62 The latter are primarily interested in recording what they consider to be “authentic” indigenous culture and concentrate on religious rituals such as the Ayuujk costumbres. Village videographers, on the other hand, view “modern” elements as part of their culture. From the local perspective, specific cultural manifestations are distinguished according to when they were introduced. Thus, while la Danza de la Malinche, which was integrated into the fiestas at the beginning of the twentieth century, is looked upon as “traditional,” the couples dance events (bailes), which became popular in the 1990s, are generally classified as “modern.” I gradually became aware that the fiesta videographers, contrary to their claim of recording everything that takes place at a fiesta, in fact avoid recording costumbres (see also chapter 2). This is consistent with the local view that photographing and filming ritual sacrifices undermine their efficacy. For example, this applies to the sacrifice of poultry before the castillo fireworks is ignited. This impressive spectacle is organized by a single sponsor as part of a vow that he or she has made to either el Espíritu Santo or Santa Rosa de Lima. Interestingly, there is a rumor in circulation about Alfonso “Poncho” López who died in a 2006 car accident shortly after sponsoring a castillo; some allege that the accident occurred because he had ignored the ban on photography at this particular fireworks display. But as discussed in chapter 2, mediamakers in Tama have increasingly expanded their activities to include the religious realm. Óscar Rojas, for instance, extensively recorded the costumbre that took place before the fireworks at the 2013 Santa Rosa de Lima celebrations; the patron saint video he produced, which was widely disseminated, was the first to show such an event. There are further aspects of the fiesta that village videographers generally do not take into consideration or intentionally leave out when recording and editing. The following section explores these ommissions by examining the negotiations and relationships with municipal officials and video consumers.

Videographer, Merchant, and Comunero/a All at Once Video Rojas, Video Tamix, Video Mecho, and Video Cajonos are small family businesses. For the most part, they consist of a married couple

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and, occasionally, their adult children.63 They travel as itinerant merchants to as many as forty patron saint fiestas a year, capturing each of them audiovisually over a period of several days. Whoever lives in the Sierra Norte knows that “after the fiesta is before the next fiesta,”64 so that, in theory, one could attend such fiestas more or less without interruption; people often speak of enfiestarse when referring to the overflow of fiesta participation. In Tama alone, there are eight agencias and each celebrates its own patron saint fiesta; this situation predominates in many of the surrounding municipalities. Videographers’ decisions as to which regional festivals to record are determined by the potential for profit. Like other itinerant merchants, they link the villages where fiestas take place into a flexible market system. Commercial success depends on being able to conform to customer tastes, something the videoastas have become experts at analyzing. The degree of profitability, however, also depends on the cargo officials’ stance toward videography (which will be discussed in more detail below). These businesses typically own or rent a car that serves as their traveling studio. As a rule the equipment comprises a PC with an editing program (for example, Pinnacle), a DVD burner, a color printer, a television screen, and often several camcorders. They edit their films at night and take special care in creating attractive menus and DVD covers. These are printed in color with titles and screen shots that reveal the contents of the disc. Specific team members, usually women, specialize in selling the finished product. At the fiesta, DVDs are normally displayed next to a large television with a flickering screen that has been set up on the open bed of the business’s pickup. In Tama, Video Rojas and Video Tamix are the oldest businesses active in this field.65 Video Rojas is largely operated by the married couple Óscar Rojas Cruz and Jaquelina Rojas Sánchez, who have been producing films since 2005. Óscar is in charge of the first camera and the film editing, while Jaquelina is responsible for the second camera and occasionally takes over from her husband. Sometimes they employ an additional cameraman. In 2012, for instance, they hired a member of the Video Rey team from the Zapotec community of Guelatao to videotape the Santa Rosa de Lima fiesta in Tama while Óscar was fully occupied with his responsibilities as a municipal official (regidor de educación). The couple has a Nissan pickup for journeys to fiestas throughout the region, where they park in rented market spaces. Óscar edits the films in the pickup overnight, while Jaquelina sells them to costumers during the day. Video Tamix is a family business, owned and run by Genoveva Pérez Rosas and her sons Romel and Illich Ruiz Pérez. Interestingly, Genoveva

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sees herself as a housewife who makes films on the side. Along with Jaquelina from Video Rojas, she is in fact a woman pioneer in the maledominated field of village audiovisual production (as TV Tamix, a collective composed exclusively of men, demonstrates). Genoveva essentially manages Video Tamix. Her son Romel edits the films, while his younger brother Illich operates the camera and designs the DVD covers and the discs themselves. Unlike the Rojases, the Ruiz family does not own a car and therefore has to rent one for work. Over the years, they have performed a wide range of commissioned work and made recordings of fiestas during the crowded festival calendar in the dry season between March and May. The business also produces land dispute documentaries and has made a video about a family that lost its house in a landslide. The versatility of the business is attributable to Romel, who, much like other mediamakers, moves between the village’s diverse media fields and has mastered several genres. Romel is a founding member of the Colectivo Cultura y Resistencia Ayuuk (CCREA) and helps to organize the Feria Cultural del Pulque. Similar to other activist youth, such as Temo, he has been involved in film projects that are critical of village society; in particular his projects have examined its lack of support for disadvantaged sectors of the population and the cultural expression of youth. Finally, he also produces music videos for village rock bands like Adamantys. In the following section, Video Tamix is used as an example to highlight special features of the business of patron saint fiesta videos in transnational Tama. The media actors try to reconcile their commercial interests with both an idealized version and the real-life requirements of being a comunero/a. Meanwhile, the culture of migration is interwoven with the nature of their business and their respective commercial strategies. When I met Genoveva for the first time, she emphasized that she was a housewife. As to how she learned the profession of a “traveling camera” (cámara viajante), as she likes to call it, she explained that she is self-taught: I began to learn about it. I picked up a small camera, one of those amateur cameras, and when people contracted us and told us that they wanted discs, we started to work that way. After that, we then bought a somewhat more professional camera. I also didn’t know how to use that camera at first, but I began to learn how. Yes, I have never studied any of that business. I only finished primary school. I am a housewife and that’s how I started. It’s out of necessity that you start out this way, because, indeed, what can we do? As a woman, when you don’t study, you sometimes don’t have any income, and how are you going to do something, how will

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you survive? So that’s the path you have to take, you start learning on your own.66

All of the videographers consider themselves amateurs and emphasize that they are self-taught.67 They partly base their status on the fact that none of them have attended workshops such as those offered by Video Indígena. Interestingly, they refuse to even call themselves videoastas or camarógrafos, as they are not professionals in the common sense. But through their regular cooperation with communal filmmakers, comunicadores, who have professional training they have nonetheless acquired a great deal of knowledge specific to their profession. The transfer of media knowledge on-site has proved crucial to setting up a business. Commercial and communal mediamakers do not adhere to a strict division when it comes to passing on knowledge or sharing equipment. Adherents of both media fields value being able to ask for advice on the spot without further ado. Due to their practical advantage, knowledge transfers of this kind are frequent. Those who cooperate profit in the long run, because favors are likely to be returned in the future. In 2016 village videographers were experimenting by filming with cell phones and a drone. The term “autodidactic” is often used in Tama in a negative, deficient sense, which can be attributed to the visual divide.68 Yet this village illustrates how professionalism in media is constructed on its own terms in each location. In Tama’s case it required overcoming hegemonic appraisals of indigenous videomaking as “amateurish” due to the coloniality of power. In contrast, in the 1990s social event videographers in the United States constructed their professionalism through their discourse. They actively denigrated amateur practices—despite the fact that as self-proclaimed “professionals” they had “no more formal training than amateurs” and “share(d) the same technologies, the same domestic ideologies, and the same middle-class status” as amateur videographers, as James Moran (2002: 64, 80) analyzed. In Tama, autodidactic training and reliance on local media knowledge have a different emphasis: mediamakers use them to create their “own path” to professionalism. Genoveva, for instance, in fact relies very much on Ayuujk assets when practicing her occupation. She originates from a family of pottery artisans and merchants and has transferred her artistic talent to the field of videography.69 Furthermore, she takes great pains to combine her interest in commercial videography with her obligations as a comunera. In 2013 and the beginning of 2014, this meant both broadening and intensifying her level of activity. On the one hand, she assumed all the ritual duties connected to being the wife of an official—her husband Adolfo served as regidor de hacienda.70 Besides partici-

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pating in the many costumbre sacrifices, Genoveva also prepared food for hundreds of fiesta visitors, together with the wives of other authorities, at the many ritual events that accompany the year-long cargo position. She even supervised certain events like cooking at the jaripeo, which took place during the Espíritu Santo festivities in 2013. On the other hand, she also pursued her activities as the manager of Video Tamix, which she carried out over a vast region encompassing Villa Alta, the administrative center in the Zapotec Sierra Norte, and Chuxnabán, an agencia of Quetzaltepec in the Mixe Media region to the south. As I was able to observe at the fiesta in honor of El Señor de las Cinco Llagas in Chuxnabán in April 2014, she coordinates her sons’ activities and on certain occasions (such as the church mass), she operates the camera or sells DVDs from the rear of their rented pickup truck. One of Genoveva’s trademarks is that she still films with a large analog video camera, a legacy from a time when the family business invested a great deal of its money in equipment.71 She often appears in the typical attire of Tama’s women: a white huipil with bright-red seams and an ankle-length, dark blue skirt held together by a woven sash at the waist. On her head, she wears a traditional folded white shawl with thin stripes in red, green, orange, and blue. When Genoveva dons this array at patron saint fiestas outside of Tama, she herself becomes an added attraction. In fact, some of the DVDs have been sold principally because of the attention she attracts. Her use of traditional dress has the earmarks of a successful marketing strategy. Among the various videographers who work at fiestas, she clearly stands out as a woman who is in costume and filming. At the same time, with this dress she represents the community in a way that is expected of women from this region when they visit a fiesta. She behaves accordingly and participates in fiesta activities whenever she takes a break from videotaping. After a foreigner took a photograph of Genoveva filming in traditional dress with the striped shawl on her head—a kind of village flag—her son Illich integrated the picture into the beginning of their videos as a logo. Migration is inextricably woven into the business model of Video Tamix. Romel told me that the catalyst for the video enterprise came from the United States. Their first video camera was a present from his aunt Felicitas (Genoveva’s sister who lives in Los Angeles). Then a paisano from Los Angeles made a proposal for how they might work together: Romel: At the beginning, when we started to record, we collaborated with a man in Los Angeles, who comes from Tama, but resides in the United States. When he saw us recording here, he was the one to tell us, “You know what? Why don’t you record an entire fiesta in Rancho El Señor, that is, in

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Konkixp? If you’ll record it, I’ll send you a camera with all of the equipment. All you have to do is record it and send it to me on cassettes. Then I’ll edit it [in the United States]. I’ll sell them there and give you a percentage of what I have sold.” And that’s how it started … but then, as time went by, we realized that we weren’t earning very much money, and that was the end of that. And so we started to record here at the agencias and the migrants [from the United States] would always talk to us on the phone because we used to offer public telephone service. They said that they wanted DVDs. How much would we sell them for … and then we would offer them the same price we were charging here. If the whole series was offered for 500 pesos here, we would sell it to them for the same price, only charging them for the postage. So, all in all, they had to pay some 1,000 or 1,500 pesos.72

Migrants in the United States therefore placed orders as well as put up seed money to record fiestas in Tama, especially its agencias Konkixp and Tierra Blanca. The inhabitants of these rural agencias have migrated in disproportionately large numbers because of their poverty. Those in the United States who make financial contributions to the festivities have a great interest in seeing that their hometown fiesta is recorded and that those recordings are disseminated as part of the media spaces that extend into the United States: Romel: Over there [in Tierra Blanca], people often want to donate the prize for the sports tournament, so they compete as to who will give the most and they compete in this way all the time. Supposedly they have enough resources, right? As long as they have enough work, that’s fine, they continue sending money. … We usually talk with the person who is sponsoring the dance. Ingrid: Ah, the dance has a sponsor? Romel: Yes. We talk with him … and say, “We’re going to film the fiesta in Tierra Blanca, do you want us to record the dance?” And he reacts by saying, “Why would I want that?” And then we tell him, “Never mind. If you don’t want us to record, it will be as if you had never donated anything, nobody will know that you paid for the dance.” And then they feel obligated. That’s how we play the psychology card, letting him know: What good is it to pay for the dance if nobody records it for you? Ingrid: In other words, what good is it if nobody will get to see it? Romel: Instead everybody gets to see the dance, because we film the dances. We then record the greetings later on, when the relatives of the people in the United States climb onto the stage and start telling everyone that they are the ones who paid for the band. And in our recordings,

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you can see their pride. That’s simply what it’s all about: that everybody gets to know who paid for it. And the video has an important function. Because if you do not record, nobody will know and they’ll ask, “Who donated the castillo fireworks?” To which someone will respond, “Who knows? There is no video.” That striking detail helps us a lot.73

At the same time, videographers are not solely dependent on their local and migrant clientele for success. Indeed, the village cargo systems (that is, their officials), who regularly ask videographers who are not from the village for a fee, have different attitudes toward videorecording. Jesús Ramón of Video Cajonos noted that when the boom began in 2005, several villages insisted on staking a claim on this lucrative business. They argued that their local culture—in which the cargo officials had invested considerable sums of money—should represent a communal cultural patrimony. The officials of Cotzocón demanded a payment of 10,000 pesos for a film permit. Jesús Ramón’s response was to stay away from the village since then. (Given that the officials are replaced annually, however, the situation may now have changed.) As a result of such experiences, fiesta videographers now negotiate directly with municipal officials on an annual basis. They try to avoid upfront payments and instead create favorable conditions for their work and subsequent sales. Their ultimate goal is to obtain the exclusive rights (exclusividad) and special permission from the cabildo to film the fiesta in its entirety and sell the extensive material on DVD. Romel from Video Tamix indicated that videographers have considerable leverage with officials, who generally exploit patron saint fiestas to publicize their organizational talent and their ability to bring together the whole village. He has had the experience of persuading officials that it is in their best interest to capture the fiesta on film, because it serves as visual proof of the extent of their local engagement, which is particularly important with respect to the distant satellite communities in the United States. Furthermore, fiesta videos are an enduring testimony to a significant moment in time. According to Romel, the films enhance the officials’ prestige since they are disseminated over both space and time. Romel and his father, who held an important office (as regidor de hacienda) in Tama in 2013, decided to broaden their business strategies. For example, when officials they knew through family relationships asked that they stage a type of boxing match called box ranchero in their village for the first time, they complied and requested permission to record the fiesta.74 The municipal officials agreed, recognizing that staging a popular sporting event and having it captured on a fiesta video would make their celebrations more appealing. As a rule, visitors from neigh-

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boring villages closely observe and comment on the success of a patron saint fiesta year after year, which, in turn, serves as a barometer of the economic, religious, and political power of the hosting municipality. Officials therefore do their best to provide memorable highlights: they invite the most popular bands, organize a regional sports competition, or present other novel attractions. The DVD series are designed as a showcase for all of these different activities. As Nemesio Vásquez Narváez of Video Mecho explained to me after the Santa Rosa de Lima fiesta in 2013, the respective discs that put them on display are in demand locally to varying degrees. Customers who buy all nine discs will often send this series to relatives in the United States. Those who live in the home village, on the other hand, often selectively buy one particular disc for themselves. The performance of the philharmonic bands is a favorite among older residents, while parents often like to buy recordings of basketball games featuring their children. In addition, he told me that the “Calenda” dance procession and the church mass were not big sellers, whereas the three bailes, the couples dance events, flew off the shelves. Anticipating this response, Nemesio decided to painstakingly record all three dances. The recordings of the evening dances to cumbia music and música norteña have become top-selling films. At the same time, as discussed at the beginning of this chapter, these are the DVDs that have provoked the most controversy. This is connected to the fact that the dances have a social function as a place for courtship, finding a mate, and relaxing moral norms. These dances differ from the more traditional baile serrano, which is accompanied by the music of the philharmonic bands. Here, men and women dance either alone or with each other in different age and gender configurations. At a baile, in contrast, the male-female couple is the norm. Such dances are also opportunities for attendees to signal that they are (once again) “single and without commitments” (soltera/o y sin compromisos) and looking for a new partner. The couples dance events are related to a more comprehensive transformation in relationships over the years. While marriage arrangements in the 1980s were still based on parental decision, in the 1990s self-determined courtship, where a relationship could be initiated by the young man— or the young woman—became commonplace. This development was supported by several factors, including an extended phase of youth due to a longer period of school education. An engagement period is now often a test phase for the partnership, and civil and church marriage are generally only entered into after one or two children have been born. Female migrants in particular have contributed to increasing the autonomy of young people involved in courtship.

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Yet conflicts arise above all within the transnational audience, primarily when men watching a film of the dance discover their wives dancing with other men. They know, at the same time, that other viewers will be in a position to interpret the episode as an evidence of infidelity. Romel described the problem as follows: Romel: Men sort of don’t really like hearing people comment, “We saw that your wife was out there dancing with that son of a bitch.” The truth of the matter is that there are a lot of people who also may misinterpret what they see, you know? There are no doubt married women who dance two or three songs with whoever invites them. And that’s all there is to it— they also just want to dance. But what happens? There are very jealous, very possessive men who say, “I saw you with that son of a bitch. I’m not sending you any more money … until you tell me the truth.” And that’s the other side. Ingrid: I wanted to ask about that: If the married couple were here [in Tama], and the wife or the husband dances with another person that probably wouldn’t be perceived as problematic. Am I right? Romel: What do you mean? Ingrid: Well, I suppose a married couple doesn’t always have to dance together. Romel: Here things are a bit different. You always dance with your partner, right? Or if she dances with somebody else, then it would be with her cousin, her brother-in-law or her father—some relative in any case. Or, if it’s an acquaintance, then it’s her compadre. … That’s still acceptable. But dancing with anyone else can lead to misunderstandings.75

But in spite of the potential for “misunderstandings,” (or perhaps because of those misunderstandings), DVDs of bailes have become the topselling films for videographers, both in the hometown and in the many diaspora communities. The different emotions they spark in the hometown and satellite audiences are part of their attraction in both sites, as Romel further explained: … many people buy the DVD because of the allure of finding out: “I’ll see if I discover my wife. Maybe she danced with another man.” I think they’re two very different worlds. We who live here and work as videographers receive complaints. … those who live there in the United States appreciate our recording, because it allows them to watch us here [from a distance]. But people here don’t like that.76

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Although bailes are still recorded, videographers now take great care to not film any particular couple longer than the others. Yet the consequences of the transnational audience watching fiesta videos have been quite dramatic. As has already been mentioned, some husbands in the United States stopped sending remittances as a result of alleged “visual evidence” of their wife’s infidelity. In 2011 discontent about videotaped scenes of couples dancing to cumbia music and música norteña was so acute that the then presidente municipal temporarily prohibited them from being filmed. At the time, certain individuals, who had either been videotaped while dancing in Tama or had seen a recording in the United States, took their complaints to Tama’s síndico, the official who is responsible for internal legal matters, accusing (in this particular case) Video Rojas of destroying their marriage. The accusations came from married men who had migrated north to make money and had been away from the hometown for a period of three to seven years. Besides the problems relating to couples, the behavior at dances can also be interpreted as an indicator of the moral conduct of the entire village. This is exemplified by another case in which the village of Santiago Atitlán concluded that it had been denigrated by the video images of an evening dance. In 2011 several videographers, among them a filmmaker from San Isidro Huayapam, were recording at its patron saint fiesta. The latter shot a close-up of a young woman at the baile with a bare midriff, which also provided a view of the tattoo on her back. At that time, she worked as a prostitute (she has since married) and that evening danced with three drunk men. The videographer who told me this story said that while he had found this scene to be very chusco, he immediately decided not to record it. A couple of days after the fiesta, however, the municipal officials saw these scenes on the fiesta DVD that the entrepreneur from San Isidro had sold in their village. In short, they thought the images were scandalous, above all, because they considered them especially inappropriate for women and children. They summed up their discontent with the observation: “We from this village are not like that” (Nosotros de este pueblo no somos así ). In the end, they blamed fiesta videographers in general for misrepresenting their village. As a consequence, they imposed a collective punishment the following year by not renting market space to any of them. The situation was not normalized until two years later, and Atitlán’s patron saint fiesta has been regularly documented ever since. In sum, these critical situations, debates, and negotiations demonstrate how the videos themselves and the practices and circumstances that surround their production and diffusion have opened media spaces where the representation of village is commented on, discussed, and

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community is redefined. Moreover, they demonstrate the path that village videographers have traveled to professionalism. Since they are also comuneros/as, these videographers have in-depth knowledge of the dynamics of patron saint fiestas, the bailes as one of their principal events, and the motivations of the officials who organize them. A number of them have already held higher offices and as cargo holders have helped organize fiestas. The dual role of videographers has an impact on organizational structures, forms of interaction, and ways in which they acquire knowledge in the course of their business. At the same time this line of business is a relatively new one; it contributes to an internal market that responds to both the logic of market capitalism and a communitarian orientation. The videographers are not purely motivated by monetary gain nor do they act in this way. Instead they strive to balance their commitment to making a profit with the ideal of being a comunero/a (or are pushed in this direction by the community). At the same time the definition of what it means to be a “good” comunero/a is changing. It is precisely those changes that connect the videoastas to the part of their clientele that lives in the satellite communities and seeks to preserve their rights and make contributions as comuneros/ as from a distance.

The Los Angeles Side of Transnational Media Spaces This section focuses on the perspective of the estimated four hundred migrants from Tama residing in Los Angeles regarding the patron saint fiesta videos, as well as their role in the production of the videos. Although migration labor to cities has become an integral part of the Tama economy since the 1960s, the migratory waves that started in 1999 and later became massive due to an economic boom in the United States entailed a new dimension. Because of restrictive US policy toward job seekers from Mexico, this kind of migration now involves a considerable monetary investment: in 2016, the cost of an undocumented border crossing with the assistance of a coyote was between $3,000 and up to $10,000. This means that people willing to undertake that journey first have to carefully measure its dangers and financial implications. Often, they can only come up with the money they need with the help of relatives, to whom they are then indebted. The money they have borrowed and the capital they intend to acquire typically influence the length of their stay. Here, it should be emphasized that motives for migration are not purely economic: several of my interlocutors mentioned motives ranging from difficulties graduating high school and failed attempts to

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manage a business in Tama to serious conflicts within their family or with their spouse. Many start out with the intention of limiting their stay in the United States to one to three years and returning to their hometown thereafter. Often only one spouse goes to the north, so that the other can stay behind in the home village and take care of the children and possessions. Over the years, however, many villagers from Tama have decided to settle permanently in Los Angeles and either eventually reconstituted their nuclear families or formed new couples and families in the United States. Marriages in their new country not only bring together paisanos/as from the village of origin, but also connect men and women from Tama with partners from other regions of Mexico, Latin America, or the United States. So far, the paisanos and paisanas from Tama—as the migrants are generally called and as they also identify themselves—have not established a community with formal institutions (for example, a hometown association) and political representation to the same degree as other Oaxacan diaspora communities in Los Angeles. One reason is their relatively late migration in comparison to other groups from Mexico and their lack of legal status in the United States. Circumstances of time and place have been decisive for the particular waves of migration from Oaxaca.77 Sierra Norte Zapotec people, who immigrated in large waves in the 1980s, profited from the aministía (the amnesty provided by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986) and were able to legalize their immigration status in the United States to a large extent. While the majority of adult immigrants from Tama have no legal status, their children born in the United States do. Consequently Tama paisanos/as are in some aspects less organized there than many Zapotec migrants (such as those from Yalálag and other villages). As official US residents, the latter now travel freely back and forth between Mexico and their target country, the United States. Most of their satellite communities from the Zapotec-speaking regions have an independent political committee (a comité) that organizes patron saint fiestas in rented salons (called kermeses) in Los Angeles and raises funds that are subsequently invested in infrastructure projects in their hometown. Although the paisanos/as from Tama in Los Angeles organized themselves into a comité in 2004 in response to an acute conflict between Tama and Ayutla over a water source, it had a short lifespan; a few years later it was dissolved as the result of the alleged corruption of its leader. They have only sporadically participated in umbrella organizations of indigenous Oaxacan migrants like Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales (FIOB), Federación Oaxaqueña de Comunidades Indígenas en California (FOCOICA), and Organización Regional de Oaxaca (ORO) in Los Angeles.78

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Meanwhile the people of Tama in Los Angeles foster close relations with each other by means of a common orientation toward their hometown. A cornerstone of their cohesion is their self-conception as comuneros/as of the village of origin even from a vast distance. Despite their long absences, many paisanos/as continue to regularly send remittances to their immediate families and relatives in the home village for a variety of reasons: they support them financially or want to invest in their own well-being or future retirement in Mexico. Tama’s construction boom is closely connected to this form of investing migradolares. In addition, as comuneros/as they make annual payments for tequio and (less regularly) donate to Tama’s fiestas. Although visits back home to Mexico entail great risks and enormous costs because the border has to be illegally crossed back again, many have nonetheless temporarily returned to Tama in recent years if elected by the village General Assembly for an office, sometimes even bringing their wives and children (see chapter 2). They feel a certain pressure to comply, because serving as an official is required for upholding their right to communal land. At the same time for many this political participation constitutes a source of empowerment, since it implies gaining respect and recognition in the transnational context (compare Schütze 2016). Some men and women have lived in the United States for nearly twenty years without returning ‘home’. Acquiring patron saint fiesta videos and watching them over time is a means of reinforcing close ties with the village of origin. Each of the Tama families I visited in Los Angeles had numerous fiesta videos in their home collections. They preserve the annual films of their hometown in small family archives. Along with videos from Tama’s center, they also keep recordings of agencias that organize their own patron saint fiestas. The families either arrange with relatives back home to have the DVD series sent to them or they acquire them from paisanos/as who act as distribuidores in Los Angeles either over the phone or door-to-door. Most of the distributors I met are relatives of videographers in Tama. Just about every family in the village has a close relative in the United States, a brother, a sister, a cousin, a parent, or a child. The DVDs are sent from Mexico via self-organized delivery services (paqueterías) that specialize in shipping local foods and iconic items such as chintestle, hierbas, café, and totopos from home to the United States.79 In Los Angeles, the fiesta videos are watched in different spaces of belonging such as at home with the family or other members of the household, or in the context of a weekend get-together with guests. They are shown on an ordinary DVD player and a television set. At get-togethers neither hosts nor visitors watch the many hours of film in their entirety. They leave the

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Figure 4.5. Paisanos/as watching a self-styled video at a Los Angeles birthday party, April 2016. Photo: Ingrid Kummels.

video on as a means of attunement in the background giving their full attention only to scenes of particular interest, which they then watch several times. Gatherings like these constitute important forums for cultivation of the paisano/a community. Viewed more broadly, the patron saint fiesta videos are consumed in Los Angeles in a field of tension of different belongings, where paisanos/as in the United States develop a sense of community that is linked explicitly to the hometown, but also, in part, independent of it. The following example clearly illustrates the role of the fiesta videos in this process. In February 2014, I sat with eight paisanos/as at a Sunday barbecue, prepared by our host Francisco, who has lived in Los Angeles since 1999 and works as a plumber.80 These eight people constituted a highly mixed group in terms of the nature of their migration from Tama and the specific time periods, motivations, genders, and accompanying statuses this entailed.81 Although I explicitly avoided raising the subject of fiesta videos at first in order to get a sense of its relevance, it came up repeatedly in conversation, for instance, when I asked Felipe, my neighbor at the table, where he came from. Felipe was about forty and, worked with Francisco as a plumber in a business operated by a

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migrant from Michoacán. In response to my question, Felipe not only referred to the Tama agencia Konkixp as his home village, but also felt moved to describe it, going into great detail about its new municipal building and drawing my attention to the beauty of its façade, newly painted light green. Although his words gave the impression that he had recently seen it, he had actually not returned there since he left for the United States in 1999. As it turned out, the source of his description was a recent fiesta video from Konkixp.82 Felipe, as part of this genre’s large transnational audience, and I, as a recent visitor to this hometown, were thus able to exchange views about contemporary Konkixp. The conversations at the barbecue repeatedly revealed a key aspect of these videos, namely, that the paisanos/as use them to gather audiovisual information about their hometown and revitalize their feeling for it. This, in turn, allows them to participate more fully in village life from a distance. Viewers in Los Angeles told me that they enjoy this genre in the style of “our telenovelas” (nuestras telenovelas). In other words, they consume it as a series that gives them an opportunity to participate in the latest gossip and, in a manner of speaking, to be personally present in their hometown. These videos simultaneously show and create a social microcosm. Viewers have a specific interest in identifying family members and friends, and in witnessing their engagement with the fiesta as visitors or as officials. Moreover, they are eager to judge the appearance of the village with its buildings, streets, and decorative painting and to see its residents and their facial expressions, movements, clothes, and behavior. The staging of new fiesta elements and the overall transformation of fiestas in general also capture their interest. All of these aspects of the video have the potential to trigger conversations, not only while audiences view the film face-to-face but also in other contexts such as chats on the phone or contact on social media (for example, Facebook) across the Mexico-United States border. Based on these particulars, the paisanos/as comment on and intervene in community affairs. Such exchanges are forms of creating and participating in a transnational media space. Clothes are a telling example of this. On the evening of the barbecue, I joined the women in the kitchen, after our host, Hilda, had banished the men to the living room. Drinking coffee (drinking coffee at night is a typical Ayuujk pastime), the paisanas, who were in their thirties, began to comment on “good clothes.” They said that while they were watching the latest fiesta DVDs they were particularly surprised to see that most children in Tama now wear “good clothes,” as they referred to brand-name clothing. Emilia Rojas, one of the visitors, joked that residents in the hometown wore even better clothes than they did

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in the United States, given that she herself wore her employer’s castoffs, whereas she buys expensive brand-name clothing for her teenage daughters in Tama to make up for her absence. All three women (Hilda, Emilia, and Olinda) work as housekeepers, two of them “encerrada,” as live-in housekeepers. The money saved on room and board is seen as a particularly effective method of saving, apart from their incomes, which they mainly invest for their children’s education, either in Mexico or in the United States.83 It seemed to the paisanas that—thanks to them—their hometown had finally caught up “being modern,” having the higher standard of living that they themselves had sought when they migrated years before. The women complained that their traditional female dress was being worn less and less, and then only by older women. They themselves flout convention in the United States by specifically wearing traditional attire, which they had sent to them from home for special events such as christenings and weddings, where the paisano/a community convenes. They also send videos of these Los Angeles events to their relatives in Mexico. Hence paisanos/as do not identify solely with their village of origin—they also compete with it and in many cases criticize it. This conversation hints at a particular interpretation of the patron saint fiesta videos: Paisanos/as see them as indicators of the current overall transformation of the home village. The fiesta is particularly suited to this purpose due to its character and its massive attendance, which serves as a demonstration of village power. The progress the migrants see in the images gives them a sense of pride in the impact of their earnings as migrants. Every paisano/a I met worked overtime during the week and on part of the weekend to amass as much money as possible now and in the foreseeable future. Most are between twenty and forty-five years old and support their families in Tama with regular remittances. Some also invest money in such a way as to facilitate their return to the village, for example, to build on land they own or will inherit from their parents is one example. Photographs and video recordings sent from Tama allow them to supervise these projects from Los Angeles. Some of my interlocutors commented on what distinguishes a good video de comunidad. Cecilia, who returned to Tama in 2015 after having worked eighteen years as a migrant in the United States, explained to me that: “Those who record well convey every detail, the houses, the landscape, even the stream, and the food” (Los que grababan bién, ahí se ve cada detalle, las casas, el paisaje, hasta el arroyo, y la comida).84 And, she added, “Those are the details that people in the United States get excited about” (Son esos detalles que emocionan los que están en los Estados Unidos). Those very elementary things are metaphors for ‘home’ and

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do not serve a mere nostalgic function. Rather “the details” transform into powerful symbols that evoke a whole cosmos. They, however, do not conform to a static baseline of “the” community of origin. On the whole, the hometown has repeatedly experienced accelerated change due to earlier waves of migration within the Sierra Norte region and throughout Mexico that were also motivated by individuals looking for a better life. Since the center of Tama is now highly urbanized, it is difficult to capture audiovisually elements of nature at the fiesta. Nevertheless, such elements are cherished and celebrated as part of a “natural and organic life” (vida natural y orgánica) that people with migration experience seek to reclaim on-site for the community of origin. In this interpretation and use of fiesta videos a “productive nostalgia” intervenes and comunidad/kajp/‘home’ is conceived not in the way that it once was, but rather in the way that the actors strive to create it in the future (compare Blunt 2005; Kummels n.d.). In the United States, Tama migrants also watch fiesta videos, which sometimes they simply call la movie, with their children who have grown up in Los Angeles. This gives them an opportunity to acquaint their children with “the hometown,” a place with which they might otherwise find it hard to identify. Parents often send US-born children to visit Tama on their own starting at the age of ten. An example is Marina, who emigrated from Tama in 1999. When we spoke in 2015, she was in the process of sending her sixteen-year-old daughter and twelve-year-old son to visit their grandparents in the agencia El Duraznal. She hoped that the fact that she had regularly shown them fiesta videos would help make el pueblo less foreign to them when they saw it for the first time.85 Tama migrants will regularly watch fiesta videos with their children who have grown up in Los Angeles. Even if most children find the hourslong videos boring, some parents will explain to them that videos of this duration are necessary to understand Ayuujk culture from a distance.86 Because members of this early generation of immigrants from the years 1999 and 2000 in particular have made their homes in Los Angeles, they now invest their money in quality of life. The fiesta videos at ten dollars per DVD are part of this. The migrants occasionally buy several DVD series of the same fiesta produced by different videographers, a luxury that could mean 160 dollars for a single event. One evening I visited the couple Felipe and Olinda. They live with their two children in a small house in Mid-City, Los Angeles, a modest residential area that has attracted a noticeable concentration of people from Tama, both single men and women, as well as nuclear families and family groups. After a meal of homemade tamales Tama style—Olinda buys her corn dough at the nearby tortillería of the restaurant Expresión Oaxaca—Felipe and

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Olinda showed me their personal library of patron saint fiesta videos. Since 2005, they have been collecting videos about their two agencias, Konkixp and El Duraznal, as well as those about Tama center—first in 8mm format and later on DVD. Yet they are not merely consumers of this genre. Felipe lent Óscar Rojas money to help finance his first recordings and, in 2005, Olinda sponsored a recording made in El Duraznal when her father held the high religious office of capitán. Such sponsors are called a madrina or padrino de video. Thanks to the video she had at home in Los Angeles, she was able to share this significant moment of her father fulfilling his duties as a comunero. The DVD is therefore both an expression of her financial contribution to the communal duty of her family and an opportunity to witness this momentous and emotional event from a distance. The intense experience of watching patron saint fiesta videos is characterized by the various feelings that are awakened in the paisanos/as who live in Los Angeles. Francisco describes the enormous entertainment value of the films: like viewers in the Sierra Mixe, he heartily appreciates examples of lo chusco.87 At the same time, he remarks that watching the movies in the United States “also hurts. You would like to be at the fiesta and not here. You see your parents, siblings and cousins. … And you don’t know when you’ll be able to see them again” (también duele. Uno quisiera estar en la fiesta y no aquí. Ve a sus padres, sus hermanos, los primos. … No sabemos cuando los vayamos a volver a ver). Felipe, too, explains that he looks for relatives in the scenes and is quite sad when he finds one of his parents, as he has no idea when they will meet again. Francisco’s opinion of village videographers is therefore ambivalent: he has the impression, on the one hand, that “videographers are doing us a favor” (los videoastas nos están haciendo un favor); but on the other hand he suggests that they might be exploiting the migrants’ nostalgic feelings for profit. Francisco offers the following critique: “We’re also critical of them. In the beginning videographers used to charge up to fifteen dollars for a DVD as if it were a Hollywood picture with good actors. They also cost fifteen dollars. They should have more consideration for us. After all we don’t earn that much and we work hard for our money.”88 The videos in the couple’s collection were produced by three different enterprises: Video Rojas, Video Tamix, and Ereoemeese. Before my field research in the United States, I had not been aware of Ereoemeese. The engineer Sergio Rodríguez from Tama produced his Ereoemeese films in the years between 2008 and 2010 exclusively for the US market.89 The different emphases of particular enterprises and their relatively short periods of operation are a strong indication of the competitive situation between the businesses and the supply and demand fluctuations in the

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marketplace of their commerce. The migrants speculate whether particular enterprises were able to obtain the exclusive rights or if some have advantages when relatives occupy important offices in the hometown during particular years and thus have a better opportunity to record the fiesta. Insight into market strategy and consumer behavior from the perspective of the satellite community is provided by two distributors of the patron saint fiesta videos in Los Angeles, Emilia Rojas and El Bob. El Bob, who is around twenty-five years old and has sold Ereoemeese films, explained that he tried to get the DVDs to the interested parties as soon as possible—that is, ahead of the competition and before his potential customers borrowed the DVDs from another paisano/a— by making cold calls and paying door-to-door visits.90 He sold between twenty-five and forty copies of the series that Sergio had sent him after a fiesta. He also tried to sell the merchandise quickly because of the danger of piracy by the paisanos/as. In the end, the sales he made were quite profitable.91 Ereoemeese’s first series, which consisted of eight DVDs, depicted the Espíritu Santo fiesta from 2008. The cover featured a female photo model, who posed somewhat lasciviously in Tama’s traditional women’s dress. Though Sergio had simply created this image with Photoshop, buyers were always curious to know the identity of the woman in Tama who had posed for the picture. Regarding the DVDs themselves, customers were especially interested in the dance event, the basketball game, and the bull riding. According to El Bob, Video Rojas had an advantage over its competitors because it managed to put one and a half to two hours of footage on a single disc. El Bob argued that, although the Ereoemeese DVDs were only an hour long, they had better image quality. He typically sold one series to a single household, and they would then share it with a larger group of relatives, friends, colleagues, and neighbors. Emilia Rojas, Óscar’s sister, is in her late thirties and has worked in Los Angeles for two years as a live-in housekeeper. She migrated to the United States because she and her husband had amassed a large debt after failing to establish a taxi enterprise. For Emilia migration has meant a painful separation from her husband who in 2014 continued studying for a career as a teacher at Mexico City’s UPN and from their four children, who live with her mother in Tama. She sells Video Rojas DVDs by making cold calls and paying door-to-door visits to the paisanos/as. Emilia notes that the quality of the recordings depends on their content and whether they allow the viewer to get a real sense of village life. The extent to which migrants enjoy the videos depends on how involved they are with their hometown.

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Emilia: Since the majority of the people here have already been living here for many years, they only get to see their village (pueblo), their people, their community in the films. They see how they’re getting along, how they’re progressing. Because it [the village] keeps changing, it hasn’t remained the same way it was when they left it. Therefore they see that the village is different now. There are several people who record them. Sometimes they tell me as Óscar’s sister, “Well, I like how Óscar records,” and I ask them why. [They respond]: “Because he captures the whole community, how the people are, what the road looks like, how particular persons are, what they do, what they sell and he shows people attending the dances.” That interests them the most, because people didn’t dance the same way earlier. Ingrid: I see, so even that changes. Emilia: Yes, it changes, it changes. Besides, the money for the prizes awarded at the fiesta comes from here and that’s what interests them most, too. And those who donate here say later on, “Well, I want Óscar to record back home as it is customary, exactly as it normally is done, I want to see everything.” That’s why the people are interested in the films and they do respond to them well. They like them. At least that’s my impression. Ingrid: So, if they get to see those aspects they long to see, they’re satisfied, right? Emilia: Since that person is here [in Los Angeles] they remark, “That didn’t look that way when I left; it’s large now … oh, the market, that’s how it looks now?” They do like to see these kinds of things. Here it is almost as if the people do not miss their village, their community anymore, because they see it on TV with the videos.92

Emilia is herself interested in recordings that show Tama’s youth-oriented rock and reggae scene in order to spy on her daughter, who just recently turned fifteen. Unfortunately for her recordings like these are not still available. In addition to these distribution networks of the paisanos/as, particular fiesta videos from Tama were also sold in the DVD and CD stores in downtown Los Angeles that cater to immigrants from Oaxaca. These stores are part of the array of ethnic businesses in Los Angeles run by Oaxacans (often Zapotecs and Mixtecs) that focus on customers from their home state. Meanwhile, northern migration from ‘indigenous’ regions in Oaxaca has had a profound impact on the social life, culture, and economy of Los Angeles. This is recognizable, for instance, in the “Oaxacanization” of neighborhoods such as Mid-City and Korea-

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town, where ethnic business entrepreneurs, cultural associations, and political organizations that refer to Mexico, its culture, and products abound (Kummels 2016a). Stores that are run by or for Oaxacan immigrants offer a wide range of Latin music from many countries as well as videos of their respective cultures, like the Mexican jaripeo, which has been integrated into the fiestas. In addition to the stores, there are also regional Oaxacan restaurants and philharmonic band schools, which serve as meeting places, information exchanges, platforms for the reorganization of the community and for engaging in Mexican migrant civil society in the city. Products such as typical local foods, traditional ethnic attire, and patron saint fiesta videos are telling evidence of the migrants’ longing for and simultaneously redefining ‘home.’ These stores are not exclusively economic enterprises, but also constitute the basis of a broader political form of civic organization of Oaxacans in Los Angeles. Among those who have now ascended the social ladder as businesspeople are the previous generations of migrants, who mainly came from the Mixtec and Zapotec regions. They are the most influential group within migrant forums for community building in Los Angeles like the Guelaguetza, which is similar to the massive event held in the state of Oaxaca (the Los Angeles celebration, however, takes place in August rather than July). From the perspective of the migrants living in Los Angeles, Tama’s fiesta video industry is a specific form of ethnic business. Due to strict limitations on mobility relating to the international border, inhabitants of the village of origin and the satellite community have essentially built this transnational media space. The fiesta videos themselves and the practices surrounding their production and consumption have been transformed into a new place of belonging, a ‘home’ (in Spanish, pueblo, comunidad; in Ayuujk, kajp). To summarize, patron saint fiesta videos have become a key element of opening new media spaces that allow for novel dimensions of transnational belonging in the wake of Tama’s diasporization to the United States. Their role must also be understood against the backdrop of the relatively late arrival of Ayuujk immigrants in Los Angeles in the period after 9/11 and the particularly restrictive immigration policies toward migration from Latin America they have to face. Residents of the hometown and the satellite community have felt compelled to look for new means of overcoming this exclusion. Fiesta videos are produced, circulated, and consumed in a tight exchange between people living in Mexico and those who have settled in the United States; they have created crucial media spaces. Paisanos/as from Tama are essential coproducers of these films, which they have in part commissioned and financed. They enjoy this genre as an entertaining diversion, and in-

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deed often as a form of telenovela, one that allows them to keep in touch annually with relatives and friends who participate in the patron saint fiesta as their hometown’s chief communally organized event. The multiple layers of information presented by the fiesta videos serve to compensate for gaps in the viewers’ memory about the village of origin and its inhabitants, while keeping them up-to-date on current events. While the films do not permit viewers to experience the fiesta physically or haptically, they do allow for auditory and visual participation. They evoke laughter about lo chusco, pride in village financial investments, and sadness over separation from family and friends in the community. The videos enable viewers to participate in conversations and gossip as if they were actually back in their home village. They are also used as a didactic device to socialize the first generation born in the United States into the Tama communal way of life they are expected to eventually experience in person one day. By accessing and creating a common imaginative space, members of this genre’s transnational audience enhance and intensify their communication with one another. On the other hand, paisanos/as also draw on fiesta videos in order to distance themselves from their hometown and assert their independence. While watching the DVDs, they interpret the growth and modernization of the village in Oaxaca as largely resulting from their own work and financial contributions as migrants. For some migrants, moreover, the filmic sections showing the bailes present an opportunity to monitor their spouses back home in Mexico. Finally, the films constitute a nostalgic medium, though one that is based on a “productive nostalgia” (Blunt 2005; Kummels n.d.) geared toward shaping the future. They permit migrants who have decided to stay in Los Angeles indefinitely to reconstruct their home there around the patron saint fiesta as a key cultural component.

Notes 1. Parts of this chapter evolved from Kummels (2015b), Kummels (2015c) and Kummels (2017). 2. “asamblearia, colectiva, con programas de contenido social, con ingresos 100% independientes de cualquier institución pública o comercial, en armonía con las tradiciones locales, democrática radical, en concordancia con los derechos humanos y horizontal.” 3. The pioneering role of TV Tamix in the 1990s has already been widely recognized in scholarship (Cremoux Wanderstok 1997; Wortham 2004, 2005, 2013). One of my anthropology students in Berlin wrote her master’s thesis on TV Tamix during that period (see Kuhlmann 1997). Erica Wortham (2013: 143, 148, 171) highlights TV Tamix’s significance for the Video Indígena movement

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4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

in asserting its independence from the state and from INI, and for the struggle for social embeddedness within Tama. Casas del Pueblo were first established in rural villages based on a program implemented by Oaxacan state PRI governor Heladio Ramírez (1988–1992). His Mixtec origin made him highly sensitive to the disadvantaged situation of indigenous communities. As a state governor, he was instrumental in pursuing multicultural policies aimed at cultural empowerment of the indigenous population of Oaxaca (Recondo 2007: 173–180). The following information originates from interviews I conducted in September 2012 in Tamazulapam with Genaro Rojas and in May 2013 with Vicente Antúnez, both founding members of TV Tamix. Hermenegildo Rojas read an early draft of this chapter and added information. While Daniel Martínez Pérez focused his investigation on Tama’s religion, Alfonso López García, among others, researched village crafts. He also produced didactic material for schools in the Ayuujk language. CINAJUJI was co-initiated by the anthropologist Salomón Nahmad Sittón, who promoted ethnic-based organizations at the regional and national level. Beginning in the 1920s, the Ayuujk people reorganized during several phases of “ethnic renaissance” (see chapter 3). The neighboring villages of Tama and Tlahui competed over ethnopolitical ideas and the symbolic repertoire for representation of Ayuujk ‘nationalism.’ TV Tamix broadcast the village’s patron saint fiesta annually. Fortino Lucio is a man from Tama, who married a woman from the Zapotec village of San Pedro Cajonos. The video camera was financed by Tama’s cabildo as a community asset. Similar to Raúl Velasco, the famous presenter of Siempre en domingo, a program broadcast on Televisa’s Canal 2, Genaro Rojas later assumed the role of presenter for TV Tamix’s Canal 12. Interview with Genaro Rojas, Tamazulapam, September 2012. Having collaborated with Dorantes, Genaro sent his younger brother Hermenegildo to Huautla to work for him as a media intern. The Video Indígena movement did not seek to incorporate Tama’s mediamakers until 1992 due to concerns about privileging the village during the agrarian conflict between Tama and Tlahui (see chapter 3). Interview with Guillermo Monteforte, Oaxaca City, 21 July 2013; see also Wortham (2013: 66). TV Tamix soon developed into a well-equipped TV station with a 10-watt transmitter, two VHS analog cameras, and a lighting system. Its staff assumed diverse functions: Genaro Rojas worked as a presenter and later on as a cameraman. Hermenegildo Rojas was initially in charge of setting up the equipment and later specialized in sound and image recording. Victoriano Guilberto was both cameraman and editor. Vicente Antúnez worked as a presenter and a cameraman. Tito Antúnez selected locations and worked on the business side of TV Tamix. Interview with Genaro Rojas, Tamazulapam, 2 January 2015. Victoriano Guilberto of TV Tamix used INI documentaries such as La Semana Santa entre los mayos (1982) as a guideline while filming Tama’s Holy Week at the beginning of the 1990s. TV Tamix produced this animated film using plasticine figures to convey Ayuujk vowels for one of the regional seminars organized by CINAJUJI. Interview with Genaro Rojas, Tamazulapam, September 2012.

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18. Genaro’s early role as a presenter is documented in the film Primer encuentro estatal de Casas del Pueblo (1990), produced by Alfonso Muñoz, director of INI’s “Transferencia de Medios.” 19. This early interview material was catalogued under the heading “comical interviews” (entrevistas chuscas) by Hermenegildo in 2013. 20. The subtle exclusion from TV Tamix was something several interlocutors complained to me about, including members of the Rojas family. 21. Juan José García was initially a key member of Centro de Video Indígena (CVI), which was part of INI, and later on of Ojo de Agua Comunicación, founded in 1998. He functioned as the CVI director as of 1997 and was director of Ojo de Agua from 2004 until 2009. Juan José was born in Guelatao and belonged to the popular band Trova Serrana before becoming involved with the INI radio station XEGLO and later a comunicador. See Anna Brígido-Corachán (2004), Ingrid Kummels (2011: 213) and Laurel Smith (2005: 169–174). 22. In 1998, Guillermo Monteforte, Juan José García, and other members left CVI to form the NGO Ojo de Agua Comunicación. The split was caused by differences with INI over the degree to which this state institution actually transferred media knowledge and control to indigenous people and supported their media autonomy. Issues at that time revolved around the use of financial resources, INI censorship of media content, and the transfer of CVI leadership to an indigenous organization, with which INI ultimately never complied (Wortham 2013: 84–88). 23. TV Tamix received grants amounting to 12,000 dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Catherine D. and John T. MacArthur Foundation to finance their film projects (Wortham 2013: 151). 24. Additionally, in this version TV Tamix left out “modern” aspects such as couples dance events with cumbia bands. They did, however, include them in the fiesta versions they broadcast for the village audience. 25. See the extracts in the introduction from interviews with Hermenegildo and Genaro Rojas. 26. While excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages is a stereotype of the Ayuujk people that neighboring Zapotecs make fun of in their la Danza de los Mixes, there is no discrimination against high levels of alcoholic consumption in Tama. On the contrary, the male capacity to consume large quantities of pulque, beer, and mezcal is seen by many, notably men, as proof of masculinity. Almost everyone socializes with drunks at fiestas. Criticism of men’s excessive drinking is nonetheless a topic women increasingly raise in the context of domestic violence. 27. Interview with Guillermo Monteforte, Oaxaca City, 21 July 2013. Wortham (2013: 236n11) also points out that the concept of espacio sagrado “was widely appreciated in Video Indígena circuits as being exemplary of the positive hybridity of indigenous spiritual sensibilities and modern technology.” Genaro’s explanation of the concept was published in a brochure of the Organización Mexicana de Videoastas Indígenas (OMVIAC) in 1994. 28. For the perspective of nonindigenous trainers on their failure to facilitate the creation of an “indigenous visual language” at the workshops, see Wortham (2013: 70–72). 29. La música y los mixes was produced in 1978. 30. Cuando la niebla levante was produced by Federico Weingartshofen in 1980; En clave de sol deals with the Tlahui philharmonic band and was published by Lud-

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31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47.

wik Margoles in 1981; the film Pelea de tigres: una petición de lluvia nahua was made by Olga Cáceres, Alicia Pérez Grovas, and Alfredo Portilla in 1987. Interview with Hermenegildo Rojas, Tamazulapam, 9 September 2013. Interview with Hermenegildo Rojas, Tamazulapam, 9 September 2013. Telephone conversation with Carlos Pérez Rojas, January 2015. Genaro’s short film Estado de ánimo was selected for the Festival Internacional de Cine Morelia as one of the nineteen best Mexican short films of 2014. They had invested much of the grant money in film equipment (which belonged to the village due to TV Tamix’s communal status) but failed nonetheless to justify this and probably other expenses as well. “Una época desoladora. ‘Ya,’ dices, ‘no más. Se fue otro, ¡puta madre!’ Cada vez que alguien se iba, era un derrota.” Interview with Genaro Rojas, Tamazulapam, 17 October 2013. Genaro sees this genre as his invention. Interview with Genaro Rojas, Tamazulapam, 17 October 2013. The enthusiastic reception of the first fiesta video in the United States is corroborated by Ernesto Martínez Antúnez, who lived in Milwaukee at the time (see below, Light and Dark Sides of Videos de Fiesta). Interview with Hermenegildo Rojas, Tamazulapam, 17 October 2013. Camcorder interview with Fernando Sánchez, Oaxaca City, August 2013. Individual migrants manage self-organized delivery services (paqueterías) that specialize in shipping traditional foodstuff and iconic items from the hometown to the United States. Interview with Hermenegildo Rojas, Tamazulapam, 4 September 2013. Óscar and Jaquelina Rojas of Video Rojas have a different recollection of how they became videographers. Unlike Hermenegildo they emphasize that it had to do with their desire to record the development of their first child, a son. Yovegami Ascona was awarded first prize at the film competition “Miradas sin tiempo” in February 2012, which was organized by INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia) and IMCINE (Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía). Carlos Pérez Rojas won the “Alanis Obomsawin Best Documentary Award” in 2010 at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Canada. The members of TV Tamix and Carlos in particular were involved in training mediamakers in Chiapas as part of the Chiapas Media Project. This NGO has provided training and equipment to neo-Zapatista communities since 1998 and was founded by Alexandra Halkin (see Halkin 2006; Wortham 2013: 177–206). Carlos has thus had a highly varied career as a filmmaker. He later joined the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center in Guerrero, where he used video to document cases of human rights violations. Traditionally the umbilical cord (ombligo in Spanish) was buried at the birthplace of a newborn. According to a widely diffused metaphor, el ombligo will always “call” him or her back to this locality. The notion of the umbilical cord as a person’s origin has deeper meanings since it not only refers to the concrete connection between a child and the mother. This connection is also presumed to exist with the birthplace and with the earth, which is conceived as a mother and a supreme being in Mesoamerican cultures (et naaxwi’iny in Ayuujk). For this reason fowl’s blood is regularly offered up to the earth by the Ayuujk people on an individual basis or collectively.

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48. Isis Contreras Pastrana, a Mexican anthropologist who worked for many years in Tlahui at Radio Jënpoj, produced several films with Rigoberto Vásquez García of Tlahui, including O’jken: La muerte Ayuuk—Hacia la transición de la vida eterna in 2009. 49. Aquí Cine is an Oaxacan network recently devoted to providing facilities and training to screen films in rural communities. See: http://aquicineoaxaca.blog spot.mx/p/quienes-somos.html (accessed on 14 May 2015). 50. Fiesta videos are a transnational genre that are also produced in nonindigenous Mexican villages and are disseminated to the United States. 51. Interview with Romel Ruiz Pérez, Tamazulapam, 12 March 2014. 52. Couples either live in common law marriage with no mutual legal obligations or contract a civil marriage according to the stipulations of joint property (mancomunado) or separated properties (bienes separados) at the Tama sindicatura. In practice, however, even mancomunado marriages do not guarantee that men contribute to child support following separation or divorce, since these contributions are rarely legally enforced by the village governance system. 53. Interview with Teresa López Domínguez, Tamazulapam, 19 August 2013. 54. The visitors offer the patron saint flowers, coins, and other gifts, and they touch the statue to ensure its efficacy. Further religious elements are ritual dances like la Danza de la Malinche, in which those who have made a vow to do so participate. 55. Funds from the ramos 28 and 33 consist in budgetary aid for infrastructure and culture, which the federal and state governments provide for municipalities on the basis of tax incomes deriving from these entities. 56. “la fiesta es el punto donde la gente expone lo mejor que tiene de ese año.” Camcorder interview with Genaro Rojas, Tamazulapam, September 2013. 57. My interlocutors for this topic who position themselves as communal filmmakers were Carlos Pérez Rojas, Vicente Antúnez, Yovegami Ascona, and Genaro Rojas. Hermenegildo Rojas pointed out that TV Tamix regularly used interviews as part of the documentary style of their audiovisuals and a political stance with the aim of provoking statements from the subjects and inciting the viewers to reflect. 58. In English: Reception of the Bands, The Traditional “Calenda” (disc 1); The Sports Parade, Inauguration of the Copa Mixe (disc 2); Cultural Program, Dance Event with Super T and Los Originales de Tlahui (disc 3); Public Performance of the Bands, Ignition of “The Castle” Fireworks (disc 4); Second Dance Event with Maike y Sus Teclados Super Uno, Musical Group Calenda and Grupo La Sombra (disc 5); Final Basketball Matches Children, Female and Male Youngsters, Final Matches of the Copa Mixe 2013 (disc 6); Final Matches of Female and Male Adult and Youth Basketball, Finals of the Copa Mixe 2013 (disc 7); Award Ceremony, Third Dance Event Grupo Siglo XXI ” (disc 8); Farewell to the Bands (disc 9). 59. Today, authorship is frequently identified by a corporate logo on the videos. Videographers took this measure to prevent local piracy. 60. While mediamakers in Tama speak of this style as lo comunitario, Leonardo Ávalos Bis, a videographer of the Zapotec village of Yalálag, termed its products as videos de comunidad, that is, as videos both stemming from and representing the community. He characterized videos de comunidad, among others, as a genre that captures “reality” (lo real ) as perceived by its audience, such as by recording events in real time. For this reason village videographers deliberately

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61.

62. 63.

64. 65.

66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72.

renounce as far as possible editing or manipulating images through animation. Interview with Leonardo Ávalos Bis, Yalálag, 29 April 2016. Here I summarize corresponding statements from interviews with Jesús Ramón García (Tamazulapam, August 2012), Óscar Rojas Cruz und Jaquelina Rojas Sánchez (Tamazulapam, April and May 2013), and from interviews with Romel Ruiz Pérez and Genoveva Pérez Rosas (Tamazulapam, August and October 2013 and in Chuxnabán, March 2014). Informal conversation with Jaquelina Rojas Sánchez, Tamazulapam, March 2013. From a business standpoint, videographers generally concentrate on two different areas: family celebrations that they film for private individuals and the recording of the village fiestas, which they document even without a specific commission. In the first case, the client purchases films of a wedding, christening, or quinceañera celebration. It is now common for a padrino and/or a madrina (some of whom live in one of Tama’s satellite communities) to sponsor the video recording of a family celebration, which can cost between 1,000 and 5,000 pesos. In the case of the patron saint fiesta videos, on the other hand, there is no need for sponsors, since videographers can make 10,000 pesos or more selling the DVDs to the attendees at 30 to 50 pesos apiece to the attendees. It is difficult to quantify the earnings of commercial videographers, since there is a tendency to conceal large profits to prevent envy or criticism. I adapted this phrase from legendary German football trainer Sepp Herberger who coined the dictum: “After the game is before the (next) game” (Nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel). Video Cajonos is also organized as a family business, which includes Jesús Ramón García, his wife, and his adult son. Based in San Pedro Cajonos, they regularly record patron saint fiestas over a widespread region and frequently visit Tama, since Jesús Ramon’s second wife comes from this village. Nemesio Vásquez Narváez, who represents Video Mecho, did not found his enterprise until 2013, after returning from years of work migration in New Jersey, United States. At first, he served as a cameraman for Video Rojas; he then successfully copied its business model and became independent. Since 2015 he has been managing a taco restaurant in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. Camcorder interview with Genoveva Pérez Rosas, Tamazulapam, August, 2013. Videographer Jaquelina Rojas Sánchez explained, “We are autodidacts” (somos como líricos,” líricos being a term used to describe self-taught musicians. For some time, I had difficulty grasping the intricate meaning of “autodidactic,” partly because I had been socialized in the exclusively positive meanings given to this term by my parents. My mother as a musician and my father as a cameraman had worked in a transnational context and they would both use the term to emphasize their ability to independently acquire knowledge and to effectively make it on their own as professionals. The same applies to Conrado Pérez Rosas, a professional photographer (see chapter 3) and Wenceslao Pérez Rosas, a painter, who are Genoveva’s siblings. Adolfo is an employee at the state institution for adult literacy INEA (Instituto Nacional para la Educación de los Adultos). This holds true for the period up to 2015. Video Tamix then renewed its equipment and bought up-to-date digital cameras. Before that they used a particularly large video camera, as this helps convince costumers of their professionalism. Interview with Romel Ruiz Pérez, Tamazulapam, 31 October 2013.

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73. Interview with Romel Ruiz Pérez, Tamazulapam, 31 October 2013. 74. A box ranchero resembles a boxing competition but does not adhere to all the rules of professional boxing. Virtually anyone can participate, though men and women compete separately. 75. Interview with Romel Ruiz Pérez, Tamazulapam, 12 March 2013. 76. Interview with Romel Ruiz Pérez, Tamazulapam, 12 March 2013. 77. With regard to distinctive processes of migration from Oaxacan towns to the United States, see Alejandra Aquino Moreschi (2012), Jeffrey Cohen (2009), Adriana Cruz-Manjarrez (2013), Rocío Gil Martínez de Escobar (2006), and Lynn Stephen (2007). Lars Ove Trans (2013: 133) estimates the number of Oaxacan migrants in California to have totaled 300,000 in the first decade of this century. The number of indigenous Oaxacan migrants in Los Angeles alone has recently been estimated at 200,000 to 300,000 persons (ECO 2013: 24; Krannich 2014: 10). 78. ORO has organized the Los Angeles Guelaguetza since 1987 and a dance group of the Tama paisanos/as has occasionally participated in recent years. In addition, they took part in Los Angeles basketball tournaments organized in particular by Sierra Norte migrant organizations. Interviewees pointed out that the reasons they had desisted from these activities were their lack of leisure time as well as deceptions or quarrels they had experienced with the non-Ayuujk organizers in the course of participation. 79. Chintestle (a chili-paste), hierbas (herbs), and totopos (large dry tortillas) are traditional foods. Because of their light weight, they are easy to transport and allow for enough supplies to be carried during a journey. They still serve as a comfort food and are a useful staple that teachers like to take along with them when they participate in the sometimes week-long demonstrations organized by Sección 22. 80. I use pseudonyms for Tama villagers living in the United States to protect their identity. In a certain way, I became acquainted with Francisco for the first time at a costumbre that was carried out for him in Tama at his parents’ home in March 2013. They had consulted a diviner on his behalf and sacrificed a turkey on Zempoaltépetl mountain. At the meal after the sacrifice, Francisco’s sister talked to him on the cell phone to give him updates on the festivities he had ordered. I coincidentally met Francisco in person a year later in Los Angeles. 81. The group included both men and women, married and unmarried individuals. Some had lived in the United States for more than twenty years, and some had only been there for two years. 82. Interestingly, while these videos are not the sole source of information on the hometown in the age of cell phones and Facebook, they are nonetheless still important. Since the introduction of the mobile network in Tama in 2011, paisanos/as receive most of their information on current affairs in the village through Facebook and cell phones. 83. While acquiring “good clothing” is no longer a primary motivation today for migrant workers, it once had central importance. In the 1960s, young girls from Tama frequently worked as maids in Mexico City after having finished primary education. They were mainly paid with “good” urban-style clothing, even after years on the job, and thus shamelessly exploited. Nevertheless, they tolerated this as a way of acquiring fluent language skills in Spanish and acquiring new cultural knowledge and the symbolic capital of the clothing that went with it.

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84. Informal conversation with Cecilia, Tamazulapam, 5 May 2016. 85. Informal conversation with Marina at a birthday party and get-together of Tama paisanos/as in South Central Los Angeles, 25 July 2015. 86. Informal conversation with Rogelio, Los Angeles, July 25, 2015. 87. He sees the veteranos basketball game as comical since these older players tire more easily, making their movements less athletic. 88. Informal conversation with Francisco, Los Angeles, 24 February 2014. 89. Sergio Rodríguez currently works as an impresario for bands that perform at patron saint fiestas, a form of employment that seems to be even more lucrative. 90. Informal conversation with El Bob, Los Angeles, 1 March 2014. 91. Each DVD cost 10 dollars and the total package was 80 dollars; El Bob himself received a 10 dollar commission for every DVD series he sold. El Bob also left DVD series with individual families that did not have the money on hand. In his view, collecting these debts was one problem with the business; a further issue concerned the piracy of these DVDs. 92. Interview with Emilia Rojas, Los Angeles, 23 February 2014.

Figure 5.1. Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala, October 2013. Photos: Ingrid Kummels. Collage: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

CHAPTER 5

Tama’s Media Fields and the Pan-American Indigenous Movement

An Introduction to the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala On this particular Monday, 7 October 2013, the Santa Ana agencia, located in a valley two kilometers below the center of Tlahui, is unrecognizable. As a rule, daily life is shaped here by the agricultural activities of the inhabitants in their cornfields and scattered dwellings, and crowds of young children and teenagers on their way to school, including the well-known high school BICAP.1 Now, however, the picturesque valley is dominated by a vast white tent with the capacity to hold up to 3,000 people and equipped with several large screens to enable them to follow events on the stage. The colossal Media Summit is organized by an army of local supporters who welcome and register the visitors on arrival. Many of the hundreds of indigenous media professionals and political representatives arriving by bus make a point of wearing the garb of their village or region of origin. On arrival each person is given a welcome package, which includes a locally woven wool gabán (poncho), an identity marker of the Ayuujk ja’ay, as protection against the piercing October cold at almost 2,300 meters above sea level. Apart from the diversity of its participants and the enormous scope of the event, the cultural emphasis on indigeneity is what immediately gives the Media Summit its distinctive character. Media summits have become a permanent meeting space for indigenous mediamakers from across the Americas. Participants have been sharing their interest in the strategic empowerment of indigenous peoples through mass means of communication ever since 2010, when the first event of this kind took place in Resguardo Indígena de la María Piendamó in the Cauca region of Colombia. This chapter looks at the Sec-

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ond Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala2 held in Tama’s neighboring village of Tlahui from 7 to 13 October 2013. People from Tama who see themselves as community mediamakers or comunicadores also cooperate and network with organizations in the global indigenous media or medios comunitarios movements. The two international movements are not identical. They differ in terms of focus. They strengthen local media based on either indigeneity (that is, on the concept of a collective identity as original peoples who have lived on the same land from time immemorial and were colonized and exploited) or community media work (not necessarily defined in terms of ethnicity). In both cases, however, internationally connected grassroots movements—through global forums such as the UN—proclaim equal access to mass communication as a precondition for freedom of speech and the exercise of the full rights of citizenship. Mass media in Mexico, for example, has hitherto been defined by extreme inequality: Mexican law favors private corporate media giants over local community media and small private media enterprises, which are driven to a state of illegality. Even if they have obtained the required operating licenses, they do not enjoy the same privileged access to available television and radio airspace (see the introduction). The demand for cultural citizenship is placed center stage by organizations in the field of indigenous media, a concept of citizenship that allows for appearance in the public sphere as members of a linguistic and ethnic community and not merely as citizens of a particular nation state (De la Peña 1995). Numerous local media projects in Latin America rely on this idea and broadcast in their own languages about their own cultural needs (Rodríguez 2009). The organizations in question push for an understanding of (state) citizenship that endorses cultural diversity and thus the complexity of local practices, religious and political institutions, and legal structures. Indigenous organizations are not, however, the only actors crucial to the production and interaction structures and methods of networking in the Pan-American indigenous movement. Nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations (asociaciones civiles) such as the Oaxaca-based Ojo de Agua Comunicación, A.C., are another important actor group. Apart from media summits, annual film festivals geared primarily to Latin America’s indigenous mediamakers constitute key platforms for meetings and discussion forums. One example is the Latin American Coordination of Cinema and Communication of the Indigenous Peoples (CLACPI) founded in 1985. Moreover, political appointees from the indigenous movement intervene as central personalities at these events. Hence the constellation of actors at work in this international scene differs from that of the transnational

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Mexico-United States media space that evolved as a result of international migration. Those who define the category “indigenous media” as an umbrella term are members of this international indigenous movement, who see it as a tool to unite a highly diverse group of people and as referring to their use of media in the struggle for culturally based rights for indigenous peoples. They achieve this in detail at summits, where they negotiate and formulate demands for the empowerment of communication processes and the autonomy of the indigenous media sphere. This chapter focuses on the linkages that are being forged between the local and transnational media fields of Tama and Tlahui and the Pan-American indigenous movement. The standpoints of local and transnational media circuits and their diverging political positions vis-àvis the Pan-American Media Summit will be explored. How did village actors, notably those from Tama, position themselves in and toward these international circles? What influence did they have? The following section examines the conflicts and processes of negotiation that evolved before and during the Media Summit in Tlahui. Prior to the event, members of nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations played a highly active part in discussing controversial issues via social media and Internet news agencies. They turned the spotlight on the need for horizontal forms of organization and legitimate sources of funding for the Summit. During this preliminary stage the issue of village media work and cultural orientation was barely touched on. Debates during the main stage of the Summit were usually conducted face-to-face in the agencia Santa Ana in Tlahui. Most of the work was invested in formulating demands for self-determined communication processes with the intention of submitting them to the UN and exerting pressure on nation states. To what extent during the two stages were these actor groups able to open up new media spaces with their respective networks and modes of communication in terms of a wider geographic reach and of practices and imaginations? These heterogeneous actors, who participated in and influenced the Media Summit, will be studied more closely.3 They form part of the complex intercultural workings of Latin American indigenous movements that had long been ignored by the scholarship on this topic (Rappaport 2005: 58). Community mediamakers were not the sole actor group involved in the Media Summit. Indigenous intellectuals active either partor full-time in political organizations like CNCI—political strategists who tend to base special cultural rights on ethnic distinctions—assumed a leading role. Another actor group consists of the nonindigenous allies of native activists. They are described as collaborators (colaboradores), people who are committed (comprometidos), scholar-facilitators or advo-

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cates who as a rule are leftists critical of the neo-liberal governments.4 Based on a “deep and sustained dialogue” (Rappaport 2005: 58) nonindigenous allies are organized in NGOs and nonprofit organizations, often teaming up with native activists. A further actor group of village mediamakers engages in more radical forms of community media autonomy. This group distanced itself from the Media Summit from the start, which is why I refer to its members as “media dissidents.” The chapter will outline how these heterogeneous stakeholders used the Media Summit in Tlahui as a platform to negotiate the status of indigenous peoples on the continent, as well as their common basic concerns and the issue of their political representation. My interest here is the outcome of these negotiations on indigeneity. It should be noted that preparation for the Media Summit brought the following central issue to the fore: the degree of autonomy—particularly in financial terms—that should be preserved with respect to the Mexican government. Franco Gabriel Hernández, General Coordinator of the Summit in 2013, is a Mixtec intellectual and has been a prominent, albeit controversial, indigenous politician in Mexico since the late 1970s.5 Ironically he arranged for the Summit to be financed by the Ministry of Communications and Transport (SCT)—a ministry notorious for its persecution of illegalized community media such as radio stations. In addition, Gabriel Hernández had invited Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to open the Summit (in the end he abstained, allegedly because of other obligations). Both decisions split the medios comunitarios sector into two camps: those who supported and those who opposed continuing with the Media Summit as planned. In order to underline their claim of speaking for indigenous mediamakers and concerns, indigenous appointees like Franco Gabriel made stronger use of ethnicity as an argument to discredit the position of nonindigenous colaboradores with a more uncompromising attitude toward government funding. Interestingly, participants did not conduct this dispute backstage, but in a Pan-American indigenous media space. The Internet news agency Servindi, for example, a site that focuses on indigenous concerns, reported extensively on the matter and provided online access to letters in which organizations either justified boycotting the Summit or appealed for its continuation. Based in Peru, Servindi is operated by nonindigenous activists “who identify with the goals of indigenous and original peoples.”6 Prior to the summit, the agency had reported regularly in a neutral and essentially positive manner about the forthcoming Summit. When controversial issues arose, however, it provided the Pan-American public interested in the indigenous movement with ample information about the discordant parties. This audi-

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ence also participated in the debates via websites such as the Radio y Comunicación Indígena Blogspot and Facebook communities, who will have their say in the following sections. Against the background of the local-global linkages conceptualized through media spaces, the degree to which the Pan-American Media Summit 2013 discussed indigeneity in relation to the current diversity of indigenous ways of life will be explored. It should be mentioned in the context of Mexico and transnationalization to the United States that the affiliations of people who identify themselves as indigenous have diversified as a result of a growing shift in and broadening of milieus. An estimated 40 percent of these indigenes now live permanently or for long periods in Mexican cities and in the United States.7 New orientations in the field of culture (of religion, for example) and politics are also at play in this diversification. A range of media uses has emerged as a result of mass migration, such as commercial videomaking and DVDs of the patron saint fiesta, which are produced, distributed, and consumed between Mexico and the United States. Despite their significant dimensions, however, these activities found no echo at the Media Summit, at least not officially: only community projects were de facto invited, thereby excluding commercial radio broadcasters and filmmakers. Hence the Pan-American Media Summit equated indigenous media normatively with community media. Yet the issue of reconceptualizing “indigenous media” as embracing these new developments cropped up in several situations, which the following sections illustrate.

Leading Up to the Media Summit: Ethnopolitical Positionings in the Pan-American Media Space On 9 August 2013 (proclaimed International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples by the UN) a so-called pre-Summit event was held in Tama’s auditorium. A mere thirty individuals found their way into the vast hall on the first floor of the market building (where up to 800 comuneros and comuneras meet to attend the General Assembly). Among them were Rigoberto and Braulio Vásquez from Tlahui, the organizers of the Media Summit; Timio in his double role as coordinator of the Media Summit cultural program and head of CCREA in Tama; Froylita, Temo, Romel and others from Tama’s youth movement; and those invited as guest speakers at the pre-Summit, such as Hermenegildo and Genaro Rojas from TV Tamix, and me.8 One guest came the long way from Querétaro: the Mexican musician known as Eltonman gave the opening lecture and also performed with his band Leones Negros at

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the evening reggae concert. In his speech he interwove the history of indigenous people like the Ayuujk ja’ay and descendants of African slaves like him with the Rastafarian hope of finding salvation by abandoning the degenerate consumerism of Babylon. Eltonman pointed out that the “Good Living” (Buen Vivir) of Zion could be achieved by adhering to indigenous cultural values and that its attainment called for decolonization and disobedience. The event met with little response in Tama, because hardly anyone at that time, apart from these insiders, had a concrete notion of what the Media Summit was. Yet the pre-Summit gave these thirty people extensive opportunity for exchange, and subsequently things began to happen at the local level. Two days later the Summit team, with Braulio Vázquez as chairman of the Oversight Committee of the Second Summit of Indigenous Communication (Comité de Seguimiento de la Segunda Cumbre de Comunicación Indígena), performed a typical Ayuujk sacrifice ritual on Zempoaltépetl mountain. In this case the local ceremony of scattering chicken’s blood on Mother Earth served as spiritual preparation for the Media Summit. The ritual was thus performed in the international context of the indigenous movement, reinterpreted as cosmovisión,9 and served as a political demonstration of indigenous spirituality. The Quechua comunicador Christian Arango Vallejos, who traveled from Ecuador to participate, filmed the ceremony and distributed his short film throughout Latin America via the Servindi news agency.10 In other words, local Ayuujk traditions were disseminated in Pan-American indigenous media space via self-determined practices and structures of mass communication. Meanwhile, in August 2013 village mediamakers in Tama and Tlahui gradually began to take a stance on the Media Summit. Those skeptical of this massive event, such as Hermenegildo and Genaro Rojas, reflected on the initial lack of general information, which they attributed to internal disputes about the conditions for the production of community media in the Mixe region and specifically the diverging positions of comunicadores in the two villages concerned. This “inclination toward fragmentation” (tendencia fractal) is in their eyes characteristic of the inhabitants of the Mixe region. They also perceive small-scale rivalry and divergence as intrinsic to community building and land disputes, and as contributing to both internal dissent and hostilities between villages. According to the Rojas brothers these controversies have rubbed off on the work of community-run media. As competitors for locally-based media projects and respective audiences, comunicadores from different Ayuujk villages rarely cooperated with each other on a steady basis.11 Focusing on rivalry and negotiations in village media, the next section will first examine the diverging positions of the Ayuujk commu-

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nities of Tama and Tlahui within the framework of the Pan-American Indigenous Media Summit. Hosting the Summit in Tlahui was no accident: for decades the village has enjoyed the reputation of being a “guiding community” (comunidad rector) in the ethnopolitical Ayuujk movement, which it presents successfully and aggressively to the outside world beyond the local and regional level. Due to several factors, the village hosts a number of key institutions. The Salesians, for example, who had gained a foothold in Tlahui in the 1960s, strengthened local schools in cooperation with inhabitants by encouraging education in the Ayuujk language.12 Floriberto Díaz, who advanced in the early 1980s to become the central Ayuujk ethnopolitician and created the theory of comunalidad, was a seminarian with the Salesians before abandoning this career to pursue anthropology studies at the ENAH. Although he later distanced himself from both the Salesians and anthropology, he found inspiration in each for his quest for the ethnic-based empowerment of the region’s inhabitants (Nava Morales 2013). In the early 1980s, Díaz organized regular seminars (Semanas de Vida y Lengua Mixes) where he worked with supporters on developing a written form of the Ayuujk language and mathematics derived from Ayuujk cultural traditions. The idea was to make Ayuujk epistemology a cornerstone of future curricula in government schools. As a young anthropology doctoral student I personally witnessed one of these seminars.13 National indigenist policy during the presidency of José López Portillo also paved the way for Tlahui’s privileged position in 1977 with the establishment of a Center for Mixe Music Education (CECAM).14 The reform initiatives of teachers and activists in Tlahui led to the founding of bilingual schools for all age groups and, in 2012, its own university (UNICEM). As part of its marked ethnopolitical path and discourse, Tlahui either attracted key indigenous institutions or created them. Tama’s ethnopolitical trajectory in terms of Ayuujk empowerment, on the other hand, is not perceived as straightforward as Tlahui’s despite the fact that Tama has often assumed a more militant position toward the state and federal government. With regard to Ayuujk cultural assets such as the mother tongue, Tama has pursued a more ambivalent stance, as is apparent in its education policy.15 Among the ethnopolitical organizations with regional coverage set up by the people of Tlahui are the Committee of Defense and Development of Mixe Natural and Human Resources (CODREMI), which was active from 1979 until 1984, and Services to the Mixe People (SER), founded in 1988. Both organizations based the assertion of their rights to control local resources, such as coffee cultivation and mining, on Ayuujk ethnicity. With their demands they opposed structures of caciquismo and

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clientelism in the Mixe region, which was supported by the then leading PRI party and government. New at the time was their political use of modern mass media like serigraphy, painting, megaphones and radio transmissions, and later video and television, all of which aimed at strengthening the community by supporting the Ayuujk language and culture.16 For this purpose a ‘national’ Ayuujk symbolism was created. CODREMI had the walls of the municipal building in Tlahui decorated with a key symbol of the Ayuujk ja’ay: Konk ey hatched from an egg (Barabas and Bartolomé 1984: 74–75; Contreras Pastrana 2014: 42–43). Today this iconography thrives; it can be seen on the Ayuujk flag which flies throughout the region. Although neighboring villages like Tama remain disgruntled because they were not asked to participate in the original process of the flag’s design, they too have adopted it. Tlahui also created an Ayuujk national anthem, which they disseminated through their radio station. It is sung in other Ayuujk villages at school celebrations and athletic events. Today ethnopolitical activists in Tlahui and Tama regularly collaborate in view of common interests and demands toward the state, thereby overcoming the deep-seated differences that emerged in agrarian disputes in the 1990s.17 Radio Jënpoj, which first saw the light of day in August 2001, is yet another milestone in the process of disseminating Ayuujk ethnic politics beyond the village. When representatives of Mexico’s community media negotiated a location for the Media Summit, Tlahui was selected because of the pioneer character of its communal radio station. Fellow competitor XECTZ, The Voice of the Sierra Norte (La Voz de la Sierra Norte), located in Cuetzalan, Puebla, and founded by INI in 1994, was seen as too dependent on the Mexican government. Radio Jënpoj plays a major role in preserving and spreading the Ayuujk language, and creating a regional identity that “was non-existent a few years earlier,” as María Luisa Acevedo Conde (2012: 39) rightly remarks. As already described in chapter 1, this popular radio station currently broadcasts in both Ayuujk and Spanish in a region that extends well beyond the nineteen municipalities (municipios) bundled in the Distrito Mixe and encompasses many neighboring Zapotec villages. It has operated since 2004 with a government license, which was extended for ten years in 2014. The eventful history of Radio Jënpoj will be discussed briefly at this point to illustrate, on the one hand, the culturally heterogeneous composition of the actor groups involved in indigenous media. On the other hand it will also serve as an example of the constant threat of state force or co-optation that community-run media suffer, which in turn becomes a source of conflict and division among activists. In its early stage nonindigenous colaboradores or advocates were decisive, but the cooperation

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established has meanwhile been eclipsed by scholarship, perhaps because Radio Jënpoj fails to fit the ideal of a “flawless” communal resumé, according to which this medium should have been exclusively founded by members of the indigenous community themselves.18 The stories told by radio pioneers of the time, among them some of today’s “media dissidents,” reveal that in reality Radio Jënpoj had to work stepby-step to overcome village resistance and make progress in creating a radio station that villagers saw as representing the Tlahui community.19 Today it enjoys wide—albeit not unchallenged—acceptance in Tlahui and throughout the Mixe region. The crises that accompanied this process are reminiscent of those of TV Tamix, the community television channel in Tama (see chapter 4). Initially, the radio team consisted of a group of ethnically heterogeneous young people, not all of them locals: people from Tlahui who had studied in Oaxaca City, for example at the Ricardo Flores Magón High School, were organized and politicized in CAE-K (Centro de Apoyo al Estudiante Kutääy) and formed an alliance with radical left-wing nonindigenous students at UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) during their strike in 1999. The latter had the technical know-how and experience to operate a “pirate” radio station.20 For these young people it was all about “adapting outside technology to community life against the backdrop of a rapidly changing global society and recognizing that communication means are indispensable, because their influence on the social, political, and cultural orientation of our societies is significant and growing.”21 The student station adopted a left-wing, socialist path and, in addition to harsh criticism of the Mexican government and the Catholic Church, formulated demands for local autonomous media, at first without basing these demands on cultural or ethnic principles. Thus the initial impetus for Jënpoj did not arise exclusively from the heart of the village and found little resonance there in the beginning. The youth movement that sustained it sought empowerment via radio within the village and its actions could therefore also be read as criticism of the local cargo system of governance, which was based on the principle of seniority. In 2002, less than a year after the launch of Radio Jënpoj, the Mexican military and the Ministry of Communications and Transport intervened against this militant station. They removed the students from their headquarters and seized their operating equipment. My interlocutors saw this as a turning point. The violent government intervention was unanimously criticized and ultimately persuaded the inhabitants of Tlahui to identify with “its” radio station. Following a debate at the General Assembly, the station re-opened on a new basis, focusing on the needs and desires of the village.

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At the same time, a number of founding members left Jënpoj, unwilling to give up their uncompromising stance. These “media dissidents” still maintain that ever since 2002 and the ministry’s intervention, Radio Jënpoj has conformed to Mexican government policy and has lost its original essence of “true” communitarianism. The dissident group has serious reservations about the radio’s reorganization and perceives its departure from the earlier radical position as tantamount to a betrayal of the ideals that inspired the founding of the radio in the first place. The diversity of political attitudes in Tlahui itself has led mediamakers critical of Radio Jënpoj to engage in projects of their own. They have developed alternative media initiatives, striving to becoming economically independent and thereby more communitarian. Others who do not take umbrage at Radio Jënpoj have likewise pursued their own approach to village media, such as the Internet radio station Yin Et Radio, which also operates on a volunteer basis in Tlahui.22 The media dissidents’ condemnation targets the threat posed by legalization, since licensed radio stations are forced to broadcast spots promoting party election campaigns.23 Their disgruntlement also refers to the “monopoly position” of the three Vásquez brothers, Sócrates, Braulio, and Rigoberto, who undoubtedly play a significant role in the local ethnopolitical scene and beyond. Their father, Joel Vásquez, was a founding member (along with Floriberto Díaz) of CODREMI and SER, and is still a leading figure in Tlahui today. The reproach is reminiscent of complaints in the year 2000 targeting the monopoly position of the Rojas family in the context of TV Tamix in Tama. Sócrates Vásquez has been the director of Radio Jënpoj for years and since 2011 Mexican representative of the World Association of Communitarian Radios (AMARC); Braulio was a key organizer of the Media Summit and is currently president of CNCI; and Rigoberto is the head of the intercultural university UNICEM, founded in Tlahui in 2012. On their own initiative in the years prior to the Media Summit (2010 and 2011), the comunicadores Hermenegildo and Genaro Rojas set about forming a regional association of Ayuujk mediamakers. They maintained that successful portrayal of the Ayuujk people’s interests at the Media Summit called for greater regional solidarity among village mediamakers. At their invitation well-known comunicadores from five towns, including Tlahui, met regularly for months and organized joint workshops.24 Their idea was to unite the abundance of media projects in the Mixe region under one ethnically defined roof entitled CAYUUK (Cultural Communitarian Ayuuk Committee). In retrospect, however, Hermenegildo, the initiator of the project, sees this with skepticism; he claims that the process of constituting CAYUUK showed that genuine

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collaboration in the Mixe region never developed. Several co-organizers were frequently absent from meetings. As comunicadores they failed to mobilize supporters and activists; unlike municipal officials they lacked the authority to summon (convocar) villagers to their meetings. In this sense they were already aware of poor regional cooperation in the period leading up to the Media Summit.25 Around the same time, the Vásquez brothers from Tlahui networked successfully at the Pan-American level, for example, with indigenous representatives of the Abya Yala summits. As representatives of Radio Jënpoj, a community radio station whose popularity extended beyond its local audience, they had been invited to the first Media Summit in Colombia in 2010. These examples indicate that mediamakers from both villages were involved in several regional, national, and international networks. At the same time, they were not visible as a regional ethnic-based entity, because they had failed to unite under the aegis of an umbrella association. This rivalry notwithstanding, they continued to interact frequently, for instance when they met to negotiate regional collaboration prior to the Media Summit. Village mediamakers agree on the central importance of communitarianism but not on the practices needed to achieve it. Existing media projects were either seen as complying with democratic “grassrootedness” and autonomy or as far too close to the government and dependent on it. Grassroots democracy, seen for the most part as originating from village life and rooted in the community, was juxtaposed with national policy, which is perceived as corrupt and shaped by the PRI party (compare Recondo 2007: 119). Since they basically agree on these values, mediamakers from Tama and Tlahui continued to meet despite their differences. They exchanged views and argued mostly outside the Pan-American media space. In fact, in view of the Media Summit they often supported each other.

A Storm over Open Letters, News Agencies, Facebook, and the Question of Ethnicity and Political Goals Shortly before the Media Summit began in the valley of Santa Ana and indigenous representatives began pouring out of the buses, the heterogeneity of potential participants and their diverging political attitudes suddenly became very real. In late August 2013, a debate ignited in open letters, news agencies, and on Facebook with the revelation that this massive event would be financed by the Ministry of Communications and Transport. Moreover, Enrique Peña Nieto, the controversial

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president of Mexico, had been invited to the inauguration. This caused the medios comunitarios sphere throughout Latin America to divide into two camps. At the same time, the debate itself demonstrated that although the actors concerned were scattered geographically they relied on self-determined media practices and structures to exchange ideas on the orientation of the Summit within a Pan-American media space. Prior to analyzing this debate and the cultural and political heterogeneity of the actors involved, several members of the Media Summit Organizing Committee (Comité Organizador) will be described, since they met regularly beforehand to define concrete terms of the Summit’s organization: Ojo de Agua Comunicación, A.C.: Apart from the influence of Italian-Canadian documentary filmmaker Guillermo Monteforte, this nonprofit organization founded in 1998 was primarily shaped by indigenous mediamakers like Juan José García and Clara Morales, who come from the Zapotec villages of Guelatao and Tuxtepec, and Sergio Julián Caballero from the Mixtec community of San Antonio Huitepec. Ojo de Agua Comunicación has excellent network links to indigenous and nonindigenous media projects, beginning with the Canadian television channel Isuma, extending to the Cuba Media Project of the Americas Media Initiative, and finally, to the umbrella organization CLACPI. It concentrates, on the one hand, on support for the founding and development of communitarian radio stations and offers training in corresponding workshops. As a second priority it functions as a film production company and takes assignments from government institutions or designs its own projects.26 Mixtec Franco Gabriel Hernández, who was acting president of the National Oversight Commission of the National Congress of Indigenous Communication (Comisión Nacional de Seguimiento of the CNCI),27 president of the International Agency of the Indigenous Press (AIPIN),28 and General Coordinator of the Media Summit 2013. Franco Gabriel looks back on a long career in the indigenous movement. He is a founding member and former president of the National Alliance of Indigenous Bilingual Professionals (ANPIBAC), which along with the National Council of Indigenous Peoples (CNPI) was the first nationwide indigenous organization in Mexico, founded in 1977. A university professor, Franco Gabriel is the current director of Institute for Research in the Humanities of UABJO. Jaime Martínez Luna from Guelatao is a founding father of the concept of comunalidad and a key figure in Oaxacan indigenous movements. He became active in the early 1980s in the Organization in Defense of the Natural Resources and Social Development of the Sierra de Júarez,

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A.C. (Odrenasji). He also advanced communitarian radio, and television in Guelatao; later these projects broke away from INI and were organized as an NGO under the name Fundación Comunalidad, A.C. (see also L. Smith 2005: 124–33; Wortham 2013: 97–105). Braulio Vásquez García, born in 1978, belongs to the younger generation of indigenous activists from Tlahui. He was one of the founders of the Tlahui student movement in Oaxaca City, CAE-K. A lawyer, he is currently the legal adviser of Radio Jënpoj and acted as General Coordinator of the Media Summit. In 2013 he was elected president of the CNCI. As emerged from the battle of minds that followed, which was confirmed to me by insiders, internal friction had been simmering for months within this Summit organizing group. The dispute was primarily triggered by questions of organizational structure and the sources of funding for the mass event. Two ideas were circulated. The first advocated down-to-earth communitarian organization in the style of Ayuujk fiestas, that is, based on the voluntary work of the local comuneros/as, which implies their involvement and identification with the cause. The second model foresaw “professional” mass event organization in the sense of reliance on outside catering and transport, which would require substantial funding. In particular Ojo de Agua Comunicación had constantly argued for diversified funding sources to finance the event to avoid reliance on public funding from the Mexican government, which they consider detrimental to the independence of the indigenous cause. Nevertheless, obtaining a mix of funds deemed legitimate was no easy task because of the financial crisis in the European Union, particularly in Spain. This meant that grants from the Fondo Indígena, which had always supported the Abya Yala summits with large sums of money, would now be more modest. Ayuujk members of the Organizing Committee such as Braulio Vázquez, however, also set their hopes on the communal way of organizing mass events, which does not require large outside investment. But Franco Gabriel was clearly more interested in the second model and keen on raising a sum of twenty-two million pesos (1.700.000 US dollars in 2013) for the Media Summit. As my informed interlocutors in Tama already told me in early August 2013, it was Franco Gabriel who had asked the Ministry of Communications and Transport, of all possible entities, for the money. This was the same ministry that in 2002 had ruthlessly crushed Radio Jënpoj, at that time a so-called pirate station. According to insider gossip, the money for the Summit had, in fact, been approved on the condition that Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto was given a place of honor. Rumors to this effect, which circulated in Tama, were confirmed when Genaro Rojas discovered a letter dated 28 August on the Ojo de

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Agua Comunicación website.29 Genaro was a regular Internet user at his cousin’s cyber in Tama’s “media street” (in 2013 sophisticated cell phones and flat rates were not yet accessible). The letter had been posted with the headline: “Ojo de Agua Comunicación breaks with the Second Summit” (Ojo de Agua Comunicación se desliga de la II Cumbre). Genaro and others immediately uploaded it to their Facebook page without further comment. The letter explained in two and a half pages why the organization had dissociated itself from the Media Summit. It argued that the coordination (that is, Franco Gabriel) had “systematically ignored our proposals, ideas, and concerns.”30 Despite the fact that Ojo de Agua had established a state committee (Comité Estatal), which had been preparing workshops for the summit, Franco Gabriel ignored its activities. He instead applied for funds from the Ministry of Communications and Transport through AIPIN without consulting the members of the Organizing Committee. He then issued an invitation to the Mexican president, as stated in the open letter from Ojo de Agua Comunicación: Our assessment of these facts is that, on top of creating a vertical, authoritarian and inefficient structure to organize the Summit, there is a severe lack of coherence and sensitivity, of openness and information on the part of those with a mandate to coordinate the event. The lack of willingness to share and work collectively—two principles of communitarian life in Oaxaca—prevents the Summit from becoming a fiesta for all of us and has led the organizers to strip away its original meaning.31

A few days later, on 3 September, the CNCI General Coordinator (that is, Franco Gabriel) and on 4 September “The Commission of Pursuit of the CNCI” (probably also Franco Gabriel) responded with letters that specifically addressed the issue of compromising financial sources. One of these letters refers for the first time to the financial details of the Summit, justifying the decision with the words: One of the important strategies we implemented was to apply for the public resources we are entitled to from the Mexican government by law without compromising the autonomous decision-making and ideas of this Summit or the right to the self-determination of our peoples. Our efforts were successful in that the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues recommended that Mexico support the Second Continental Summit and just recently the funding has come through. The Ministry of Finance has agreed to release the funds, thanks to our applications to the Ministry of Communication and Transport. These public resources will be managed directly by the National Commission of Development of

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the Indigenous Peoples (CDI) and are destined for budget activities presented by the National Congress of Indigenous Communication (CNCI). In no case will these resources be administered by the National Oversight Commission.32

The following days and weeks bore witness to the domino effect predicted by Hermenegildo in one of our talks. Once Ojo de Agua Comunicación had taken the step to boycott the Media Summit, other organizations followed suit: Proyecto Videoastas Indígenas de la Frontera Sur (Chiapas, Mexico), Tejido de Comunicación de la Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca (ACIN) (Colombia), Coordinación y Convergencia Nacional Maya Waqib’ Kej (part of the promotion group of the Second Media Summit, Guatemala), and Red Tz’ikin (Guatemala). In public statements on their websites, they signified solidarity with Ojo de Agua Comunicación. On 12 September, Franco Gabriel wrote a six-page open letter outlining his personal view of the conflict and the proceedings surrounding the organization of the Summit. The news agency Servindi advanced its position on the dispute for the first time by describing Gabriel’s email as “verbose and excessive” (extenso y farragoso mensaje de correo). According to its analysis “although Franco Gabriel … attempted to deny he had invited President Peña Nieto to launch the event, his letter confirms that he did so personally, because no one else had signed the invitation [to Peña Nieto].”33 In the letter, Franco Gabriel described the crucial meeting of the Organizing Committee in August and the dispute concerning the leadership structure of the Media Summit. He claimed that Ojo de Agua Comunicación, led by Juan Julián Caballero with Guillermo Monteforte as elder statesman, had criticized the vertical structure in place and tried to remove him as General Coordinator, suggesting a new organizational structure. Present at this eventful meeting were “Mr. Monteforte, compañero Melquiades [Rosas] from Radio N’andia, compañero Rigoberto [Vásquez] from UNICEM, Davíd [Pacheco Vásquez] from Instituto Superior Intercultural Ayuuk and comrade Braulio [Vásquez].”34 All of them had listed numerous complaints and criticized in particular the lack of transparency about funds earmarked for the major event. At this point Franco Gabriel stressed the ethnic antagonism between the adversaries: As an indigenous person, for as long as I can remember, I have identified with political struggle. I have always opposed any form of domination, including cultural domination as a colonial practice. I have been involved in the struggle for our rights as indigenous peoples since 1976 and my

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endeavor to be free has not diminished. I undoubtedly have many shortcomings, but I have learned to listen and learn from everything that is part of our common cause and the purpose of our struggle; nevertheless, I have never allowed my thinking to be swayed or my decisions altered by others outside the collectives and organizations that I come from.35

On 18 September, Gustavo Estevez and Arturo Guerrera from Unitierra, an alternative center for higher education in Oaxaca City with a postdevelopmental ideology, replied to this letter. One of the founders of “University of the Earth,” Gustavo Estevez is a nonindigenous ally and internationally renowned champion of indigenous concerns: It seems to us that the Ojo de Agua Comunicación letter from 28 August was sufficiently clear and based on the facts concerning the fundamental disagreements we had with Prof. Franco Gabriel and the International Agency of the Indigenous Press (AIPIN), members of the National Oversight Commission … from which we now dissociate ourselves.36

In their letter they criticized the invitation to the Mexican president and accused Franco Gabriel: We categorically condemn the racist attack on our friends in Ojo de Agua Comunicación and particularly Guillermo Monteforte. … We have agreed and disagreed with Guillermo on different occasions in the course of almost two decades. However, we cannot fail to praise his work and commitment to the comunicadores, collectives, and communities of Oaxaca and other states. In the communal Oaxacan world that we know, it is concrete participation in the collective that defines membership, not place of origin.37

It should be added here that other leading indigenous appointees at the Media Summit, such as Vicente Otero (Coordinador de Comunicación y Relacionamiento Externo del CRIC), adopted Franco Gabriel’s argument that it was mostly the nonindigenous mediamakers who had tried to push their own ideas in an allegedly colonialist manner. Suddenly in the midst of this debate throughout the hemisphere on ethnic identity and participation in a de facto ethnically heterogeneous “indigenous” media community, a new source of division emerged: disagreement at the village level in Tlahui. Media dissidents stepped in with an “explanatory letter” (carta aclaratoria) and signed it “Citizens of Santa María Tlahuitoltepec” (Ciudadanos(as) de Santa María Tlahuitoltepec), without disclosing their identities. At the same time, by using the

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Ayuujk flag in the letterhead they claimed to represent the wider community. Referring to the serious dispute over Tlahui’s internal media hierarchies, they complained about “groups of people who no longer identify with the essence and principles of community life but exploit it in discourses and proposals to benefit themselves and their family.”38 Here they alluded to the origins of Radio Jënpoj, which in their view had once been a genuine community organization: It’s true, Radio Jënpoj is in the community, but this radio station would not exist without the collective initiative of those young people in 2001 who decided to use technology to convey their language, culture, music and concerns through radio. At that time the radio was indeed exclusively communitarian, but in 2004 when the federal government granted a broadcasting license through the Ministry of Communication and Transport (SCT), it began to lose its communitarian essence, something that many young members of this initiative were against as it implied interference with program content. Some left the project because they no longer had the freedom to continue doing communal radio the way they did originally. As predicted, the radio ultimately ended up in the hands of a few who forgot the communitarian principle and turned the station into an “enterprise” with programs that resemble commercial radio stations; hardly any time is devoted to our culture and language. This small group of people adopted the name “Jënpoj Collective” in order to position themselves and receive outside funding; they have exploited Radio Jënpoj in the interests of profit.39

At this juncture the diverging positions of “the indigenous peoples,” otherwise presented as homogenous and united, took center stage, both at the local and the Pan-American levels. Everyone was talking about the letter from the media dissidents. At the same time, these village actors refrained from criticizing the Summit in the Pan-American media space of Facebook, websites, and open letters. They were concerned that further public criticism could damage the Media Summit and its function as a common platform to articulate demands for self-determined media. Those in favor as well as those against the Summit continued their discussions in private. In the end, the perception prevailed that the event was vital to the Ayuujk cause and should therefore take place. For this reason participants tended to avoid giving too strong an impression of disunity among indigenous mediamakers. On 23 September, however, the disagreements within the field of indigenous media became a topic of discussion in the Pan-American media space. The news agency Servindi reported in detail on the dispute.

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Letters from organizations that either agreed or disagreed about holding the Summit were made available on its website. Public statements by the organizers in Tlahui began to address the internal division. In his function as head of Radio Jënpoj and director of AMARC México, Sócrates Vásquez declared in a press release on the AMARC website on 30 September: We recognize that the representativeness of aboriginal peoples (pueblos originarios) can be controversial, because indigenous peoples, as all societies, are inherently diverse and complex, with a variety of attitudes and interests … The organization of global or continental events requires tolerance, respect and recognition of this diversity and complexity. Similar to other summits, the path in the case of Tlahuitoltepec has not been without its contradictions, difficulties, and differences, some of them fundamental.40

The debate and pending boycott by a large number of indigenous media organizations called for a change of course. Sócrates Vásquez demanded this in the name of AMARC México: Invitations to government officials of Mexico and Guatemala should be withdrawn, because they contradict the principles of the Summit. We call on those who have assumed organization of the event … to abstain from extending such invitations to officials and taking decisions that could damage the fraternity that should exist between the peoples and their organizations. … Organizations that have withdrawn should therefore reconsider their participation so that broad participation can immediately be resumed in order to debate decision-making processes in collective events, such as the one with which we are currently concerned. The organizational tasks of the Summit should be assumed on condition of autonomy and transparency.41

In the course of the Internet debate conducted on the eve of the event via open letters, news agencies, and Facebook, dissatisfied organizations ultimately boycotted the Summit. The Media Summit’s normative equation of indigenous media with community media led to a major contradiction between its alleged financial independence from and de facto financial dependence on the Mexican state. The main actors themselves were much commented on and put under scrutiny in Tama. Insiders criticized Franco Gabriel and his allies as typical indígenas profesionales, that is, as indigenous persons who have crossed the line in aspiring to a government position and who are therefore much more involved in

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Mexican party politics and its clientelistic structures than in communal organizational forms according to the comunalidad ideal. They also characterized them as of doble filo, two-sided, that is, proclaiming to support the indigenous cause, but not actually pursuing it, and as lobos (wolves), influential politicians ready to prey at any time. The discord manifested in social media, however, had the effect of forcing the Media Summit to assume a critical position toward the state. As a result of the boycott, the organizations that remained saw themselves obliged—at least in public—to distance themselves from the government bodies financing the Pan-American event. National institutions sent representatives to the inauguration in Tlahui who abstained from delivering words of welcome or speeches in order to avoid further tension and differences of opinion.

Media Spaces at the Outcome of the Summit as a Major Face-to-Face Event To what extent did particular actor groups at the Summit succeed in creating new media spaces in personal encounters and exchanges in the sense of broadening geographical reach as well as practices and imaginations? From a media anthropological perspective and based on ethnographic research, John Postill (2011) analyzed the sociality of a similar face-to-face event likewise organized by a committee. In a Malayan case study he highlights the use of the public rhetoric of community to call on “the involvement of the community as a whole” (Postill 2011: 103). The actors involved, however, were in the main political appointees, who discussed predefined agendas in meeting rooms restricted to members and their guests. Participants wondered why they had gone to so much trouble to travel to the event location given the narrow scope of their opportunities to influence the agenda. This next section also examines media spaces whose potential for opening new dimensions appears extremely limited at first. For this purpose the course of the Media Summit will be divided into several stages: (1) the inaugural meeting on 7 October; (2) workshops and interaction during the week, and (3) announcement of the Summit results and media dissident activities on the highly symbolic date of 12 October. Despite all the heated debates, this mass event hosting up to a thousand attendees took place more or less smoothly beginning with the inauguration on 7 October.42 Comunicadores from sixteen countries of the Americas from Canada to Chile took part, as did supportive nonindigenous collaborators and observers from Australia, Belgium, Ger-

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many, France, Italy, and Switzerland.43 Some of the mediamakers who boycotted the event were from Tama and other Ayuujk villages, a number of whom were close to Ojo de Agua Comunicación. A number of international guests, whose travel expenses had been approved by the CDI, albeit very late, failed to appear. Furthermore, photographers and filmmakers who mostly worked in commercial media felt either ignored or left out. Although many local mediamakers move easily between the communal and commercial domains, the rhetoric of the organizers with respect to profit-oriented media businesses deterred them from identifying with the alliance of comunicadores. The vast white tent where the plenary sessions were held was rarely filled to more than a third. As a result of the boycott, the opinions and beliefs expressed by the indigenous representatives who did participate were more homogeneous than might otherwise be expected. The inaugural event on 7 October combined discourses on the political agenda of the Summit program with impressive cultural and religious performances of indigenous media work. But now to the political discourses: a core group of indigenous appointees,44 who had attended the first Media Summit in Cauca in 2010, appealed for more unity against the backdrop of dissent. At the same time, they set a clear agenda for the Summit: the aim was to formulate and adopt resolutions (compromisos) to be presented as demands to the United Nations, if possible at the first UN World Conference of Indigenous Peoples to be held in New York in September 2014. Juan Carlos Morales, a representative of the Brunca indigenous people of Costa Rica and active for years as Latin America’s delegate to the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), argued along these lines.45 Jose Vicente Otero, the communication coordinator of Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca (CRIC),46 likewise pointed out that it was vital first of all to ensure that indigenous mediamaker positions were incorporated in this UN world conference on indigenous peoples. Apart from this actor group of indigenous intellectuals professionally engaged in international political organizations, Salomón Nahmad Sittón, as a key figure in anthropological research on and advocacy for the Ayuujk, opened the conference. He spoke of the significance of indigenous media, which he characterized as creating communication between Self and Other rather than geared toward profit. It was the responsibility of government at all levels to ensure that indigenous people were guaranteed the right to own and operate means of communication in accordance with legal regulations.47 The leftist PRD federal deputy (diputada federal), Purificación Carpinteyro, was the only person to represent Mexican party politics. In her speech she mentioned one of the key demands of indigenous media: guaran-

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teed access to broadcast frequencies free of charge. She saw the Media Summit as being in a position to sensitize the Mexican legislative and executive powers to these demands, which should be integrated into Mexico’s telecommunication reform legislation.48 As the opening speakers, they all had a prominent position at the Summit. Moreover, their role as pacemakers was reinforced by media coverage that turned the Summit itself into a mediatized event. Representatives of indigenous and/or community-run radio and television stations not only came to Santa Ana as participants and voiced their political opinions, but also simultaneously reported on the event onsite. Approximately two hundred radio broadcasters, photographers, and filmmakers recorded and commented on the speeches. From their press room, they sent Internet reports to the editorial staff at Abya Yala Internacional, Radio Lachiwana in Cochabamba, Emisora Comunitaria Chaski Radio in Ayacucho, and Wambra Radio in Quito, just to name a few. One of the influential mediamakers who attended was Susana Pacara, a Quechua activist and radio broadcaster from Bolivia. At the inaugural ceremony she was seated onstage at the podium in the Summit tent, one of twelve international representatives. Pacara wore Quechuan garb and carried a Wiphala or rainbow flag.49 Since 1993 she has been involved in the peasant organization Federación Única de Campesinos de Cochabamba and the women’s organization Federación Departamental de Mujeres Bartolina Sisa de Cochabamba in the struggle against the oppression of the campesinos/as, indigenous peoples, and women at the hands of the neoliberal state regime. Along with other activists she launched Radio Lachiwana and mastered the art of radio broadcasting “neither at universities nor workshops but as part of our struggle.”50 In the course of the Media Summit this experienced grassroots activist bridged the gap between the abstract discourse of professional indigenous politicians and her own biography of political struggle by constantly referring to local concerns. Within the workshop framework Susana Pacara never tired of emphasizing the close relationship between political activism, such as in her case the defense of water resources in Cochabamba, and media work.51 As a comunicadora she also learned to use her mother tongue in mass communication so as to reflect and promote her own cultural knowledge and ideas. Apart from these international guests, leading officials from Tlahui were also in attendance and as hosts sat in a row on the podium at the front of the tent. The municipal president, Hermenegildo Hernández Cortés, made welcoming remarks in their name. The political speeches were embedded in cultural performances and spiritual acts. This part of the program highlighted interculturally

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“readable” performances and acts from the Pan-American indigenous movement, which have become a sort of canon in the course of various Summit events (see also Kummels 2008). The design in 2013, however, contributed to the folklorization of indigenous peoples. Local and international representatives sat on the podium in front of a screen with six oversized photographic portraits of indigenous people (five men and one woman), all wearing traditional indigenous attire. The name of the Summit appeared on the screen, but in contrast to similar events, emblems of the government ministries SCT and CDI that sponsored the Summit were nowhere to be seen. The aesthetic quality of the portraits reminded me of the typical exoticizing photos of indigenous people found, for example, in National Geographic; the images had been chosen by the CDI. The cultural program, on the other hand, was compiled and organized by Timio (Eutimio Antúnez Calderón, Ayuujk) from Tama and Claudia Barajas (Mazahua), including the performances at the opening ceremony. A team of three from the cultural-philosophical movement around the Maya priest Luis Nah from Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, opened the Media Summit with incense offerings and the blowing of conch shells in the Aztec dance style.52 In addition, the local dance group of the CECAM, Konk ëy Tajëëw, performed the emblematic Ayuujk dance to the sound of Sones y Jarabes Mixes while one of its members carried out an offering of chicken’s blood to Mother Earth. The use of the traditional media of dance and music and the emphasis on their place within local religion at the inaugural event conveyed the broad media concept on which the comunicador function is based: the term comunicador is preferred to radio broadcaster or filmmaker because it highlights the historical depth, traceable to precolonial times, of the indigenous use of media for the social benefit of the community (Servindi 2008: 11–12). Indigenous media were also showcased in a modern mass communication form at a covered exhibition area a few hundred meters from the white tent, the Culture Pavillion. Objects and art by the indigenous peoples of the Americas were presented here in the style of a museum, handicrafts were sold at the tianguis marketplace, an indigenous cinema program was screened, and work by three young Mexican photographers, including Conrado Pérez Rosas from Tama, was exhibited.53 The ten photographs Conra chose for this exhibition included a picture of maize kernels being tossed from a basket taken against the light, the men engaging in communal tequio work, and a portrait of Carlos Pérez Rojas shooting a scene of his film Barras de Color in 2013. Many visitors stopped and commented positively on this choice of photographs, seeing an expression of contemporaneity in the portrayal of these aspects

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of current indigenous life—whereas outsiders are often oblivious of certain aspects, such as indigenous use of technology, in terms of the tradition versus modernity dichotomy. Conra was one of the few mediamakers from Tama at the Media Summit. He complained about the top-down structure of the event, which in his view prevented the equal participation common at fiestas in any Ayuujk village. On the other hand, he praised the exchange between indigenous artists and mediamakers and felt encouraged to continue, like them, in his pursuit of a culturally independent path of photography. And now to the second stage of the Summit: workshops and interaction during the week. The opening speeches made it clear that the workshops served first and foremost to draw up resolutions (compromisos) to be presented subsequently to the UN as demands. As I learned from conversations, most participants (including myself) had no idea that the UN planned to hold the first world conference on indigenous peoples in 2014. The UN had little bearing on their daily media routine. At the same time, many saw the advantage of this preordained strategy as a tool to leverage greater international pressure, even if it had been imposed by the full-time indigenous appointees; besides, most were familiar with the work of the UN on indigenous rights and approved of the Convention 169 adopted by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 1989. Consequently, despite the initial lack of information, a great number of attendees agreed with the line of action decided by the core group of indigenous appointees at the top. The procedure of meeting in workshops was adopted unanimously in a plenary session and participants had the choice of attending one of six workshops on the following topics: (1) general principles of indigenous communication, (2) indigenous communication in defense of the land and communal goods of indigenous peoples, (3) legislation on media and the shaping of communication policies, (4) design of a continental plan for comprehensive training in communication (itinerant or mobile school for communication), (5) women in indigenous communication, and (6) strategies to link indigenous communication throughout the continent to the struggle and good life of indigenous peoples.54 A brief outline of the fourth topic will illustrate the dynamics of the individual workshops and their findings. Among those who conceptualized the ideal profile of a comunicador indígena were Nixon Yatacué, a Nasa indigene and CRIC representative, and the nonindigenous allies Juan Mario Pérez from Programa Universitario Multicultural at the UNAM, and José Agurto from the news agency Servindi. During the workshop they focused on the nature of this profession and the type of education to be provided in a proposed training program that would

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extend throughout the Americas, called the “Itinerant Continental School for Indigenous Communication.” One of the final statements formulated by this team and other participants contained the demand that: “The training of indigenous comunicadores must go from the rural to the urban and vice versa, and it must work on topics that enable the migrant population to still feel they are an indigenous community regardless of where they are.”55 The workshop team stressed a concept of indigeneity that takes the social reality of geographic mobility and urban living spaces into account and builds upon media practices such as the training of comunicadores in an itinerant school. After the six workshops completed their final statements, the total twenty-nine resolutions were announced in the early evening of 12 October, a significant holiday in the Americas.56 Similar to previous days, the statements were broadcast live on Radio Jënpoj and published throughout Latin America on the usual websites. Those who had boycotted the Media Summit also kept themselves informed. For the most part, the ten manuscript pages of the closing statement at the Second Media Summit gave the impression that indigenous peoples throughout the Americas are organized in grassroots communities (comunidades de base) and represented by traditional officials. The statement first explained the planned constitution of “alternative systems of communication” with the “autonomy of indigenous communication” and commitment to “the ancestral rights of indigenous peoples, such as their struggle for their land and territory, which includes the sacred underground, earth, and airspace as conceptualized in our cosmovisions. Based on these roots it is proposed that the GOOD LIVING (BUEN VIVIR) be constructed.” One of the demands directed at Latin American state governments highlighted the need to “[r]ecognize our regional autonomy, including the electromagnetic spectrum as a common good, the distribution of which should be a third (33 percent) of the national radio spectrum in all countries. Access to broadcast frequencies should also be secured in the course of digital transition.”57 This last demand found the greatest echo among the people I spoke to about the closing statement. It was the most tangible in its reference to the constraints indigenous mediamakers encounter in daily life. Because of the illegalization of independent media work they experience vulnerability in multiple ways, including personal insecurity due to the prosecution of political media work, anxiety about investing in equipment that might be confiscated, funding challenges, and limited possibilities to reach a large audience. News agencies reported extensively on this closing statement and did not withhold information on the split within the movement. As a result, soon after the Summit Franco Gabriel was voted out of office

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as coordinator of the CNCI and Braulio Vásquez from Tlahui elected his successor. Beyond the official Summit program, some Ayuujk mediamakers used the mass event to manifest their dissent. On the decisive evening of 12 October, the Cine Club Mixe Et ääw premiered the documentary Ayo’on Xaamkëjxp (Natural Disaster in Tlahuitoltepec). As briefly mentioned in chapter 1, these film activists from Tlahui regularly organize free screenings in the rural hamlets of the village. Mediamakers, who founded Radio Jënpoj in 2001 but distanced themselves from the station when it received government permission to broadcast, are now active in Et ääw.58 Et ääw members Damián Martínez and Estela González, who studied in Mexico City, had worked with the well-known filmmaker Alberto Cortés on a twenty-five-minute documentary about the catastrophe that led to the disastrous landslide in Tlahui in 2010.59 The movie screening took place in the evening after sunset in Tlahui’s main square. The choice of location and time made it an alternative to the Media Summit. The screening primarily targeted village inhabitants who had been the topic of the final statements of the Media Summit made by the indigenous appointees, intellectuals, and mediamakers who were merely in Tlahui for the Summit; villagers themselves had not participated in their formulation. Indeed, this alternative event succeeded in gaining considerable attention. Not only did two hundred people from Tlahui gather at the screening but also a number of Summit participants, who were curious about the film and the local tragedy it dealt with. The disaster that struck Tlahui during the night of 28 September 2010 and claimed the lives of eleven people from the El Calvario neighborhood still deeply affects community members, something I personally witnessed at this event. Village videographers, including Damián and Godofredo Martínez, had immediately filmed the impact of the landslide, which tore three houses down a mountain slope following massive rain: the villagers tried to rescue people from the buried houses. Hundreds had to flee their homes, made uninhabitable by cracks, and move to schools and tents. Support from Oaxaca’s state government notwithstanding, many of the inhabitants subsequently experienced a period of extreme insecurity. Government officials urged the complete resettlement of Tlahui, a proposal villagers successfully resisted. The film performance brought back these feelings. People in the audience, like my hostess Amada Jiménez Gómez, talked about this the next day and for the first time gave me an insight into the terrible suffering the disaster had caused.60 At this juncture, some answers to questions posed at the beginning are due: forms of sociality examined in the stages prior to and during

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the Media Summit show how actor networks and their respective modes of communication created new media spaces in the sense of a geographic broadening, as well as one of practices and imaginations. In the framework of the Internet debate conducted prior to the Summit via open letters, news analyses, and Facebook, the indigenous media sphere emerged as highly diverse, even though ethnic homogeneity is suggested by the labels “indigenous media” and “indigenous communication” used as political catch phrases. This was apparent in the concrete negotiations within the Summit’s Organizing Committee and the interventions of Ayuujk mediamakers outside the Committee with respect to the Summit’s organization and funding. The decisions that ultimately were taken contradict the organizers allegations of the Summit’s financial independence from the state. The dissenting media organizations had an overall impact on the Summit. On the one hand, those who dissented forced the remaining organizers to dissociate themselves (at least on the surface) from government bodies that sponsored the Pan-American event. On the other hand, some of the organizers reacted by drawing a rigid ethnic line. They characterized dissidents as nonindigenous and deprived them of the right to represent indigenous concerns. Tama and Tlahui as regional hubs of alternative media movements also adopted different positions during this time and competed with one another. Their mediamakers set different priorities in their efforts at networking. The outcome was that comunicadores from Tlahui occupied a more important position in the Pan-American context. With their interaction and regional cooperation, however, and their mutual reference to each other’s community-run media projects, mediamakers from both villages were largely responsible for drawing attention both nationally and internationally to the existence and influence of Ayuujk media spaces. During the Media Summit itself the committee sociality that set the agenda left little room for freedom of action (compare Postill 2011). The Summit adhered to this agenda, which was for the most part determined by a core group of indigenous appointees and political representatives. Despite this limitation, new media spaces opened even here. Actors used workshops and the cultural program to underscore indigeneity in novel ways. Professional indigenous politicians defined indigeneity, on the one hand, as based on grassroots communities (comunidades de base) represented by traditional officials. They conceptualized indigeneity as the original identity of native peoples who were colonized and exploited, and had lived on the same land from time immemorial. This has proven to be an effective tool for the leverage of cultural-specific citizenship rights vis-à-vis the state (Niezen 2003; Rappaport 2005: 36).

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In contrast to this concept, however, the art and photographic exhibitions of the cultural program as well as some of the final resolutions succeeded in emphasizing mobility, the diversity of ideas and practices, and the local-global linkages in ‘indigenous’ lives. ‘Indigenous’ communities and their heterogeneous mediamakers nevertheless share the experience of an illegalized media space with a wide spectrum of commercial businesses, community media, and other forms of alternative communication work. Multifaceted concepts of indigeneity and media placed this common ground and its shifting boundaries center stage at the Summit.

Notes 1. The Bachillerato Integral Comunitario Ayuujk Polivalente (BICAP), founded in 1996, offers professional agricultural training based on technology in line with communitarian principles. 2. In Spanish: II Cumbre Continental de Comunicación Indígena del Abya Yala. Abya Yala is a term in the Panamanian Kuna language for “land in its full maturity” that is now broadly used by the indigenous movements to refer to the American continent. 3. The International Oversight Commission of the Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of Abya Yala (Comisión Internacional de Seguimiento der Cumbre Continental de Comunicación Indígena del Abya Yala) integrated the following organizations: Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca, Colombia (CRIC); Congreso Nacional de Comunicación Indígena (CNCI), Mexico; Coordinadora Andina de Organizaciones Indígenas (CAOI); Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia (ONIC); Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE); Confederación de Pueblos de la Nacionalidad Kichwa del Ecuador (ECUARUNARI); Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana (CONFENIAE), Confederación de las Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Costa Ecuatoriana (CONAICE); Confederación Nacional de Comunidades afectadas por la Minería (CONACAMI), Peru, Cabildo de Guambia de la Nación Misak Wampia de Colombia. The Driving Group (Grupo Impulsor) of the Second Summit originally included the following organizations: Congreso Nacional de Comunicación Indígena (CNCI), Mexico; Coordinadora Andina de Organizaciones Indígenas (CAOI); Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca, Colombia (CRIC); Asociación de Medios de Comunicación Indígena de Colombia (AMCIC); Coordinadora Audiovisual Indígena Originaria de Bolivia (CAIB); Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Cine y Comunicación de los Pueblos Indígenas (CLACPI); Red de Comunicadores Mapuche Walmapu, Argentina and Chile; Convergencia Maya Waqib’ Kej de Guatemala; Centro de Formación y Realización Cinematográfica (CEFREC) of Bolivia; Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB); and Consejo Coordinador Nacional Indígena Salvadoreño (CCNIS). 4. Joanne Rappaport (2005: 55–56) explores the role of nonindigenous colaboradores in the indigenous movement taking the Colombian Consejo Regional

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5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

Indígena del Cauca (CRIC) as an example. The call for the Second Media Summit referred to these people as “nonindigenous mediamakers committed to indigenous communication” (comunicadores no indígenas comprometidos con la comunicación indígena). Laurel C. Smith (2010: 258) uses the terms scholarsfacilitators and advocates in the context of people involved in the Video Indígena circuit in Oaxaca. On Franco Gabriel Hernández’s role as an indigenous intellectual, among others as president of ANBIPAC, see Gutiérrez (1999: 127–32). The controversies surrounding him referred to ANBIPAC’s character as an organization exclusive of teaching professionals, the absence of a community base and its proximity to the government in the 1980s and 1990s, see Gunther Dietz (1996: 74–76). “identificado con las aspiraciones de los pueblos indígenas u originarios.” See http://servindi.org/nosotros. For estimates of Mexican migrants to the United States with an indigenous identity, see Gaspar Rivera-Salgado (2014a: 33–36). Hermenegildo and Genaro spoke on the topic of village archives and I gave a lecture about the local and transnational media fields of Tama. Teachers in particular have elaborated on the Ayuujk world view as cosmovisión, an ethnopolitical, scientific-based version of the Ayuujk religion, which they promote as an integral part of school instruction. Cosmovisión emphasizes public access to otherwise occult rituals in the interests of Ayuujk ethnopolitics (on the Pan-American indigenous movement and its interpretation of cosmovisión, see Kummels 2008). See http://servindi.org/actualidad/91812#more-91812 (accessed 28 August 2013). Interview with Hermenegildo and Genaro Rojas, Tamazulapam, 17 October 2013. At the same time the Salesians continued to proselytize, influencing the Ayuujk religion in the direction of Catholicism. The seminar took place in November 1983 in the Matagallina rancho of Ayutla. On CECAM, see Nahmad Sittón (2003: 390) and Filemón Díaz Ortiz (2013: 95). Tama’s militant actions include its withdrawal from the State Guelaguetza following the 2006 upheaval in Oaxaca, while a Tlahui delegation continues to participate. Tama villagers burned voting booths as a protest action against the state deputies’ election in June 2014. Tama has also played an important role in the Ayuujk ethnopolitical movement as exemplified by its early media initiatives and etnolinguista engagement in CINAJUJI. On the other hand, none of the schools in Tama’s center belong to the system of Educación Indígena and thus none impart knowledge in the Ayuujk language. Interview with Rigoberto Vásquez, Santa Ana, 13 August 2013. On the use of mass media, see Cremoux Wanderstok (1997: 114–19, 125–30, 143–60). See, among others, Gabriela Kraemer Bayer (2003: 139–64) and Mónica Vargas Collazos (2005: 63–138) for SER, which similar to CODREMI was primarily based in Tlahui. The film Proceso de comunicación comunitaria de Tlahuitoltepec by Rigoberto Vásquez García and Isis Contreras Pastrana shows how CODREMI and SER used media such as serigraphy in ethnopolitics as early as the 1970s. A recent example is a joint march organized by Tama and Tlahui on 22 June 2016 as a protest against the the events in Nochixtlán on 19 June 2016, in which Mexican federal police fired at civilians in the context of the ongoing opposition of teachers to Peña Nieto’s educational reform.

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18. University degree theses and articles written by former radio broadcasters deal with the history of Radio Jënpoj, but rarely with external influences during the foundation period. See Cristal Mora Patricio (2011), Carolina Vásquez García (2012), Floriberto Vásquez Martínez (2013), and Isis Contreras Pastrana (2014). 19. I conducted interviews on this topic with Rigoberto Vásquez, Santa Ana, 13 August 2013, and Godofredo Martínez, Tlahuitoltepec, 12 September 2013, both of whom were involved in the founding of Radio Jënpoj. 20. The UNAM student strike in 1999–2000 railed against the introduction of tuition fees in the form of a registration fee to this state university. On CAE-K, see Contreras Pastrana (2014: 127–33). 21. See Documento Jënpoj (2002), quoted in Vásquez Martínez (2013: 34). “la tecnología proveniente del exterior para adecuarla a la vida comunal, tomando en cuenta que la sociedad mundial se va transformando vertiginosamente y los medios de comunicación son imprescindibles, pues son los que ejercen una influencia cada vez más decisiva en la orientación social, política y cultural en nuestras sociedades.” 22. Yin Et Radio is an Internet radio station that was founded in Tlahui by Procopio Gómez Martínez in cooperation with Laurencio Rojas from Tama. Volunteers make their own radio programs, highlighting the Ayuujk language and culture. The station’s slogan is “Consume what your community produces” (Consume lo que tu pueblo produce). It also has a website, http://www.yinetradio.com/ that showcases village bands and businesses. 23. One critical aspect is the obligation of licensed radio stations to broadcast spots created by Mexican political parties. Sócrates Vásquez explained this in an interview: “Numerous radio media are against regulation because the state puts obstacles in their path. There are, for example, many discussions on the obligation to broadcast political party spots during election campaigns ninety times a day and at other times at least twenty times a day, although precisely the communitarian, collective spirit is what identifies us as communitarian media” (“Muchos medios radiales no se quieren regularizar porque el Estado pone muchas trabas. Por ejemplo, hay muchas discusiones sobre la obligación de pasar los spots de los partidos políticos, que en campaña se deben de pasar hasta noventa veces diarias, y fuera de campaña por lo menos 20, cuando es justamente el espíritu comunitario, colectivo, lo que nos identifica como comunitarias”). See http://www.somosmass99.com.mx/persiguen-a-radios-comu nitarias/ (accessed 30 September 2013). 24. The participating comunicadores were Hermenegildo Rojas Ramírez and Eutimio Antúnez Calderón from Tama, José A. Guzmán Alcántara from Totontepec, Sócrates, Braulio and Rigoberto Vásquez García from Tlahui, Engracia Pérez Castro and Rodrigo Martínez Vásquez from Ocotepec, and Regina Martínez Cruz from Metepec. See http://cayuuk.blogspot.mx/ (accessed 28 October 2013). 25. Interview with Hermenegildo Rojas, Tamazulapam, 4 September 2013. 26. One example is the Pueblos de México series, which Ojo de Agua Comunicación produced for Mexican educational television, commissioned by SEP and CDI. See https://vimeo.com/album/2922918 (accessed 3 December 2014). Among their own productions is the documentary Silvestre Pantaleón by Roberto Olivares from Ojo de Agua Comunicación and anthropologist Jonathan Amith, which received the prize for best documentary at the Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia in 2011.

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27. The CNCI was established by Mexican comunicadores indígenas in 2007 in protest against telecommunication laws introduced by the Mexican government in 2006. The Congress criticized among other things their “‘legislative exclusion,’ since they did not take into account the right of indigenous communities to acquire, operate and manage media.” (la “omisión legislativa,” al no legislar sobre el derecho a que las comunidades indígenas adquieran, operen y administren medios de comunicación); see Ojarasca 127, Suplemento Mensual de la Jornada noviembre 2007; http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/11/19/ojaportada.html (accessed 28 October 2013). 28. The indigenous press agency AIPIN was founded in April 1992 during the First International Meeting of the Indigenous Press in Mexico City (Gutiérrez 1999: 121). 29. The main sources for the original documents presented in this chapter can be found at the Servindi website, http://servindi.org/ and Radio y Comunicación Indígena Blogspot, http://radioycomunicacionindigena.blogspot.de/. All translations are mine. 30. “sistemáticamente hace caso omiso de nuestras propuestas, reflexiones y preocupaciones.” 31. “Nuestra valoración de estos hechos es que, además de que se ha creado una estructura vertical, autoritaria e ineficiente para organizar la Cumbre, existe una gravísima falta de coherencia, de sensibilidad, de apertura y de información por parte de quienes han sido mandatados para la Coordinación del evento. Su falta de disposición para la compartencia y para el trabajo colectivo -dos principios de la vida comunitaria en Oaxaca-, está evitando que la Cumbre se convierta en una fiesta de todas y todos, y ha llevado a sus organizadores a vaciarla de su sentido original.” 32. “Una estrategia importante que hemos implementado es la búsqueda de recursos públicos del gobierno mexicano, que por derecho nos corresponden, sin comprometer la autonomía de decisión y pensamiento de esta cumbre y el derecho a la autodeterminación de nuestros pueblos y en esta gestión logramos que el Foro Permanente para Cuestiones Indígenas de la ONU, recomendara a México, apoyar la II Cumbre Continental. El respaldo presupuestal se logró en fechas recientes. La Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público aportará los recursos financieros por gestiones realizadas a través de la Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes. Estos recursos públicos serán operados directamente por la Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (CDI) y destinados a las actividades señaladas en el presupuesto presentado por el Congreso Nacional de Comunicación Indígena (CNCI). En ninguna forma serán administrados por esta Comisión de Seguimiento.” 33. “si bien Franco Gabriel … trató de desmentir que se haya invitado al presidente Peña Nieto a inaugurar el evento la lectura de la propia carta confirma que sí lo hizo y a título personal, pues ninguna otra firma lo acompaña.” See http:// servindi.org/actualidad/93772 (accessed 23 November 2013). 34. See http://ia601009.us.archive.org/2/items/ComunicadoDeFrancoGabrielH ernandez/CNCI_12set2013.pdf (accessed 25 January 2017). 35. “Como indígena que soy desde que tengo conciencia de mí, desde que tengo identidad propia forjada a través de la lucha política, siempre me he opuesto a todo tipo de dominio, incluyendo la dominación cultural que es una práctica colonial. Yo llegué a la lucha por nuestros derechos como pueblos indígenas

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36.

37.

38. 39.

40.

desde 1976 y mi esfuerzo por ser libre no ha disminuido. Tengo muchos errores sin duda pero he aprendido a oír y recoger lo que se inscribe en los propósitos comunes de nuestra lucha; sin embargo nunca me ha gustado ceder la dirección de mi pensamiento ni mi decisión a otros actores que están fuera de los colectivos u organizaciones a las que me debo.” See http:// ia601009.us.archive.org/2/items/ComunicadoDeFrancoGabrielHernandez/ CNCI_12set2013.pdf (accessed 17 September 2013). “Nos parecía que la carta de Ojo de Agua Comunicación del 28 de agosto era suficientemente clara y apegada a los hechos en torno del desencuentro sistemático que tuvimos con el Mto. Franco Gabriel y la Agencia Internacional de Prensa India (AIPIN) integrantes de la Comisión de Seguimiento … del cual nos deslindamos.” “Reprobamos categoricamente el ataque racista a nuestros amigos de Ojo de Agua Comunicación, y en especial a Guillermo Monteforte … Hemos estado de acuerdo y en desacuerdo con Guillermo en distintas ocasiones a lo largo de casi dos décadas. Lo que no podemos dejar de reconocer es su trabajo y compromiso con comunicadores, colectivos y comunidades de Oaxaca y de otros estados. En el mundo comunal oaxaqueño que conocemos, es la participación concreta con el colectivo y no el lugar de origen que define la membresía.” “grupos de personas que pese a ya no identificarse con la esencia y principios de la vida comunitaria, lo utilizan en el discurso y propuestas para beneficio personal y familiar.” “Es cierto, en la comunidad opera la Radio Jënpoj, aunque dicha radio no existiría sin la iniciativa de jóvenes quienes de manera colectiva en el 2001 decidieron usar la tecnología para transmitir su lengua, cultura, música e inquietudes a través de la radio. En ese tiempo la radio sí era exclusivamente comunitaria, pero desde el 2004 cuando el gobierno federal a través de la Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SCT) otorgó permiso de transmisión, la radio empezó a perder su esencia comunitaria, situación con la que muchos jóvenes integrantes de esta iniciativa no estaban de acuerdo al implicar condicionar el contenido de los programas, algunos abandonaron el proyecto porque ya no encontraban libertad para seguir haciendo radio comunitaria en su acepción original. Finalmente, como era de preverse, la radio quedó en manos de unos cuantos que olvidaron el principio comunitario y lo convirtieron en una ‘empresa’ con barras programáticas similar a las radios comerciales, solo en unas horas reviste de un tinte cultural y lingüístico. Estas personas, que se hacen llamar ‘Colectivo Jënpoj,’ con tal de posicionarse y recibir financiamiento del exterior, han usado la Radio Jënpoj con fines de lucro.” “Reconocemos que la representatividad de los pueblos originarios puede resultar controvertida, pues como todas las sociedades, los pueblos originarios son diversos y complejos y en su seno conviven diferentes puntos de vista e intereses. … La organización de eventos globales o continentales requiere de tolerancia, respeto y reconocimiento de esta diversidad y complejidad. Al igual que en otras cumbres, el camino hacia Tlahuitoltepec no ha estado ajeno a contradicciones, dificultades y diferencias, algunas de fondo.” http://www .amarcmexico.org/index.php/amarc/informacion/item/294-posicionamien to-de-amarc-hacia-la-ii-cumbre-de-comunicaci%C3%B3n-ind%C3%ADgena (accessed 30 September 2013).

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41. “Que se retiren públicamente las invitaciones a los funcionarios públicos de los gobiernos de México y Guatemala, por contravenir a los principios de la Cumbre. A quienes han asumido la organización del evento, les llamamos a que … se abstengan de hacer ese tipo de invitaciones a funcionarios y tomar decisiones que pueden lesionar la fraternidad que debiera existir entre los pueblos y sus organizaciones. … Que las organizaciones que se han retirado reconsideren su participación para retomar de manera urgente una participación amplia en la que se puedan debatir los procesos de toma de decisiones en eventos colectivos como el que nos ocupa. Que bajo la condición de autonomía y transparencia, se sumen a los trabajos de organización de la cumbre.” http://www.amarcmex ico.org/index.php/amarc/informacion/item/294-posicionamiento-de-ama rc-hacia-la-ii-cumbre-de-comunicaci%C3%B3n-ind%C3%ADgena (accessed 30 September 2013). 42. Various estimates circulated about the number of people in attendance. The figure 2,000 was mentioned in Media Summit statements. Chauffeurs of a bus company in charge of transport, however, put the figure at 800. 43. See Declaración de la II Cumbre Continental de Comunicación Indígena del Abya Yala. There were four participant categories: (1) indigenous comunicadores, (2) non-indigenous comunicadores, (3) observers, and (4) special guests. I had observer status as a member of the Freie Universität Berlin and was the only German representative present. 44. In my observation this core group was made up of the remaining members of the Media Summit preparatory committee led by Franco Gabriel, as well as several representatives of the Misak people from the Cauca Region of Colombia, Genaro Batista from AIPIN, Juan Carlos Morales from the UN, José Vicente Otero from CRIC, Roger Rumrill, an independent Peruvian journalist, Carolina Vásquez García from Tlahuitoltepec, and others. 45. “The Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) was established by the Human Rights Council, the UN’s main human rights body, in 2007 under Resolution 6/36 as a subsidiary body of the Human Rights Council.” See http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IPeoples/EMRIP/Pages/EM RIPIndex.aspx (accessed on 8 October 2016). 46. Joanne Rappaport (2005: 55–56) remarks that CRIC has always been an intercultural organization supported by nonindigenous colaboradores. 47. Recording in Santa Ana, 7 October 2013. 48. See Huguet Cuevas (2013) and the introduction. 49. The Wiphala is a flag with forty-nine diagonally aligned squares of fabric in the colors of the rainbow. It is currently used by indigenous movements in the Andes as the symbol of an indigenous America. 50. See http://www.wambraradio.com/susana-pacara-la-comunicacion-alter-nativase-hace-desde-el-corazon-y-con-carino/. 51. See the interview with Susana Pacara, https://abyayala2013.wordpress.com/ (accessed on 8 October 2016). 52. The Aztec dance (danza azteca) is a mainstream religious movement in Mexico with mostly nonindigenous membership and this also applied to one of the dancers at the Media Summit with whom I spoke. The participants’ sense of belonging is based on the concept of a universally perceived indigeneity (Kummels 2015a).

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53. Juan José Serafín Estrada and Marlene Vizuet Morales were the other two photographers. 54. (1) Principios generales de la comunicación indígena, (2) La comunicación indígena en defensa de los territorios y bienes comunes de los pueblos indígenas, (3) Legislación para la comunicación y construcción de las políticas públicas en comunicación, (4) Construcción del plan continental de formación integral en comunicación (Escuela Itinerante), (5) Las mujeres en la comunicación indígena and (6) Estrategias y mecanismos de enlace continental de la comunicación indígena para la lucha y el buen vivir de los pueblos indígenas. 55. “La formación de comunicadores indígenas debe transitar de lo rural a lo urbano, y viceversa, trabajar contenidos para que la población migrante pueda seintir que sigue siendo comunidad indígena, sin importar dónde esté.” (Declaración 2013). 56. Most Latin American countries once celebrated 12 October as the day of the “Discovery of America.” It is still observed in Mexico as the “Day of the Race” (El Día de la Raza). Other Latin American countries have redefined this holiday. In Venezuela and Nicaragua, for example, it is observed as “Indigenous Resistance Day” (Día de la Resistencia Indígena). 57. “Reconocer nuestra autonomía territorial que incluye el espectro electromagnético como un bién común cuya distribución debe otorgar el 33 % del espectro radioeléctrico nacional en todos los países, así como asegurar la asignación de frecuencias derivadas de la transición digital.” 58. The career of Et ääw member Godofredo Martínez is a good example. He gained his practical experience in radio primarily in the social movement in Oaxaca in 2006 with Radio Plantón, Radio Itinerante, and Radio Bocina. As a college student at UPN between 2010 and 2013, he performed social work with indigenous young people in the capital. Godo explains his criticism of Radio Jënpoj’s licensing as follows: “It is still the state that tells you what programs to transmit, when you transmit them and when you omit this and that. They impose their program spots a lot, since everything has to be in the right order, right? They tell you when to announce this or that political party or to transmit spots for IFE … and you’re not supposed to criticize Coca Cola or Sabritas or McDonalds or Warner” (“Pues porque igual el Estado es el que da órdenes de qué programas tienes que transmitir, cuándo debes transmitir esto, cuando tienes que transmitir lo otro. Imponen mucho y sus barras programáticas pues ya tiene todo ya ordenadito, ¿no? Cuando van a entrar para anunciar el partido de… de tal partido, o del IFE cuántas veces va a pasar lo del IFE no … o no vas a criticar ahí la Coca Cola, no vas a criticar ahí la Sabritas, ni McDonalds, Warner, todo esa”). Interview in Tlahuitoltepec, 12 September 2013. 59. Alberto Cortés made his widely acclaimed feature film Corazón del Tiempo in 2008, a love story embedded in the neo-Zapatista resistance movement against the Mexican government. 60. Amada explained to me: “But where could we have gone, who would have given us land here in the region for a new community? We come from this land and will never leave it. The rich have no idea how to live from the land, to work it with a digging stick and a pick. But Mother Earth gives us everything. We live with her and we thank her for this space she has given us.” Written from memory, 13 October 2013.

Figure 6.1. Xëë/Fiesta. Photo: Conrado Pérez Rosas.

CHAPTER 6

Conclusion Media Spaces of an ‘Indigenous’ Community— Comunalidad on the Move

The mediatization of Tamazulapam Mixe and its transnationalization between the hometown in Oaxaca and the satellite communities of, for example, Los Angeles is one chapter in a broader evolution that has seen the rapid and in some aspects radical transformation of ‘indigenous’ communities in Latin America.1 Mass media are currently in the process of penetrating social life on a global scale, a phenomenon by no means confined to the urban contexts of the Global North. On the contrary, numerous mediatized ‘indigenous’ communities like Tama have emerged in Mexico’s rural areas. A key claim of this book was to show that heterogeneous stakeholders engage in these media practices to advance their own, at times conflicting visions on development, modernity, gender, and what it means to be Ayuujk ja’ay in the twenty-first century. In the course of debates on problems, worries, and unresolved matters in a mediatized and transnationalized setting, Tama actors have redefined and thus preserved the cultural specificity of the village through their media initiatives. They have written their own cultural media history, opening up new media spaces during Ayuujk ethnopolitical movements and several waves of migration triggered by a desire for education and new work opportunities. People in and from this village have been using mass communication for decades: their quest for development on their own terms motivated them to produce photographs, radio and television programs, and DVDs on an independent basis. These they distribute and consume in the home village and the satellite communities via Internet and social media, (for example, Facebook and YouTube). Village genres produced in this context are used to overcome the restrictive political border between Mexico and the United States, and to create a transnational media space.

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Showing evidence of the perspective of more than one actor group at work in their production, circulation, and consumption has been central to my framing of how social relations, senses of belonging, collectivities, and the relationship between ‘indigenous’ peoples and nation states are currently being redefined and re-created through and within media spaces. The latter are inhabited by actors whose standpoints vary according to age, gender, education, social class, migration experience, place of residence and political orientation. Stakeholders appropriate audiovisual mass media with an eye to their respective interests and life situations, and are instrumental in shaping the dynamic changes that occur precisely because of their disagreements. The concept of media spaces was chosen as a key approach, since it allows for pursuing the link between the movements and practices of the many different actors concerned and imaginations that emerged via mediatization. The mobility of a section of the inhabitants of Tama—and the forced immobility of those who have crossed the Mexico-United States border—is an integral part of the lives of all who identify with the transnational community. As the migration stories of individual villagers show, media practices were at first frequently taken up for the practical purpose of communicating with relatives and friends over vast geographic distances. In a twofold movement they were then used for entertainment and business endeavors or as an empowerment tool to overcome several boundaries (including those internalized at the individual level and present within the community itself), such as those of race and class. This book essentially conceptualized one type of boundary and placed it center stage: the visual divide. The realm of mass media is riddled with values taken from the colonial era and reinterpreted. According to current hegemonic evaluations, people classified as indigenous are still not accepted as contemporaries: they are denied a ‘natural’ affinity and even less so an active contribution to modern mass communication and the universal history of photography, video, radio, television, and the Internet. Yet, as I have striven to clarify in this study, Tama actors are indeed innovators in the field of audiovisual media and have created, among other things, new transnational video genres. Fiesta videos, officeholder films, land dispute dramas, and ethnopolitical documentaries are part of the wide spectrum of self-styled media that attract various transnational audiences and village subaudiences. It covers the popular patron saint fiesta videos consumed for entertainment both in the hometown and its satellites, land dispute videos produced in the same context for political ends but with a more restricted diffusion, artistic experimental photographs and videos that young mediamakers exhibit locally and at international forums of the Pan-American indigenous movement, and

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last but not least ethnopolitical documentaries primarily shown at international film festivals as part of the indigenous cinematic trend that also targets nonindigenous audiences, and to a lesser degree are screened in the transnational village. These processes of appropriating audiovisual means of communication on the actors’ own terms between Mexico and the United States have so far found little echo in media anthropology scholarship. On the contrary, they were essentially perceived as having been promoted by the Mexican government and as the outcome of its Video Indígena program. Initiatives originating in ‘indigenous’ villages have thus chiefly been analyzed in relation to Video Indígena as a media sphere heavily influenced by the Mexican state’s ethnicizing category of indigenous peoples. The present multisited ethnographic research chose a different starting point, first identifying the village genres produced, distributed, and consumed in Tama and Los Angeles as the basis of their distinct “ways of seeing” (Berger 1990; Strassler 2010). Their variety transcends rather than fits the Video Indígena category, which refers to a specific training structure in government workshops, a particular filmic language of realism and the distribution of documentaries at specialized film festivals. Self-determined media in this variety have something in common: they focus on topics and imaginations that above all concern the Mexican village itself. At the same time, they deal with Tama’s relationships to the surrounding world, since they portray dynamic, transnationalized, sociocultural, and political institutions such as the fiesta in honor of the patron saint and the civil-religious cargo system, as well as controversial events such as land disputes. In its interaction with global flows, youth culture and its media products explicitly conceptualize and visualize being Ayuujk ja’ay beyond the local level. These examples show that mass media technology is not solely directed at village concerns introspectively. On the contrary, it is combined with traditional means of communication, while media practices are interwoven with globally circulating left-wing political ideas and capitalist flows. It is in this mediatized context of the local, transnational, and global that Ayuujk cultural specificity is realigned.

Media Diversity as Constitutive of Social Heterogeneity As presented in the initial research questions, one objective of the book was to identify the needs and desires that inspire villagers to both use and shape mass media, and the practices and media representations they apply to these ends. By looking at videomaking as a component

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of these diverse media forms, which include photography, radio, community television, video, and the Internet, a complex picture emerges of Ayuujk actors from several generations of mediamakers engaged in appropriating mass means of communication for political, artistic, or business purposes both in and beyond Oaxaca. These actors engaged particularly in discursive practices of “knowing, explaining, justifying and so on” (Hobart 2005: 26, quoted in Postill 2010: 5) and sparked debates on the role village media should play in aspects of social life such as fiestas, entertainment, and Ayuujk culture, and in community and Pan-American indigenous politics. Mediamakers and intellectuals are among the actors who explore these processes in their discursive practices. Ideas and practices are recuperated and reformulated to become “our own” (këm jä’, lo propio). Despite the novelty of electronic digital media, actors see them as perpetuating self-determined oral forms of passing down history, traditional artistic practices, religious beliefs, the relationship to the land, and a sense of belonging as Ayuujk ja’ay. Yet at the same time, stakeholders in the transnational village do not necessarily agree in detail on what constitutes “our own” and what it should consist of in the future; the variety of positions has given rise to a broad range of initiatives and media fields. I directed my analytical gaze at debates held in the new media spaces that emerged as a result of village-based media initiatives. The former are vital to voicing different positions and arise where media creativity and the redefining of belongings and collective identities take center stage. My methodological approach in this context made it possible to highlight the role of media diversity and complexity in the constitution of social heterogeneity itself.2 Privileging an inductive approach, I identified social groups that are highly aware of the power of mass communication, which they use to extend their local and transnational influence. A number of community members regularly pursue audiovisual practices in order to document and interpret aspects of their life and work and to systemize cultural knowledge. Pioneers in this field were the teachers who emerged in Tama in the 1960s as a new social group. Other actors who engage in specific media frequently do so in the context of their migration experience or their position in the cargo system. A series of youth movements was supported by migrant returnees, who set up media projects as a method of introducing new forms of entertainment and information that successively reformed Ayuujk society. The case of former officials who served in the upper echelons illustrates how photographs and videos are put to use in seminal activities ranging from the mediatization of civil-religious and community service to land dispute negotiations.

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Senior cargo officials often store photographs and videos in their personal archives. Since male villagers in particular assume a major office more than once in their lifetime, most of them have put a great deal of thought and work into audiovisual documentation. As an effective method of diffusing the achievements of the person concerned in time and space and their contribution to prestige events such as the fiesta in honor of the patron saint, this constitutes a means of acquiring political power. This section of Tama’s population puts forward its position on private and/or community interests in terms of land tenure, redefining community citizenship and village governance by resorting to private audiovisual archives as political instruments. At the same time, another group of Tama villagers, who see their political influence restricted, challenge the predominance of men in the cargo system and its seniority principle, and make innovative use of mass communication as well. Considering themselves disadvantaged in terms of political participation at the community level, they resort as an antidote to media practices that ensure their voices are heard by local and transnational audiences. This is one reason why young people were highly committed to engaging in media, first and foremost those with a high school or university education, and migrants who left Tama in search of education and work but at the end of their stay opted to return to their home village. The young people who joined forces to form the Colectivo Cultura y Resistencia Ayuuk (CCREA) in 2006 have conquered new spaces in the village center, where they regularly use experimental media formats such as academic lectures, public debate, photography, and art exhibitions, all of which publicly exhibit and disseminate hybrid and globalized forms of Ayuujk culture. They are also politically active in the village and beyond through the Facebook page Reunión de Tama—an established virtual competitor of the traditional face-to-face General Assembly of usos y costumbres—and their activities in the Pan-American indigenous movement. This had an impact on village governance, since three of them were recently (2015 and 2016) elected to major offices of higher rank than the teniente echelon normally reserved for youth. Likewise on the Pan-American media circuit, young Tama mediamakers are among those organizing the Third Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala in Bolivia that was held in November 2016. Several women have also become involved in local and transnational mass media as producers, a development that goes hand in hand with the increase in their economic and political power—a first. The case of Adelina Pérez Mateos, who was church treasurer in 2006, exemplifies how video documentation of office duties (for example, the production of a new bell) is used to pass on knowl-

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edge to subsequent officials. At the same time, this particular video testifies to women’s growing participation in village governance. The media practices of Genoveva Pérez Rosas are an illustration of new avenues taken by women to set up a videography business, redefining traditional gender-specific tasks. Women videographers now contribute to shaping village representation at patron saint fiestas and in land disputes. Once politically marginalized at the community level, these social groups of young people and women are instrumental in establishing new media spaces. In a twofold movement they not only impact on the community itself but carry creative forms of organization, new formats, and imaginations to the circuits beyond the village confines. Among them are more complex imaginations of ‘the indigenous,’ including those that skirt the ethnicizing logic of the state and, instead, propose and disseminate the notion of being Ayuujk ja’ay based on lo comunitario or comunalidad as alternative cultural, social, and political models.

Bridging the Visual Divide in Two Transnational Circuits I will now return to the second set of research questions and the book’s goal of elucidating how media practices and representations were employed to influence ongoing relations between indigenous peoples and the Mexican nation. The question of how and in what directions media actors specifically forge a sense of collective identity and belonging was raised at the outset. At this point it is worth re-emphasizing the dual or even multiple qualities of movements in the field of self-determined media, since the impact of media practices on building larger communities was not always tied to a conscious intent to do so. Practices and reform initiatives initially directed at the local level had a transnational reach and vice versa. Media uses adopted for the practical purpose of long-distance communication and the upholding of social relations in the context of migration were often extended to serve as tools of political empowerment and mobilization. As this study has demonstrated, Tama actors developed media practices, experienced processes of politicization, and engaged in entertainment as a form of community building in the attempt to grapple with and overcome the visual divide. The concept introduced in this study refers to inequality in terms of ethnicity, race, social class, and gender, one that is not merely inscribed in representations but also in the materiality of audiovisual media, as well as in media training and the organization of work. Taking the case of several mediamakers and beginning with the first professional photographer in the village, the migrant returnee Alberto Pérez Ramírez, it was shown

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how much effort and creativity was put into overcoming these barriers, such as the purchase of expensive equipment and the acquisition of skills at photography courses taught exclusively in Spanish. Initially these resources could only be tapped into in the urban context, where the actors in question were openly discriminated against as indigenous due to their phenotype, habitus, and culture. Despite their marginalized position, these mediamakers nevertheless designed successful business models and products that resonated with a wide audience. They acquired media professionalism on their own terms, opening up spaces for engagement and empowerment. “Professionalism without a photo studio,” for instance, saw major political moments and land controversies captured in a way that was in tune with the desires of village customers and could not have been matched by external photographers. As a contemporary professional photographer, Conrado Pérez Rosas has built his cultural documentation activities and portrayal of social events on this specific village media tradition, meanwhile diversifying the languages of visual representation. As a go-between he switches from the classic language of lo comunitario photography to the experimental language of abstract black-and-white pictures. Apart from recognizing the diversity of cultural tastes, he promotes his own political vision, one that privileges the youth version of Ayuujk culture and as part of it embraces countercultural global trends. His popularization of photography exhibitions in the village center decolonizes existing hegemonic practices such as those of urban photo galleries, where such “modern” forms of media diffusion are denied to the contexts of ‘indigenous’ peoples. Depending on the specific country or transnational context, racial and cultural discrimination—on which the dynamics of the visual divide relies—takes different forms. The case of the local television channel TV Tamix exemplified the history of an early transnational circuit of indigenous media in Latin America and beyond. It demonstrated that pioneer videographers in Mexico of the 1990s faced categorization as members of the Video Indígena “media reservation.”3 With reference to ‘the indigenous,’ they were forced to engage with new but equally standardizing expectations and impositions that stereotyped indigenous peoples as politically correct and politically active at all times, and as collectives that speak with a unified voice for a common cause. TV Tamix, on the other hand, attuned their topics and the aesthetic style of their documentary films—albeit not exclusively—to public tastes in the village. Consequently they engaged in messy and more complex areas, showing scenes of drunks at fiestas or portraying internal village and innerethnic dissonance on the subject of land ownership. Since TV Tamix also worked closely with nonindigenous advocates and audiences supportive

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of indigenous peoples, it occasionally included stereotypes that Video Indígena film audiences expected of ‘indigenous’ filmmakers. On the whole, however, it made its own mark. The collective influenced Video Indígena with its bottom-up approach, as evidenced by its theorizing of videomaking as a “sacred space.” It also pushed through professional standards in the international media space, despite their image of themselves as working in a sector deemed informal or illegal by the Mexican state, a situation from which most local radio and television stations in ‘indigenous’ regions still suffer. Similar to other projects nationwide, TV Tamix avoided acquiring the obligatory operating license from the state, seeing it as threatening to link them more closely to state financial and political interests. Following its demise, some TV Tamix members aligned their media practices to the demand of villagers who began to migrate to the United States in great numbers. The remaining members of TV Tamix continue to work with ingenuity, as seen in the current archive project they have designed. The demand for a novel audiovisual culture of memory recently emerged in Tama. Here, the question of who gains control of the existing private archives is still contested due to heightened awareness that the archives themselves constitute political power. The TV Tamix archive is currently under negotiation in a field of tension between these new internal needs and the external windows of opportunity offered by those who seek to render existing archives of the many local indigenous media projects more accessible to users beyond the villages via the Internet. This book gave special attention to the business of videography or “traveling cameras” (cámaras viajantes), since scholarship has hitherto largely neglected them and their dimensions of transnational community building and redefining relationships between indigenous peoples and the Mexican nation. Similar to other transnational audiovisual genres that first received little attention, fiesta videos constitute important parallel circuits of production and audience reception beyond international frontiers.4 The study showed how village videographers like those of Video Cajonos, Video Rojas and Video Tamix build on and refine the local itinerant trade, even extending it to the Mexican-US setting, the second transnational circuit for Tama media practices. Migrant crossings at this international border and the disenfranchised status to which migrants north of the border see themselves reduced—with the implication of long periods of physical separation from relatives and friends in the hometown—have shaped the importance and transnational distribution of this village genre. Transnational trade in patron saint fiesta videos is conducted through and interwoven with the ille-

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galized networks established between both countries; it relies on family ties cultivated across the international border, as seen in the tight-knit cooperation between videographers in the hometown and distributors in its satellite communities. The DVDs are marketed in the same way as other iconic merchandise; informal delivery services known as paqueterías transfer them across the Mexico-United States border. Practices related to the production, circulation, and consumption of fiesta videos are therefore an essential dimension of the goods, finances, and ideas that are moved back and forth, and are conducive to the creation of a social space that transcends the border. This study illustrated how fiesta videos contribute to Tama’s transnational social relations and community building, a process that is not straightforward but multilayered, multifaceted, and multidirectional. The village of origin itself is not “original” in the sense of having remained static; commuters from Oaxaca City, migrant returnees, some of whom have spent more than a decade in one of its many satellites, and a minority of permanent residents live there, too. The villagers’ constant reflection on the tension between here and there and what constitutes “our own” culture has prompted practices of coproducing, circulating, and consuming fiesta videos from different perspectives and places of residence. Migrants, some of whom have decided to stay in Los Angeles indefinitely, use them to reconstruct their home abroad around the patron saint fiesta as a key cultural component. Their engagement in fiesta videos has a twofold political dimension: first, it contributes both to the transnationalization and mediatization of the local governance system and its communitarian terms of citizenship; second, it allows them to develop a sense of community that is, in part, independent of the hometown. In the context of long-term residency fiesta videos serve as a didactic device to socialize the first generation born in the United States into the Tama communal way of life, one that parents expect them to adopt to some degree even from a distance. Self-determined media production, circulation, and consumption have substantial affective dimensions that surface in the context of multilayered transnational community building. A sense of pride in the hometown and of simultaneously not belonging to it translated into a desire to culturally and politically reform and engage in it. Actors participate and invest in fiestas and their audiovisual representation as a means of transforming them and of directing the community toward the model of society to which they aspire (I will return later to this “productive nostalgia” [Blunt 2005] as future-oriented). It is in these varied meanings that media practices around the popular fiesta videos have become a

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key element of transnational community building in the wake of Tama’s diasporization to the United States. As such they contribute actively to modern mass media and the universal history of video and film.

The Longue Durée of the Mesoamerican Community and Its Mediatized Politics This study brought to the fore the fact that the patron saint celebration, the largest social event in the home village drawing several thousand visitors, was shaped by self-determined processes of mediatization and is now based on the virtual co-presence of migrants. The latter finance fiesta prizes, decorations, and catering, and are repeatedly praised in public for their sponsorship. The efforts of Tama inhabitants to open up their own spaces for development through migration have led to the mediatization and transnationalization of the fiesta in honor of the patron saint, thereby reinforcing its status as a key element of the Mesoamerican community. Current displacement across the Mexico-United States border and the older mobilities it builds on already contain a political dimension: they are motivated by an interest in personal advancement and the quest for benefits to the village. As early as the 1960s, people in and from Tama associated absence from their hometown with the desire to “better oneself” (salir adelante) and with “mutual assistance” (nyëpëkëk) (that is, family support via remittances and the investment of financial profits from migration in the village itself), activities indicative of Tama’s pursuit of self-determined modernization and development. Education, work migration, return migration, and the introduction of new lines of business, youth as a new stage in life, communication within the transnational family, and land disputes, as well as religious and political matters—in Tama all of these were linked in multiple ways to media initiatives. Mass media ultimately began to occupy an institutionalized space in the form of community media and commercial lines of business. Once the fiestas were mediatized, their political and religious aspects became more entangled and the fiesta celebrations in and around the cargo system more elaborate, both processes with a transnational dimension. As this book demonstrated, fiestas are modern institutions that provide a common reference point for people who are now scattered in different places across several countries, one that allows them to identify with their pueblo, comunidad, or kajp as a ‘home,’ not least in the sense of a desirable societal model. Mediatized fiesta participation, performance, and imagination have themselves become a ‘home’ in

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this process. Hence actors use idealized representations of village life in fiesta videos not as a reference for revival of the past but rather to point toward the future and the idea of reforming the community based on new experience and cultural capital. The practice of producing, distributing, and consuming fiesta videos allows Tama migrants in Los Angeles to participate in the fabric of the transnationalized community and anchor its terms of citizenship in the California megacity. Fiesta videos are designed as reminders of the annual office rotation in the usos y costumbres system of governance and the obligation to serve every six years. Videos produced locally and transnationally encourage viewers to feel morally bound to assume an office in their hometown during this cycle or at least to compensate for their absence by donating to the fiesta and investing part of their earnings in the community. They convey the reward of belonging to the village and of individual prestige, avenues that are basically denied to illegalized migrants in the United States. It is through this mediatized participation that Tama villagers abroad gain personal status, renew a sense of belonging, and become politically involved in building a transnational society that promises a “good life.” As part of exchanges in both transnational circuits, two decades of village mass media experience and know-how are being transferred to a new generation of ‘indigenous’ mediamakers, whose members introduce new film topics and aesthetic devices to the field of existing means of communication and emerging media. On the whole, self-education in these new professional areas and flexible organization coupled with the local and transnational transfer of media knowledge has become a frequently adopted model in and beyond Tama. All of these developments inspired, for example, the cultural-specific undergraduate program in Communal Communication introduced in 2013 at the intercultural university UNICEM in Tlahuitoltepec. The program is a further step in advancing the professionalism of Ayuujk mediamakers on their own terms. In the following section I will highlight the longue durée of the use of media for political ends. The current search for Ayuujk cultural specificity in the face of dynamic change is one such example. Mediamakers in the field regularly draw on village resources and dynamics such as face-to-face communication and the social relations and institutions that prevail in the village. They base their choice of emerging mass media on local resources, linking them to their own personal and wider political interests. This applies to occupational profiles, division of labor, forms of production, motifs, aesthetic devices, types of knowledge transfer, and circulation channels, as well as to media consumption and the reception contexts they generate. In Tama, older media practices

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of dance performance, live music, lienzo “map” drawings of village territory, and strict prohibitions on viewing relating to the occult coexist with emergent uses of audiovisual mass media. Many of the motifs and functions of existing practices were absorbed and reinterpreted in contemporary media forms such as photography, radio, television, video, and the Internet. The current study sought to trace these longue durées in village media by adopting a broad definition of media that does not confine them to modern electronic means of communication. This proved useful in tracking long-term processes associated with the mediatization and transnationalization of land disputes, such as those associated with archiving photographs and videos. Access to private archives kept by former Tama officials revealed that the use of photography and videotaping had replaced the function of the lienzo, a visual strategy to claim community territory during the colonial era. These canvases served to outline the territory and geographical borders of communities organized in repúblicas de indios after the Spanish Conquest and were used in legal action before the colonial courts. In addition, modern audiovisual media integrate and reinforce traditional forms of “visual warfare” such as the mass felling of trees to mark the village boundary with a forest aisle. Videos that document and dramatize land disputes are similarly used today as evidence to assert claims in the transnational community with its semi-autonomous governance system. All of these examples show how modern mass media have been combined with residual media in line with nuances and resonances characteristic of transnational Tama in the present. Following James Moran’s (2002: 17) interpretation of the ideas of Raymond Williams (1977: 120–27), residual and emergent media practices coexist: emergent media trigger new cultural meanings, values, and social relations, transforming residual media in the process. The dimension of media space has made it possible to examine the simultaneous use of traditional primary media and modern tertiary media, and the many forms of deliberately combining and thus reinventing them. Mass media appropriation has, on the other hand, meant breaking radically with some aspects of older traditions. This is the case with memory culture referring to the deceased, whose belongings, including photographs, were once destroyed to prevent them from haunting the living. Current media practices in Tama see, for example, the retrieval of old photographs and the making of short film portraits as the audiovisual revival of people who have passed away in the hometown. The images are diffused in a transnational context to migrants whose financial situation and immobility as a result of restrictive border policies have denied them proximity to their loved ones during the last phase of their lives.

Conclusion | 307

Debates and the Political Character of Media Spaces: Comunalidad on the Move The political aspects of video unfold in the context of the debates they spark in media spaces that are created locally and transnationally. As shown by the controversies on abstaining from “visualizing culture” through mass communication, the representation of “incorrect dance couples” in fiesta videos, and the communal versus commercial media debate, the many different actors who have opened up spaces for audiovisual production and knowledge transfer do not always agree on the path to be taken. Village media products ranging from entertainment genres to exclusively archival material used in the interests of political power all factor in ongoing controversies, which in one way or another revolve around what constitutes a “good” communal way of life. This is a principle to which everyone refers and that at the same time is renegotiated against the backdrop of changing expectations and transnationalism. Debates on comunalidad in the sense of the term once coined by Floriberto Díaz and Jaime Martínez Luna at the end of the 1980s have in the meantime been extended to include what it means to be a comunero/a at a time of political resistance. The latter was manifested by Tama media actors when they took part in the broad Oaxacan social movement in 2006, when they opposed Peña Nieto’s education and telecommunications reforms in 2013 and 2014, and when they marched in protest against the federal police who had killed civilians in Nochixtlán in 2016 in the context of these reforms. At the same time, being a comunero/a has been redefined in terms of geographical dispersion and the role of self-determined media in the culture and social relations of the transnational village. Both the private and the public, entertainment and politics, interact in the realm of media in Tama. Although not always explicitly linked to each other, private aspects such as marital and family life and public issues such as the political model the community pursues in the context of two nation states inform these debates. The book teased out how reflection and discussion on audiovisual practices and the representation of “our own” culture are now integral to mediatized social relations and village life. It showed how photography, videography, television, and documentary film productions were used as a means to intervene in the internal power structure of the community and its prevailing values, with village media gaining transnational dimension in the process. This is the case with popular films made by commercial videographers who record couples dancing at the bailes of patron saint fiestas. These DVDs top the sales in transnational Tama. One debate centers on the audiovisual portrayal of “incorrect dance

308 | Transborder Media Spaces

couples” (married people dancing with partners to whom they are not married). Controversies in this context show that public involvement in this village genre saw the ascription of political aspects to the private lives of the couples in question; the associated debates point to the core of what are still unfinished issues in the transnational community. The videos provoke discussion of broader concerns, such as morality and the social norms associated with gender roles (for example, equal rights to infidelity), parenthood, and the financial responsibility for children in transborder relationships. While the fiesta videos deliberately attempt to capture scenes that emphasize the ideal of collectivity as expressed in communal work and service in the cargo system, they also record fractures of this ideal and spark comments on the fragility of marital and family life as a result of migration in particular and the complexity of social life in the transnational context in general. As a result of their varied interests in monitoring the private lives of villagers who live at a great distance, people in Tama and those living in the satellite communities express fundamentally different opinions on tightening or blurring the border between the private and the public via mediatization. Other debates in the context of village media shed light on the impact of this field on audiovisual decolonization. Villagers hold different opinions on the notion of concealing vital aspects of the community’s culture as a counterstrategy to colonial infringements. During the colonial period deliberate attempts were made to destroy them as centerpieces of autochthonous epistemology; the same holds true, albeit to a lesser extent, for the period of the “second spiritual conquest” that Salesian friars undertook in the Mixe region in the twentieth century. The ban on viewing precolonial stone sculptures, including one that embodies the central deity la Diosa del pueblo, is interpreted as such a counterstrategy in theories outlined in Ayuujk myths and transmitted in the emerging media format of academic lectures. On the one hand, elderly diviners and high-ranking officials defend this strategy of overcoming colonial infringements. The perspective of transnational media spaces adopted in this book revealed that the ban on photography has an additional effect not explicitly referred to by these actors: strategies of concealment prevent certain photo and video images from being taken and circulated in the transnational setting. Consequently, those in search of intimate knowledge of and participation in the execution of these hidden rituals are obliged to acquire them on-site in the home village. This may encourage them to assume a cargo office and return to the village should they be elected. For Tama migrants living abroad, however, opting not to return could mean exclusion and alienation from their culture.

Conclusion | 309

Young educated media actors experienced in migration (including some who have recently become diviners), on the other hand, adopt the opposing strategy of visualization. They seek to decolonize cultural practices that they perceive as “our own.” By means of audiovisual documentation and the interpretation and systemization of their culture and cultural knowledge, these stakeholders repeatedly challenge and occasionally transgress the boundaries of religious objects and practices that are banned from being viewed and photographed. Although these practices are currently the prerogative of younger audiovisual media literates, the objective of their incursions is to fundamentally reform the way knowledge is conveyed in the transnational village. By criticizing secrecy, they are in fact challenging the principle of seniority, according to which people of age and experience—in this case including women as ritual experts, a role socially ascribed to them—monopolize intimate cultural knowledge. In a typical twofold movement, young media actors experiment with new forms of visualizing sacred acts and have recently integrated a local ritual offering into the public performance of the Guelaguetza event in Oaxaca City. This they did with the intention of strengthening their culture by conveying occult areas of the village religion to the outside world. Deliberate transgressions of this kind are conceptualized and legitimized as opening up new media spaces. Finally, other debates focus on the function and position of selfdetermined audiovisual media for the position of the village in transnational circuits. Here the methodological approach used in the book demonstrated that media uses for community building differ, among other things, in terms of age, migration experience, and political orientation. This diversity shapes the interweaving of media and political practice in relation to comunalidad or the more popular version of this ideal, “being a good comunero/a.” Mediatized communities such as the Reunión de Tama Facebook page indicated the wide variety of political postures among young people from the transnational village toward the Mexican state as, for example, in the discussion on the principles of land tenure. In siding with communal land tenure or individual land ownership they assume different political positions. Some (for example, on individual land ownership) are more in line with neoliberal policies, which other young people reject out of hand. Politics in this case is mediatized through Facebook, young people’s first choice as a forum of debate. This should be seen against the backdrop of the village cargo system, which privileges the principle of seniority and face-to-face General Assemblies. Hence whether these social media practices via the Internet complement or compete with and subvert traditional forms of comunalidad remains a bone of contention in the transnational village.

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In this context, community members cast a highly critical eye on how village media projects are sponsored and organized, and how mediatization impacts their daily lives. Although de facto interwoven, communityrun and commercial media are rhetorically subject to strict separation. The call for village media to finance themselves independently ties in with wider issues referring to the political orientation of community politics and citizenship, which strives for a high degree of economic and political independence from the state. Hence the large majority of inhabitants in and from Tama favors and practices the usos y costumbres political system, officially recognized by the state government of Oaxaca in 1995. Based on the principle that each Tama inhabitant must invest work and money in the village to achieve citizen status, these grassroots practices are perceived as the cornerstone of autonomy vis-à-vis the Mexican state. Accordingly, community-run media are of necessity conceived as independent of both state and private finance. In reality, however, practitioners depart from this “pure form” on a regular basis: community media see themselves unable to survive in the medium term without some form of external sponsorship. In addition, the boundaries are blurred, since community mediamakers occasionally work in the commercial field and vice versa. Further overlapping occurs when mediamakers from both spheres are judged by the same standards, that is, whether they act in the interests of commonality and whether the audiovisual image of village life they present is consensual. The debate on community and commercial media aspects has spread further, since the democratic “grassrootedness” of the community is seen as the antidote to dangerous proximity to “institutionalization” and a government perceived as corrupt and shaped by the PRI party (compare Recondo 2007: 119). This led to the active engagement of mediamakers from Tama in the controversy that took place leading up to the Pan-American indigenous movement’s Second Continental Media Summit in 2013. Those who intervened in the debate discussed the orientation and possible boycott of the Summit following dissatisfaction over its sponsorship by a Mexican state ministry. These dissident voices manifested themselves publicly in advance of the Summit in a Pan-American media space primarily constituted by the independent indigenous media of the Americas. In the context of this space, the majority of Tama media actors sided with a fraction that succeeded in giving the Summit a critical slant vis-àvis the Mexican state. This is the stance that most village mediamakers adopt in everyday life. What kind of mediatized ‘indigenous’ community has Tama become, given the dynamics of its various interest groups and their diverse orientations in various transnational circuits? The multiple movements of ac-

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tors in the media fields under review are an expression of the collective identities and belongings that speak for a far greater complexity than suggested by the homogenizing category of “the indigenous,” conceptualized and acted upon by the nation states. Taking recourse to existing village media resources and combining them with emerging mass media, they reflect on and debate political solutions, all of which envisage persevering on a self-determined path, one of comunalidad on the move.

Notes 1. See, for example, Manuela Camus (2008) and Ulla Berg (2015). With reference to Ayuujk and Zapotec home villages in the Sierra Norte, I am currently comparing village media histories and forms of appropriating video and the Internet to create a ‘home’ in transnational settings; see Kummels (2016b). ‘Home’ is conceptualized from a researcher’s perspective as enacted in culturally varying practices of either displacement or rootedness to which affectivity and emotionality are key. 2. I would like to thank Prof. Gisela Cánepa Koch for her comments on the role of media in societal heterogeneity as part of the 2015 E-seminar of the EASA Media Anthropology Network (see Kummels 2015b). 3. The term “media reservation” is used in scholarship on indigenous media to critique the ghettoization of alternative media projects due to lack of funding and support, which in turn impedes access to a broader audience. Indigenous filmmakers are obliged to find ways of overcoming the obstacles of ethnically defined media (see Dowell 2013: 92). 4. See, for example, Norma Iglesias (1999), Hamid Naficy (2001), and Miguel Alvear and Christian León (2009) on popular and artistic transnational cinematic currents.

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———. 2009. O’jken: La muerte Ayuuk—Hacia la transición de la vida eterna. Contreras Pastrana, Isis. 2013. Kutääy: Los jamás conquistados. Cortés, Alberto. 2008. Corazón del tiempo. Gómez Martínez, Filoteo. 2004. Dulce convivencia/Sweet Gathering. Kummels, Ingrid, and Manfred Schäfer. 1993. Transferencia de Medios. Unedited footage. Margoles, Ludwik. 1981. En clave de sol. Martínez Vásquez, Damián, and Estela González Gutiérrez. 2013. Ayo’on Xaamkëjxp/Disaster in Tlahuitoltepec. Menéndez, Óscar. 1978. La música y los mixes. Muñoz, Alfonso. 1990. Primer encuentro estatal de Casas del Pueblo. Olivares, Roberto, and John Amith. 2011. Silvestre Pantaleón. Palafox, Teófila. 1988. La vida de una familia Ikoods. Pata de Gallo. 2005. Actividades Agrarias Tamazulapam – Tepuxtepec – Tepantlali. ———. 2005. Construcción de mojoneras Tamazulapam – Tepuxtepec – Tepantlali. Pérez Rojas, Carlos. 2010. Y el río sigue corriendo/And the River Flows On. ———. 2013. Mëjk/Fuerte. ———. 2015. Barras de color. Work in progress. Rojas Ramírez, Genaro. 2014. Estado de ánimo. Rojas Ramírez, Hermenegildo. 1999. Këdung ajdk/Servir al pueblo/Serving the People. Serrano, Saúl. 1982. La Semana Santa entre los mayos. TV Tamix. 1992. Jaripeo. ———. 1994. Fiesta animada/Animated Feast. ———. 1994. Maach/El machucado/The Meal. ———. 1996. Moojk/Maíz/Maize. Valverde, Rocha, and Gregorio Carlos. 2003. Los rollos perdidos de Pancho Villa. Video Cajonos. 2013. Tamazulapam Del Ezpiritu Santo 2013: Recivimiento. Video Líder. n.d. El espíritu de Monte Alban. Patrimonios de la humanidad 5. ———. n.d. Days of the Dead in Mexico. Patrimonios de la humanidad 21. Video Mecho. 2015. Cambio de autoridades 2014 Tamazulapam Mixe. Video Rojas. 2013. Fiesta en Tamazulapam del Espíritu Santo Mixe Oaxaca en honor a la Virgen de Santa Rosa de Lima. Recepción de Bandas, La Tradicional Calenda (disc 1); Desfile Deportivo, Inauguración de la Copa Mixe (disc 2); Programa Cultural, Baile de Super T y Los Originales de Tlahui (disc 3); Audición Musical, Quema de Castillo (disc 4); 2da Noche de Baile Maike y Sus Teclados Super Uno, Grupo Musical Calenda y Grupo La Sombra (disc 5); Partidos Finales Infantil, Pasarela, Cadetes Femenil y Varonil, Finales de la Copa Mixe 2013 (disc 6); Partidos Finales de Basquet Bol Master, Juvenil, Femenil y Varonil, Finales de la Copa Mixe 2013 (disc 7); Programa de Premiación, 3ra Noche de Baile Grupo Siglo XXI (disc 8); and Despedida de Bandas (disc 9). ———. 2015. Cambio de autoridades Tamix 2015. Video Tamix. 2006. Campana. Weingartshofen, Federico. 1980. Cuando la niebla levante.

Index

agrarian disputes, 56, 175–81, 183 agencias (settlements), 56, 175–81, 183 Ayutla conflict, 34, 37, 79, 175, 184–86, 241 boundary markers, 111, 180–81, 183, 187 Cacalotepec conflict, 131, 144–45, 152, 180, 192n22 Las Peñas conflict, 175–79, 194n53 lienzos, 40, 187–88, 190, 306 mancomunado villages, 182–89 Tlahuitoltepec conflict, 34, 37, 46n40, 79, 111, 176, 179–84, 189–90, 207, 215, 252n13 videos (See land dispute videos) visual warfare, 37, 40, 183–84, 189–90, 306 Aguilar, Noé, 82, 97, 112–14 Ambrosio Martínez, Marisol, 54, 87, 121 Ambulante A.C., 35, 217 Anarchism, 6, 87, 118–19 And the River Flows On (Y el río sigue corriendo), 1, 42n1, 216 Antúnez Calderón, Eutimio “Timio”, 87, 89, 217, 265, 282, 289n24 Antúnez López, Vicente, 37, 199, 201, 203, 216, 252n14 Appadurai, Arjun, 16, 46n28 Aquino Moreschi, Alejandra, 45n21

archives of community leaders, 65, 68, 122, 180, 185–90, 299, 306 of Los Angeles satellite community (See Los Angeles satellite community, archives) Asamblea de Autoridades Mixe (ASAM), 24 Ascona, Yovegami, 128n47, 215–17, 228, 254n44 Ayo’on Xaamkëjxp (Disaster in Tlahui), 90, 124, 285 Ayotzinapa, 124 Ayutla, 32–33, 56, 62, 99, 135–36, 141–43, 146–49, 151–52, 158, 201, 210–12. See also agrarian disputes, Ayutla conflict Ayuujk Ayuujk ja’ay, 5, 17, 43nn10–11, 51, 98, 135, 153–54, 191n5, 268, 295, 298, 300 ethnolinguistic group, 23, 35, 39, 43n10 food, 52, 126n13, 118, 139–40, 242, 257n79 indigenous movement (See Ayuujk ethnopolitical movement) language, 11, 20, 30, 43n11, 54, 55, 81, 85, 86, 89, 110, 118, 121, 125n2, 128n52, 143, 153, 192n20, 202, 267–68, 288n15, 289n22

326 | Index

shawl as flag, 54, 94n47, 184, 234 women’s attire, 54–55, 234, 245 writing, 53, 108, 121, 140, 187– 88, 194n51, 199, 202, 267 Ayuujk concepts comunero/a, “good” (See cargo system) development, 16–17, 20, 22, 40, 46n29, 47n49, 58, 131–33, 163, 165, 295, 304 lo comunitario, 12–13, 18, 38, 67, 83, 85, 86, 102, 121–22, 167, 173, 229, 255n60, 300, 301 sensitiveness (delicadeza, ëmay), 105, 126n12 space, 17, 27, 39, 98, 109–25, 205, 214, 253n27 (See also TV Tamix, sacred space) “those never conquered” (“los jamás conquistados”), 17, 98, 125n1, 135, 137, 191n5 our own (lo propio), 14, 17, 39, 51–52, 65, 86, 99, 108, 109, 113–16, 125n2, 131, 147, 298, 303, 307, 309 Ayuujk ethnopolitical movement advocates/collaborators, nonindigenous, 7–8, 25, 42n5, 205–6, 263–64, 268, 275–76, 287–88n4, 301–2 anthropologists, 10, 45n21, 87, 202–3 “ethnic renaissance”, 133, 134, 136, 199, 202, 252n8 líderes (See Martínez, Daniel and Rodríguez, Luis) music and dance performances, 132, 137–38, 145–46 ‘nationalism’, 137, 154–56, 252n8, 268 Tlahuitoltepec as a “guiding community”, 30–31, 81, 89, 267–68, 270 See also teachers Ayuujk religion ban on photography, 18–19, 66, 68, 98, 104–9, 147, 230, 308 ban on viewing, 39, 104–9, 126n14, 306, 308

Catholicism, 98–9, 107, 113, 116–17, 127n23, 147, 152, 223–24 (See also Salesian proselytization) cosmovisión, 66, 92n19, 266, 288n9 costumbre (religious sacrifice), 53, 99, 109, 111–13, 125n2, 127n35, 133, 230, 257n80 cuidadora (këëkajp), 106–8 Diosa del pueblo, la, 19, 65, 97– 98, 104–9, 114–16, 158, 171, 308 diviners (adivinos, xëëmääpy), 65–66, 98–99, 105, 111, 113– 14, 117, 126n12, 126nn13–14, 142, 192n15, 308–9 Evangelicals, 99, 152–53, 225 occult, the, 18–19, 66, 98, 104–9, 147, 230, 308 saint statues, 106, 114, 116–17, 171, 255n54 stone sculptures, 19, 106, 109, 114, 308 Ballesteros, Leopoldo, 116–17 Barras de Color, 2, 77–80, 94n47, 213, 215–16, 282 Basketball, 2, 132, 138, 151–56, 159, 224–26, 237, 248, 257n78. See also Campeonato Regional Mixe Berg, Ulla, 21 Bourdieu, Pierre, 157, 193n38 box ranchero, 236, 257n74 Buen vivir, 30, 47n49, 266, 284, 305 Cabañas Marín, Hermenegilda, 151, 154–55 cabildo. See cargo system caciques. See Martínez, Daniel and Rodríguez, Luis Cambio de Autoridades 2014 Tamazulapam Mixe, 101–2 Campana, 68–69 Campeonato Regional Mixe, 151–56, 193n37 cargo system bienes comunales officials, 35, 65, 145, 180, 183, 189, 195n63

Index | 327

change-of-office ceremony, 6, 70–71, 84, 99–104, 125n4, 158, 163, 173 comunero/a, “good”, 36, 61, 101, 104, 227, 240, 309 comunero/a and land tenure, 36, 40, 45n24, 61, 175–79, 181–83, 191, 194n54 General Assembly (See Tamazulapam del Espíritu Santo, General Assembly) interino (substitute), 67, 93nn22– 23, 100–101 nomination of officials, 63, 73 officials as media actors, 34, 37, 67–71, 82, 100–104, 163–64, 180, 183, 185–89, 210–12, 236–37 political parties, 10, 29–30, 44n13, 62, 289n23 ramo funds, 54, 62, 71, 74, 91n2, 93n33, 225, 255n55 titulares, 62, 67, 94n39, 100 usos y costumbres, 6, 44n13, 64, 119, 299, 305, 310 women, 18, 67–70, 72–74 youth, 73–74 Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC), 35, 90, 214–15, 217 Centro de Capacitación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Mixe (CECAM), 267, 282, 288n14 Centro de Investigación Ayuuk Jujkyajtin Jinma’any Centro de Capacitación (CINAJUJI), 103, 125n8, 199, 252n7, 288n15 Centros de Video Indígena (CVI), 35, 203–5, 253nn21–22 Cerano, Dante, 21 change-of-office ceremony. See cargo system, change-of-office ceremony Chassen-López, Francie, 37, 182, 185 Cheranasticotown, 21 Cine Club Et ääw. See youth cinema indigenous cinema movement, 1, 22, 42n2, 213–17, 262, 297 (See also Video Indígena)

traveling cinema, 84, 123–4, 147–50, 250, 305 citizenship, cultural, 262, 286 civil-religious cargo system. See cargo system Colectivo Cultura y Resistencia Ayuuk (CCREA), 6, 13, 19, 30, 54, 75, 86–90, 119, 121, 158, 232, 265, 299 Comité de Defensa y Desarrollo de los Recursos Naturales y Humanos Mixe (CODREMI), 24, 30, 89, 193n33, 267–68, 270, 288n16 Comisión Nacional para el Desarrrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (CDI), 10, 29, 43n8, 205, 275, 280, 282 commercial media. See media fields communal media. See media fields comunalidad, 10–11, 18, 38, 44n13, 45n21, 60, 63, 92n15, 119, 201, 214, 267, 272, 279, 295, 300, 307–11 comunero/a. See cargo system comunicadores, 3, 10–11, 35, 42n6, 183, 233, 262, 266, 270–71, 280, 282–84 costumbre (religious sacrifice). See Ayuujk religion courtship, 221, 237 coyotes, 55, 91n3, 221, 240 Cremoux Wanderstok, Daniela, 2, 25, 46n37 Cumbre Continental de Comunicación Indígena del Abya Yala. See Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala debates gender inequity, 12, 22, 72–74, 93n36, 94nn37–39, 149–50, 154–55, 181, 221, 237–39, 299–300, 308 “infidelity” at dance events, 12, 220–21, 237–39, 307–8 land tenure, 34–37, 72, 165–66, 175–80, 185–91, 207, 306 problem (jotmäj), 9 transnational family, 12, 21, 41, 61, 76, 84, 109, 133–34, 208–10, 219–21, 237–39, 240–51, 302–5, 307–8

328 | Index

village representation, 26–27, 221–22, 239 youth culture, 13, 73–74, 86–90, 220–21, 237 decolonization, audiovisual. See Ayuujk concepts, “those never conquered” development. See Ayuujk concepts, development Díaz, Floriberto, 10, 30, 45n20, 63, 89, 202, 267, 270, 307 discrimination. See race Distrito Mixe, 132, 135–36 Dominican proselytization, 98, 107–8, 116, 223 Dulce convivencia, 42n7 education boarding schools, 56, 136, 141– 44, 146, 147, 149, 192n14 castellanización (Hispanicization), 23, 55, 141 gender, 139–47 Lázaro Cárdenas presidency, 141–43, 147 university studies, 54–55, 81, 90, 128n45, 217, 267, 299, 305 See also teachers Ejército Zapatista de Liberación (EZLN), 8, 9, 44n13, 44n17, 64 Espíritu Santo fiesta. See fiesta, Espíritu Santo fiesta Estado de ánimo (Mood), 207, 217, 254n33 Estrada Ramos, Alicia, 21 ethnographic research, xi, 6–7, 52, 76 ethnopolitics. See Ayuujk ethnopolitical movement etnolingüistas, 58, 91n10, 103, 199, 201, 288n15 Facebook page “Reunión de Tama”, 64, 71, 73–74, 75–76, 175–78, 188, 299, 309 Felipe. See Los Angeles, Felipe Feria Cultural del Pulque, 30, 35, 39, 65, 73, 86–90, 121–23, 125n9, 161, 217, 232 fiesta baile (See fiesta, dance event)

basketball tournament (See basketball and Campeonato Regional Mixe) castillo fireworks, 27, 62, 69, 134, 200, 212, 219, 225, 226, 228, 230, 236 dance event (baile), 3, 120–21, 219–22, 227–30, 237–40, 248, 251, 253n24, 255n58, 307–8 diasporization, 227, 250, 304 donations (See sponsorship) drinking, 30, 72, 150, 192n12, 253 Espíritu Santo fiesta, 11, 26–27, 53, 69–70, 98, 110, 145–46, 200, 201, 204, 210, 212–13, 219, 222–24, 227, 230, 234, 248 opposition to, 225 patron saint, 223–25 religious dances, 226, 230, 255n54 Santa Rosa de Lima fiesta, 2–3, 11, 53, 83, 92n20, 134, 156, 222–26, 228, 230–31, 237 sponsorship, 12, 22, 36, 57, 61–62, 134, 200, 212, 225–27, 230, 235, 247, 304 temporality, 222, 246 Fiesta animada (Animated Feast), 26, 110, 189, 198, 204 fiesta filmmakers. See videographers fiesta videos aesthetic devices, 4, 213, 227–30, 255n60 comical scenes (lo chusco), 3, 20, 27, 114, 161, 204, 222, 229–30, 239, 247, 251, 253n19, 258n87 commercialization (See distribution) critique of, 3–4, 210, 228 dance event (See fiesta, dance event) didactic device, 246, 251 distribution, 3, 33, 45n25, 84, 173, 242, 246–50 history of, 19, 246, 251

Index | 329

humor (See fiesta videos, comical scenes) “incorrect couples” (See debates, “infidelity” at dance events) telenovela-like, 85, 244, 251 traditional-modern dichotomy, 230, 253n24 traveling studios, 3, 84, 231 Francisco. See Los Angeles, Francisco Freire, Paulo, 199, 202 Gabriel Hernández, Franco, 31–32, 47n51, 264, 272–78, 284, 288n5, 292n44 García, Jesús Ramón, 3, 200, 222, 236, 256n65 García, Juan José, 43n9, 204, 253nn21– 22, 272 García Martínez, Josefina, 104, 122, 148, 159–61 gender relations. See debates, gender inequity and cargo system, women General Assembly. See Tamazulapam del Espíritu Santo, General Assembly Ginsburg, Faye, 46n28, 46n34 governance system. See cargo system Gruzinski, Serge, 111 Guelaguetza Guelaguetza Popular, 112–14, 127n34 in Los Angeles, 250 in Tamazulapam Mixe, 145–46, 192n21 Oaxacan state festival, 112–14, 127n34 Guilberto, Victoriano, 46n40, 77, 96, 151, 201–4, 252nn14–15 Gutiérrez Nájera, Lourdes, 21 Hall, Stuart, 32 Hilda. See Los Angeles, Hilda ‘home’, 7, 191, 242, 245–46, 250, 304–5, 311n1 indigeneity, 22–32, 42n7, 261–65, 284, 286–87, 292–93n52 indigenismo, 5, 23, 28 Ayuujk versions of, 135

indigenous media movement, PanAmerican, 13, 29, 30–32, 41–42, 75, 89, 92n19, 174, 214, 261–93, 296, 298, 299, 310 Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI), 5, 7, 21, 24–27, 29, 35, 43nn8–9, 46–47nn39–40, 48n50, 91n10, 145, 161, 199, 201, 203–5, 213, 251n3, 252n15, 253n18, 253nn21–22, 268, 273 anthropological documentaries, 25, 46n39, 205 See also Centros de Video Indígena (CVI) International Agency of the Indigenous Press (AIPIN), 272, 274, 276, 290n28, 291n36 Internet news agencies, 263, 264, 266, 271–79, 283–84 jaripeo (bull riding), 11, 80, 82–83, 207, 224, 229, 234, 250 Jiménez Sanjinés, Froylita, 86, 121, 265 Juárez Salcedo, Lourdes, 148–51 Këdung Ajdk (Servir al Pueblo/Serving the People), 127n30, 189–91, 198, 204 Konk ey. See Rey Konk ey Kraus, Michael, 194n41 Kuroda, Etsuko, 127n31 land disputes. See agrarian disputes land dispute videos, 33–35, 37, 175, 178–180, 185, 189–91, 207, 232, 296 Ley Federal de Telecomunicaciones. See telecommunication laws López Domínguez, Teresa, 102, 221–22 López García, Alfonso, 91n10, 112, 199, 201–3, 230, 252n6 lo propio. See Ayuujk concepts, “our own” Los Angeles satellite community archives, 101, 242 clothes, 244–45 community apart from hometown, 243, 245, 251 El Bob, 248, 258n91 Emilia Rojas, 244–45, 248–49 ethnic business, 45n25, 84, 249–50

330 | Index

family celebrations, 60, 242, 245 Felipe, 243–44, 246–47 fiesta videos and children, 246, 251 fiesta videos and sponsorship, 235–36, 246–47, 249 fiesta video distributors, 33, 84, 242, 248–49, 303 Francisco, 101–2, 243, 247, 257n80 get-togethers at weekends, 243–244 Hilda, 244–45 hometown association, 60, 185, 195n65, 241 indigenous Oaxacan migrant organizations, 83, 241 nostalgia, productive, 246, 251, 303 occupational pattern, 60, 243–45 Olinda, 245–47 population pattern, 60 taco restaurant business, 57, 60, 182 TV Tamix videos, 210–13, 219, 254n38 visits to the hometown, 101, 246 Lucio, Fortino, 200, 252n10 Martín-Barbero, Jesús, 32 Martínez, Daniel, 135–39 Martínez Casas, Camila, 139–44 Martínez Casas, Victoriano, 116, 136, 139–47 Martínez Luna, Jaime, 10, 63, 88, 201, 214, 272, 307 Martínez Mireles, Adolfo, 71, 180, 185–88 Martínez Mireles, Florentino, 71, 81–83, 115 Martínez Pérez, Daniel, 16, 19, 88, 91n10, 97, 103, 107–9, 112, 116, 125n2, 125n9, 151, 154–55, 189, 192n12, 195n68, 199, 202, 252n6 media autodidactic appropriation, 5, 14, 42n2, 90, 158–61, 213, 232–33, 256nn67–68, 305 community, 14, 22, 85, 276

definition, 15–16, 305–6 diversity, 6, 17, 18, 38, 74–90, 297–300, 309 gender issues, 47n46, 67–71, 159–61, 231–34 sociality, 75, 76, 85, 279, 285–86 transmission of knowledge, 213– 17, 233, 305 (See also media, autodidactic appropriation) youth (See youth, media) media actors. See cargo system, officials as media actors; photography and videographers media anthropology, 4, 7, 42n7, 44n15, 297 media fields commercial media, 5–6, 11, 32–33, 51–52, 57–58, 75, 81–85, 208–13, 219–51, 265, 280, 287, 304, 307, 310 communal media, 10, 24, 29, 43n9, 75, 83, 86, 90, 179–80, 197–208, 213–17, 233, 261–87, 305, 307 informality, 30, 33, 302, 303 social event videography, 5–6, 10–11, 19, 34, 84–86, 156–58, 161–75, 180, 233, 301 See also Facebook page “Reunión de Tama”, media genres, photography, radio, telephony and television media genres “classic” documentaries of the 1980s and 1990s, 33, 35, 189, 205–7, 210–11, 213, 229, 252n15 experimental artistic, 33, 35, 88– 90, 121–25, 157–58, 171–75, 202, 207, 296, 298–99, 301 videos de comunidad, 6, 43n12, 245 visual languages, 9, 20, 25, 27, 35, 41, 46n37, 89, 156–58, 167–75, 189, 203–8 way of seeing, 32, 156, 228 See also fiesta videos and land dispute videos mediamakers. See cargo system, officials as media actors;

Index | 331

photography and videographers media practices, 5, 15, 16, 20, 23, 52, 58, 67, 80, 86, 97–126 media practices, discursive, 7, 9, 17, 18, 97–125, 134–35, 298 mediascape. See Appadurai, Arjun media spaces, 7, 13–20, 22, 32, 35, 36, 46n27, 52, 54, 55, 67, 69, 73, 74, 80, 83, 84, 85, 90, 97–125, 132, 139, 295–311 double movement (See twofold movement) transnational, 67, 69, 105, 240, 244, 250, 295, 308 transnational audiences, 4, 6, 12, 22, 102, 103, 197, 212–13, 220, 238–39, 244, 251, 296, 299 twofold movement, 22, 79–80, 296, 300, 303, 309 Media Summit of Indigenous Communication of Abya Yala. See Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala mediatization, 7, 13, 18, 21, 36, 44n14, 64, 67–69, 85, 100–104, 131–91, 198, 221, 227, 295, 296, 298, 303, 304, 306, 308, 310 media training. See media, autodidactic appropriation and media, transmission of knowledge Mesoamerican community, 34, 36, 53, 63, 304–6 mestizo nation model, 8, 23 mestizos/as, 43n10, 128n44, 141, 143 Mexican Revolution, 136–38, 140 migration construction activities, 54, 57, 67, 133, 242, 245 costs of, 55, 91n3, 221, 240 destinations, 7, 51, 56, 57, 60, 75, 82, 86, 89–90, 92n14, 111, 117–21, 128n47, 131–34, 139, 151, 160, 161–70, 184, 191n1, 240, 257n83, 285 domestic work, 12, 60, 94n38, 120, 132, 148, 160, 162, 245, 248 educational migration, 7, 11, 16, 40, 56, 58, 59, 64, 72, 117–25,

131–34, 139–47, 161, 177, 198, 257n83, 295, 299, 304 media enterprises, 40, 59, 82–83, 86–90, 101–2, 114, 117–25, 133, 144, 147–51, 157, 159– 75, 199–200, 202–3, 212–13, 256n65, 298–300, 303, 304 motives of, 240–41 paisanos/as, 45n25, 60, 82, 101–2, 181–82, 211–13, 219–20, 240–51 patterns of, 131–34 recreational practices, 147–56, 199 remittances, 12, 54, 61, 69, 134, 182, 212, 235, 238, 245, 247, 249 return migration (See migration, media enterprises) taco restaurant business, 12, 47n45, 52, 57, 60, 77, 119, 132, 169, 182, 225, 256n65 U.S. policies toward Mexican migration, 36, 51, 60, 85, 142, 191, 221, 240–42, 250, 306 Ministry of Communications and Transport (SCT), 31, 81, 264, 269–71, 273–74, 277 Ministry of Public Education (SEP), 58, 71, 137, 138, 192n18 modernity, 22, 46n29, 148, 194n44, 283, 295 modernization, 7, 13, 15, 18, 28, 52–53, 122, 124, 132–34, 139–47, 156, 159–60, 230, 245, 251, 253n24, 301, 304, 306 modernization theory, 23 Monteforte, Guillermo, 24–26, 31, 79, 195n69, 203–5 Moojk (Maíz/Maize), 189, 198, 206–7 Morales Galván, Filogonio, 148–50 Mother Earth (et naaxwi’iny), 99, 111, 181, 254n47 municipio organization, 56 Muñoz, Alfonso, 24, 199, 205, 253n18 Nahmad Sittón, Salomón, 140, 145–46, 158–159, 173, 194n42, 252n7, 280

332 | Index

Native American Film + Video Festival, 190, 206, 207, 210 Nochixtlán massacre, 45n23, 193n31, 288n17, 307 norteño culture, 82, 83, 92n20, 227 Oaxacan state government, 6, 135–36, 179, 184 laws, 6, 44n13, 64, 310 movement/uprising 2006, 8, 44n19, 58, 91n11, 127n34, 288n15, 293n58, 307 Ojo de Agua Comunicación, 29, 31, 32, 35, 47n46, 48n52, 48n55, 78, 79, 124, 195n69, 199, 203–4, 213–15, 253nn21–22, 262, 272–76 Olinda. See Los Angeles, Olinda oral tradition, 15, 17, 69, 88–89, 90, 93n27, 107–8, 135, 159, 186 paisanos/as. See migration, paisanos/as partnership and marriage, 53, 67, 72, 92n21, 95n53, 99, 102, 128n44, 142, 144, 161, 192n14, 237, 239, 241, 255n52 patron saint. See fiesta, patron saint patron saint fiesta. See fiesta Peña Nieto, Enrique, 29, 30, 31, 45nn22–23, 59, 92n13, 153, 193, 264, 271, 273, 275, 288n17, 307 Pérez García, Cuahutémoc “Temo”, 73, 87, 90, 97, 111–12, 115–16, 120–23, 127n28, 232, 265 Pérez Jiménez, Jorge “El Negro”, 127n23, 157, 162–64, 166, 171, 201 Pérez Mateos, Adelina, 67–70, 77, 299 Pérez Ramírez, Alberto, 5, 157, 158, 161–68, 170, 180, 201, 300 Pérez Ríos, Medardo, 104, 107, 149, 159 Pérez Rojas, Carlos, 1–3, 22, 42n4, 43n9, 77–78, 80, 207, 209, 215–17, 254nn45–46, 282 Pérez Rosas, Conrado, 70–71, 87, 89, 97, 106, 119, 125n9, 127n28, 156–58, 167–75, 194n42, 194n51, 215, 256n69, 282–83, 301 Pérez Rosas, Genoveva, 36, 55, 84, 93n26, 178, 226, 231–34, 300

philharmonic bands, 11, 81, 86, 88, 93n31, 102, 120, 125n9, 128n47, 132, 137–38, 149, 150, 158, 193n40, 204, 219, 224–29, 237, 250, 253n30 photography anthropological photography, 18, 19, 24, 78, 94n46, 117, 145–46, 158–59, 173, 174 artistic, 35, 88–90, 121–23, 157–58, 171–75, 296, 298–99, 301 autodidactic appropriation (See photography, history of) ban on (See Ayuujk religion, ban on photography) concept of, 109, 127n28, 167–68 death, 77–78, 109, 159, 164, 306 exhibitions, 9, 35, 88–89, 121– 23, 158, 161, 173–74, 282–83, 287, 299, 301 frontality, 157, 170 history of, 14, 18, 158–61 Kodak Instamatic cameras, 18, 159–60, 163–64, 166 magic, 109, 170, 171 photo studio, 157, 161–70, 194n44, 301 professionalism, 5, 14, 40, 70, 84, 89, 97, 133, 156–58, 161–70, 180, 300–302, 305 ritual use of (See photography, magic) social event photography, 5–6, 11, 157, 169–70, 180, 301 training in Mexico City, 119–20, 133, 161–65, 168–70 visual languages, 9, 20, 89, 156–58, 167–75 See also Pérez Ramírez, Alberto and Pérez Rosas, Conrado Postill, John, 279 practices. See media practices professionalism. See photography, professionalism and videographers, professionalism Putsk: El ombligo (The Navel), 215–17 race, 15, 28–29, 43n10, 118, 128n45, 138, 293n56, 296, 300, 301

Index | 333

radio community-run radio stations, 29–31, 48n52, 55, 133, 197, 201, 202, 217, 262, 264, 268, 272, 273, 275, 281–82, 289n23, 293n58, 295, 302, 306 INI radio stations, 7, 24, 29, 253n21, 268 La T Grande de Tamazulapam, 9, 76, 81–84, 114 Radio Jënpoj, 30, 31, 45n23, 75–76, 81–82, 89, 193n33, 268–71, 273, 277–78, 284, 285, 289nn18–19 Yin Et Radio, 9, 270, 289n22 Raheja, Michelle, 14, 46n27 Rappaport, Joanne, 263–64, 287n4, 292n46 Rastafarianism, 6, 55, 87, 118, 266 Reggae, 6, 13, 35, 81, 86–88, 117, 118, 120, 217, 249, 265–66 Reunión de Tama Facebook page. See Facebook page “Reunión de Tama” Rey Konk ey, 125n1, 135, 138, 193n33, 268 Rituals. See Ayuujk religion, costumbre (religious sacrifice) road construction, 34, 56, 67, 132, 136, 138, 147, 151, 181, 201 Rodríguez, Luis, 135–139, 191n4, 191n7 Rojas, Domingo Basilio, 116, 139, 144, 147, 192n19 Rojas, Emilia. See Los Angeles, Emilia Rojas Rojas, Erick “Siete Copitas”, 80–83, 94n48 Rojas Cruz, Óscar, 3, 104, 211, 213, 230, 231, 247, 248–49, 254n43 Rojas García, Marciano, 140–45, 151–54, 159–60, 191n4, 192n18, 192n20 Rojas Ramírez, Genaro, 1–2, 25–27, 48n54, 77, 94n46, 97, 110–11, 155, 199–204, 206–9, 211–12, 216–18, 252n5, 252nn11–12, 252n14, 253n18, 253n27, 254n33, 254n36, 265–66, 270, 273–74, 288n8

Rojas Ramírez, Hermenegildo, 1–2, 16, 25–27, 37, 48n54, 77–80, 189, 201–6, 208–13, 215, 252n5, 252n12, 252n14, 253n19, 254n43, 255n52, 265–66, 270, 275, 288n8 Rojas Sánchez, Jaquelina, 3, 105, 211, 230–32, 254n43, 256n67 Ruiz Pérez, Romel, 28, 47nn44–45, 70, 87, 90, 93n26, 178–79, 215, 220–21, 231–32, 234–36, 238, 265 Salesian proselytization, 98, 116–17, 147, 152, 267, 288n12, 308 Sánchez, Ingeniero Fernando, 210–11 Santa Ana, agencia, 261 Santa Rosa de Lima fiesta. See fiesta, Santa Rosa de Lima fiesta Savage, Rebecca, 21 Schäfer, Manfred, 2, 25, 42n5 Schein, Louisa, 21 Schiwy, Freya, 15, 17, 21, 42n7 Sección 22, 44n19, 45n23, 58–59, 77, 91nn11–12, 92n13, 127n34, 257n79 Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala advocates/collaborators, non-indigenous, 263–64, 268, 287n4 appointees, 262, 264, 276, 278–79, 280, 283, 285, 286 boycott, 32, 264, 273–80, 284, 310 Franco Gabriel (See Gabriel Hernández, Franco) inaugural event, 272, 279–282 media dissidents, 264, 269, 270, 276, 277, 279, 286, 310 Ministry of Communications and Transport (See Ministry of Communications and Transport (SCT)) Pacara, Susana, 281 photography, 280–83, 287, 293n53, 296 workshops, 279, 283–84 secrecy. See Ayuujk religion, occult, the Servicios del Pueblo Mixe A.C. (SER), 24, 153, 267

334 | Index

Servindi, 31, 264, 266, 275, 277, 282, 283, 290n29 Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Educación (SNTE), 44n19, 45n23, 59, 91–92nn11–13 Smith, Benjamin, 135, 191n7 Smith, Laurel, 15, 42n7, 287n4 social heterogeneity. See media, diversity social media. See Facebook page “Reunión de Tama” Sones mixes en la ciudad, 128n47, 215 Sones y Jarabes Mixe, 88, 102, 112, 138, 145, 282 sport “Ayuujk Olympic Games”, 40, 151, 153 (See also Campeonato Regional Mixe) Copa Mixe, 2, 153, 156, 224, 226, 228 Copa Nación Ayuujk (See Copa Mixe) ethnic criterium, 153–154 ‘nationalism’, 154–156 See also basketball, box ranchero and jaripeo Strassler, Karen, 20, 32, 194n41 Tamazulapam del Espíritu Santo Casa del Pueblo, 25, 46n40, 79, 199–200 economy, 51–61 General Assembly, 2, 13, 35, 37, 61–64, 67, 70–74, 79, 93n34, 94nn41–42, 104, 151, 154, 175–83, 188, 195n63, 203, 207–8, 242, 265, 269, 299 Tu’uk Nëëm, 14 urbanization, 35, 52–53, 90n1, 102, 160, 179, 182, 201, 246 village symbols, 14, 115–116 teachers, 58–59, 91n9 Ayuujk movement, 58, 66, 124, 151–54, 267, 288n9 career path, 141–47, 159, 192n18, 248 educational reform, opposition to, 45n23, 91n13, 193n31, 288n17

media, 18, 40, 77, 78, 98, 111– 13, 122, 157, 159, 161, 168, 186, 188, 199, 200, 203, 298 movement/uprising 2006, 44n19, 91n11, 127n34 music and dance performances, 18, 132, 137–38, 161 sport, 138, 151–54 village conflicts, 71, 147, 177, 194n53 See also Sección 22 telecommunication laws, 29, 36, 47n47, 281, 290n27, 307 telecommunication reform. See telecommunication laws telephony caseta, 76 cell phone, 47n43, 53, 76, 82, 112, 187, 188, 233, 257n80, 257n82, 274 television, Mexican, 10, 14, 20, 29, 45n22, 52, 68, 75, 80, 85, 94n44, 150–51, 200, 202, 223 tequio (communal labor), 10, 56, 61, 81, 83, 105, 160, 181, 201, 242, 282 Tlahuitoltepec, 10, 13, 24, 29–32, 35, 41–42, 75, 76, 89–90, 99, 116–17, 119, 120–24, 125n3, 128n47, 136, 141, 147, 148, 149, 151, 153, 154, 193n31, 193n33, 216, 217, 252n8, 253n30, 305. See also agrarian disputes, Tlahuitoltepec conflict; radio, Radio Jënpoj and Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala Transferencia de Medios Audiovisuales a Comunidades y Organizaciones Indígenas, 5, 7, 21, 24, 35, 42n5, 48n52, 199, 203, 253n18 transnationalism. See debates, transnational family; media spaces, transnational; media spaces, transnational audiences TV Tamix archive, 37, 78, 179, 207, 211 archive project, 77–80, 302 audiences of, 26–27, 75, 79, 189, 199, 202–207, 210, 212, 301–302

Index | 335

conflict and demise in 2000, 10, 78, 207–8, 254n34 documentaries (See Barras de Color, Fiesta animada, Këdung Ajdk and Moojk) first video camera, 199–200 interviews, 203, 253n19, 255n57 land dispute videography, 37, 79, 127n30, 179, 183–184, 195n63, 207 leftist movements, 200–202, 254n46 members, 5, 9, 76–77, 127n38, 199, 201, 203, 208, 232, 252n14, 253n20 migrant media spaces, 80, 198, 208–13, 219 presenters, 203, 252n11, 252n14 sacred space (espacio sagrado), 27, 110–12, 205 Transferencia de Medios program, 25–27, 29, 199, 204–206, 251n3, 252n15 transmission of media knowledge, 80, 213–17 TV transmissions, 202–3, 252n9 video-cartas, 209 United Nations (UN), 32, 274, 280, 283 Universidad Cempoaltepetl (UNICEM), 81, 90, 217, 267, 270, 275, 305 usos y costumbres. See cargo system, usos y costumbres Vásquez García, Braulio, 89, 265, 266, 270, 273, 275, 285 Vásquez García, Rigoberto, 83, 89, 217, 255n48, 265, 270, 275, 288n16 Vásquez García, Sócrates, 81, 89, 270, 278, 289n23 Vásquez Narváez, Nemesio, 101–2, 125n7, 211, 237, 256n65 Vásquez Pérez, Rolando, 74 vernacular theories. See Ayuujk concepts Videoastas. See videographers Video Cajonos, 3, 84, 200, 222, 227, 230, 236, 256n65, 302

videographers, fiesta accusation of destroying marriages, 220, 237–39, 307–8 aesthetic devices, 43n12, 101–2, 105, 125n7, 156, 213, 227–30, 255n60 autodidactic appropriation (See media, autodidactic appropriation) Ayuujk cultural resources, 22, 36, 55, 233–34 commercial approach, 3–4, 32, 51–52, 54, 57–58, 230–40, 302–3 comuneros/as, 11, 36, 41, 197, 230–40 film permits, 236 gender, 232, 300 officials’ demands, 65, 70, 84, 236–37 professionalism, 14, 19, 21, 34–35, 42n2, 84–85, 210, 213, 227–28, 232–34, 240, 256n71, 305 social events, 19, 34, 256n63 technical equipment, 231, 234, 256n71 Video Indígena activism, 22, 29, 204, 207, 213, 215 anthropological documentaries as models, 25, 189–90, 205–6 audiences, 4, 25–27, 189–90, 198–99, 203–5, 302 bottom-up influence, 205, 302 definition, 3–5, 8–9, 43n9, 44n16, 297, 301 film festivals, 22, 190, 206–7 (See also Native American Film + Video Festival) gender, 47n46 stereotypes, 25–29, 37, 205–7 visualizing culture, 98 workshops, 25, 35, 46n40, 201, 233 Video Líder, 210 Video Mecho, 84, 101–2, 211, 227, 230, 237, 256n65 Video Rey, 210

336 | Index

Video Rojas, 76, 84, 104, 105, 173, 211, 227–28, 230–32, 239, 247–49, 254n43, 256n65, 302 Video Tamix, 28, 47n44, 84, 93n26, 178–79, 220, 227, 230–36, 247, 256n71, 302 visual divide, 7, 15, 18, 40, 148, 159, 223, 228, 233, 296, 300–304

migration, 117–21, 147–48, 162 space, 86, 117–25 urban life, 120–21 See also debates, youth culture and Feria Cultural del Pulque Williams, Raymond, 199–200, 306 Wortham, Erica, 43n9, 79–80, 190, 207, 251n3, 253n27

youth Cine Club Et ääw, 90, 119, 123–24, 128n52, 285, 293n58 culture, 13, 54–55, 117, 154–56, 174, 217, 249, 301 definition, 23, 35, 95n53, 237, 304 media, 6, 9, 13, 19, 30, 35, 71, 73–74, 86–90, 117–25, 220–21, 232, 23, 265, 269, 297–99, 301

Zamorano Villareal, Gabriela, 42n7 Zapotec people, 33, 51, 117, 124, 125n1, 128n44, 135, 140–41, 186, 192n12, 229, 241, 249, 250, 253n26, 311n1 Zempoaltépetl, 91n8, 109, 116, 118, 135, 257n80, 266