The Guelaguetza : Transborder Indigeneity, Music, and Festival in Greater Oaxaca

For over a century, geographies of transmission through historic migration routes have been carved out by migrants from Mexico to the United States in search of economic prosperity. In the twentieth century, many Oaxacan migrants who made their way to California found that leaving their motherland behind was only part of the journey. Moving into a new country with different values and customs, these migrants began to replant their Oaxacan ways of knowing through the Indigenous practice of the guelaguetza (mutual assistance and gift-giving) in their new places of settlement. Their intense networking throughout Greater Oaxaca led to the sponsorship of migrant Guelaguetza festivals, an important site of transborder cultural performance where Oaxacan community members could create, renew, and maintain connections with their paisanos (compatriots).As the first transborder, multi-sited ethnography of the festival, The Guelaguetza: Transborder Indigeneity, Music, and Festival in Greater Oaxaca takes readers on stage and inside rehearsals, organizing meetings, kitchens, dressing rooms, and virtual spaces to understand the historical development and making of the ultimate festival of the Oaxacan people. Informed by more than eight years of fieldwork, performance participation, and collaboration in Guelaguetza festivals in Oaxaca and California, author Xóchitl. C. Chávez provides insight into how Oaxacan Indigenous teachings are understood and transmitted to generations outside Oaxaca. By tracing migration patterns and circuits of cultural exchanges, Chávez shows that these indigenous migrants have built solidarity within the political and cultural landscapes of California and preserved a powerful and long-standing collective memory across borders.This examination of the Guelaguetza festival reveals nuances about how the Oaxaqueño migrant community established strategies to adapt to their needs, contexts, and circumstances. Pertinent discussions of authenticity and authentication processes involved in the festival production form important theoretical frameworks throughout the book, connecting it to the larger literature on heritage and authenticity.