Tag Archives: culture
Wearing My Roots: A Queen’s Journey Through the Vela 27
By Daira Moreno —
When I reflect on my roots, I picture myself beautifully dressed in Tehuana attire. It brings me back to my ancestors, especially my grandmother. The beauty of these dresses lies not only in their embroidery, but in the way they are passed from one generation to the next. Today, only a few artisans still know how to make Tehuana attire in its traditional form. The Zapotec language, along with the traditional techniques, is at risk of disappearing. Wearing the dress is an act of resistance, a way to keep our identity alive. The reaffirmation of Zapotec identity through the figure of the Queen of the Vela 27, embodied in my own experience of wearing the Tehuana dress, is a form of empowerment for the people of my town, the Ixtepecanos. It is also a way of preserving our culture at a time when many traditions are being lost in an increasingly globalized world.
Ciudad Ixtepec’s cultural identity lives within its traditional attire, the Tehuana dress, and in the fact that only a few artisans continue to make it in the old way. This fragility, of both language and dressmaking, shows how urgent it is to preserve these parts of our heritage. The Tehuana attire has also found its place in the larger story of Mexico. Iconic figures such as Frida Kahlo and Salma Hayek embraced it, drawing inspiration from Isthmus women and, in Hayek’s case, from her own Ixtepecana roots. Lupe Vélez immortalized the style in her film La Sandunga, helping introduce Oaxacan culture to national and international audiences. Many consider the Tehuana costume the most beautiful in Mexico. These cultural references strengthen the idea that Zapotec identity carries a significance that must be protected.
In this piece, I offer a brief reflection on my experience as queen of the Vela 27 and on the meaning of a Vela, with special attention to the clothing I wore throughout the five-day celebration which culminates in the coronation, where I step into the same role my mother and cousin once held, continuing a legacy begun by my grandmother, one of the festival’s founders.
This year, I served as queen of the Renombrada Vela 27, held in honor of San Jerónimo Doctor. It is characterized by dancing throughout the entire night, waiting for dawn to arrive. “Vela” is the name given by the friars to the indigenous festivities dedicated to the deities called “Za” or “Binnizá,” meaning “men of the clouds,” according to the agricultural calendar. With evangelization, these rituals were transformed into patron-saint festivals dedicated to Catholic saints, following the mission and religious order of the friars during the colonial period. The word vela comes from velar, meaning “to stay awake, to keep vigil all night,” which remains at the heart of the celebration today.
One of the most striking parts of the Vela is that all attendees must wear the Tehuana gala dress; otherwise, they are not permitted to enter. Women showcase their finest traditional gala dresses and high heels, each one striving to look as spectacular as possible. Men must wear a plain white guayabera with no floral embroidery.
The use of gold, coins, and ornaments in the festivities has its roots in practices of prestige and offering. In the case of coins, their presence is more recent, linked to the arrival of the Trans-Isthmus Railway and the port of Salina Cruz in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Gold in women’s attire also symbolizes the empowerment of Isthmus women, as well as well-being, economic stability, and even wealth. The use of minted coins changes the meaning significantly, which is why I emphasize empowerment.
Many of the pieces I wore are family heirlooms, and when I put them on, I feel the presence of my grandmother, my mother, and the women in my family who have kept these traditions alive. Each garment reflects the work of artisans whose techniques are at risk of disappearing.
To understand the significance of each day and the meaning behind every outfit, it is helpful to look at the schedule of the Vela 27 and the Tehuana attire I wore throughout the celebration.
The Vela 27 Schedule:
September 26 (evening): The festivities begin with the Calenda (traditional street parade) at 8 p.m., continuing until 2 a.m. The streets of Ixtepec come alive with dancing, fireworks, and music, announcing the start to the Vela 27. That evening, I wore a coordinated skirt and huipil made with the cadenilla technique, featuring pink and yellow greca designs crafted by the artisan Francisco Javier Reyes Vázquez from San Blas Atempa. My hairstyle followed the traditional style of the women of Ixtepec: two braids intertwined with a pink ribbon and adorned with artificial flowers. To complete the muda, I wore a three-strand espejito azucena necklace with a calabaza pendant in pearls and gold filigree, along with matching earrings and a bracelet made from 2.5-peso Mexican coins embellished with rubies and alejandrina.
2nd Day of Activities:
September 27 (morning): The queen’s Mañanitas begin at 7 a.m. and include serenades, prayers, and dancing. The organizers of the Vela attend, making it one of the most beautiful moments of the celebration, filled with emotion as the family prepares for the day. Breakfast is offered at the queen’s home to those who came to serenade her, and gifts are given to the attendees. This festivity also commemorates the birthday of the patron saint, San Jerónimo Doctor. For my muda during the Mañanitas, I wore a circular stylized yellow rabona skirt with a hand-stitched cadenilla huipil. I accessorized with a choker made of hinged coins and matching cross-shaped earrings.
September 27 (evening): The most significant and symbolic day of the Vela 27 gathers about 3,000 people. It begins at 9 p.m. and lasts until 7 a.m. The highlight of the event is the queen’s coronation, which includes her arrival, her first dance, and her speech. Past queens, as well as the queen from the previous year, also make their appearances. After the ceremony, the community spends the rest of the night dancing. On the day of my coronation, I proudly wore an original, hand-embroidered traditional dress crafted by the artisan Antonia Morales Lobo from the town of Santa Rosa de Lima. This community is distinguished by its mastery of the Tehuana gala dress, an art practiced by both its women and men. The making of this outfit was commissioned a year in advance.
The dress is a replica of one of my mother’s gala dresses, which she wore when she served as queen in 1985, although for my version I chose a garden of yellow Castilian roses. The outfit consists of the enagua (skirt) and the huipil (blouse). I also wore a gold fleco made of gusanillos and canelones, a distinctive accessory that sets the queen apart from the general public. My hair was styled in gathered braids with a rosette at the nape of the neck and a floral adornment on the left side, leaving the top free for the crown. The crown and its matching scepter were crafted exclusively for my reign by the master goldsmith Hugo Charo from the town of San Blas Atempa. My Tehuana attire was complemented by a set of gold doblón dos María jewelry and a matching ahogador, along with a bracelet, rings, earrings, and a hair brooch. All of these are family heirlooms in gold, passed down from generation to generation.
September 29: The lively and colorful Regada de Frutas fills the streets with decorated buses carrying the queens or captains, who toss food and gifts to the townspeople. Horses, bulls, and captains in traditional attire parade alongside, accompanied by children’s orchestras playing music from the buses. This day symbolizes giving back to the community.
During the Regada de Frutas, we rode on a float designed to match the colors and floral motifs of the outfit I wore that day. With great pride, I wore a huipil and enagua featuring multicolored orchids. This traditional ensemble from Salinas del Marqués, an agency of the municipality of Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, was crafted by the artisan Francisco Gallegos. The design itself was created by my mother, making it especially meaningful. The technique used for this dress is crochet work with yellow filled stitching. The outfit was completed with a two-strand lazo, a choker (ahogador), earrings, a bracelet, and a ring.
October 1 (noon): A mass is held in honor of the Vela 27’s patron saint, San Jerónimo Doctor. Afterward, the queen and princesses take a long walk accompanied by the music group until they arrive at the lavado de olla, where the founding members and the community await them. To enter the church and offer floral arrangements to San Jerónimo Doctor, I wore a yellow velvet Tehuana dress created with two traditional techniques known as flor en medio. The central floral motif was made using crochet work, while the edges featured geometric stitched patterns. I also wore the traditional gold fleco, and on this occasion the jewelry I used included a doblón necklace and a choker (ahogador) of great sentimental value, as both pieces belong to my mother. This dress was crafted by the artisan Francisco Javier Reyes Vázquez from the town of San Blas Atempa. This Tehuana dress uses an ancient technique that is now being revived, since velvet (terciopelo) is rarely used in contemporary Tehuana dressmaking.
As the final notes of the Vela faded, I realized that this experience was not only a personal honor but a reminder of the responsibility we carry. The Tehuana dresses, the rituals, the music, and the devotion of the community showed me how culture survives through practice, through memory, and through each generation choosing to keep it alive. Serving as queen of the Vela 27 strengthened my belief that our heritage is not something of the past, but a living tradition that continues to shape who we are.
December 2025- The Eye Huatulco
A French Touch in the Heart of Oaxaca: Chef Israel Loyola’s Culinary Dialogue
By Jane Bauer
Culture is not static—it is always transforming. As much as we might wish to preserve certain traditions and claim them as part of our identity—especially in times of nationalism and cultural divide—food reminds us that nothing remains fixed. Many people take comfort in declaring a certain dish, ingredient, or way of living as “theirs,” drawing boundaries between themselves and others, whether based on class, religion, or geography. But cuisine has always been porous. Before colonization, the diet in North America centered around the “three sisters” of agriculture—corn, beans, and squash—foods still essential in many parts of Mexico today. And yet, what we now think of as Mexican cuisine has evolved through centuries of influence: German, Chinese, Lebanese—and perhaps most significantly, French.
One chef who embodies this interplay is Chef Israel Loyola. For him, cooking isn’t just about technique—it’s about people. “A cook can’t just be a cook,” he says. “A chef has to be the sum of everything—kitchen, service, dishwashing, even working the register. It includes the people who arrive early to prep before the restaurant opens. It’s a team effort, and that’s what we try to reflect in every dish.”
That spirit of collective craftsmanship lies at the heart of El Parián Atelier, Loyola’s restaurant in the center of Oaxaca City. Located just steps from the rhythm of daily life, the space feels both elegant and grounded, welcoming locals and visitors alike to experience thoughtful cuisine shaped by memory, migration, and collaboration.
The name Parián is more than a nod to historic Mexican markets. It honors a nearly abandoned Mixtec town once known as the “port of the Mixteca,” a place that flourished during the railway boom of the Porfiriato but all but disappeared after privatization in the 1990s. Today, the original Parián has fewer than ten inhabitants—mostly memories and nostalgia. That emotion infuses Loyola’s cooking. Atelier, the French word for workshop, completes the name and reflects the constant creative process behind every plate.
His team, like his menu, brings together diverse roots. Half are from Oaxaca, the rest from across Mexico. “Many came to Oaxaca to grow—culturally, yes, but professionally, too,” he says. Many have formal culinary training, often in the French tradition.
That French influence in the kitchen is no accident. During the Porfiriato, the long presidency of Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911), French culture was consciously adopted as a model of modernity and refinement. Díaz himself was famously Francophile, and under his rule, Parisian aesthetics permeated architecture, fashion, and especially cuisine. French chefs were invited to Mexico to cook for the elite, and French cooking techniques became the standard in upper-class kitchens and newly formed culinary academies.
Sauces such as béchamel and velouté began to appear alongside traditional Mexican moles, and pâtisserie methods influenced everything from breadmaking to wedding cakes. Table service became more formal, plating more intentional, and an appreciation for technique—mise en place, precise knife work, structured courses—began to define what it meant to be a “professional” cook.
Even in the world of drinks, the Porfiriato left its mark: two foundational books on distillation and cocktail-making were published during this era. “We inherited a whole structure of formality from that time,” says Loyola. “The way we plate, the way we move through the kitchen—it still carries echoes of that period.”
After the Porfiriato ended, much of that French culinary refinement faded from everyday food culture, and traditional Mexican mixology—particularly curados, or infused spirits—was nearly forgotten. But today, Loyola sees a revival. “All of that is coming back,” he says. “We’re not just following global cocktail trends. We’re reclaiming what was already ours.”
At El Parián Atelier, every element—from the name to the ingredients to the way the team works together—tells a story. “We’re not just making food,” Loyola says. “We’re making something living. Something that speaks to memory, migration, and the ever-changing shape of culture itself.”
Sneak Preview 2025: A Few New Gems by Our Favorite Writers
By Carole Reedy
The end of the year creates a wondrous feeling of bookish anticipation that helps move us through the post-holiday doldrums. To whet your appetite for our upcoming reading pleasure, here’s a brief preview of new books by several favorite authors, both fiction and nonfiction. Publication dates are, as always, subject to change.
Fox: A Novel, by Joyce Carol Oates (July 2025)
Lolita for feminists! In yet another of her original novels, the prolific and amazing Joyce Carol Oates this time takes on Vladimir Nabokov’s classic Lolita (1955), shifting the perception to that of the woman in the tale, a temptress schoolteacher named Frances Fox.
I try to read everything Joyce Carol Oates creates. Despite writing more than 100 books, she still finds new, varied, and creative paths to entertain and captivate her readers.
Flashlight: A Novel, by Susan Choi (June 2025)
Susan Choi won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2019 for her novel Trust Exercise: A Novel (2019).
Her newest novel, Flashlight, tells the story of Louisa and her family after her father disappears when she is ten years old. By focusing every other chapter on a different family member, complicated stories are revealed through time, patience, and memory.
Sounds challenging and intriguing.
The River Is Waiting: A Novel, by Wally Lamb (May 2025)
We eagerly await new novels from this skilled writer of the best sellers She’s Come Undone (1992) and I Know This Much Is True (a Novel) (1998).
Advance press for Lamb’s new novel refers to a great deal of pain created by the protagonist’s own mistakes. He goes to prison, where, pondering his errors, he wonders if he can ever be forgiven. Is there a possibility of atonement for the unforgivable?
Fever Beach: A Novel, by Carl Hiaasen (May 2025)
With 14 novels and many best sellers – Skinny Dip: A Novel (2004), Sick Puppy: A Novel (2000), and Squeeze Me: A Novel (2020), among others – under his belt, Hiassen returns with two unique characters who continue yet another laugh-out-loud adventure story in the author’s home state of Florida.
Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie, by James Lee Burke (June 2025)
Burke, who spent most of his life in the US South, is one of the most popular mystery writers of our time. Currently splitting his time between Montana and Louisiana, he says the greatest influence in his life was the 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.
His latest takes place in Louisiana and New York City and is told through the eyes of 14-year-old Bessie Holland. Holland finds solace in her mentor, a suffragette English teacher who encourages her to always keep fighting, but the challenges presented at the beginning of the 19th century seem almost insurmountable.
Warhol’s Muses: Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine, by Laurence Leamer (May 2025)
Bestselling biographer Leamer explores the lives of 10 superstar women Andy Warhol manipulated for his own artistic benefit while also revealing the mysteries of Warhol’s turbulent life and work. Surely meant to sensationalize!
Leamer is the author of Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era (2023), Hitchcock’s Blondes: The Unforgettable Women behind the Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession (2023), and The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family (1996).
Men in Love, by Irvine Welsh (July 2025)
This much-anticipated sequel to the 1993 cult classic Trainspotting joins the two existing sequels, Porno (2005) and Dead Men’s Trousers (2018), but this new novel takes place immediately after Trainspotting.
Recall the characters in Trainspotting (Renton, Spud, Sick Boy, and Begbie) were heroin users in Edinburgh. In this new novel, the crew is dispersed to Scotland, London, and Amsterdam where they try to substitute love for heroin. The author tells us he has never stopped writing about these strange, beloved characters from Trainspotting.
Three years after Trainspotting was published, Danny Boyle converted it into a successful movie starring Ewen McGregor, Robert Carlyle, and Johnny Lee Miller.
Vianne, by Joanne Harris (May 2025)
We know Joanne Harris for her multi-million-copy bestselling Chocolat (1999). Vianne is the story that takes place six years before the famous chocolaterie opens.
It appears this newest novel is equal to its predecessor both in its sensuality and its ability to provoke thought.
Mark Twain, by Ron Chernow (May 2025)
Ron Chernow is the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer who has tackled the challenge of relating the varied and exciting life of the famous journalist, satirist, and performer Mark Twain.
We know Mark Twain for his two novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), but there is much more to his life and story that comes via his thousands of letters and unpublished manuscripts.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens adopted the moniker Mark Twain and thus gave the world hundreds of hours of entertainment in his vast library of writing. More than a hundred years after his death, Twain, who travelled the world and wrote about it, is still voraciously studied in schools worldwide.
His clever use of words, description, and phrases is still quoted. Some of his most famous aphorisms include, “A classic is a book that people praise and don’t read.” Then there’s “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education,” as well as the popular, “Never put off until tomorrow what may get done the day after tomorrow just as well.”
Speak to Me of Home: A Novel, by Jeanine Cummins (May 2025)
Cummins is the author of the Oprah Winfrey-recommended and highly controversial novel American Dirt (2018), in which a woman and her son must escape their home in Acapulco when they are pursued by narcos. The journey through Mexico and the doubts arising from the purpose of their adventure are the basis for the book.
This new novel takes place in Puerto Rico and the US, telling the tales of fifty years and three generations of immigrants. It is ultimately a story of mothers and daughters and the decisions they face and are haunted by.
This is only a sampling. Many more book recommendations forthcoming over the next few months.
Happy Reading New Year 2025!
Love, Telenovela Style
By Deborah Van Hoewyk
When we first arrived in Huatulco, in the winter of 2004-05, we stayed in a long-gone B&B in La Bocana and ate in the next-door restaurant, Los Güeros, which is still there. It was a quiet, magical place – apparently, however, not magical enough for the family that ran Los Güeros, as they gathered every night to watch a TV suspended from the ceiling. Sparsely lit by circular fluorescents, the blue-painted restaurant seemed to pulsate to the flickering movement on the screen.
The family was devoted to telanovelas – prime time, melodramatic, soap operas. Immensely popular in practically all Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking countries, telenovelas are “maxi-mini-series”; unlike U.S. soap operas, they almost always complete their story arc in less than a year, often less than six months. The shorter duration doesn’t keep telenovelas from having complicated plots rife with reversals and revenge, drama and deceit, usually driven by love, be it forbidden or happy-ever-after, or maybe both.
Telenovelas also differ from U.S. soap operas in that they are set in a social, political, and economic framework; they acknowledge poverty, factory layoffs, class differences and conflicts. Indeed, doomed love between an honorable-but-struggling young woman and a wealthy man is a favorite theme, especially in earlier telenovelas. (Don’t worry, they usually get together in the end – think Cinderella!)
How Did Telenovelas Come To Be?
The direct ancestor of the telenovela is the radio-novela, and the ancestor of the radio-novela was born in Cuba, in a 19th-century cigar factory. El lector de tabaco, the tobacco reader, read many things to the cigar-makers, but among them were novels, presented chapter by chapter, day after day. It was thought to entertain the workers, to relieve the tedium of factory work and ensure they would show up to hear more.
Cuba made its first attempt to win its independence from Spain in the unsuccessful Ten Years’ War (1868-78); cigar makers and workers who fled the war moved to Mexico, specifically the state of Veracruz, ideal for growing tobacco, and Florida in the U.S. The tobacco reader came along. Soon there were readers in textile and other factories as well.
Once the lectores began to include labor issues in their readings – seen by some historians as leading to the labor movement (a story for another time), they were on their way out. Factory owners did not like having their workers educated on what they saw as socialist, communist, or anarchist themes. Mexico banned lectores in its factories, although whether that was a total ban is unclear. In the US, the tobacco factories in Ybor City, part of Tampa, staged multiple strikes – the live readings ended with the strike of 1931 – but there are still lectores in Cuba today.
Radios Replace the Readers
As soon as radio became available, it, too, was put to work in factories to entertain workers. In her doctoral work at the Free University of Berlin, researcher Hanna Müssemann studies “every-day media,” and has confirmed that radio broadcasts, and then radio-novelas, were intended to entertain factory workers, among other audiences, and to keep workers coming back for “the rest of the story.”
Radio arrived in Mexico at 8 pm on September 18, 1930, when station XEW began broadcasting from the Olimpia Cinema on Calle 16 de Septiembre, right off the zócalo (main square) in Mexico City. Intended for broadcasting music, XEW also produced theatrical works on the weekend; when XEW put out its first radio-novela in 1932, they followed in the steps of the tobacco readers, and broke up the French novel The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas, 1844) into 15-minute segments.
That there was a cliff-hanger element to the radio-novela was made quite clear when XEW writer Vicente Leñero put together guidelines for creating radio-novelas: the plot should have “mild suspense” (suspensos suaves) before commercials, “disturbing suspense” (suspensos inquietantes) for the end of the episode, and “frightful suspense” (suspensos tremebundos) at the end of the week.
XEW’s radio-novelas didn’t really take off until March of 1941, when they put on Ave sin nido, la vida apasionante de Anita de Montemar (Bird without a Nest, the Passionate Life of Anita de Montemar). Anita de Montemar is a student at a nunnery who falls in love with Carlos Miranda, an engineer who handles the mechanical needs of the nunnery. Carlos and Anita marry, only to discover that Anita cannot have children. Carlos’s old friend Carlota is experiencing hard times, and gives her daughter to Anita and Carlos to raise. It turns out, of course, that Alicia is actually Carlos’s daughter with Carlota, and Anita, destroyed, leaves her family. There you have it – the first radio-novela and all the themes that will become the telenovela: obstacles to love, love realized, poverty, deceit, illegitimate kid, and love in ruins.
with the success of Bird without a Nest, XEW began broadcasting five radio-novelas a day; enormously popular, they were the mainstay of Mexican broadcasting through the 1950s. Radio-novela casts included major stars from the big screen (the 1950s was the “Golden Age” of Mexican filmmaking). As in the US, they were sponsored by domestic products, mostly soap. The sponsors were particularly happy when a soap opera delivered a moral ending that listeners could apply to their own lives.
From the Radio-Novela to the Telenovela
Radio-novelas continued to be produced up until 1983, even though a more congenial medium – television – had arrived. Television actually started in Mexico on August 19, 1946, a mere 16 years after the country’s first radio broadcast. Not that it was an auspicious start – Guillermo González Camerano, an electrical engineer, broadcast the first television signal from his Mexico City bathroom. Nonetheless, on September 7, an experimental television station had started broadcasting artistic programming and interviews. In 1950, XHTV, Channel 4 in Mexcio City, became the first commercial station in Latin America. As other stations formed, they joined together as Telesistema Mexicano; in 1973, Telesistema joined with Television Independiente de México to create Televisa, which became the world’s largest producer of Spanish-language television content, including, of course telenovelas. (Televisa is now 45% of TelevisaUnivision, the largest U.S. producer of Spanish-language content.)
The very first telenovela was created in Brazil in Portuguese in 1951. Sua vida me pertence (Your Life Belongs to Me) contains the first on-screen kiss seen in Brazil. Relatively simple by current telenovela standards, it offered fifteen episodes, broadcast twice a week, and followed the story of a developing love affair between a young woman and an older man. In 1952, Cuba’s initial offering was Senderos de Amor (Paths of Love), which involved a repressed spinster who was in love, did bad things, and represented the evils of urban life as opposed to the morality of the countryside. The next year, Cuba and Mexico collaborated on Ángeles de la calle (Angels of the Street), in which a kindly grandma helps out street urchins (said urchins apparently were a popular theme at the time).
The Mexican Telanovela Industry
Mexico finally got going on its own when, on June 12, 1958, Telesistema started broadcasting Senda Prohibida (Forbidden Path), sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive Mexico. There were no poor-but-innocent heroines in this one – the great Silvia Derbez played Nora, who had been small-town poor and suffered for it, but was now an ambitious secretary who falls for her married boss, and despite his very nice wife and cutie-pie son, suckers him out of big gifts and fancy jewelry, which leads to his financial ruin. The 30-episode telenovela ends with Nora in her wedding dress, crying before a full-length mirror, her plotting unrewarded in the end. Silvia Derbez received hate mail, threats, and people waited outside the studio to curse at her and even attack her for being so evil. (Senda Prohibida was remade [refriteado] in 2023, with an emphasis on Nora’s creating conflict between boss father and now-grown son.)
Televisa went full-on into telenovela production, with 3 more productions in 1958, 8 in 1959, 239 titles in the 1960s, and another 550 through 2019. During and following the 1970s, the melodrama increased, sex (and sometimes nudity) appeared on screen, and crises like murder, incest and drug addiction began to appear. On the other hand, the Cinderella-type stories also appeared with increasing regularity.
One that’s got it all? Los ricos también lloran (The Rich Also Cry) tells the story of Marina, thought to be poor but swindled of her inheritance, who is asked to live with a wealthy family. She falls in love with the spoiled son of the family, and he with her, but he marries someone else; there’s a hit man, a fake pregnancy, a gangster, robberies and murders, a psych ward, real adultery, adultery misunderstood, a lost child, an adopted child – it just goes on and on through 248 episodes, all crammed into the four-plus months between October 16, 1979, and February 29, 1980. There is, of course, a happy ending. Los ricos is considered the first “global telenovela,” dubbed into 25 languages and sent off to Russia, Poland, Greece, Serbia, Japan, as well as English, French, and Portuguese.
Reflecting Culture, Shaping Culture
Recently, the academic community has turned its attention to telenovelas, which had generally been dismissed as “simply another example of the ‘mind-numbing’ mass-media programming” driven by copying American capitalistic and consumerist tendencies. That notion didn’t last too long, and now we have detailed analyses like Mexican Screen Melodrama: Unraveling Mexico’s Sociocultural Expectations and Ambiguities by Sofia Rios Miranda (2020), which looks at social change in Mexico and “Mexico’s ambivalence around socioeconomic background, race and religion, gender and worth, family and duty.”
Telenovelas are used, both indirectly by shaping the way people look at the world, and directly by imparting “public service” messages, as educational tools. A good example of indirect “education” would be how they shape the audience’s ideas about gender (telenovela heroines generally have light complexions, and their dress and makeup reflect upper-middle-class European standards). Health agencies have promoted more direct messages: Encrujiada: Sin salud no hay nada (Crossroads: Without Health, There Is Nothing), a telenovela about Alicia, a psychiatrist who dies of colon cancer. The series, created in 2012 for the Hispanic population in California, emphasizes the importance of early detection of cancer. There have been telenovelas designed to change attitudes toward homophobia, drug addiction, and domestic violence.
Romancing the Narcos
And then there’s the narco-novela. The 1970s were not just the time when telenovelas reached their height, it was when drug cartels became part of the fabric of everyday Mexican life. Popular music, with its narcocorridas (drug ballads), and narco-dramas in film and novels began to show people caught up – willingly or not – in the social and political violence brought by drug production and distribution.
The first narco-novela was a 2006 Colombian production, Sin tetas no hay paraiso (No Boobs, No Paradise). Catalina has a very small bust, which she believes is keeping her from marrying a rich drug lord, so she becomes a call-girl to pay for the breast implants that she sees as her path out of poverty. Needless to say, things do not go well – after participating in all manner of corrupt and murderous narco activities, Catalina arranges her own assassination to escape her misery.
Narco-novelas show drug lords with some admiration, and government and law enforcement as corrupt, inept, and underhanded. Like Sin Tetas, most narco-novelas have made some effort to portray the drug trade in a negative way. That gets a bit lost in the shuffle by the time we get to La Reina del Sur (The Queen of the South).
La Reina del Sur and El Chapo
Based on the 2002 Spanish novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La Reina del Sur is the story of Teresa Mendoza, a Mexican woman who becomes the most powerful drug trafficker in southern Spain. Season 1 was produced by Telemundo, NBC Universal’s Spanish-language TV network, with other partners. Seasons 2 and 3 have been made by a Telemundo Global Studios – Netflix partnership. To date, there have been 183 35-minute episodes; there’s no indication there will be a Season 4. Teresa is played by Kate del Castillo, who started out in telenovelas, notably Muchachitas (Young Girls), a 1991 Televisa hit.
Yes, that Kate del Castillo, who arranged an interview for the American actor Sean Penn with Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera – El Chapo – the former head of the Sinaloa cartel. In 2012, del Castillo tweeted “Today I believe more in El Chapo Guzmán than I do in the governments that hide truths from me … Mr. Chapo, wouldn’t it be cool if you started trafficking with the good? Let’s traffic with love, you know how.” Two years later, El Chapo’s lawyers contacted del Castillo to explore putting the drug lord’s life up there on the big screen. They gave her a special phone that could text El Chapo.
So … she texts El Chapo to set up a meeting with Penn, El Chapo checks out Penn, and by October 2015, everyone is good to go. Except … the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency had already tapped all of El Chapo’s communications, including Castillo’s “special phone,” and the Mexican marines were going to take out El Chapo at the same time as the meeting.
Bad weather stopped the marines, Kate del Castillo thinks Sean Penn took advantage of her, Mexican authorities investigated del Castillo to a fare-thee-well, Sean Penn planned to write an article for Rolling Stone, not make a film about El Chapo, the Mexican government was humiliated when the story came out – sounds like a narco-novela, ¿no?
Dragon Ladies
By Marcia Chaiken and Jan Chaiken
Dragons are among the most ubiquitous cross-cultural figures. They appear prominently in myths originating in virtually every part of the world. The belief in the existence of dragons was well established by the time the Chinese lunar calendar was created around 2600 BCE, incorporating the dragon as the only fictional animal in the cycle of years. One plausible hypothesis is that the universal awe of these creatures arose when humans began mining for metals and uncovered dinosaur bones; the dragon was born out of a need for explaining these phenomenal relics. With minor variations, cross-cultural graphic representations of these revered and feared creatures are very similar.
The Dragon Lady: A Very Different Origin
The dragon lady, a much newer concept unrelated to female mythological dragons, was initially a form of new world racial bigotry. The term was created by the media in the US around the end of the 19th century. Anti-Asian sentiment was endemic at that time, resulting in the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), and the migration of many Chinese residents from the southwestern US to the border town of Mexicali, Baja California (see Van Hoewyk’s article elsewhere in this issue). The New York-based Asian American Writers’ Workshop credits (or perhaps discredits) The New York Times for first publicizing the term “Dragon Lady” in reporting about the Chinese Empress Tsu-Hsi (Cixi), who ruled from 1861 to 1908.
Dowager Empress Tsu-Hsi. Tsu-Hsi began as a royal prostitute serving the eighth Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, Xianfeng; after giving birth to his first and only son, she was officially elevated to concubine status. Xianfeng ruled from 1850 to 1861, when he died young at age 30. After the Emperor’s death, he was succeeded by their son, who was five at the time; the Dowager Empress Tsu-Hsi thus wielded power in China from 1861-1908, although it was a checkered reign. Reportedly she was responsible for the death of eight ministers who were appointed as regents for the child, and then she had absolute control. She was described in The New York Times as “The wicked witch of the East, a reptilian dragon lady.”
Others credit the term Dragon Lady to cartoonist Milton Caniff, who authored the comic strip Terry and the Pirates. Published in the Chicago Tribune for about four decades, beginning in the early 1930, it included a central character who was a Chinese woman pirate called “The Dragon Lady.” The term took on the meaning of a Chinese woman who was wily and used her sexual allure to rise from obscurity to great power – but the term Dragon Ladies soon morphed to include any Asian women with those characteristics.
Madame Nhu. Perhaps the most famous Dragon Lady of the mid-20th century was Trần Lệ Xuân, aka Madame Nhu, the sister-in-law of Ngô Đình Diệm. As President of what was then South Vietnam, Diệm exercised the powers of a dictator from 1955 until 1963, when he died in a coup along with his brother and chief political advisor, Ngô Đình Nhu, Madame Nhu’s husband. During Diệm’s reign, Madame Nhu functioned as first lady and was herself elected to the National Assembly. Although she had converted from Buddhism to Catholicism to marry Nhu, she fought for reforms for women opposed by the Church, including divorce and the right to use birth-control. After the coup, she fled to Italy and remained there until her death at age 86, still being referred to as The Dragon Lady.
Non-Asian Dragon Ladies
It was not long before the term was applied to powerful women of other races. The politician who was a force to be reckoned with in the California Democratic Party, Carmen Warschaw (1917-2012), was called the Dragon Lady by other politicians in both parties. Warschaw was Jewish, so the term with roots in racial bigotry had nuances of antisemitism. Well-known within California for her philanthropy, especially to educational and medical institutions, she was the first woman to chair the California Fair Employment Practices Commission with the mission of fighting discrimination in housing and employment. She was named The Woman of the Year by the Los Angeles Times in 1976.
With the rise of feminism, and the entry of women into careers from which women were formerly excluded, the image of a Dragon Lady, a fiery powerful woman, began to have international appeal. In Mexico, one of the best-known women in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) matches is Lady Dragon or Lady Drago; in her ten years of performing, the 4′ 9″ star has not revealed whether she was given another name when she was born. Muna Shrestha, from Nepal, also wrestles under the name of Lady Dragon. In the early 1990s, the American martial artist and actor Cynthia Rothrock was featured in a couple of films titled Lady Dragon.
And Last but Not Least!
Perhaps the best-known Dragon Lady in the 21st century is a fictional character in HBO’s medieval fantasy drama Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen, the mother of dragons (actually, it was three dragons that hatched from petrified dinosaur eggs). Based on the fantasy book series A Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin, the first of which is A Game of Thrones (1996), the series is viewed in 207 countries and territories. Adored by millions of fans, Daenerys filled the stereotype of the Dragon Lady, a beautiful woman rising from obscurity to achieve the ultimate in power. Well, almost. In the final episode, to the horror of people all over the world, Daenerys went mad and, with her dragon Drogon breathing fire, devastated whole cities and people – which may reset the meaning of the term Dragon Lady.
In spite of Daenerys’ ignominious end, modern Asian-American women are reclaiming the appellation as meaning power with a socially approved implication. Some years ago, the book Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire (1999), edited by Sonia Shah, presented writings of Asian-American feminists. The book has become an inspiration to many women who, rather than finding the accusation of being a dragon lady noxious, revel in the term Dragon Lady as recognizing their power and their ability to exercise their skills.
Hits, Blows and Coffins
By Kary Vannice
There has been much talk in the news over the last year about the financial “hit” many Mexicans have suffered as a result of the Coronavirus lockdown and economic downturn. Countless businesses took a “blow” as they were forced to close their doors. And for many, that put the final nail in the coffin of their business.
However, there is another equally important story, not making headlines, also connected to the Coronavirus outbreak. This story too is full of hits, blows and coffins. But, in this story, they are not financial, they are physical.
Less than a month after social distancing measures took effect in Mexico, domestic-violence-related 911 calls increased by 60% and federal authorities estimated that violence against women and girls had gone up between 30% to 100%. And that was in just the first three weeks of the pandemic.
Now, nearly a year later, the statistics on violence against women in Mexico during the pandemic are gruesome and, in all likelihood, don’t even come close to telling the full story, as many women are too afraid to file an official report and the ones who try often report that authorities urge them not to.
Even if a report is filed, odds are it will never result in a conviction. According to the government’s own data, 93% of all crimes in Mexico went unsolved in 2018; according to U.S. researchers, 98% of violent crimes go unsolved – which is a very sad reality for the families of the thousands of women who are killed in Mexico each year.
On average, 10 women a day are murdered in Mexico. In the early months of the pandemic, that number rose by more than 20%. Ten women a day might not sound like many in a country 127 million, but multiply that by 30 days and you have 300 women a month and multiply that by 12 months and you have 3,600 women murdered each year.
And for every one woman or girl murdered, there are countless others that suffer physical violence. Statistics report that two-thirds of all women in Mexico have experienced some form of violence, 44% of which is at the hands of a domestic partner.
Domestic violence is now referred to as the “shadow pandemic” in Mexico and throughout Latin America. One civil rights group said, “The so-called ‘shadow pandemic’ is characterized by a lack of information, incomplete data, and a culture of silence. How are national governments and support services supposed to respond to such an intimate and private, but also urgent, issue?”
Well, here in Mexico, quite poorly, as it turns out. When asked at a press conference about the startling numbers of domestic violence reports in the early days of the pandemic, Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador replied, “90% of calls to domestic abuse hotlines are fake.” But neither he nor his administration could provide any evidence that this statement was true. His failure to substantiate these literal cries for help as factual does nothing to change the culture of oppression and control over women’s bodies in Mexico.
A few weeks later, perhaps as damage control, the administration unveiled a new public service campaign aimed at addressing the rising domestic violence problem. The campaign depicted men and boys starting to get angry with women and girls in the home and advised them to “Take a breath and count to 10.” It then showed them smiling and waving a white flag of peace and surrender.
However, that same month, the AP reported that the Mexican government proposed cutting funding to women’s counselling centers in rural and indigenous areas, at a time when they knew they were needed more than ever.
It is unlikely that simply counting to 10 is going to change a deeply machismo culture, especially when the country’s own president “blames violence against women on the neoliberal policies of his right-wing predecessors and dismissed Mexico’s growing feminist movement as a plot orchestrated by his right-wing opposition,” as one news outlet reported.
Where does this leave Mexico’s women?
Well, unfortunately, we are back to the hits, blows and coffins. With the Coronavirus pandemic still ongoing, victims of domestic abuse have fewer support resources available to them than ever before and they are less likely to report their abuse due to the fact that they have to queue up outside of civil offices in full view of community members and potentially their own aggressors.
The Coronavirus has contributed to a spike in domestic violence in Mexico but is by no means its root cause. The root of it is a deeply misogynistic culture, which Cornell University philosopher Kate Manne defines as, the “policing of women’s subordination” in patriarchal societies, or the way people condemn women who don’t adhere to social expectations.
Until social expectations evolve in Mexico so women are seen as having rights equal to those of men, domestic violence and femicide will continue. Many, many more women and girls will suffer the consequences, as they continue to go unprotected in their own homes and often unaccounted for when they disappear.
¡HEY COMPADRE!
By Alvin Starkman M.A., J.D.
It doesn’t matter whether you live in Oaxaca or vacation here on a regular basis. Whether it’s Puerto Escondido, Huatulco, the state capital or elsewhere, if you’ve at all begun to integrate into the local community, eventually you’ll be asked to be a padrino or madrina (godparent) to an ahijado or ahijada (godchild). So you’d better familiarize yourself with compadrazgo, or co-godparenthood. Even if you’ve never been asked, it’s important to learn about compadres, the cornerstone of compadrazgo. You’ll hear the word spoken frequently. Compadres are different from friends, by a long stretch.
Compadrazgo is a web of mutual rights and obligations of monumental importance throughout Mexico (and elsewhere), both in urban centers and rural communities. It permeates virtually all socio-economic strata. It’s more important in Oaxaca than in many other states, in part because of both economics and the strength of interpersonal relationships. One chooses who will be his or her lifetime compadres.
If someone is asked to be a padrino of a child upon baptism, it creates a new bond between two families, solidified by the creation of compadres. The parents and grandparents of the child become compadres to the padrinos. While family members are frequently asked to be padrinos, often friends, neighbors and business acquaintances are selected, as a means of strengthening existing ties. Academic writings, confirmed in my personal experiences here in Oaxaca over the past quarter century, suggest that while as a godparent you have lifelong obligations to your godchild, which may never be called upon, it’s the ties between compadres that can come into play on a regular basis.
Let’s examine occasions aside from baptism when you might find yourself asked to be a godparent, obligations which may fall upon you, and finally how your new status as a compadre manifests itself and keeps on ticking. Why you and not someone else? To understand we must look at the pool of prospective choices from which you may be selected. My perspective may appear cynical, but, using a functionalism model, is fact based and proven.
Godparents are selected for both religious and secular rites of passage, for godchildren ranging from infant to adult. In Oaxaca the most common events where custom dictates godparents be chosen are marriages, school graduations, a girl’s 15th-birthday celebrations (fiesta de quince años), confirmations, first communions and baptisms. Sometimes but not always, there may be a financial commitment involved, where for example as padrinos of a wedding or quiñce anos, a couple may be asked or simply volunteer to contribute to the cost of the affair. But don’t worry, financial obligations may be shared amongst several godparents.
A case in point involved my wife and me. When asked to be godparents at the wedding of the son of then mere acquaintances, our mouths dropped, whereupon after a pregnant pause the request was concluded with “of the rings.” This meant that we were responsible for buying the wedding bands, whereas another couple was being honored with being the primary padrinos of the newlyweds. In fact you can be asked to be godparents of (for purchasing) the cake, liquor, flowers, party favors, and the list goes on, often depending upon the financial ability of the people throwing the function. In the case of individuals with resources, they typically simply want to bestow a special honor to an existing relationship.
You may be asked to make a speech, give a blessing, dance with the bride/groom or quinceañera, almost always being an active participant depending on circumstances. If you’re not Catholic and don’t take communion or kneel, let your soon-to-be compadres know, even if it appears there won’t be a religious component to the proceedings. There will likely be a priest involved. For example, on occasion one finds padrinos chosen within the context of the opening of a new business. As part of the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the man-of-the-cloth may be in attendance to give and direct blessings. Personally, as a Jew, I don’t object to having a little holy water splashed on me by the padre…as long as it’s as a result of inadvertence.
Padrinos are almost always selected from people of the same or a higher socio-economic class. For example, a factory worker may select the supervisor of her department to be her daughter’s padrino at a baptism, but the supervisor would rarely select a worker. A maker of handicrafts in a small Oaxacan village may ask a wealthy patron or shop-owner from Mexico City to be godmother to her daughter and future son-in-law at their wedding, but the opposite would likely be out of the question. And you may be similarly asked, by a Mexican friend/neighbor, a perhaps perceived equal, but for different reasons. Functions regarding the foregoing three examples? Bonds of friendship are acknowledged and strengthened for future utility; a patron-customer relationship is affirmed with comfort in now knowing that it will continue ad infinitum; and there will be the perception that a boss won’t fire a compadre.
Your status as a compadre begins immediately, and you may never again be referred to by your name, but rather compadre. You’ll experience the metamorphosis of your status, and will be treated differently. Otherwise an extranjero, or foreigner, you may feel as though you’ve come of age in your new hometown. Compadres give and receive more invitations to events. Favors may be asked of you more readily, and of a different type. There’s an expectation of compliance, if not the most careful consideration: borrowing your truck, lending money, housing a relative temporarily, providing counsel in trying times. By the end of our first year of permanent residency in Oaxaca, all the foregoing requests had been made of us. But remember, requests for assistance can go the other way as well, so keep that in mind.
In Western society the number of kinship ties you have is relatively finite, and usually beyond your control. In contrast, with compadrazgo, for as many life stages and changes as may arise, one’s immediate family has the opportunity to extend non-relative or “fictive” kinship ties through deliberate selection. One is able to build and nurture through mutual requests and compliance innumerable economic and social alliances.
Here in Mexico no one ever utters the adage “You can pick your friends but not your family.” The strategies and decision-making processes involved in determining who would make appropriate compadres for a family, and why, are absolutely fascinating. I’ve touched upon only some of the dynamics. The internet and traditional anthropological literature are exhaustive, and should be consulted by those interested in or thrust into the system.
A permanent resident of Oaxaca, Alvin Starkman operates Mezcal Educational Excursions of Oaxaca (www.mezcaleducationaltours.com).
You must be logged in to post a comment.