Zapotec Gift: 3,000 Years of Guelaguetza in Indigenous History

In this presentation, Dr. Flores-Marcial will discuss Guelaguetza the Indigenous code of communal conduct recorded by Zapotecs over the course of 3,000 years. The genealogical registers that Zapotec nobility commissioned during the late postclassic period, contain elements such as corn, cacao drinks and poleo, a sacred plant used in the ceremony that cements the guelaguetza commitment between individuals and the community they belonged to. Colonial documents written by Zapotecs in both Spanish and Zapotec reveal many details about how Indigenous people contributed to the Guelaguetza system, including the ways in which Indigenous women managed intracommunity Guelaguetza networks. In the sixteenth century several native Zapotec speaking men worked alongside the Spanish friar Juan de Cordova in the very first Zapotec grammar and vocabulary published in 1578. This is where the Indigenous code of conduct known today as Guelaguetza was defined in print for a Spanish audience. The colonial Zapotec manuscripts provide evidence of a highly important and well structured social code that bound participants to their community of origin. Moreover, the descriptive attributes provided by Zapotec language archival materials reveal how this communal system encouraged Zapotecs from all social classes to participate and the benefits of contributing to this lifelong Indigenous code of communal conduct based on social responsibility. Finally, ethnographic observations in Zapotec diasporic communities in California reveal a transformed but recognizable Guelaguetza system that supports community members in their life as immigrants in the twenty first century.