The Aesthetics of Oppression: Traditional Arts of Women in Mexico

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<head><title>The Aesthetics of Oppression: Traditional Arts of Women in
				Mexico</title></head>
			<byline>Judith Friedlander</byline>
			<div>
				 What do we mean by the traditional arts of women? All too often we are talking
					about activities that are not considered art either by the women who perform the
					tasks or by the societies in which they live. Some peoples do not conceptualize
					transforming mere cultural’ activities into the domain of art. When the category
					does exist, women rarely emerge as the great artists. Coming from a society
					where art is recognized, valued and produced almost entirely by men, it is not
					surprising that American feminists are interested in looking at the relationship
					women have to art in other cultures, to see if the comparison sheds additional
					light on the American condition. Before entering into such a discussion with
					material from Mexico, however, we should provide a more specific context for the
					cross-cultural analysis by reviewing some issues concerning art in the United
					States.
				Our society has a hierarchical view of art, making rigorous distinctions be<pb
						n="4"/> tween the so-called fine arts and the traditional or folk. The
					nature of fine arts is individualistic, that of the folk, collective. The fine
					arts represent the work of specialists, recognized personalities who dedicate
					themselves almost exclusively to their art. Even when they supplement their
					incomes with additional jobs, the culture sees them as artists first. The folk
					arts, on the contrary, are the work of nonspecialists, unknown people who are,
					perhaps, farmers, fishermen, miners, individuals who make modest livings in
					“old-fash- ioned” ways and happen to produce folk art on the side. What is more,
					according to cultural definitions, folk artists do not create so much as carry
					on timeless traditions. They are living vestiges of the past and the more
					obscure they are, the more authentic they appear.
				 In a culture where progress, specialization and rugged individualism are valued,
					why have we created and main- tained such a static category as the traditional
					arts? We could argue that the anonymity and timelessness imposed on folk art
					permit those who practice the fine arts to borrow freely from traditional
					motifs. Who would accuse a Bartók of plagiarism just because he used Hungarian
					peasant melodies? Less cynically, but troubling all the same, we might suggest
					that the alienation of our lives in modern America has awakened in many a
					yearning for simpler times and forms. Yet in order to have the “folk, a group of
					people must preserve for us the ways of the past—in the hills of Appalachia, in
					the African bush or in mud huts in Mexico.
				 Feminists today are well acquainted with the cultural strategy that keeps folk
					artists in the obscurity of their grass-roots authenticity, for women have been
					erased in similar ways. Like the folk artist, woman is by definition a
					nonspecialist and a carrier of traditions. She is first and foremost a
					wife-mother whose social and economic duties prevent her from having the time to
					specialize. Then, even if class privilege gives her the option to refuse her
					sex’s destiny, she still has to fight the culture’s traditional view that her
					creative powers are limited by her biology.
				 Our culture has so successfully confined the arts to the male sphere that it has
					developed sex-specific vocabularies to distinguish work done by men
					(specialized) from that done by women generalized). Thus, although tasks tra-
					ditionally assigned to women usually fall outside the arts entirely, a number of
					skills become lesser arts when performed by male specialists. Women, for
					example, do sewing and cooking. Men are couturiérs or chefs. Careful to mark the
					status relationships, we borrow terms from the lofty French to describe the
					specialized work of a man, leaving the lower-class Anglo-Saxon to identify the
					chores that fragment a woman’s day. Of course there are female couturieres and
					chefs, and the numbers are undoubtedly growing as women today succeed in
					becoming professionals in these and other fields. Yet recent changes do not
					negate the long cultural history of the sexes in American society in which men
					(at least of certain classes) have been encouraged to specialize, while women
					(despite their class) have almost always been less rigorously trained, at best
					educated to dabble in a few areas, but by and large inadequately prepared for
					anything other than, perhaps, wifing and mothering.
				 While feminist artists continue their struggle to change cultural definitions
					and thereby gain entry into the male-dominated world of the fine arts, some are
					also trying to open the Academy to work usually associated with the “inferior”
					crafts or simply with the domain of women s work. In the process, they have been
					collecting the nearly forgot- ten traditions of women in rural America and
					abroad, creating a specifically female folk culture by bringing to light
					previously unrecognized skills of unknown women who never had the chance to
					specialize. Given feminist consciousness, we can hope that those who produce the
					recently recognized art will emerge from obscurity as individuals, instead of
					being reduced to the collective anonymity so characteristically the fate of
					traditional artists. Still, lingering questions must be raised, for it is not
					entirely clear that we see what our interest in folk art may mean for those
					women who happen to be carry- ing on our timeless, authentic female culture.
				 Other political movements have heralded the art of the folk while fighting to
					end their oppression—i.e., the Narodniks in czarist Russia, intellectuals in the
					Mexican and Irish revolutions, leaders of Black and Native American Power
					movements—and it might be useful to analyze their histories carefully. As a
					start, let us look at postrevo- lutionary Mexico, where we shall see how the
					enthusiasm expressed by urban oolitical leaders for traditional culture has been
					a mixed blessing, particularly for those who have been living the impoverished
					reality which seems to preserve folk art the best. Specifically we shall see how
					Indian women from Hueyapan, a highland village in the state of Morelos, have
					been encouraged to maintain their so-called Indian culture—in essence their
					lower socioeconomic status—by a nation whose revolutionary” ideals call for the
					preservation of Mexico s indigenous heritage.
				
					<title>A Mexican Indian Example</title> Looking at the traditional culture of
					Hueyapan is like looking into a reser- voir of oppression. It is a mixture of
					cultural hand-me-downs from the ruling class, combined with a few vestiges from
					pre-Hispanic times that have managed to survive over 400 years of
					Spanish/Hispanic occupation. We find, for example, under the rubric of
					indigenous culture, sixteenth-century Spanish colonial dress, medieval miracle
					plays, and renaissance double-reeded instruments played only to celebrate
					Catholic fiesta days. As for those customs which are truly of pre-Hispanic
					origin, they have been transformed almost beyond recognition to conform to the
					dictates of Hispanic cultural rules. What is more, these modified indigenous
					forms frequently exist only because they have become part of the dominant
					culture as well. After the Revolution of 1910-1920, the Mexican government began
					actively to preserve and reinforce so-called indigenous customs. For ideological
					purposes, political leaders wanted to glorify the country’s unique heritage,
					partly Spanish, partly Indian. Artists painted, choreographed and wrote about
					Indians, while philosophers philosophized about them. Archeologists, sculptors
					and architects labored to restore and celebrate pre-Hispanic culture. Folk arts
					began to flourish. So successful was this cultural renaissance that by the 1950s
					tourists were flocking to Mexico to visit museums and pre-Hispanic ruins, to
					purchase inexpensive traditional art objects and to travel into the interior to
					see how the Indians lived in their natural habitats.
				 In the eyes of many Hueyapeños, this glorification of Mexico’s “roots' can do
					little more than reinforce their oppression. Living in a community where the
					socioeconomic realities of their traditional culture prohibit them from enjoying
					the conveniences of modern Mexico, they claim that the only viable future for
					the villagers lies in losing their Indian identity. Many of the young people,
					particularly women, are not waiting for changes to take place in Hueyapan and
					have migrated instead to Mexico City and Cuerna<pb n="5"/>vaca. As far as they
					are concerned, it is better to work long hours as maids in comfortable homes, or
					live in the urban slums, than to remain in Hueyapan and continue their
					tedious—albeit “folkloric”—Indian existence.
				 That more women than men want to leave Hueyapan is directly related to the
					distribution of so-called traditional culture in the village. In a society where
					to be traditional or indigenous still brings both low social status and hard
					work, the world of Hueyapan women is decidedly more Indian than that of its men.
					What is true here simply supports what anthropologists writing about
					modernization have found elsewhere: almost always men assimilate more quickly in
					Third World countries, for capitalist and socialist systems integrate them more
					rapidly into urban and rural work forces. Women who do not become maids in the
					cities are often isolated at home where they provide unpaid labor by taking care
					of their husbands and reproducing new workers, remaining, as a result, more
					“conservative” culturally. Even in places where men no longer practice
					traditional customs, women often continue to do so, speaking the local language
					among themselves, dressing in the old way and continuing to work with little
					help from labor-saving technology? As any Hueyapan woman will explain, women who
					stay in the village are the last to change.
				 The Mexican government has further contributed to the division between the
					modernizing man and the traditional woman by its interest in promoting
					indigenous culture. On the one hand, it has provided more training and
					technology to change the nature of men’s work than women s. On the other hand,
					it has encouraged women more than men to develop their traditional skills. In
					Hueyapan, for instance, where weaving still exists, government programs have
					tried to interest local women in making shawls, ponchos and scarves for the
					tourist trade. What is more, when government representatives come to the village
					on official visits—an event that happens several times a year—they appreciate it
					if the Hueyapeños welcome them with an ethnic reception. Thus, in the name of
					paying homage to Mexico’s indigenous heritage, young girls are dressed up in the
					so-called Indian costume” native to the area and receive the honored guests with
					flowers and little speeches in Nahuatl.“ Furthermore, women prepare a mole meal,
					the traditional fiesta dish, for these government representatives. 
				 To move to a more specific analysis, we could look at almost any one of the
					so-called indigenous traditions found in Hueyapan today to illustrate in
					concrete terms how the villagers’ culture reflects their long history of being
					dominated by a non-Indian society. Although industrialization has hardly brought
					liberation, it is still a fact that the poorest rural communities throughout
					Mexico are generally the most “Indian. What is more, as these villages begin to
					change, traditional culture holds on the longest among the most oppressed
					inhabitants, particularly the women, who for social, economic and cultural
					reasons remain more isolated from the influences of modernization. Given that
					Mexico is interested in both industrializing the country and preserving its
					so-called indigenous heritage, we could suggest that one resolution of the
					problem has been to “develop” one sex and sustain the past with the other.
					Drawing on traditional Hispanic definitions of sex roles and status
					differentiations between men and women, the choice was easily made. For purposes
					of this discussion, then, let us turn to traditional cooking to see what the
					preservation of this “folk art” has meant in the daily lives of Hueyapan
					women.
				
					<title>The Art of Cooking</title> In a recent article entitled The Magic of
					Mexican Food North of the Border,” Craig Claiborne whimsically begins:
				<quote>For some confounding reason known only to a few Aztec gods, the authentic
					flavors of the Mexican kitchen, like cer- tain fine wines and some exotic
					plants, do not travel well. They transport poorly through some curious dilution
					of tastes, some diminution of savor, some evanescence of essences [New York
					Times, September 21, 1977).</quote>
				Could Claiborne have written this if he had tasted Mexican food prepared in an
					indigenous peasant village? His calling forth of mystery, humor and romance
					inadequately describes what one experiences in today’s closest equivalent to an
					Aztec kitchen. There, it is true, the ingredients are very fresh and the food
					has that special aroma of the open hearth, but it also has been ground first,
					for tedious hours, on special volcanic stones (metates) that are generations
					old, and cooked in earthenware pots seasoned by years of use. There is no secret
					why Mexican food does not travel; it cannot even be re-created properly in
					Mexico City, much less New York. What we lack are the necessary “rustic” working
					conditions and equipment.
				 While members of the privileged classes, particularly from abroad, have come to
					appreciate Mexican cooking a one of the world’s great cuisines, for Hueyapeños
					it remains one of the end less chores that women must attend to in the course of
					a day’s work. As far as many villagers are concerned, the food they eat and the
					process involved in it preparation are merely additional indications of their
					inferior status. If they had the means, therefore, they would stop eating like
					Indians and would eat as they think the rich do, buying food in tin cans and
					cellophane packages which they—or preferably a maid —would heat quickly over a
					gas stove. Although most Hueyapeños recognize that certain foods, tortillas for
					example, taste better when prepared at home, the labor entailed is enormous,
					encouraging the women, more than the men, to seek ways of simplifying the
					work.
				 In almost every home in Hueyapan, the basic daily diet consists of tortillas and
					boiled beans served with chile peppers, sometimes in a sauce, sometimes just off
					the vine.? At every meal, even among the poorest, one is sure to have these
					staple foods and then, depending on the family’s income, the productivity of the
					barnyard, fields and orchards, other dishes may be added. At breakfast and
					supper—the latter being a very light meal with perhaps only one tortilla wrapped
					around a few beans— weak and highly sweetened coffee or herbal tea is served,
					substituted on rare occasions by hot chocolate. Coffee, like chocolate, is
					expensive and must be purchased, while most of the teas are grown locally. Sweet
					rolls (pan dulce) baked in the village and bought at nearby stores are also
					frequently served at breakfast or dinner, particularly to children.
				 If the family can afford it, women usually prepare additional dishes for the
					main meal at midday. Lunch specialties may be nothing more elaborate than one of
					several kinds of chile sauces, beans prepared with the flavorful ayocote flower
					or fried in a bit of lard. But on market day, a piece of beef or pork may also
					be added (one kilo for about 14 people), boiled with seasonings and served in
					its broth. Beef may be cooked in a beef mole soup instead. When meat is
					unavailable or too expensive, noodle soup, prepared with pork fat, or pork rind
					fried in a soupy, green chile sauce provide substitutes. Although chickens and
					turkeys are fiesta foods only, eggs fried in pork fat and a chile sauce may also
					appear, perhaps once a week, in the diet of families <pb n="6"/> who raise
					laying hens or have enough money to purchase eggs at the store (four or five
					eggs would serve 14 people). Another popular dish, when they are in season, is
					stewed prickly pear cactus shoots (nopalitos). Finally, after fiestas, the
					leftover mole sauce (see below) is used to make enchiladas and chilaquiles.
				 Women prepare the most elaborate meals on fiesta days. Traditionally Hueyapeños
					celebrate at least ten village-wide Catholic fiestas as well as the individual
					saint days of members of the family. Since the Mexican Revolution, about five
					national holidays have been added. All celebrations, be they religious or
					secular, village-wide or family, are feted by serving a traditional menu.
					Although Hueyapeños share responsibilities by sponsoring one fiesta or another
					in a given year, at which time they have open house, most families who can
					manage to—and most sacrifice so that they can—still celebrate at home as well,
					at least for the most important fiestas. Relatives, compadres and comadres
					(individuals with whom the family has a formal ritual relationship blessed by
					the Church), and political friends, visit one another at these times, eating the
					same traditional dishes at each home.
				 For birthdays and other family-based holidays, there is a special breakfast of
					atole and meat tamales as well as the elaborate midday meal. Meat tamales take
					hours to prepare and must be made the night before by a team of women—usually
					the mother-in-law, the wife, perhaps a teenage daughter still living at home and
					a comadre or two (in particular widows with no fam- ily left in the village who
					have time to help on such occasions). Since the work goes on late into the
					night, only to begin again before dawn the next day, the invited assistants do
					not bother to go home, but wrap themselves up in blankets they bring along with
					them and curl up on straw mats placed on the dirt floor in the kitchen. Thus, by
					the time the male family members and a few guests—mostly men as well—are
					enjoying a tamale-atole breakfast, the women have long been at work, some
					looking after the hot atole corn meal drink and others attending to the main
					meal of the day, butchering turkeys or chickens, cooking the soup, the rice, the
					mole colorado,e the bean and plain tamales, the boiled beans and the countless
					tortillas.
				 Fiestas, it is true, give women the chance to cook, eat and drink together,
					certainly providing some relief from their normal routines. Still, the work is
					exhausting and may go on for several days, rarely letting up enough for women to
					have a chance to leave the kitchen and enjoy the dancing or other party
					activities. What is more, once the holiday is over, women, particularly mothers
					with young children, are faced once again with their strenuous daily
					schedules.
				 Mexican cooking is difficult and time-consuming under traditional conditions
					mainly because almost every ingredient must be ground finely by hand—from the
					corn used in tortillas tamales and atole, to every spice and vegetable added to
					a mole or chile sauce. The work is back-breaking, even for women used to it, and
					must be performed kneeling before the large grind- ing stone (metate), a kitchen
					utensil known pre-Hispanically throughout America.
				 Since the 1950s Hueyapan has actually had a number of corn mills, eliminating
					the need to grind corn by hand. According to the women, however, many men
					initially objected to the mills. Not only did they complain about the cost (two
					cents a bucket), but hey did not like the texture of millground tortillas. Corn
					ground on the metates simply tasted better. Another innovation which met with a
					mixed reaction was the tortilla press, used to shape tortillas that
					traditionally are fashioned between a woman s'hands into paper-thin disks.
				 Despite the new improvements, the work of “throwing” tortillas remains endless,
					for a family of 14 eats well over 50 at one meal and expects them fresh and hot
					off the griddle at least twice a day. What women really need to simplify their
					work is a tortilla factory, where hot tortillas can be purchased before each
					meal. While many non-Indian communities surrounding the village have such
					tortillerías, there is no talk as yet of introducing one into Hueyapan.
				 Given the argument developed so far we can now conclude with a few re- cipes,
					letting the descriptions of the preparations and the ingredients speak for
					themselves. No attempt will be made here to help the reader reproduce these
					dishes in a modern kitchen, nor will proportions be systematically provided.
					Traditional Mexican cooking, at least in Hueyapan, has been a matter of
					availability of resources: what has been harvested, what the family can afford
					to buy, how many people must be fed with a small fixed budget. One chicken, for
					example, can easily serve 20 people. When the soup gets low, one just adds more
					water and another leaf of peppermint. There are no exact amounts of this’s and
					that’s and it would therefore be an arbitrary exercise to suggest that there
					were.
				 What can be discussed is the labor involved in preparing a particular dish and
					whether the ingredients are grown locally or must be purchased. Further- more we
					can note the origins of the ingredients at the time of conquest to aid us in
					identifying the influences Hispanic tastes have had on so-called indigenous
					food.
				 It will become immediately evident that fiesta food, more than the basic
					staples, shows considerable Iberian/ Old World influence. This is hardly
					surprising when we remember that all aspects of the Indians’ ritual life be¬
					came the solemn responsibility of the Catholic missionaries who settled in in¬
					digenous towns during the early colonial period, converting the people and
					transforming their culture. Hueyapan was conquered in 1524, only three years
					after the Aztec Empire fell. By the 1530s Augustinian missionaries had come to
					the area and by 1561 the Dominicans had already built a church, monastery and
					several chapels in the pueblo (Martinez-Marin, 1968, p. 64ff). 
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