ABSTRACT
In 1841 the wife of a Spanish diplomat , Frances Calderón de la Barca, witnessed a religious celebration in the Indian village of Uruapan in western Mexico. She recalled:
Yesterday, being the festival of San Andres [sic], the Indians were all in full costume and procession, and we went into the old church to see them. They were carrying the saint in very fine robes, the women bearing coloured flags and lighted tapers, and the men playing on violins, flutes, and drums. All had garlands of flowers to hang on the altars; and for these lights and ornaments, and silk and tinsel robes, they save up all their money. 1
Calderón’s brief account concerns a pervasive component of rural Mexican life, the patron saint holiday. A melding of pre-Hispanic and Catholic religious sensibilities, these celebrations (fiestas) had served as symbols of indigenous identity and resistance to exploitation since the Spanish colonial era (1521–1821). Often noisy, sometimes violent, and almost always carnivalesque, fiestas were occasions for peasant communities to reaffirm social bonds and ethnic boundaries in a racially stratified society that placed indigenous people at the bottom rungs of the social pyramid. To celebrate the birth or martyrdom of a saint, a manifestation of the Virgin Mary, or significant events in the Catholic calendar, villagers shared food and alcohol while enjoying the pageantry of fireworks and candles, bullfighting, costumed processions, dance, and music. As Calderón notes, holidays could be exceedingly expensive, and were a luxury for otherwise poor peasant communities. Indians traditionally raised income for village fiestas through the selective commodification of communal property they considered the domain of the saints themselves. Agricultural produce and livestock raised on the saints’ lands were sold, while many of these same goods (e.g., corn and cattle) circulated through reciprocal networks of exchange (and consumption) that reaffirmed community affinity. 2