Fiesta Performance as Epistemology

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Notes

1. “Letrados” refers to the literate elite. See Angel Rama, The Lettered City, Ed. and translated by John Charles Chasteen, Duke University Press, 1996.

2. Taylor, Diana. “Performance and/as history.” TDR. 50.1 (2006): 67-86.

3. San Cristóbal de las Casas is one of the larger towns in the southern region of Chiapas.

1. ‘Book II’ of the Florentine Codex makes a description of all the festivities, rituals and ceremonies that took place throughout the year. The counting of the days, and the festivities that marked them, were recorded in a calendar or book of the days, ilhuitlapohualamoxtli or tonalpohualli (Sahagun 1956 [1577]).

2. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are ours. ‘Y esta poiesis del mundo, que se realiza en la caminata, en los kipus que registran la memoria y las regularidades de los ciclos astrales, se nos figura como una evidencia y una propuesta. La alteridad indígena puede verse como una nueva universalidad, que se opone al caos y a la destrucción colonial del mundo y de la vida. Desde antiguo, hasta el presente, son las tejedoras y los poetas-astrólogos de las comunidades y pueblos, los que nos revelan esa trama alternativa y subversiva de saberes y de prácticas capaces de restaurar el mundo y devolverlo a su propio cauce’ (Rivera Cusicanqui 2010).

3. Referring to the November Fiesta of Difuntos (the Dead), Guamán Poma wrote, ‘en la fiesta de los difuntos de este mes … gasta en esta fiesta muy mucho’ (1986: 181, Illustration 257[259]).

4. James Lockhart suggests the Nahua's ‘general lack of clearly drawn polarities, seen above all in a disinclination to distinguish systematically between private and public’ (1992: 440).1

5. Taylor defines scenarios as ‘meaning-making paradigms that structure social environments, behaviors, and potential outcomes … The scenario makes visible, yet again, what is already there: the ghosts, the images, the stereotypes … ; [it] predates the script and allows for many possible “endings”’ (2003: 28).