ABSTRACT
In Latin America, the concept of multiculturalism is deeply tied to an origin myth of achievement according to which transnational and national indigenous movements rallied against governments in the struggle for cultural rights and social equality. Cultural performance is the duty of indigenous citizens and the right of mestizos, and with the multicultourism of the Magical Villages Program as principal, the first steps toward direct mestizo control over indigenous intangible skills are currently being taken. Differences and similarities can be noted in struggles over tangible resources such as land and intangible resources such as indigenous cultural heritage and identity. Yet as intangible indigenous culture is becoming an economic resource within a growing local tourism industry concentrated in Cuetzalan, indigenous communities are increasingly turning bitter at seeing the mestizo elite profiting from it. As in Cuetzalan's fiesta and the huipil ceremony, one cultural tradition laminates another, just as local history-writing is laminated with the grand nationalized Aztec narrative.
