ABSTRACT

This chapter shows how a group of female Nahua handicraft vendors from San Miguel Tzinacapan manage the ambiguity of being desired yet undesired participants in local Cuetzalan-centric tourism, and how they attempt to turn multicultourism to their advantage by forging ritual co-parenthood ties to visiting outsiders. It analyzes the formation of a ritual co-parenthood relationship between a newcomer couple and a Nahua woman and her daughter from Tzinacapan. The handicraft vendors apply an identity-based long-term networking strategy that looks to craft enduring social relations with urban middle-class tourists and newcomers on behalf of their children, whom are thus spun into a web of relations that transcends their social class and social networks in Tzinacapan, and bypasses Cuetzalan. The chapter also analyzes the formation of a ritual co-parenthood relationship between newcomers Lucas and Olivia and the Nahua handicraft vendor Maria and her daughter Yolani from Tzinacapan.