The Guelaguetza, more than a festival of color and tradition in Oaxaca, Mexico, celebrates the deep reciprocity and solidarity of the indigenous worldview. It was born from the Zapotec concept of “guendalezaa,” meaning offering and mutual cooperation, although its massive festival was institutionalized after an earthquake. Today, this celebration elevates and makes visible the richness of indigenous identities, transforming itself into a vital platform for the state’s culture and economy.

Author: Gabino Damián Jiménez Martínez

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La Guelaguetza in Oaxaca, the “guendalezaa” of the communities to the city. The word Guelaguetza has roots in the indigenous worldview, it celebrates reciprocity and solidarity. The Zapotec name “guendalezaa” means “offering, gift, or cooperation,” symbolizing mutual help in important moments of life, such as weddings, births, and deaths, in the form of loans in kind to hold a celebration. The feasts of the Lunes del Cerro, also known as Guelaguetza, combine pre-Hispanic, colonial, and post-revolutionary traditions. They are celebrated on the Monday following the feast of the Virgin of Carmen (July 16) and the commemoration of the death of Benito Juárez (July 18), culminating with the Octava. During this time, the music, dances, clothing, crafts, and products of the land from the original peoples fill the city with colors, melodies, flavors, smells, and diverse languages.

Although attempts have been made to link it to pre-Hispanic rituals, its origin dates back to the 1930s, when policies were implemented to integrate the state into the new institutional life of the country. Since the 1920s, the post-revolutionary regime, interested in transforming the country and consolidating its power, promoted the construction of a “national identity” and the integration of “backward Mexico.” This process was carried out through an educational program that brought symbols and national history to towns and communities, alphabetizing and Hispanizing them, seeking to eliminate their cultures and languages. The anthropologist Jesús Lizama Quijano asserts that ethnocentrism and stigma guided indigenist policies for most of the 20th century. The cultures and traditions of the original peoples, reclaimed as essential for national culture, were seen as bearers of an ancestral mission: to build modern Mexico. Intellectuals and ideologues of the regime forged a myth of unity, integrating all regionalisms.

On January 14, 1931, the city of Oaxaca was shaken by a tremendous earthquake that forever changed its physiognomy and damaged an already precarious economic activity. The earthquake left thousands of residents disoriented, with their belongings destroyed, homeless, and without money. The value of urban real estate plummeted, and a large number of families migrated to the country’s capital and other states. Commerce and the entire economy also collapsed. Pressured, state authorities remembered that the following year, 1932, Oaxaca would celebrate four hundred years since it was named a city by the King of Spain, Carlos V. The organization of a great festival that could attract visitors and investments was seen as a remedy for the crisis. This is how they asked for their “guendalezaa” from the regions that make up the state.

The government organized the Regional Exhibition at the old Aguilera hacienda as a “powerful stimulus for indigenous industry” and to create the first complete directory of regional producers and a catalog of Oaxacan articles. 473 exhibitors participated in this event (112 from the capital city and 361 from the state’s regions), who presented in pavilions with the original construction style of each region.

Attendees admired tanned hides, sarapes, precious wood, medicinal herbs, corn, coffee, hibiscus flower, tobacco, mezcal, palm hats, and saddlery. Even the jewels from Tomb 7 of Monte Albán were exhibited.

The inauguration of the Regional Exhibition marked the beginning of the festivities for the IV Centenary of the city. The commemorative album recounts that on April 24, a crowd celebrated the governor’s opening declaration and then toured the stands. The exhibition lasted for the two weeks of the festival.

The commemoration of the fourth centenary of Oaxaca reflects the new post-revolutionary nation model. The indigenous people, dressed to hide poverty and backwardness, participated in a festival that reaffirmed the social order and the power of the elites, so the original peoples could finally integrate into the nation by paying tribute to their urban superiors.

The Lunes del Cerro continued as a regionalist festival that sought to “revive old customs.” Over time, the festival was transformed into a spectacle and tourist attraction, offering an alternative to the industrialization that never came to Oaxaca.

The Guelaguetza, as we know it, was consolidated in the late 1950s with the participation of regional “delegations,” in the style of the Homenaje Racial. In 1974, an auditorium was built in the Rotunda de las Azucenas on the Fortín hill, with a capacity for eleven thousand spectators. In 1980, the state’s Ministry of Tourism took over the organization, turning it into a folkloric spectacle for tourists.

Today, the regional delegations must go through a selection process validated by a Committee of Authenticity that evaluates their knowledge of tradition and a monographic investigation. The final decision rests with the Ministry of Tourism, which implies political negotiations with the aspiring municipalities.

Participating in the event has become a highly sought-after distinction, granting prestige and recognition to the participating groups, but also creating conflicts and separations between participating and non-participating communities.

The Guelaguetza, despite its racist origins, has managed to merge cultural and identity expressions into an idea of coexistence among communities that reclaim their identity. This act generates a duality: the community celebration and the one that is extracted to be represented.

It is a problematic festival, but one with an important communal and reivindicative ingredient of the indigenous identities of Oaxaca, which has given visibility to our communities and a significant economic spillover on which those of us who live in this state now depend.