Mexican fiestas

Nestled in the mountainous Michoacán landscape rests a small pueblo Aranza. Overshadowed by its larger and more populous neighbors Paracho and Uruapan, Aranza appears at first blush like a typical Mexican town. Like many small towns in the state of Michoacán it boasts a quaint 16th Century church in the town square. There is a school, a series of shops, and taco stands dotting the landscape. Waves of banda music roll out from pick up trucks, dogs skulk about and roosters sporadically call. Wind rustles through the high, thick forests and a faint scorched smell permeates the streets from the burnt garbage. The air is cool year round due to its high altitude. Women cart their children in rebozos, long, wide scarves that women use to cover their heads or wrap around their shoulders and twist their long hair into braids down their back. Men don boots, thick belt buckles and sombreros. It is a town that, despite its beauty and tranquility, has lost many enterprising, energetic and young to their northern neighbor due to the sluggish local economy.

One characteristic, however, sets Aranza apart from its neighbors: a religious fiesta. It is a tradition that binds the community together despite the fractured, migrating families and despite the isolation that characterizes nations slowly leaving their community identity in favor of globalization. El niño Chichihua, the baby Jesus Christ, provides this metaphoric glue—a constant reminder of its inhabitants ties to the land and to each other.

Much has been written about fiestas, particularly Mexican ones. The Nobel prize winning author Octavio Paz wrote in his seminal book The Labyrinth of Solitude about the importance of the fiesta in Mexican culture: He believed that the Mexican soul was closed from the world, hermetic and solitary. Fiestas provide a “… brilliant reverse to our silence and apathy, our reticence and gloom.”(49) Fiestas offer a place to release tension built from being sealed off from the world. They are where “the Mexican...communes with his fellows and with the values that give meaning to his religious or political existence.”(52). That is, fiestas are societal theatre where the role of the Mexican citizen is played out—replete with the religion and politics. Whether or not one agrees with Paz’s characterization of lo mexicano, that he mentions fiestas as key to Mexican culture is revealing. Why are they so important to the community make-up? The fiesta is home to intricate, entangled social relations essential to community identity and which also bind the community to the larger nation. To look at a fiesta is to look at a deep slice of Mexican culture.

Fiestas props up a complex network of friendship, favors, and political ties. Important people are invited as guests of honor, the children of special families are asked to perform in the religious plays solidifying friendships, community members offer support to the cargueros in show of unity. It also boosts the local economy because sellers of all types set up outside the fiesta offering mangos on sticks, snacks and toys. The fiesta acts as more than an expression of devotion and faith to a saint; it tacitly ties a community together through a series of interpersonal exchanges and relationships.

The dependency of social relationships in Mexico cannot be underscored enough. Relationships define your life: the school you attend, job opportunities, the applicability (or not) of the legal system, etc. It is not what you know, rather it is who you know that is important. The emphasis and importance of your connections with others sustains the fiesta, but it also reflects how the larger Mexican culture operates.

The fiesta for the niñito Chichihua solidifies community identity. Differences between the townspeople are mitigated in faith, in ritual, and in custom. Sworn enemies and social dramas hide under the polite public faces and, in some cases, fiestas ease the drama. The very act of sitting with member of your community and sharing food provides a sense of belonging and place. And it is the true “imagined community” for the hundreds of migrants who come home during the fiestas; a welcoming place and constant, sure, event with the niño Chichihua who never forgets you. The fiesta is a vehicle of social cohesion for a community.

The fiesta also gives people place within the larger national imagination as the local customs merge into a larger nexus of cultural references to the Mexican nation. In this way the fiestas patronales serve not only as a microcosm of Mexican culture, but they also reinforce the idea of the very existence of a Mexican culture through ritual and a historical, shared experience of a singular object of faith.

Fiestas for the niñito Chichihua offer a peek into Mexican culture. They display the religious blending that took place after the Conquest, the manifestation of the ideology of meztisaje, and the site of complex social relationships and social rituals. All lead to strong identification with a local as well as national community.

Entering into the cooking area, one’s eyes begin to sting from the smoke of the cooking fires. Flies scatter in the air and the steamy smell of cooked rice and tortillas warming on the comal fill the air. Women in checked aprons busily serve Styrofoam plates stacked with food. The earth is uneven, so the plastic tables teeter. Handmade baskets hold the mounds of tortillas filled as seats are abandoned and then reoccupied. Bees cloud around the half-drunk plastic cups of soda while bottles of beer collect on the tables. The band plays. Paper cut-out designs, balloons, and crepe paper swing painting the party with celebratory colors. Returning townspeople greet one another and talk about their lives far away and the shared memories of Aranza. The community hums and the niñito Chichihua looks on.

Markets to Wal-Mart

Before the Spanish conquest the Aztecs bought and sold food in outdoor markets. Today, centuries later, many Mexicans still buy their food in markets; it is tradition. But more than ever the raucous outdoor markets have begun to fade in favor with Mexican consumers. They prefer Wal-Mart and other large grocery chains where they can buy capers in glass jars from Italy, beef from the United States, and sushi made fresh daily with imported seaweed and rice. This shift from small local markets to large international grocery chains is a manifestation of changes in economic policy. Policy affects where people buy their food. And where people buy their food causes many cultural changes.

For many years the notorious PRI party held power in Mexico. They created an economic policy ISI, or import substitution industrialization, designed to protect local agriculture markets by putting high tariffs on imports. Thus, once the imports made it to the Mexican market, the high prices steered potential customers away from foreign products and towards food produced in Mexico. This policy worked for decades to strengthen the Mexican agricultural sector. And consumers could find a plethora of locally grown and produced at the outdoor markets. ISI offered farmers a bit of economic protection and allowed families to live off of their crops while providing consumers with traditional food choices.

In 1986 Mexico opened up its economy and joined the globalizing trend by forming part of GATT, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. This agreement stressed the importance of imports and led to NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA opened the borders between Mexico, Canada and the United States to easily buy, sell, and produce in other countries without strict trade restrictions. As a result US grocery chains sprouted up in Mexico and imported products began entering Mexico. The shift from economic protectionism to free trade changed buying habits for Mexicans. Grocery chains offered an enticing selection of foods from the “global village” and Mexican consumers moved away from the limited open markets to the array of food alternatives at the grocery stores.

The shift in buying habits from local to international shapes culture in diverse ways. Now that consumers largely prefer to buy imported goods from international grocery chains, many farms have lost customers. Therefore, many rural Mexicans have been forced to sell their land or leave it untilled in search of alternative sources of income. Without work many rural Mexicans migrate to the larger cities within Mexico or the United States in search of jobs. Young men pour out of their towns leaving them desolate. Many don’t return, thus the cultural institution of the family severely breaks down. Cities, straining under overpopulation, deal with water issues, underemployment and all the subsequent social issues due to poverty.

The traditional diet of freshly made tortilla, beans, meat, and salsas—all products offered in the markets-- offered daily supplements of protein and vegetables. But buying largely imported products from the grocery store dramatically changes diet. Replacing traditional foods for their imported counterparts supplants the nutrients found in beans, vegetables and tortilla with products high in oils, sugars, and preservatives. The obesity rate in Mexico has risen as a result. Diabetes, its nefarious counterpart, trails weight gain and causes countless secondary health problems. Teeth problems caused by sugar mount as well.

Food choice, undoubtedly, gives consumers a great deal of freedom. Free trade and globalization offer astounding conveniences and add to the gross national product: it is not without its positive side. However, open markets in Mexico have inadvertently helped increase migration and contribute to the breakdown of the family, unemployment, and other societal ills. In addition, many health problems due to imported foods are radically affecting millions of Mexicans. Clearly, economic policy drives far-reaching cultural changes.