Fragment of Story: An Otomi Woman from Hidalgo in Mexico (1886-1974)

Abstract

Abstract We present the life dynamics of an indigenous woman. Those dynamics, which took place mainly in the post-revolutionary era, have been taken from life stories. They have been built among fragments of memories and empty documentaries. The analysis approaches the sociocultural conditions of a region where ancestral knowledge was vital for family subsistence. This approach allows us to consider the actors, Ángela Tolentino and other Otomí-Tepehua [geographic and cultural region from Hidalgo State, Mexico] women natives of the state of Hidalgo, as products of history. We highlight decisive actions to make her life a unique story as an actor in her own social space. Those actions are the formation of a family without the guardianship and protection of a father, a brother, or a husband; becoming the sole economic provider of her children; migrating to experience the gradual abandonment of previous knowledge (including her mother tongue, which gradually became extinct among her descendants); and to live in a political context that fought for the assimilation of indigenous culture because it was considered as a restraint for the development of the country. We recover memories of her life from her descendants, such as experiences and discussions made while walking and traveling from one ranchería [small rural settlement] to another, far from rural and urban centers. In this sense, we consider her as the producer of her own story. This is how to interweave the image of an Otomí-speaking indigenous woman at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.