Oaxacan immigrants recently abandoned the great, fertile fields in and around the Central California city of Santa Maria. They left the rows of fruits and vegetables alone on Sunday, June 7, taking a brief break from the grind of stooping and picking to enjoy a reunion with their cultural legacy at the local Guelaguetza festival.
Guelaguetza means "giving in receiving the the Zapotec language, and the festival harkens back to traditions in Oaxaca, a state of Mexico with various indigenous populations. The festival highlights music, dances and other cultural aspects of the eight regions of Oaxaca, which have all sent many immigrants to Santa Maria to work the fields, harvesting strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli and other crops. According to representatives of the local Guelaguetza committee, which organized the cultural celebration, 80% of the immigrants in Santa Maria are from Oaxaca, with most of the rest coming from other Mexican states, including Michoacan, Jalisco and Zacatecas.
The Guelaguetza festival plays out against the fetching farmland scenery that makes tourism a secondary local industry. But it's not for tourists; it's for the farm workers themselves.
"Our focus is not the tourist or the gringo, but our rural people who not even in Oaxaca have had access to seeing a Guelaguetza," said Natalia Bautista, who serves as the coordinator of the Santa Maria Guelaguetza Committee when she's not working at her job as a Mixtec interpreter for a community clinic." I feel content here because we emigrated, we came to work, and we all got together: Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Chinantecs, and others, at the Guelaguetza celebration."
The festival isn't just about cultural performances, though.
"One of our concerns is that our students, who have not been able to reach their goals due to life circumstances, become able to achieve their goals," Bautista said. "We want to be the source that can provide for them economically with a scholarship."
The Guelaguetza Committee counted on contributions from the tight-knit, hard-pressed Oaxacan community to support the $500 scholarships that went to 11 students this year.
"Hopefully, year after year we will get the support from our community to increase the money," Bautista said. "It is small step toward entering college, and we want to be the impetus to help them do that."
The Guelaguetza comes with plenty of challenges—from fundraising to getting the word out and the logistics of staging the event, which took place at a Santa Maria fair park this year.
But organizers remain undeterred.
"It does not limit us," said Bautista. "We keep moving ahead, and the most important challenge is to reach all of our rural Oaxacan people, the workers in the assembly plants or restaurants, all of us who came to these lands to survive."
The Guelaguetza is a way to help indigenous roots thrive while the immigrants survive far from their native land.
"We must learn that the essence of the indigenous person is our language, our lifestyle, and we must not lose it," Bautista said. "Those of us who are in the United States want to adopt a new culture, which is important, but even more so is living within our own culture."
Among the 11 young people who won the scholarships were Santiago Bautista, Engel García, and others who thanked the organizers for their economic support, which will allow them to pay for books and some tuition.
"Many thanks to the Committee, thank you all because you are giving us the opportunity to continue with our goals and to continue spreading our culture," said Esmeralda.
Santiago Bautista did the same, and gave his supporters a view of the future he sees.
"One of my goals is to be an engineer," he told the crowd. "The scholarship is for continuing my studies, since college is very expensive and this helps me with the books." Engel Garcia, a descendent of a family originally from San Juan Mixtepec, Oaxaca, said that the plans to attend UC Berkeley to study to be a lawyer. H thanked the Guelaguetza Committee and all who attended "because the money you pay to enter is for scholarships, that is why the more people who come, the more scholarships there will be for more needy young people."
Mireya Olivera is editor of Impulso.
Photos by Impulso
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