Becca's Anthropological Adventures in Oaxaca

These little children adopted me as their entertainer for the wedding

Last weekend I went to my second wedding in Gelavia, this time that of a couple I had met twice before, and had had long conversations with the groom at the last wedding (he is the man posing with the hanging turkeys in my pictures from the previous wedding), and my invitation passed through L was not one that I wanted (or could) refuse (I still got a lot of questions about why I hadn’t attended a baptism that took place before I had met them and why I hadn’t brought my parents to visit). L was involved in lots of wedding prep the week before, including making the chocolate (which had started with green beans that they roasted on the comal and then brought to Tlacolula to be ground with sugar and cinnamon at the molino, finally pressing the paste into molds) and told me to get there early on Sunday morning (I decided to just go to one of the three day celebration).

uncomfortable position ever) to the crucero of GSo I left the city early under grey skies and caught a collectivo (somehow whenever I am wearing a shortish skirt I end up having to sit in the middle of the front seat in the mostelavia (basically the government has built these big concrete pedestrian overpasses at the turnoff for many of the small villages along this valley so that people don’t have to run across the highway, but I’ve never seen anyone using them, and I don’t either… this is another case of follow the money when the governor’s family owns one of the big concrete companies). While I had luckily packed a small umbrella, I wasn’t expecting the steady rain in the valley since people in Gelavia are always saying that even when it rains at the highway, they never get any. As I left the collectivo I resigned myself to a wait for a local collectivo to take me into town (about another 15 minute drive off the highway). But as I got out of the collectivo and collected my extra bag and present, I had seen a pickup truck turn in and then stop a little up the road. As I stood under my umbrella, it backed up a little and then honked and since I was the only one around, I went over to the window and saw two men, who asked me if I was going to the wedding and let me into the back. I had this moment of total indecision as I weighed the safety of what I was doing (I know that L sometimes gets rides to and from the highway with strangers) and hoped desperately that I wasn’t making one of those decisions that serves as a warning to others. But, my judgment was accurate as it turned out that the driver was the groom’s brother-in-law and they delivered me to the house (saving me a muddy walk from the center of town). It was pouring in Gelavia and the backyard had been set up with two enormous tarp canopies with long tables and folding chairs.

While Arturo (the groom) had told me that his wedding wasn’t as elaborate as the previous one, it definitely followed the basic ritual patterns (although L and I flubbed the presentation of our wedding and baptism gifts)…. I arrived and was presented with a plate with two big chunks of pan de yema and a cup of hot chocolate (and a bag to save the expected leftover bread). Arturo’s family is incredibly welcoming (they are the ones with whom L spends most of her time and the ones I know best) and I caught up with the various people I had met before… including one women who is heavily pregnant and who told me she had an apt at the hospital the next day (we quickly made plans for me to accompany her!). While the men do a lot of the heavy prep work, at a wedding they mostly sit around and play host while the women are constantly on the move during the day preparing food, washing dishes, and recording the transfer of gifts and commitments to and from the bridal couple. Interestingly enough, people were constantly asking me about how weddings in the US are different and I would tell them that weddings tend to be shorter and invitations are restricted, but what they really picked up on was that the family doesn’t work the day of the wedding (and this was men, who generally weren’t working).

And we sat and waited and waited as the time for the mass was pushed back an hour… and then were rushed into the same truck I had arrived in to be delivered to the church (L and I sharing the front seat with the driver and a little girl who eventually adopted us), at which point we again waited for the priest to open the church. As we huddled until a stone arch with couple, the man started asking us about US elections (something Mexicans correctly see themselves pretty invested in) and then told us this long story about how Obama had come to Oaxaca to talk to the Mexicans…. laughing all the while as we protested that this was not the truth.

And then there was the interminable mass… something that most people in the family declined to attend (although we were of course expected to). The little girl Rayna latched onto me and as we waited for the bridal couple, she pointed out the various saints and told me their stories in a bossy didactic tone. Throughout the service she would whisper to me (earning both of us censoring glances) questions making sure I understood what was going on (not that I understood her very well as she chattered so quickly) and asking me things like why I didn’t cross myself or take communion. My muttered “well, because I’m not Catholic” or “I haven’t been confirmed” were incomprehensible to her and she kept asking (L reports that people are also always mystified that she doesn’t know how to properly bless things, like holding her fingers wrong when making the sign of the cross). The mass was doubly long because as well as the wedding, the couple was having their infant daughter baptized and throughout at least 3 and at times 4 to 6 people were filming the process, making it impossible to see as they flocked around the action, and making very visible the importance of media making in transnational communities (as many of the tapes made on cameras sent from the US will then be sent back across the border).

After the mass we joined a very small contingent in walking back to the house in the traditional procession led by the town band. Only some of the streets in Gelavia are paved, and those end before the house, not to mention that there aren’t good drainage systems in place, so this walk required careful attention to puddles, mud clumps as well as animal droppings. Meanwhile the bride and groom gamely made their way, with her long train held up by a quartet of little girls with big dresses and intricate hair styles who tried holding the train over their heads to avoid the rain and who sometimes needed their mothers to hold the train while they were carried over the particularly large puddles. As the day went on I tried to figure out the least mud sucking routes to and from the house, but basically gave up all hope for my shoes and was glad that my dress was short unlike the brides whose hem (and about 2 inches up) was completely mud soaked (I also ended up rocking the rolled up jeans under a dress under a cardigan with heeled sandals look). I also learned that what they say about pig shit and its odors are completely unexaggerated.

Many of the rituals were sped through in part because this was a wedding with only one family. The bride’s (Erika) parents refused to give their approval to the wedding, nor attend the baptism, because they objected to Arturo (interestingly, his family’s narrative is that they were somewhat justified in their characterization of him pre-relationship but that she has changed him—women also characterize most single men as drunks) and to the family generally (which I understand as class status differences). Their absence, the awful weather, combined with her age (17) made her seem often very petulant and sad (or tired, since these events are super intense for the couple).

These events are hard in part because we are a) outsiders where most (all) non-local people are family and b) there is nothing for us to do as others have tasks and are constantly working… my big coup was being give the task of filling the napkin holders! Luckily we were given leave to take a little rest during the mid-afternoon in the house where we were to spend the night. It was super interesting, the house belongs to the sister of the woman L is closest to, but she, her husband and daughter are still in LA while her son is a lawyer in Oaxaca City and basically just sleeps at the house (the family narrative about him is that he must stay there to watch over the house and be close to family, but he’s a useless family member since he doesn’t participate as a responsible community member… nor clean the house adequately). It was crazy to walk into this house and look at the pictures on the wall that included school pictures from my local elementary school—Alej and I talked about LA, his father got amnesty in the ‘80s and they lived in Venice for a while, but then came back to Gelavia, at which point everyone but he decided to return to the States. Off topic, another thing I found as I talked with people (mostly men) about their time in LA is that they would name Venice, Santa Monica, and Malibu as their social geography—which fits in many ways into their narratives that life in the States (for those without family who stay only a couple years) involves only work and sleep. Another off topic interesting tidbit is the guests’ gifts… the woman whose house we were staying in had sent a large package of things for the wedding as part of her familial cargo since she wasn’t present, including bottle openers printed with “I love California.”

We came back to the wedding to eat more (pork barbacoa, eaten with tortillas as utensils, the same as the egg soup earlier) and watch as the wewete (I have no idea how to spell this zapotec word, he’s the man in charge of witnessing and enforcing compradrazo commitments) made a series of ritual pronouncements over the gifts intended for the padrinos/ madrinas (godparents, for which there are specific different ones for the various ritual stages of baptism, confirmation and weddings etc). Then, it was time for the dance of the turkey… a man and a woman (she less willing than he) were selected to dance the local dance (whose name I’m blanking on, it involves a line of men and of women dancing as partners with about three feet in between them and without looking at each other nor doing the same steps, turning around each other after a couple minutes… and it’s the dance people do whenever they “dance) with a live turkey under their arm. We were each asked to dance as well and given gourd bowls of candy to throw at the end of the dance (people get pelted!). We then took the dance out into the street and they danced at each of the corners between their house and that of the madrina, throwing candy to the crowd (I ducked). After this we were allowed to rest until the evening dancing.

When we got back it was to the kind of wedding cake I always stared at in the windows of bakeries downtown (multiple levels with bridges connecting them and a lit fountain underneath!!!). There was also a local cumbia band playing and everyone sat around in folding chairs in a big circle under the main tent (we were moved several times). One of the cousins who lives in DF (Mexico City) called L and I up to dance “the women are dancing together” and so I got up stupidly thinking that it wasn’t another opportunity to be giant gringa freakshows on display… nope, it was just Martha, L and I dancing. And I, not really thinking starting dancing my version of the cumbia (which is a bastardized version of my salsa) complete with hips, until I realized that no one else was dancing like that and heard the whispers… as we returned to sit down with the other women (strict gender separation), all these old women patted me and told me that I danced so well and and and asked L why she couldn’t dance like that etc. As the evening went on, a number of older women brought me to dance with their (eligible) sons/ nephews (who were invariably in their early 20s and previously married/ had children) and I concentrated on toning down my dancing and following the no-touching rules while still dancing—because of course the first questions were am I married, and I here alone, and how old am I? One of the men I ended up dancing with spoke to me only in English and told me how he has lived for 20 years in Venice (on the same street a high school friend of mine lived) and how I should come see his family when I’m back in LA.

Shortly thereafter we got into the proscribed dances which just furthered my conviction that Zapotecs are really the lost tribe. In the berioba the bride and groom stood on chairs maybe 5 feet apart (supported by men holding them on the chairs), he held onto her train creating a clothes-line. L and I were pulled into a line of giggling young women and told to hold on (after they tried to put us in the front, not listening when we told them that we had no idea what to do). We then engaged in this weird kind of crack the whip, holding on in front and behind running full out around and around the couples’ chairs and under the train crashing into them etc. This went on for probably 10 minutes and I was laughing so hard I thought I would fall over. Then, it was the men’s turn, and we learned what the point is (at least for them) as their crashed into the groom and took him out in about a minute. Then, there was this weird sequence where a group of men grabbed the groom and carried him on his back around and around the circle while the bride was draped with a white rebozo and given a white flower to hold as she was escorted around after him, the men pulled off his shoes and socks and then threw him up a couple times before setting him in a chair so that she could kneel and put back on his shoes and socks.

The DJ read out the names of all the padrinos/ madrinas and made a point of announcing those who lived in LA as present (and addressed the cameras recording this to send to CA) and Chela quickly counted off all those he missed, sending another woman to correct him. And then the wewete dedicated an interminable dance to the couple, periodically stopping it to give another benediction. After this, L and I were exhausted and decided that 1am was a perfectly acceptable time to leave (this being Sunday after all). When I met up with Silvia and Beto the next day, we learned though that our absence had not been unnoticed and everyone else had stayed until 4am! At 7:30am, they picked me up to go to the hospital for Silvia’s apt (which she though was at 8, but wasn’t seen until noon) and I hung out with them for the day as they navigated the hospital systems.