Ethnic projects of Yalalteco youths and adult living in Mexico City’s Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Around the 1940s, far from reporting the assimilation and full incorporation of the schooled and literate sectors of Villa Hidalgo Yalalag, Oaxaca, to Mexico’s national culture, being letrado (literate), became consolidated as an attribute of social distinction within and without the village, as well as a resource of intermediation and ethnic distinction. This paper documents the persistence of quarrels in the cultural groups, gestated by older generations and, in particular, the way in which these historical quarrels create dispositions and recreate family loyalties, and with younger generations among the youths who foster new ethnic projects. This contrasts with a group generated only by youths, in which they seek to overcome the conflicts among families and factions in favor of their generational expectations and interests, and another group in which the ethnic boundaries are widened due to the social exclusion they face every day, as well as their subordinate position and class. Thus, this paper not only exemplifies, in an in-case study, how ethnicity is strengthened through the fragmentation of initiatives deployed in historically conflictive cultural and political arenas, where inherited intra-ethnic confrontations motivate their permanent continuation in new spaces and life contexts. The paper also documents, in the case of the youths of the Dance Group, their interests and expectations in the confluence of their family histories, their generational adscription and new life options offered by transnational migration, globalization and modernity.