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Ou the rover: Aiuistasio Leon, an itinerant craftsmnu. finishes the edge on a framecontaining the holy image ofSan Xavier, a patron saint of the Arizona-Sonora borderlandsregion. Don Anastasio learned this craft, luhich combines reverse-painting on glass luith tinframe-making, from- his father. He usually sells his frames with a variety of holy images at theFiesta de San Xavier in Magdalena, Sonora. Photo by Doctor Felippe deJesus Valenzuela
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION1993 Festival ofAmerican FolklifeJuly 1 -July 5
Co-sponsored by the National Park Service
Festival of American Folklife
?
1993 by the Smithsonian InstitutionISSN 1056-6805Editor: Peter SeitelStyle Editor: Arlene ReinigerDesigner:]oan WolbierAssistant Designers: Rebecca Lepkowski, Carmina .'\nguloTypesetter: Harlowe Typograph)'Printer: Schneidereith & SonsTypeface: New BaskervillePaper: LOE DullInsert: Cross Pointe Genesis Milkweed
Contents
America's Reunion on the Mall, Bill isf Hillary Clinton, Al & Tipper Gore 4The 1993 Festival, Robert McC. Adams 6Cultural Conversation on the Mall, Bruce Babbitt 8Culture on the 1990s Agenda, Richard Kiirin 9The Festival of American Folklife; Doing More with Less, Diana Parker 15
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDSUnited States - Mexico Borderlands/ La Frontera, Olivia Cadaval 1 7Living on the Border: A Wound That Will Not Heal, Norma E. Cantil 26Cultiual Identities on the Mexico- United States ^ordei, Jose Manuel Valenzuela Arce 30The Problem of Identity in a Changing Cultine: Popular Expressions of CultureConflict Along the Lower Rio Grande Border, Americo Paredes 33The Arizona-Sonora Border: Line, Region, Magnet, and Filter, fames S. Griffith 37The Epic Tradition of the Foiuiding of Nuevo Laredo, Manuel Ceballos-Ramirez 42Border, Culture, and Maquiladoras: Testimonies ofWomen Workers, Maria Eugenia de la O 44The Mixteco Presence in Tijuana, FranciscoJavier Moreno B. 47Mixteco Women on the Migration Route, Laura Velasco Ortiz 49The Texas-Mexican (jonjiuito, Manuel Pefia 53La Onda Bajita: Lowriding in the Borderlands, Michael C. Stone 56Mortars and Metates, Alice Fay Lozano as told to Ian Hancock 59The Chinese in Baja California, Maricela Gonzcilez Felix 61AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCESharing Common Groimd: Social Dancing in the U.S.A,Vivien Chen luith Magaly E.Janad & Chan Moly Sam 63Generations of African American Social Dance in Washington, D.C.:Hand Dancing, Hip-Hop, and Go-Go, LeeEllen Friedland 69Hip-Hop Dance, Anthony Hovington 73Iroquois Social Dances: The Life of Dance in the Dance of Life, Linley Logan 74
"Circle Lip Four on the Old Dance Floor": Old-Time Dancing inChilhowie, Virginia, Susan Eike Spalding 77METRO MUSICMusic in Metropolitan Washington, Phyllis M. May-Machunda 80The Music Performance Trust Fimds 82
KIDS' STUFFKids' Stuff: Children's Traditions of Play andPerformance in Metropolitan D.C., Diana Baird NDiaye 84City Play, Amanda Dargan Csf Steven Zeitlin 86
FESTIVAL RESEARCH REPORTThe Jerusalem Festival Project, Amy Horoiuitz 90
Reprinted from the program book for America's Reunion on the Mall,held for the Presidential Inaugural, fanuary 17-18, 1993.America's Reunionon the MallBill Cjf Hillary ClintonAl Csf Tipper Gore
From Kamuela, Hawai'i, and Ketchikan,Alaska; from Ponce, Puerto Rico, and Rangeley,Maine; from the rural heartland of Kansas, Mis-souri, and Tennessee; from our major cities ofLos Angeles, New York, and Chicago, they havecome to our Nation's capital. From the glam-orous world of popular entertainment and fromthe neighborhoods of local communities theyhave come to the Nation's front lawn. Craftspeo-ple representing the long-lived arts of America'scultural past have come, along with new immi-grants whose artistic and cultural traditions willmake their place in the history now being writ-ten. Cooks and stoiytellers, musicians, dancers,and artisans have come to this Festival on theMall to tell, to sing, and to weave the stoiy ofAmerica. Their artistiy, skill, and talent, asimmense as it is, is but a sample of the culturaldiversity that exists throughout our land. Thatthis diversity can be imited, together, in the sym-bolic center of our nation, tells us much aboutwho we are and what we dream.The enlightened founders of this counti7conceived of a new nation in which the manycould be united. We have always thrived as anation of nations. This has not been easy toachieve. We have overcome manv travails to
forge ideals of tolerance, mutual respect, andhuman dignity. We are still engaged in the pur-suit of these ideals, yet, America stands as a bea-con of hope. Here, cultural difference can be asomxe of strength not weakness, hope notdespair, joy not sorrow.A nation comprised of a diversity of people,communities, and cultiual groups is a flexibleand adaptable one. Ideas, inventions, songs, arts,even foods developed by some can be enjoyed byall. Never before in the histoiy of humankindhave so many different people from so many dif-ferent places joined together in one nation. Andnever before has a nation accomplished so muchpolitically, economically, socially, and culturallyas ours. Ovu^ form of democracy, our freedom ofexpression, our concern for hiunan rights andfor the rights of the minority grow from ourrecognition of a diversity of origins, perspectives,and interests. The diversity of American lives hasenriched our souls, oiu' minds, our institutions,and even oiu" senses.We Americans are proud of wlio we are. Wetake pride in our own regional, ethnic, religious,and family identities, for these give us a sense of
.self. But we are all Americans first. Being Ameri-can means bridging differences, not stamping
them out. It means learning from each other. Itmeans including everyone as "us," rather thanexcluding some as "them." It means we can singour own song, enjoy the singing of others, singtogether, and even make up new songs. Some ofthe distinctly American forms ofjazz, blues,gospel, and rock-and-roll heard at the Festivalarose from just such a creative combination ofcultural styles. Just as our recognition of theuniqueness of each and every individual does notdetract from our sense of a common humanity,so, too, the recognition of our diversity need notstand in opposition to national unit}- and identi-ty. Indeed, just as the creativity, genius, and gen-erosity of individuals enlarge our sense ofhumanity, so, too, can an appreciation of ourdiversity increase our sense of national accom-plishment.
It is fitting that we rededicate ourselves tojoining together at this time and in this place.The Mall is the place where Americans talk toeach other. It is where we celebrate and enshrineour national understandings. It is the placewhere soine 30 years ago the Reverend MartinLiuher King, Jr., informed the nation of hisdream? of a nation in which children of differ-ent backgrounds, races, and creeds could walkhand in hand. Wlrere the differences that dividecould one day be used to unite. It is thus fittingthat in the same place on this Day, and on Mar-tin Luther King Day, for the inaugural and forthe first public event celebrating a new adminis-tration, the American people gather here, toreunite with each other, to reunite with anAinerican ideal, and to reunite with a nationaldream that all of us can help realize.
The 1993 FestivalRobert McC. AdamsSecretary, Smithsonian Institution
This is, in a sense, the second Festival on theMall this year, the first having taken place somesix months ago for the Presidential hiaugural.The America's Reunion on the Mall broughttogether performing musicians, artists, craftspeo-ple, and cooks from all across the country in acelebration of our nation's strength in diversity.The inaugmal festival was wonderfully successful.
"We were happy to play a role in celebrating ourdemocracy, and all the more so because thatevent reinforced what the Smith.sonian's Festivalhas been doing and saying about American cul-ture for the past 26 years.Through the Festival of American Folklifewe have learned that to represent truly the cul-ture of our nation, one must represent the diver-sity of its people, its commimities, its regions,and its genres of cultural expression. We havelearned that such representations? whether inthe form of cultiual performances, skill demcjn-strations, expository talks, or museum exhibits?must result from intimate collaboration withthose being represented; they too have roles toplay as researchers, curators, presenters, andartists. We have also learned that cultiual repre-sentation is a vehicle for affirmation of self-worth, especially when it is done in a highly visi-ble, centrally symbolic place like the NationalMall. And we have learned that people ? thoserepresented at the Festival as well as visitors to it
? can understand, appreciate, and learn fromeach other when culture is presented in an open.
respectful setting. Indeed, the Festival hasproved to be a forum where the confluences anddivergences of culture can be engaged in apeaceful and sometimes even enlightening way.At the Festival, the interaction of visitors, partici-pants, and Smithsonian staff has often resultedin new cultiual awareness and in syntheses ofnew ideas and cultural forms.This summer, the Festival includes programson U.S. - Mexico borderlands, American socialdance, music in the Washington Metropolitanarea, and urban children's culture. All point tohow people creatively use the resources of com-munity culture to shape life experiences in waysthat celebrate and affirm social values.The Festival's featured program, U.S. - Mexi-co Borderlands, is the latest in a series developedfor the Columbus Quincentenan' which hassought to expand public knowledge about thecultural histoi"y of our heiuisphere and to fortifythe Smithsonian's engagement of colleagues andcommunities in Latin America and theCaribbean. These programs, including Creoliza-tion in the Caribbean, Land and Power in NativeAmerican Cultures, New Mexico, Maroons in theAmericas, and American Indian Soundscapes,have directly reached some 5 million Festival visi-tors. Brought to fruition with the cooperation ofscores of academic, cultural, and educationalinstitutions in 18 nations, these programs haveengaged the efforts of some 250 different schol-ars and over 1,000 exemplaiy culture bearers
from across the Americas. These Festival pro-grams have generated rich documentaryarchives, copies of which reside both at theSmithsonian and at collaborating institutions.Additionally, these programs have generated twodocumentaiy films, several books, and even thepassage of cultural legislation.Our consideration of cultiual borderlandscomes at an important time, socially and intellec-tually. The migrations and movements of peoplechallenge prior notions of boimded, localizednational cultures. Borderlands are generallyregarded as the edges of a nation, marginal andperipheral to its cultural life. Yet what happenswhen the border region of two nations achievesits own sense of identity, its own idea of cidturalcentrality? The borderlands are characterized bycultural dynamism, liminality, and contention.And the U.S.- Mexico cultural border is quitepermeable, with flows of people, goods, andideas that extend not only geographically deepinto each country, but also deep into their sociallives. No doubt, in a continent whose patterns ofexchange may be refashioned by the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement or like arrange-ments, we will continue to witness the culturalevolution of this important region. And so toowill our thinking aboiU the relationship betweenculture and nation deepen. The examination ofthe borderlands makes it possible for us to seeculture not as a static accumulation of things,
but as flows of meanings, styles, and values con-tinually reshaped and revalidated by use.Finding such phenomena as cultural border-lands represented at the Festival signals the factthat over the past decade, museums and theirprograms have increasingly become forums foraddressing the cultural realities of contemporaiylife. These cultural realities are complex, andoften intimately tied to important social andpolitical issues. The involvement of the Smith-sonian and other such institutions with issues ofcontemporaiT cultural concern is part of ourpublic trust. We have the responsibility to con-tribute our knowledge and perspective to publicdialogue and debate ? imderstanding of coursethat oiu" voice is only one, and not necessarilythe definitive one, in that discussion.The Festival has historically been a leader inthis area. This was especially true during the pastyear as its staff engaged colleagues from Hebrewand Bir Zeit Universities in researching the grass-roots cultural traditions ofJerusalem. No placeon earth is perhaps as culturally rich, nor as con-tentious, as Jerusalem. Yet working with localresearchers and scholars, community artists andleaders, and members ofJerusalem's diversecommunities, excellent work was accomplished.We hope that this lesearch, the understandingsand substantive practices that animate the cultur-al life of that great city, will emerge as a Festivalprogram in the near future.
Cultural Conversationon the MallBruce BabbittSecretary, Department of the Interior
Tlic National Mall is our countiy's symboliccenter, where we celebrate our national civicrites? the inauguration of a president, ourindependence day, oiu" bicentennial. The Mall isour national showcase where we enshrine, in ournational museums, our understandings of histo-ry, culture, science, and the arts. And it is ournational town square where generations ofAmericans have gathered to speak to each other,to represent themselves and their concerns totheir fellow citizens.Since 1967, the Festival of American Folklifehas presented the grassroots culture of ournation, bringing together musicians, craftspeo-ple, cooks, stoiytellers, workers, and other cultur-al exemplars from eveiy region of our country.People from various states, ethnic and NativeAmerican groups, occupations, and cultureshave brought their wisdom, knowledge, art, andskill to the Mall and have shared it with their fel-low citizens.For some 20 years, the Department of Interi-or through the National Park Sendee and withthe cooperation of its other Bureaus, has been aproud partner in the Festival. The Smithsonianand the Park Sendee share a commitment to thepreservadon of our national heritage? culturaland natural. Over the years, the Festival's workhas been guided by research done by folklorists,anthropologists, and historians from both agen-cies in communities across the countiy. The Fes-tival has been a forum for discussions about cul-ture conservation, environmental presenation,and local economic development. The Festivalhas provided a training ground for developingskills and techniques for the presentation ofgrassroots culture. Most of all, the Festival hasfunctioned as a combined outdoor museum andinterpretive park, where people from around thecountiy can speak directly to their fellow citizensabout their history, their culture, and their lives.
This type of cultural conversation, in whichcultural traditions can be respectfully presented,discussed, and even exchanged, is vital to ourcontinued health as a whole nation. As PresidentClinton has affirmed, our cultural diversity is asource of national strength. Oiu- educationalprograms and public institutions need to encoin-age the study and broadest dissemination ofknowledge about our history, and about thevalue and flow of ideas between people of variedbackgrounds. Sometimes our cultural conversa-tions will be celebratoiy, and sometimes sober-ing. But to appreciate their importance, oneneed only look around the globe to places wherethe cultural conversadon has stopped, and wheredifference has led to intolerance, to the abuse ofhuman rights, and even to endemic violence.We continually engage the American publicin eveiy state and territoiy in cultural conversa-tions. The Yaqui, represented this year at the Fes-tival, have regidarly participated in the Fiesta atTumacacori National Monument in Arizona;musicians, craftspeople, and working cowboyslike those here at the Festival from Texas havedisplayed their culture at Chamizal NationalMemorial Park in El Paso; and local Washingtonarea musicians like those at the Fesdval have reg-idarly performed in National Park venues atGlen Echo and Wolf Trap. The cultmal dialoguegoes on at historical sites such as America'sIndustrial Heritage Park in Johnstown, Pennsyl-vania, at interpretive exhibits in urban parks likeLowell National Historical Park, at natural siteslike Hawaii's Volcanoes National Park, at culturalcenters being developed in Maine and West Vir-ginia, and in programs such as Keepers of theTreasures. Our work, and oiu" partnerships withthe Smithsonian and with many others at thenational, state, and local level, help Americansunderstand their national heritage, and we fer-vently hope, each other.
Culture onthe 1990s AgendaRichard Kurin
Who would have thought that cultiue, as asign of group identit)', would play a prominentand sometimes deadly role in world politics?Who would have thought that culture, as com-modified knowledge, art, and image, would bethe world's largest industry? In one form oranother, culture has become central to politicsand economics. Culture is on the agenda for the1990s. Wliat role is to be played by institutionsconcerned with understanding culture and edu-cating large and broad publics?The Politics of CultureTalk to a politician about cultural issues afew years ago, and before the eyes glazed over,you'd likely get a reaction that placed culture inthe realm of the frivolous, the romantic, or theobvious. No more. From ethnic cleansing inYugoslavia, to family values in the United States,and a distinct society vote in Canada, culture ison the battlefield, in the news, and on the ballot.Culture has come to be seen as values, worldviews, and identities that may move world events,shatter states and forge new ones. This is not the
"culture" of high society, the elite arts or com-mercial media. It is rather the culture of ordi-nary people as expressed in daily life, in thestreets, the workplace, and the school yard.As a political issue culture has emerged inpublic consciousness under the rubric of "multi-culturalism," a term which has been used todescribe 1) a demographic situation? a culturallydiverse population; 2) a policy? equity inresource accessibility for different cultures and
Richard Kurin is Director of the Smithsonian Institution Cen-terfor Folklife Programs & Cultural Studies and a Professor-ial Lecturer at TheJohns Hopkins University Nitze School ofAdvanced International Studies. He is a cultural anthropolo-gist with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago who hasdone most of his research work in India and Pakistan. Hefirst worked on the Festival ofAmerican Folklife in 1976.
their bearers; 3) an ethic? the comparable valueof every culture; and 4) a process? the ways inwhich cultures interact within pluralistic societiesand complex individual lives.Debates over multiculturalism in all of thesesenses have defined a number of issues. Thepolitical question of the decade will be whether amulticultural state is possible, and if so, how? Forpublic institiuions the question is how to makemulticultiualism part of institutional practice.And for students of society and civilization, thequestion is to what extent multicultiualismencourages or precludes larger sociocultiual syn-theses and unities. Each of these sets of issues?the political, the educational, and the evolution-aiy have their own histoi7, and their own prob-lems and tensions.Culture and the Modern State. Modern Europearticulated the idea of nation in the mid-1 9thcentui7 by binding it to ideas of race, language,and land. Definitions of singular national cultin-al identities were attempted through scholarshipin folklore, physical and cultural anthropology,philolog)'. and other disciplines. Debates overthe characteristics of these unicultural or mono-cultural national identities, from their costiuiiesto their customs to the question of who is to beincluded in them, have never ceased.Many Third World countries, emerging fromcolonial rule after World War II, knew they hadto construct culturally diverse states? nationswith different languages, different religions, andmany ethnic and regional backgrounds. India,Indonesia, Kenya, and others had to face theissue of forging political imity from cultiualdiversity. As we know, the maintenance of a cen-tral government with a core civic culture hasbeen difficult in these societies. Ethnic, religious,tribal, linguistic, and regional differences contin-ue to challenge national civic cultures.The industrialized nations, because of theirhistories, traditions of governance, and levels of
literacy and education, were thought to beimmune to pressiues arising from cultural differ-ence. Their stability was thought to result fromtheir having made the transition from traditionaland cultiue-bound societies to modern ones.Indeed, many political scientists have seen theculture of the folk as a sunival, a kind of primor-dial identity subsumed by the modern state andthe rise of the individual. When cultural identit)'figures in politics, it is often seen as an irrational,unpredictable force.Yet this idea of progress is challenged by thefact that some of the societies most successful inmaking this modernizing and industrializingtransition have experienced a strong surge ofpolitical conflicts apparently based upon reli-gious, ethnic, and regional cultmal identity. Arecent study sponsored by the American Acade-my of Sciences (Fundamentalisms and Society:Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family and Education)found that religious fundamentalism has tended,worldwide, to emerge as a cultin al reaction tomodernism, not as a survival of long held andcherished folkways. But even the most modern ofnations have not been spared from such conflict.Movements of immigrant and colonized popula-tions, the resistance of previously subjugatedpeoples, and persistence of internal cultural andregional differences have challenged receivedideas of nationhood. Efforts to redefine the stateas multicultiual have in some cases resulted indissension, conflict, bigoti7, and violence. Manynations seem to be under a cultmal siege, threat-ened by the unreconstructed cultmal diversity oftheir people. And thus, more and more the ques-tion is being asked ? is a multicultural state pos-sible?According to the former ministers of cultureof the republics in the former Soviet Union, theanswer is no. On the eve of the dissolution of theSoviet Union, those ministers warned about thepitfalls of cultural diversity lest it weaken the U.S.in the same way it had undermined the Sovietstate.It was at about the same time that debate onmulticulturalism heated up in American publiclife. The so-called "culture wars" erupted in themedia, in national institiuions, and eventually inpresidential politics. To consenative detractors,multiculturalism is a highly problematic ideolo-gy, ethically relativistic and ahistorical. In thiscritical \aew. Western, European, andjudeo-Christian culture have crystallized in the Ameri-can historical experience to form a national cul-ture characterized by civic pride, political stabili-
ty, economic success, and high moral ideals.They argue that "politically correct" history,bilingualism, ethnic particularism, fimding ofthe national arts endowment, Hollywood portray-als of the family, and other activities were imder-mining the cultural unity and foundations of thenation. Some suggested that the way to deal withAmerican cultural diversity would be to elimi-nate it, generally through the type of culturalassimilation associated with mainstream econom-ic success. Others suggested that elimination ofcultmal diversity would involve a more coercivestrategy of excluding people and ideas.Cultural wars became an election issue. Onthe eve of the presidential election the celebrat-ing crowd in Washington was told, "no more cul-tural wars. No more religious wars. No more cul-tiual cleansing." And in accepting the results.Bill Clinton interpreted his victory as amongother things, a call "to bring oiu' people togetheras never before so that our diversity can be asource of strength." The Presidential Inauguralwas termed "America's Reunion" to explicitly cel-ebrate the relationship between imity and diver-sity. And so the question, at least in the UnitedStates, would appear to turn away from whetheror not the multicultural state is possible to thequestion of how to make it so.Cultural Representation. Debates over multi-culturalism often grow quickly around the publicevents and institutions through which a societ)'"sculture is represented. Contending interpreta-tions of histoiy, luiderstandings of the present,and visions of the futiue have been subjects fordebate in these arenas. The bicentennial of Aus-tralian settlement in 1988 was a harbinger of the1992 American (and Iberian) Columbus Quin-centenary, as issues of the "discoverers" and "thediscovered," the glory and the gore, the celebra-tion and the commemoradon emerged inexhibits, programs, speeches, television pro-grams, demonstrations, and coiuiter-demonstra-tions. Japan's ceremonials smrounding theinstallation of the Emperor and the commemo-ration of Pearl Harbor are also recent contextsfor stud)'ing what Geoff White calls "the politicsof remembering.
"
The ways in which different cultural groupsare remembered and presented is also beingfought oiU in museimi exhibits, textbooks, televi-sion programs, and magazine advertisements.Simply piu, many cultural groups are upset withtheir lack of representation, or the skewed orprejudicial way in which they are represented,and they are using techniques of political persua-
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Forums for multiculturalencounters will continueto be invented as a wayof grappling with socialrealities. Here at the 1992Festival of American Folk-life, New Mexican partici-pants from variousPueblo and Plains Indian,Hispanic, Anglo, AfricanAmerican, and otherbackgrounds develop amulticultural way ofexpressing a new-foundcommunity spirit.Photo by Jeff Tinsley,Smithsonian Institution
sion to do something about it. Public institutionsare under increased scrutiny to be inclusive andpositively value cultural diversity in hiring, pro-gramming, and audience outreach.While generally accepting the ethic of multi-culturalism many scholars in cultural studieshave criticized the way its arguments are framed.According to some critics, proponents of multi-culturalism endorse simplistic and essentialisdcnotions of cultural groups. Too often, advocatesof culturally articulated groups argue as thoughthey believe themselves to be naturally constitut-ed? as discrete, unchanging species. Hence,they unwittinglv accept and replicate scientifical-ly unsupportable ideas of race and racial classifi-cation. As a social consciousness, this atomisticsort of multiculturalism avoids attention to socialsystems (such as capitalism and colonialism) andsocial identities (such as those based upon class,gender, region, occupation, and religion) whichcrosscut ethnic groups. It also ignores how indi-viduals and communities have juggled, juxta-posed, synthesized, and compartmentalized vari-ous identities in daily contexts and over thecourse of histoiy.New Syntheses and Alternatives. In spite ofinternal difficulties, divisions, and debates, glob-al institutions like the U.N. have moved in anunprecedented way to define new global consen-sus on standards for ethical conduct, himianrights, and environmental policy. These are notmerely agreements among nation-states, but to
an unprecedented degree seem to represent theopinion of people across the planet. A moreimited Europe, whatever the fate of the Maas-tricht Treaty, has emerged, and has subsumedaspects of sovereignty and national identity infavor of shared economic interest. New freetrade zones proposed in North America and inother parts of the world are based not on similar-ities in cultural identities, but on participation inregional and global markets. Indeed, there is, asEmile Durkheim predicted almost a century ago,the emergence of a global culture tied to theindustrial and post-industrial world. Made possi-ble by telecommunication technologies, this newculture defines distinct codes, networks, andcommunities of individuals and institutions,many, as Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett hasargued, with a shared folklore.But these new, emergent forms of globalpolitical and economic culture are not so univer-sal or so entrenched as to preclude opposition.Often characterized as nativistic though not nec-essarily home grown, some of multiculturalism'sopponents proclaim their own form of universal-ism. In the United States and in parts of Einopesome analysts see new forms of Islamic transna-tionalism as alternative global visions and athreat to the new world order. Domestically,some Christian fimdamentalist groups are seenin the same way, and indeed, they explicitly chal-lenge the very notion of a new world order basedupon secular economics. How much multicultur-
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alism Clin the new global framework stand whenfaced with ahernative, inimical systems? Does theacceptance of a mvUticnIturalist ethic meanbringing systems opposed to its ideology into thetent?The Economics of CultureAs culture has become a political problem, ithas also been turned into an economic treasure.Cultural knowledge, artifacts, songs, stories,images, and representations are rapidly andincreasingly being transformed into commodi-ties. Culture, as such, is at the forefront of theglobal economy. Who is consuming whose cul-ture for whose economic benefit and at whatcost?Culture as Tourist Industry. Counting toiuism,or at least a good part of it, together with the artsand entertainment, culture is the largest industn-in the world. Trillions of dollars a year are spentrepresenting and selling culture.Perhaps the largest cultiual enterprise in theUnited States is the Disney Corporation. Millionsof Americans learn about world cultiues at Dis-neyland and Disneyworld where they see thepirate-like people of the Caribbean drinking,and pygmies of Africa rising out of a river to aimtheir spears at your body? with knives and forkspresumably to follow. Only slightly less dismay-ing is Disney's "Its a Small World After All," atableaux of cute, little, formulaically but differen-tially costimied doll-figures meant to representall the world's people singing the same song ?each in its own language. Ersatz and fakeloreabound. One French intellectual, intei^viewedabout Euro-Disney, aptly summarized, "theyclaim to present our folklore and culture, biuthey have taken it and returned it to us in anunrecognizable form." Similarly, cultural themeparks, costing millions of dollars, are proliferat-ing? in Japan, hidonesia, China, WesternAfrica, the Caribbean, the U.S., and Europe.Can touristic cultural theme parks be orga-nized so that their representations do justice tothose represented; so that the material benefitsof tourism are not just exported or used to buildmore luxury high rise hotels but actually reachthe people represented; so that such activities donot destroy local environments and communityculture? Strategies to meet these goals have beendeveloping under the rubrics of eco-toiuism andcultural toiuism. Increased efforts to achieve andbalance three broadly desirable goals? culturalconsei"vation, economic development, and envi-ronmental preservation ? will define key cultur-
al policy concerns aroiuid the world over thenext decade.Indigenous Creations. Another aspect of thecultural economy is the international trade inthe creations of folk and traditional communitiesthe world over. Popular musicians make millionsof dollars mining the music of South Africans,Cajuns, Latin Americans, and others. A contem-porary cosmetic company bases its multi-milliondollar business on folk potions and ethnoaesthet-ics. Pharmaceiuical companies work withshamans and healers to develop new drugs andtreatments. Scholars, writers, and artists make ahealthy living by writing about or appropriatingthe wisdom and knowledge of "their" people.Increasingly, folk cultiual knowledge, wisdom,and art are going to be repackaged, made andmarketed for profit, and distributed far beyondtheir traditional audiences. The issues invohingthe kinds and uses of property? intangible andtangible, individual and community, ownershipand usufruct? continue to emerge as the indus-trial and post-industrial economy appropriatesthe creativity of traditional cultiues. If the tech-nology, knowledge, and networks are made avail-able, some of this may occur under the controlof the communities that produce this culture.Cultural Markets. Mass production and massmarketing are designed for products that are thesame for all consumers. Making everyone mod-ern through advertising, propaganda, and otherdiscursive forms has been a long term goal ofindustrial economics? whether capitalist orsocialist. But mass producers are increasinglyaware of cultural diversity in the marketplace.More salsa than ketchup is now eaten in U.S.households; Hindi film rentals in New York are abig business; a /;?/?/ grocery and butchery arenecessaiy institutions in several Detroit-area com-mimities. In their search for new markets, pro-ducers have realized they have to be responsiveto local needs. And they may have to competewith local producers whose niche in the localmarket is cai^ved out by attention to culturalneeds and aesthetics. The market has at oncebecome more homogeneous? penetrated byinternationally produced goods available every-where, and at the same time increasingly cus-tomized for local consumption. Apple and IBMcan sell their computers everywhere, but need avariety of script and language packages. Market-ing research, needs assessment, and ethnograph-ic fieldwork are likely to become increasinglyentwined, as the interpenetration of local andglobal goods brings cultiually diverse popula-
12
tions together in complex patterns of cultural-economic exchange. Global businesses will haveto become more aware of the culture of theirproducts, their markets, and their audiences;local producers will become increasingly sophis-ticated about creating new products and pene-trating new markets.The Challenge for Cultural InstitutionsWhat role can public cultural institutionsconcerned with the study, documentation, andconservation of culture play in this political andeconomic context?We face several problems. One concerns oiu^own standing and expertise as professionals.Eveiyone knows something about culture, espe-cially one's own. This makes public understand-ing of cultural expertise problematic. In Ameri-can public discourse it is difficult to separate outfolk sociology, folk folklore, and folk anthropolo-gy from their disciplinaiy varieties. Key terms?such as "'society," culture," "tradition," and "com-munity"? are used by much of the population,journalists, politicians, and experts with consid-erable slippage of meaning.Wliile scholarly and scientific studies havemuch to contribute, they have generally failed topenetrate public luiderstandings. Popularly, soci-ology is often reduced to psychology, histoi^y tobiography, culture to human nature. The socialsciences, the humanities, and the arts are largelymarginalized and trivialized in our educationalsystems, which contintie to be informed by aresilient anti-intellectualism. Disciplinaiy imder-standings, which once held hope of escaping eth-nocentrism, have been shown to be heavily influ-enced by it. The idea of race in the UnitedStates, for example, which should have beendrastically reformulated in light of social andnatural science findings, nonetheless persistsamong the public and its leaders in its 19th cen-tury form.This is not just a commimication problem.The human studies disciplines have in a reflexivemoment undercut some of their own legitimacy.They have generally remained aloof from nation-al and international debates on fimdamental cul-tural issues. They have failed to work closely withthe commimities they study on matters of press-ing political and economic concern.Scholars and museum curators face a fimda-mental challenge. We claim a special empathyfor, imderstanding of, and ethical relationshipwith the people we study and represent. But if weare so intimately and meaningfully involved.
those petiple should be flocking to us for knowl-edge and insight. They, the studied and repre-sented, should be coming to our museinns,attending our professional meetings, enrollingtheir children in our courses, reading our books,and becoming professionals in oiu^ fields. In theU.S. this is not happening. The participation ofAfrican Americans, American Indians, Hispanics,and Asian Americans in the cultiual studies andmuseimi fields is stunningly low.Emerging Cultural Policy NeedsWhat are we going to need for a world inwhich increasing weight is put on culture?I think the future of the cultural field is tobe foimd in a clearer focus on situated scholar-ship. Research and analysis need to be situatedin contexts? historical and contemporaiy, localand global ? and presented to affected politiesand institutions. We need research work onissues that crosscut disciplines, populations, andgenres as we have traditionally defined them.And we need the active involvement and engage-ment of commimity and lay scholars in this effort
? people who can bring to the field new under-standings, assumptions, approaches, and associa-tions.We need research on the midticultiual state,on comparative cultural politics, on cultural eco-nomics, on multicultural lives, on transnationalcultural flows, on cultural processes associatedwith immigration, acculturation, urbanization,and the relationship between culture, environ-mental preservation, and development. We needstronger scholarship if it is to stand the scrutinyof the audiences who can actually think aboutand use our work. This means students and pro-fessionals trained in several fields and method-ologies. And it also means the penetration of cul-tural work into other disciplines? lawyers whowork on intellectual and cultural property rightsLssues need ethnomusicological research toimderstand the creation and ownership of songs;pharmacologists who will work with rainforesthealers and shamans need folklore research toimderstand ethnobotanical knowledge, and soon. We have to combine research more closelywith education and public service. We havemajor work to do in developing teaching materi-als and upgrading teacher training to reflect thecomplexity' of cultural issues students will face.We have to use the full range of new media andcommunicative forms to transmit our ideas sothat younger and broader publics can entertain
13
Maroon leaders from Jamaica, Suriname, French Guiana, Colombia, and Texas met each other for the first time at the 1992Festival. Joined here by Rev. Jesse Jackson, the opportunity provided an occasion to discuss the cultural history and conti-nuity of these communities, and their common concerns. Photo by Jeff Tinsley, Smithsonian Institution
them. If kids can sit for hours in front of a videogame tiying to get Mario to save the princessfrom the dragon, we have to figure out ways toengage them with the same intensity in questsfor cultiual linowledge, understanding, andappreciation.We need to be more creative aboiU how adiversity of understandings are shared, discussed,and debated. Grassroots communities through-out the world cannot afford to communicatethrougli Ph.D. dissertations, the meetings of pro-fessional organizations, or documentaiy films?the time lag is too long and the audiences toosmall and insignificant. Increasingly public cul-tural institiuions themselves will have to becomeforums for cultural conversations. Museums,libraries, and universities? in their currentform, as well as in electronically networked, "vir-tual" forms? will have to serve town, national,and global conversations, if they are to continueto merit public support. The conversations them-
selves will need to become less of an authorita-tive monologue, as central institiuions enabledialogue and the increase of knowledge by thoseformerly seen as peripheral.The federal investment in this process hasnot been made. The resources put toward multi-culturalism are minute. Public institiuions havefailed to connect enshrined ideas of culture?what it is and whose it is? to an increasinglymulticultiual America. Funds and commitmentsfor training people and supporting professionalsin the cultiual studies areas are lacking. And yet,in a changing world, where culture looms largerand larger in political and economic life, theneed for this investment is greater. DevelopingAmerica's cultiual economy in a just way anddeveloping public understanding of the nation'scultural life seem not only worthwhile goals, buturgent ones that require swift and decisiveaction.
14
The Festival ofAmerican Folklife:Doing More with LessDiana Parker
This year's Festival of American Folklife isthe 27th since the Smithsonian's annual livingcultural exhibition began in 1967. We havelearned much in these years about how to pre-sent traditional cultures respectfully and under-standably to a broad audience. We have learnedabout the products besides the Festival that cancome from the research done to produce theevent. .And we have learned about the ways thelabor and the money the event requires can beused to maximimi effect.Walking through the Festival, you see theculmination of more than a year of hard work.Before a Festival can happen, themes and cura-tors must be selected, research plans formulatedand researchers identified, funds raised, fieldresearch documentation reviewed, participantsselected and in\'ited, visas, transportation, hous-ing, and meals procured, sites and programsdesigned and produced, signs and programbook articles written, supplies located, and more.Upwards of 100 people have worked closelytogether to create the program on the Mall, andover 100 vohmteers a day will add their laborduring the Festival's span.The annual Festival requires a tremendousconcentration and commitment of intellectual,emotional, spiritual, and physical energ)-. It alsotakes a lot of money. Considering salaries, fees,transportation, and everything it takes to pro-duce the event. Festivals typically cost betweenone and two million dollars, depending on thesize, length, and complexity of the program.In the recent past, the Festival, like the restof the Smithsonian, has had to learn to make dowith less. Traditionally, about 25% of the cost ofthe Festival has come from Federal funds, 25%
Diana Parker is the Director of the Festival ofAmerican Folk-life. She has worked on the Festival in a variety of capacitiessince 1975.
from Smithsonian trust funds, 20%) from corpo-rate and foundation sources, and 30% fromother governments. The sale of traditional crafts,foods, publications, and beverages at the Festival.which do much to bring the intimate aestheticsand taste of folk culture to a broad audience,also help in a limited way to offset the cost ofproduction. But the current economic climatehas limited the a\ailability of Federal and Smith-sonian fimds, and also made it more difficult toraise fimds from the outside.More than 1.2 million people visited the1992 Festival. That makes the cost of the Fesdvalabout $1.50 per visitor? less than the cost of aconcert or a movie ticket and much less than thecost of maintaining an artifact-based museum.But the economy of the Festival is even greaterwhen you consider the ways it reaches beyondthe Mall.Perhaps the most direct way that the Festivalstretches beyond its temporal and physicalboundaries is through the media. It is estimatedthat some 40 million people learn about theevent and the people and themes it presentsfrom sources as varied as 'The Today Show," fea-ture stories in national and local newspapers,and "Nadonal Public Radio" inteniews with Fes-tival participants. Public television has producedseveral documentaries about our programs andFestival participants, and aired others made byindependent producers. Perhaps the best knownis The Stone Carvers, produced by Marjorie Huntand Paul Wagner which won the 1985 AcademyAward for best docvmientary.Remounting sections of the Festival of Amer-ican Folklife "back home" has proved an effec-tive way of multiphing the value of the moneyspent for research and planning by sharing theresources of the Smithsonian with non-Washing-ton audiences. The Fesdval's second life reusesits research, design, and its museimi-qualitysigns, banners, and publications; it trains people
15
in various parts of the counti'y in the art of pre-senting traditional culture to a broad publicaudience; and it increases the much desei"vedhonor tradition bearers receive in their ownhome regions.Recent Festival of American Folklife pro-grams remoimted back home include Michigan(1987), Massachusetts (1988), Hawai'i (1989),and the U.S. Virgin Islands (1990). Althoughthere was no state or territoiy program at the1991 Festival, a portion of the Family Farm pro-gram of that year was remounted in the Festivalof Michigan Folklife in the fall of 1991. The leg-islature of the state of New Mexico has recentlyappropriated fimds to remount the successful1992 program back home in Las Cruces. Some ofthese Festival restagings, as in Michigan, haveprovided the impetus for year-roimd culturalresearch, educational, and public programs.Other restagings, like the one in the U.S. VirginIslands, have led to legislation and the establish-ment of local cultural institiuions. Generally, theSmithsonian provides in-kind staff support tothese efforts, which are funded largely by statesand private sources.States and territories participating in the Fes-tival receive complete archival copies of theresearch done in preparation for the Festival.The Festival has generated significant dociunen-taiy collections, which are now housed in manystate archives and universities. This culturalinformation provides material for books, policystudies, and public programs.Festival research materials have also beenused to prepare educational packets for use inpublic schools. Smithsonian and U.S. VirginIslands scholars compiled audio, video, and wiit-ten materials from the 1990 Festival to createteachers' kits. The kits were used to teach tradi-tional culture in Senegal and the U.S. VirginIslands? comparing and contrasting story-telling, foodways, music, and other expressiveforms, and introducing students to the skillsrequired to research folk culture in their ownfamilies and communities.Other ways have been foimd to share theresearch done for the Festival with people out-side the Washington area. Numerous Smithson-ian/Folkways recordings accompanied by exten-sive documentary notes have been producedfrom eveiy Festival since 1988, beginning with
the critically acclaimed Musics of the Soviet Union.These recordings have proved valuable tools inthe classroom for teaching about traditional cul-tiue. Their quality is reflected in a GrammyAward and several nominations. The most recentFestival recording. Roots ofRhythm and Blues: ATribute to the Robert Johnson Era, was nominatedfor a Grammy in the category of best traditionalblues.Eveiy year the Festival generates ancillaiyprojects that capitalize on the energy and fimdsput into it. For instance, the 1984 Black UrbanExpressive Culture from Philadelphia programled to a traveling exhibit, an exhibit catalog, aNational Geographic article, and a training pro-gram for young African American documentaryphotographers. A 1992 program on White HouseWorkers is being developed into a film and atraveling exhibit for the presidential libraries;another 1992 program on Native Americanmusic is being transformed into an exhibit forthe National Museimi of the American Indian;and yet another, on Maroon cultural histoiy, willtour the nation as a future exhibit in the Smith-sonian Institiuion Traveling Exhibition Sei"vice.Numerous interns, undergraduate, and post-doctoral fellows have used the Festival and itsarchives for research and publication. Addition-ally, the Center originated a Folklore SummerInstitute which brings together selected lay schol-ars from commimities around the countiy fortraining in research, documentation, and pre-sentation of traditional culture, as well as propos-al and grant writing. Coinciding with the Festival,the Institute allows students to use the event as alaboratoiy and an opportunity to meet other tra-dition bearers and professionals in the field oftraditional culture. The National Park Semcehas held its training program for Native Ameri-cans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians inWashington during the Festival for the last twoyears for the same reason.Proud as we are of the Festival on the Mallcreated by the tradition bearers it honors, wethink of the event as just the tip of an iceberg.The effect of the Federal funds expended on it isamplified many times over by private, state, andincome-generated fimds that support Festival-inspired cultural education projects around thecountiy and even around the world.
16
U.S. -MEXICO BORDERLANDSUnited States-MexicoBorderlands/La FronteraOlivia CadavalDedicationWe dedicate the Borderlands program to Don Americo Parades whoselifelong intellectual, artistic, and social engagement with the border has ledthe way in imderstanding borders as distinctive cultural regions. Borders,and in particular the area he has called the Lower Rio Grande Border andfiom which he came, create complex and turbulent environments. Thesegenerate what Don Americo has rightly understood as a culture of conflict,struggle, and resistance. For Don Americo, it is precisely the generativepower of the struggle that makes border folklore distinctive.
La frontera inarca I'l sitio doiide dos paises sobera-nos colindan, creando un drnbito de acercamiento perotambien de separacion entre culturas y jurisdiccionesnacionales. La frontera trazada de acuerdo al tratadode Guadalupe Hidalgo de 1848 entre Mexico y losEstados Unidos invadio tierras indigenas, dividiocomunidades rnexicanas, y creo una dindmica de opo-rtunidad, explotacion, y conflicto que ha engendradouna cultura propia fronteriza.Basado en la investigadon, este programa nosofrece una muestra de esta adtura fronteriza? sushistorias, sus diversas comunidades, identidadeslocales y regionales, y de su musica, su arte, su arte-sania, sus costumbres, su comida y su nanativa. Elprograma se ha realizado gracias a la colaboracion deEl Cokgio de la Frontera Norte, Texas FolklifeResources, Western Folklife Center de la Biblioleca de laUniversidad de Arizona, el Centra de EstudiosRegionales de la Universidad Autonoma de NuevoLeon, la Universidad Autonoma de Baja California yde investigadores individuals y miembros de variascomunidades de ambos lados. Este articulo es unaintroduccion a los ensayos de investigadores partici-
pantes que aportan diferentes perspectivas y tocandiversos temas.Finalmente este articulo es una introduccion a losparticipantes del programa en elfestival, a esas vocesindividuales que viven y crean la cultura de la fron-tera. A traves de sus historias y la presentacion de sushabilidades artisticas y creadoras, esperamos apreciarla vitalidady riqueza propia de la cultura fronteriza, yentrar en un didlogo con los fronterizos mismos paramejor entender los problemas y los procesos culturaks ysociales que se dan en este drnbito transnacional.IntroductionBorderlands have often been the locale ofmajor folk cultural achievements, from the out-law ballads of the Scots-English border to theheroic corridas oi ionth Texas. Energized by thelives of heroes and others, borderlands continueto spark themes of frontier lawlessness, nationalpride, rebellion against injustice, and a commu-nity hero's stand against all odds. What is itabout a border that triggers these cultural formsand others, such as souvenirs, duty-free liquors.
"United States-Mexico Borderlands " has been made possible with the support and collaboration of the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes -El Programa Cultural de las Fronteras, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Texas Commission on the Arts, Cerveza Tecate - Imported Beer, Texas Folk-life Resources, University ofArizona Library 's Western Foltilore Center, Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon - Centro de Informacion de HistoriaRe^onal, Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, Gobiemo del Estado de Nuevo Leon, Mexican Cultural Institute, and the recording industriesMusic Perfonnnnre Trust Funds.
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 17
retaining walls made of automobile tires, andmaquiladora assembly plants? Is the border a par-ticular kind of region or social environment? Ifso, does the border tend to produce a particularkind of culture? And what is the relationshipbetween this environment and its culture? In thisessay and in this Festival program we exploreanswers to these questions.A line drawn in various ways, a border marksthe place where adjacent jurisdictions meet. Thiscombined conjunction-and-separation of nationallaws and customs creates a zone in which move-ments of people and goods are greatly regulated,examined, discussed, and hidden. Commerceattains a higher importance in border society asdoes dialogue about the identities of its peoples.Smuggling, the myriad signs in border towns,legal and illegal immigration, and the use ofunneighborly names between neighbors are partsof this picture of accentuated concern with thetrade in goods and the flow of people.The border is an environment of opportuni-ty . Individuals find work enforcing or avoidingthe laws that regulate movement. Companies usenational differences in labor and euNaronmentalregulations to pursue their advantage. Bordersociety thrives on difference, and people andinstitutions come there to exploit niches in itsenvironment.Borders are artifacts of histoiy and are subjectto change over time. Wlien borders shift, landsand peoples are subjected to different sets ofrules; this creates opportunities for exploitation,conditions of hardship, and motivations for revolt.
An approach to describing a society con-structed by difference is necessarily many voiced.Rather than a central, authoritative perspective,we strive for a de-centered point of view, onewith many authoritative speakers. Of course, thisis more easily achieved in the Festival, where citi-zens of the border region speak and perform forthemselves and their communities. But even inthis printed mediiun, through translation andtranscription, a varietv of authorities are repre-sented.Border society is an abstract concept com-poimded of ideas about the sovereignty ofnation-states, the intensification of commerceand social discourse, and strategies of culturalrepresentation. The U.S.-Mexico border can beunderstood in these terms; and in this it is simi-lar to borders like those between the U.S. andCanada, East and West Germany, or Kenya andTanzania. But a particular history of the U.S.-Mexico bcjrder is expressed in the images,soimds, discourse genres, and social fcjrmationsdiscussed below. This particidar historical devel-opment has made the border the planet's longestbetween a coimtiy characterized by economicpractices and achievements sometimes known asTirst world" and a countiT whose economv is
Olivia Cadaval is curator of the Festival's United States-Mexico Borderlands program. She has conducted researchand collaborated in public programming with the Washing-ton, D.C. Latino, Latin American, and Caribbean commu-nities/or over a decade. .She received her Ph.D. from GeorgeWashington University.
18 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
sometimes characterized as 'third world'. Thegrowth of a capitalist world economy providedthe context for the development not only ofU.S.-Mexico border culture, but also of othertypes of cultural processes that incorporate dif-ference ? acculturation, creolization, and thegrowth of various cultural diasporas.Cultural processes which may be opaque andelusive elsewhere become clear at the border.This is the case, as Dr. Valenzuela points out, inthe formation of cultural identitw The borderoffers a stark context of cultural difference,social inequality, and ever present reminders ofgovernmental power to limit individual opportu-nity by ascribing national identity. The dominantdiscourse that assigns low social value to particu-lar sectors of the population is answered by a cre-ative flood of expressions of identity in music,graphic arts, poetry, and styles of clothing andself presentation.People speak passionately and often artisti-cally about themselves and others; they regulateexchange and avoid regulation; they struggle tosurvive in an environment often shaped by thepractices of nation-states and a global economv.These human acts are not luiique to borders, butthey occur there with a claritv and an urgencythat commands our concern.People at the BorderThe region between the Gulf of Mexico andBaja California has been inhabited by manyNative ^\merican societies, which first settled andused the land. Spaniards took ownership of theselands in grants made by the Spanish crownaccording to a perceived divine right. Mestizos,whose practices, like their ancestiy, combinedhidian and Hispanic heritage, inhabited theregion. And English-speaking citizens of theU.S., whose land acquiring and owning practiceswere informed by principles of commercial capi-tal and manifest destiny also settled here. Theborder region is usually thought of as composedof these principal groups of landowners, fcjrmerlandowners, and workers, but its environment ofopportunity has attracted many others, whosesuccessive arrivals continue to transform thesociocultural life of the region.On the Gulf coast, Jewish families from cen-tral Mexico sought refuge from religious perse-cudon in the 18th century and established busi-nesses in Matamoros and along the valley. In thelatter part of the 19th centui^, a Mexican govern-ment concerned by U.S. expansionism encour-aged settlement and in some cases granted land
When her paralysis was cured, Josefina Ollervidez builta shrine in her yard in San Antonio, Texas, to NuestraSenora de los Lagos, a patron saint she brought with herfrom Jalisco in central Mexico. Photo by Kathy Vargasin the western region of the border to groups asdiverse as Chinese, Mennonites, Molokan Rus-sians, Black Seminoles, and Kickapoo Indians.Black Seminoles and Kickapoo were welcomedwith the stipulation that they defend the territoryagainst the Apache and Comanche raids.As Maricela Gonzalez describes in her arti-cle, Chinese managers and laborers establishedresidence in the towns of Mexicali and Calexicoat the beginning of the 20th century. Thedamming of the Colorado River converted thisarea in the Imperial Valley along the ColoradoRiver into fertile agricultural land. Anglolandowners leased this land to Chinese entrepre-neurs from California, who smuggled agricultur-al laborers into Mexico from China.The Bracero Program of 1942-1964, firstnegotiated by the U.S. and Mexico as an emer-gency measiue during World War II, encouragedlarge migrations of Mexican workers to the U.S.Under its terms, Ameiican agricidtural enterpris-es could legally bring Mexican contract laborers
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 19
for seasonal work. In the off-season many did notreturn home but settled on the border, oftenselecting a place where people from their homestate were already established.The Mixtecos are one of 16 indigenousgroups from Oaxaca who, for at least 30 years,have been migrating to urban and agriculturalareas in Mexico and in the U.S. As FranciscoMoreno's article points out, they are not a mono-lithic group but have regional linguistic and cul-tural differences. For them, as for other indige-nous migrants in Mexico, the sale of traditionaland tourist crafts has been an economic main-stay. Today, some of the most popular touristitems sold throughout Mexico are the rag dollsdressed in archetypal peasant garb with nostrong regional identity. Mixteco women vendorssell them in Tijuana. They formerly made thedolls but now buy them, along with other tradi-tional crafts, from other migrants in Tijuana,who come from the western Mexican states ofJalisco and Guanajuato, and from Guatemala.The traditional and tourist crafts displayed on aMixteco vendor's cart represent the labor ofmany cultural groups on the border and theentrepreneiuial skill of Mixtecos who make a liv-ing in this market i reatcfi b\ short-distancetourism.Mexican immigrants continue to seek eco-nomic opportunities. Workers have been attract-ed to the border area by the 19til-1965 MexicanNational Border Economic Development Pro-gram followed in 1965 by the IndustrializationProgram of the Border, which introduced themaquiladora assemblv plants to the region. Inher article, Maria Eugenia de la O records testi-monies of several inac|uiia workers in CiudadJuarez.From the 1980s onward, economic and polit-ical refugees from Central America have swelledpopulations at the border and migrations acrossit. Individuals, groups, and corporate bodies con-tinue to be attracted to the border to exploitniches in an environment created by differenceand marginality. Wliat they have constructed,appropriated, abandoned, and re-constructed fillthe social landscape of the border region.Regions of the BorderWhile border cultiues share an environmeiUcreated by adjacent jurisdictions and socioeco-nomic marginality and difference, culturalexpressions do vaiy from one border town orregion to another. Older, established communi-ties populate the string of small towns on both
sides of the river along the Rio Grande/RioBravo valley to Laredo/Nuevo Laredo. EaglePass/Piedras Negras and Del Rio/Ciudad Acmiabegan as coalmining towns in the 1800s. In DelRfo, the San Felipe spring feeds a network ofcanals, creating a lushness not othei"wise seen insouth Texas and inviting the establishment ofItalian vineyards. Here regional cultiual tradi-tit:)ns are shaped by agriculture, cattle ranching,and mining as much as by the early conflictsbetween the Mexican land-grant settlements andthe northern land-grabbers. Labor unions ofMexican farmers, semce employees, and oilworkers now organize maquila workers at theassembly plants that are replacing those olderindustries on the Mexican side.The border follows the river through therough terrain of the Big Bend and through theonce busy trading posts of Presidio/Ojinaga andon to the El Paso/Ciudad Juarez twins estab-lished as the "Pas.sage to the North" between themountain ranges, "the border's fulcrum, wherethe river gives way to the fence and where Northand South have been horsetrading for centuries"(Weisman 1986:85). El Paso/Ciudad Juarez is acrucible of cultmal identities, in which sharedborder personas are created, exported, re-imported, and transformed. Here the pnrhuco, aMexican American, neighorhood identity of the1940s and '50s was reforged as the cholo Mexicanand Mexican American yoiuh of today.West of the river a series of straight lines, notthe topography, define the boundai"y. Here theSonoran Desert border is home to Yaqui andO'odham Indians. As noted by Dr. Griffith, thereis in this region a unique cultural interdepen-dence between Native Americans and Mexicans,exemplified by the shared celebration of thepatron saint, Francisco Xavier, and of the mis-sionar)' Francisco de Kino (often merged into acomposite St. Francis along with St. Francis ofAssisi). Members of these groups share eachother's crafts and food at the feast in Magdalena,20 miles south of Ambos Nogales (the TwoNogales). In this area, the socioeconomic strug-gle of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo region is not asdominant a feature of life. Wliereas lower bordercorridos praise the valor of men who fight fortheir rights, corridos in this area celebrate famedhorses that win epic races.The westernmost border area between theCaliiornias is veiy different. The original NativeAmerican populations are surroimded and for-gotten by the growing urbanization of the early20th cell tun'. Many have migrated to San Diego
20 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
Most Mixtecos in Tijuana live in the neigborhood l<nown as the Colonia Obrera, where retaining walls made of tires areused to keep homes from sliding down steep hills. Photo by Laura Velasco Ortiz
.**i:
On the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande, a pollero (whose work is to assist undocumented travelers cross theborder) floats children from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso on an inner tube raft. Photo by Pete Reiniger
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 21
and l.os Angeles, establishing large communi-ties.A striking architectural feature in the Tijua-na working class neighborhoods that spread onthe sloping canyons of the city is the use of tiresin landscaping. Tires create stairs that lead up tohillside houses, and they are built into retainingwalls that keep homes from sliding downhill.Architects have integrated the distinctive tireembankment motif into the cement retainingwalls they design for affluent neighborhoods, hiNogales, street vendors reserve their space on adowntown street with bright yellow half tireslined up like croquet wickets to mark their terri-tory and attract customers. In Laredo andthroughout the valley, sculpted and painted tireflowerpots decorate the front yards and yardshrines. And as almost everywhere, border chil-dren swing on tires hung from trees in houseyards or from metal scaffolds in public play-groiuids.The Border in HistoryThe Mexican and the United States govern-ments settled the location of the border with thesigning of the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty in 1848and the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. But longbefore there was a border, Indian commimitieshad settlements in the areas between the Gulf ofMexico and the Pacific. In the 17th century,Spanish settlers established the same area as thenorthern frontier of New Spain and then of Mex-ico after its War of Independence in 1810. In theSpanish colonial period, this area was a frontierthat attracted the most adventiuesome explorersand dedicated missionaries.The eastern region of the border along theRio Bravo (later called Rio Grande in the U.S.)was more hospitable and became a focus ofregional life as towns grew up along its banks. AsDr. Ceballos points out, residents of these townslike Laredo felt a strong allegiance to a Mexicanidentity. El Paso del Norte, now known as ElPaso, was the first and largest town built on theriver in the early 1600s in the mountain corridorthat was called El Paso del Norte, the "Passage tothe North." Many small towns established beforethe creation of the border still dot the Texas val-ley. The Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, a "symbol ofseparation" in Texas, constitutes over half of thelength of the border. In the decades followingthe Mexican-Ainerican War (1850s), U.S. cattlebarons and agricultural opportimists from theEast and the Midwest with substantial capital and
Much border crossing is cJone extra-legally because ofconvenience. Here a grancJmother crosses via a well-traveled route for a day's shopping in the U.S. Photo byDavid Burckhalter
extensive mercantile connections came to domi-nate the U.S.-Mexico trade across this Texas riverborder. Shortly after their rise, these merchantsbegan to acquire extensive tracts of land inTexas and to assert dominion over the earlierSpanish and Mexican settlers. This created anenvironment of cultural and economic conflictthat characterizes the border to this day.Dining the Mexican Revolution, whichbegan in 1910, the border population increasedsignificantly as many moved across the borderseeking refuge. Migration patterns were estab-lished between particular states in Mexico andparticular regions or towns on the border. Forexample, refugees from central Mexico who set-tled in the Texas valley were likely to be joinedlater by immigrants from their hometowns.Migrants from the northwestern states of Zacate-cas, Durango, and Sinaloa regularly traveled toCiudad Juarez/El Paso.Wlien economic recessions hit the LI.S.,efforts mounted to push immigrants back toMexico. In 1914-1915, the U.s'side of the RioGrande Valley experienced a winter of violence
22 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
A mural decorates the wall of a workers' neighborhood in Ciudad Juarez. Photo by Lyie Rosbotham
when hundreds of Mexicans, or mejicanos in bor-der usage, were persecuted and killed by theTexas border patrols. The Great Depression ofthe 1930s brought a new wave of deportations inwhich immigrants who had lived undisturbed inthe U.S. for decades were repatriated.As people from different cultural regions ofMexico have settled on the border, they haveevolved a complexly layered cultural and socialenvironment that has been created by competi-tion and adaptation for survival. In this struggle,border peoples have developed distinctive styles,social organizations, and local economies. Aninteresting example of this is the way Mixtecovendors in Tijuana appropriate the traditionaland tourist handicrafts made by other Mexicanmigrants to create a market that helps to supportnot only their own cultiual identits' biu also thatof the other groups.Local economies that develop on the Mexi-can side capitalize not only on available skills butalso on available, usually discarded, materials.Small businesses trade in secondhand clothespurchased by the poimd and cardboard from theU.S. Some items, like the used tires found eveiy-where along the border, are made into distinc-tive items that support local economies anddefine a border stvle.
The extensive use of tires is evidence of eco-nomic difference and marginality and of the cul-tiual inventiveness and resilience that exploitsthe border environment. But the visible pres-ence of discarded materials is also a reminder ofthe pollution that is imfortunately also prevalenton the border. The poorly regulated industrial-ization including that of agricultiue on bothsides of the border increasingly contaminates theair, water, and land. Wltile border residents cancreatively reuse discarded tires, the uncheckedand growing regional pollution, which seriouslyaffects their health as well as the environment, isat present beyond their control.The ProgramBased on research in the rich and dynamicliving cultiue of the border, the Borderlands Fes-tival program is designed to provide a glimpse ofthe border? its histories, its diverse communi-ties, local and regional identities, and its music,arts, crafts, healing practices, foodways, and nar-rative. This program has been assembled by theCenter for Folklife Programs and Cultural Stud-ies in collaboration with El Colegio de la Fron-tera Norte (a center for studies of the northernMexican border), Texas Folklife Resources, theUniversity of Arizona Library's Western Folklife
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 23
Carolina Samaniego de Leyva shapes rounds of asaderocheese in her home in El Divisidero, a few miles from Oji-naga. Chihuahua. This major cattle region of Mexico'snorthern border is noted for this pliable white cheesemade from milk curdled with trompillo, a seed from alocal deadly nightshade plant. Photo by Emily Socolov
Center, the Centro de Estudios Regionales of theUniversidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, the Uni-versidad Autonoma de Baja California, and withindividual scholars and community membersfrom both sides of the border.The program is about community-based cul-ture. It presents cultural practices foimd on theborder and cultural expressions about the bor-der, and it explores cultiual patterns that seemto be created by the border. It also addresses thecultural heritage, adaptability, and creativity ofNative Americans and of the Mexican, HispanicAmerican, Anglo and other immigrant commu-nities that have played a part in creating the lifethat siuTounds the Mexico-U.S. border? thosethat maintain it, those that cross it, those that areleft behind, and those that dwell in the borderregion. The program explores the processesthrough which the groups create, adapt, and pre-sei've culture to meet the challenges of life onthe border. It seeks to present and imderstandcommiuiity codes of behaNaor that evolved on
the border including confrontation, evasion, vio-lence, and romance, especially as these havebeen transformed into narrative and other formsof artistic expression.Music performances include emergent formssuch as the coujiinto, which grows out of theinteraction between different cultural commiuii-ties; older forms, such as the corrido, which hasbeen used to presei"ve a historical vision in thedefense of dispiued territory; and adapted formssuch as the string band music now incorporatedinto the traditional repertoire of the TohonoO'odham Native American commimities.Also featured in the program are five nun al-ists, whose work reflects the traditions of Mexi-can cholo and United States Chicano muralism.These traditions draw upon the rich histor)' ofmuralism in the Americas? from wall paintingsin pre-Columbian temples and colonial chinch-es, to popularized images in bars and on com-mercial facades, to the socially-engaged master-pieces of the Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, andTamayo, to the graphic protest in U.S. cities thathas now been re-contextualized on the border.Murals continue to be touchstones of commonhistorical experiences, archaeologies of sociocul-tiual movements, and powerful statements ofidentitv', ethical principles, and community aspi-rations.The unique fusion of border aesthetics andhandcrafted technology is embodied in lowriders
? distinctively customized automobiles?described below by Michael Stone. These low-slung, hopping cars complement the iconogra-phy of murals as statements of cultvnal identity.Vaqueros of south Texas demonstrate their skills,crafts, and foodways associated with their cowboytradition, which dates back to the Spanish colo-nial era. A fisherman from the port ofBrownsville demonstrates shrimping techniques.A Laredo blacksmith forges stirrups, belt buck-les, and other implements of vaquero life, alongwith a nimiber of traditional and contemporarydecorative objects. A ropemaker demonstratesthe use of the local fiber called lechugilla (anagave of the amaiyllis family). While fine crafttraditions like guitar- and finnitiue-making arenot specific to the border, craftspeople haveincorporated motifs and instruments native tothe region, like the bajo sexto guitar. Other occu-pational groups characteristic of the border envi-ronment include federal Immigration and Natu-ralization Senace (INS) agents who regulatemovement across the border: coyotes and polleros,who help migrants evade immigration regula-
24 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
dons; and workers in maquiladorn assembly lineindustries. Narrative sessions focus on the cul-ture of craft and occupation in the context ofthe border.Aitisans demonstrate crafts used in thehome and for special celebrations, includingquilt-making, flower- and pinata-making, candle-making, and reverse-painted glass. Participantsprepare regional specialties, traditional foodssened for fiestas, and offer a sampling of t\'picalvaquero outdoor cooking. Finally, the Festivalpresents members of the Mixteco Indian com-munity in Tijuana, a recent migrant group,which preserves its cultural identity and con-tribmes to the economy at the border by main-taining ties with other Mixteco communities inOaxaca and California.The United States-Mexico border has had aprofoiuid effect on the lives of millions of peo-ple. The pending free trade agreement is onlythe latest in a long line of international socioeco-nomic arrangements that have wide ranginglocal impacts. Critical attention in Mexico andthe U.S. has been increasingly focused on thehistorical consciousness created in this border-land and on its expression in traditional andother forms of art. Recognition of the vitality andvalue of borderland cultiue is growing at themargins, among borderland populations, as wellas in the centers of power and opinion in bothcoiuitries. Scholars and political leaders increas-inglv realize that the cultiual encounters, synthe-ses, and resistances characteristic of border lifesignal similar cultural developments in the largersocieties. This intensifying concern and scrutinycenters on the margin, but can it reduce themarginalit)' in human rights, social dignity, andeconomic opportunity at the border? Listeningto commimity voices of the border from theMexican and United States sides can betterinform oiu" thinkinsr and decision-making.
Citations and Further ReadingsCarrillo Strong, Arturo. 1990. Coirido de Cocaine:Inside Stories ofHard Drugs, Big Money andShort. Lives. Tucson; Harbinger House.Garcia Canclini, Nestor. 1989. Culturas hihridas:estrategias para entrary salirde la modernidad.Mexico; Grijalbo.
.1989. Tijuana. La casa de toda la gente.Mexico; CONACULTA.Clifford, James. 1993. Sites of Crossing; Bordersand Diasporas in Late 20th-Centui7Expressive Cultiue. Cultural Cunenls 1 (Jan.).Graham, Joe, ed. 1991. Hecho en Tejas: TexasMexican Folk Aiis and Crafts. Denton, Texas;University of North Texas Press.Herzog, Lawrence. 1990. Where North Meets South:Cities, space and politics on the United Stales-Mexico border. Austin; University of Texas.Miller, Tom. 1981. On the Border: Portraits ofAmerica 's .Southwestern Frontier. New York;Harper Row.Montejano, David. 1987. Anglos and Mexicans inthe Making, 1836-1986. Austin; Univ. ofTexas.Quintero Ramirez, Cirila. 1992. Sindicalismotradicional en maquiladoras; El caso deMatamoros. Rio Bravo, A Bilingual Joiunal ofInternational Studies 1(2);60-71.Ross, Stanley R., ed. 1978. Views Across the Border:The United States and Mexico. Albuquerque,NM; University of New Mexico Press.Weisman, Alan. 1986. LaFrontera: The U.S. Borderwith Mexico. San Diego; Harcourt, Grace,Jovanovich.
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 25
Living on the Border:A Wound That Will Not HealNorma E. Cantu
Living in the geographical area where theU.S. and Mexico meet, the truth is always pre-sent. It gnaws at one's consciousness like a fearof rabid dogs and coyotes. Beneath every actionlies the context of border life. And one must seethat undergirding for what it is? the pain andsorrow of daily reminders that here disease runsrampant, here drug crimes take a daily toll, hereinfant mortality rates run as high or higher thanthose in Third World coimtries, here one cannotdrink the water, and here, this land that is ourland ? and has been our land for generations
? is not really oms. But one must also see bor-der life in the context of its joys, its continuoushealing, and its celebration of a life and culturethat survives against all odds. For to do othei"wisecondemns us to falling into the vortex of pes-simism and anomie where so many already dwell.Lafrontera: the frontier, the edges, the limits,the boundaries, the borders, the cultures, thelanguages, the foods; biU more than that, theunity and disunity: es lo mismo y no lo es (it's thesame and it isn't). Chicana novelist GloriaAnzaldi'ia speaks of this same terrain, this samegeography, but her words are hers; they are notmine, not ours, not those of eveiyone livingalong the border. However similar experiencesmay be they are not the same, for the frontera isas varied as the geography from Matamoros/Brownsville to Tijuana/San Ysidro, and the peo-ple that inhabit this wrinkle in space are as var-ied as the indigenous peoples that first crossed itcenturies ago and the peoples who continue totraverse it today. The Aztec pantheon didn't real-
Nomia E. Cantu, a natwe oj the borderlands, received a B.S.from Texas A&I University at Laredo, a Master'sfromTexas A&'l at Kingsville, and a Ph.D. from the UniversityofNebraska at Lincoln. She is an associate professor ofEng-lish at Laredo State University. She has published poetny,short fiction, and critical analyses.
ly rule these northern lands; and the h^)//('?o per-sonality, customs, rites, and language are testa-ment to that other native culture, now all butgone, which survives in vestiges sometimes asvague as an image in the sand, on the wall of acave, or in the lexicon and intonation of a bor-der native's speech.These lands have always harbcjred transients,people moving sometimes north sometimessouth. Like birds making their annual trek,migrant workers board up their homes and packthings in trucks and off they go with the localpriest's blessing. In Laredo, in Eagle Pass, andelsewhere, the matachines celebrate on May 3rd,December 12th, or another significant date, andas they congregate to dance in honor of the holycross, the Virgen de Guadalupe, or other localdevotion, they remember other lands and othertimes. Spanish and English languages bothchange along the border? mariachis are floiu"tortilla tacos in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo andwithin a 50-mile radius of the area; the calo(slang) of the batos locos, lowriders, cholos, orpachucos maintains its literaiy quality in its exces-sive use of metaphor all along the stretch, yetchanges from community to community, just asthe names for food and even the foods them-selves change. Differences have been there sincethe settlement of the borderlands in the 17thand 18th centuries, and the changes wroughtupon the border culture have occurred over thespan of more than 300 years; yet there are otherchanges, as well, ongoing changes that will alterthe very fabric of borderlands cultiue.The collusion of a myriad of cultures, notjust Mexican and LI.S., makes the borderlandsunique. It is a culture forever in transition,changing visibly from year to year. The popula-tion increases in number and in variety, as Kore-ans, Indians, and other peoples of non-Euro-pean, non-Indigenous, and non-Mestizo originflow into the region. Because of such an influx, it
26 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS

9^
A migrant worker harvests celery and jokes with the photographer. In an interview conducted as part of the BorderlifeProject of the University of Texas-Pan American, Donna Garcia describes part of her life as a Mexican migrant worker.
"For years we had been traveling to west Texas to work the cotton crop. I would hear people always talking about 'Thosemigrant workers ? look how they left this place; they're so dirty. You can't leave anything out while they are around.' Ihad heard these remarks so often that I thought they were talking of people in trouble with the law. One day my hus-band was talking of some mishap and I said, 'Oh, it was probably those migrant workers.' He looked at me and askedwhat I thought migrant workers were, so I told him. When I had finished he told me, 'Mama, we are migrant workers.'"Photo by Lillian M. Salcido
cases make lite easier but in others, nearly intol-erable.Immigration and emigration have shapedthe borderlands. The exodus of Texas bordernatives to the metropolitan areas of Houston,Dallas, and San Antonio or to California or theMidwest during the 1950s was due in large mea-sure to the depressed local economy. But, as emi-gration to the north occurred, immigration fromMexico into the area continued. The luiemploy-ment rates often hovered around the teens anddid not noticeably decrea.se, in spite of largenumbers of families relocating elsewhere, set-tling out of the migrant labor stream, in industri-alized areas such as Chicago, or going to work inother areas of Texas.In the 1980s and 1990s, some of these same
people, now retiring from steel mills in Illinoisor factories in Detroit, are retiu'ning as retireesand settling in the soiuh Texas border communi-ties they moved from 40 years ago. For many,like my mother's cousins who moved away andworked for Bethlehem Steel, Christmas and sum-mer vacation were times to visit relatives on theborder; these days, it is their children who makethe trip down south to visit them.Biu in many cases the move was permanent.With little to come back to, families settled per-manently in places like California, Wisconsin,and Nebraska. This was the experience of myfather's cousin who lives in Omaha and whoretired from the upholstering business sheworked in for over 30 years. She speaks of herlife away and her reasons for leaving with great
28 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
The shrine in the yard of Isidro Ramirez, a Vietnam War veteran who lives in Laredo, commemorateshis participation in the war and expresses gratitude for his safe return. IVlr. Ramirez includes in hisreligious work traditional objects like candles, flower vases, and images of saints, and also personalofferings that express his patriotism and war experience like the flag of Texas and his military helmet.Photo by Norma Cantu
pain: there were no jobs to be had; politicalmachines controlled the few jobs there were; thepay was below the national minimimi wage; theschools were not good for their kids; and thestreets weren't paved. At least up north, in spiteof discrimination, language barriers, alien foods,and cold weather, there were jobs; one coulddream of a better life. The border population isin transition once again as it has been for cen-turies. The healing occurs for but a short timewhen the newly formed scab is torn by a new ele-ment, and the process begins anew.The border is not homogenous in geographyor in cidture; there are many borders, resplen-dent in their heterogeneity. We who live in theserealities celebrate our day-to-day life with familycame asada gatherings; with civic events such asGeorge Washington's Birthday Celebration withits numerous border icons like the abrazo(embracing) ceremony and the InternationalParade; with high school graduations (currentlyattained by aroimd 55% of students), and othermarkers of academic achievement; and with reli-gious events, such as the matachines dance orthe annual visit to the city by the image of theVirgen de San Juan de los Lagos in Mexico, ven-erated on both sides of the border.
The pain and joy of the borderlands? per-haps no greater or lesser than the emotionsstirred by living anywhere contradictionsaboimd, cultures clash and meld, and life is livedon an edge? come from a woimd that will notheal and yet is forever healing. These lands havealways been here; the river of people has flowedfor centuries. It is only the designation "border"that is relatively new, and along with the termcomes the life one lives in this "in-betweenworld" that makes us the "other," the marginal-ized. But, from our perspective, the "other" isoutside, away from, and alien to, the border.This is oin- reality, and we, especially we Chi-canes and Chicanas, negotiate it in our dailylives, as we contend with being treated as aliensourselves. This in essence is the greatest wound
? the constant reminder of our otherness.
Citations and Further ReadingsAnzaldtia, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontna:The New Mestiza. San Francisco:Spinster/Aunt Lute Press.
"Rio Grande labeled 'virtual cesspool'." TheLaredo Morning Times, 21 April 1993.
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 29
Cultural Identities on theMexico-United States BorderJose Manuel Valenzuela ArceTranslated by Hector Antouio Corpordn
La fronterd es In iiilriiiii (juf i'.\/iil/t' tin esrcnariodonde confluyen dos adores de una misma obra: capi-ialismo avanzado y drpendencia, intemacionaUzacidndel proceso productwo y uldizacKni iiUoisiva de jucizade trabajo barata y vulnerable; inUinaiionalidad delmercado de trabajo y disminucion de dereelios labo-ralfs, identidad.es emergentes y profundas, y resistenciacultural. En este espacio se avecina la desigualdad, seevidencia la "desnacionalizacion", se transparenta laidentidad.
A Mexican chola dressed in dark, severely styled clothesand a masculine hat. Her self-created persona embodiesa defiant attitude towards authoritarianism, subordina-tion, sub-estimation, and poverty. Mexican cholas tendto be more dominated by their patriarchal families thantheir counterparts across the border. P/ioto by JoseManuel Valenzuela Arce
The indigenous communities ot the Mexico-United States border region succumbed to vio-lence, tuberculosis, venereal diseases, and thecatechism. From the era of the K'miais, Cucapas,Yiunas, Apaches, and Yaquis, to the present,there have been a multitude of engagements andmisencoimters, fusions and ruptures, innova-tions and oblivions. Cultures in this region con-tinually give shape to themselves through theirinteractions and relations and their social orga-nizations, contradictions, and conflicts.Much has been discussed about the danger-ous possibility of entreguismo or "surrendering toforeign influence," by the border population inMexico. But on the contraiy, along that very bor-der we find important sociocultural resistancemovements which articulate their goals with ver-bal symbols, visual images, and reinterpretationsof regional history that assert a cultiual identityformed in opposition to the United States.In the intense interactions on the Mexico-United States border one can see importantprocesses of transculturation. These culturalprocesses are ine\'itable and should not automat-ically be imderstood as the loss of national iden-tity. To the contrary, because these processesthat occtir in northern Mexico and southernUnited States involve relationships betweenneighbors across a border, their significanceassumes an international dimension ? evenwhen they might seem to be local in nature. Thispoint has been amplv explained bv Jorge A. Bus-tamante.The border is a shopwindow that contains astaged encoimter between two actors in the sameplay: advanced capitalism and dependency; theinternationalization of production processes andthe intensive lUilization of cheap, vulnerablemanpower; a global labor market and adecreased recognition of workers" rights and ofindigenous and emerging identities. But in thatscene in the border shopwindow there is also cul-
30 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
A group, or clica, of cholos pose in their neighborhood in front of a mural that depicts, among other elements, the Virginof Guadalupe and an idealized cholo and chola. A defensible power space, the neighborhood is at once a nexus of solidari-ty and an immediate source of conflict. Photo by Jose Manuel Valenzuela Arce
tiiral fusion, re-creation, and resistance. In thisspace suffused by inequality, society becomes
"dis-nationalized" and the sources of culturalidentity become transparent.Beyond faddish styles fashioned on Ameri-can models particularly for consumption by theyounger population, cross-border popular cul-ture in our coimtr\' is prominently expressed incoiridos, musica nortena, language, symbols, andyouth movements. Among the most recent ofthese movements to become popular after themid-1970s is el cholismo? the most massive youthphenomenon that emerged among the poorpopulation in the northern part of the country.Cholos represent a major cultural paradox, forthey import their national symbols from the Chi-cane and Mexican barrios in the United States.Many of these symbols had given voice to cultur-al resistance in the Chicano movement andamong Mexican-born youths throughout theUnited States; they were redefined and integrat-ed into the speech, graphic arts, and symbolismof cholos in Mexico.
On the other side, important sectors of theMexican-born population in the United Statesresist emotional and cultural isolation by con-siuning cultural products made in our country.Unfortunately, the majorit)' of these productsoffered through film and especially television areof deplorable quality. Mexicans in the UnitedStates are also culturallv strengthened by furtherimmigration of Mexicans to that country and byrelationships formed with populations on theborder. In these cultural interactions, as in theconsumption of Mexican cultural products, andin the immigrants' implication in social andpolitical processes in Mexico or in transnationalprocesses such as undocumented migration, rela-tionships between the Mexican and the Chicano
Jose Manuel Valenzuela Arce, a native ofTecate, Baja Cali-fornia, received his Ph.D. from El Colegio de Mexico. He iscurrently a researcher with El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.He received the Fray Bernardino de Sahagun Award insocial anthropology for his book A la brava ese!: cholos,punks, chavos, banda.
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 31
populations in the United States are shaped bywhat happens south of the border.In the crucible of the border, culture is sub-jected to a process of piuification that refinesand redefines the dominant traits of Mexicannational culture and combines them with otherpopular forms, regional expressions, and emerg-ing identities. BiU the various collective identities(cholos, Mixtecos, Zapotecos) find themselvespenetrated and influenced bv proximity of theUnited States: an indispensable reference in theculunal analysis of our coimti-y's northern bor-der. The presence of the United States takes vari-ous forms, and its cultural products are alsoredefined by the life experience of the socialgroups who use them.People construct cultinal identities with awide range of expressions that associate themwith some groups and differentiate them fromothers. The various collective identities on theborder are linked by a common bond of differ-entiation from the United States and of construc-tion from sources not bounded by the interna-tional line. They construct their identities in
This mural, an expression of La Raza movement of the1960s and 1970s, depicts a 1940s pachuco wearing charac-teristic baggy pants, tattooed with the Mexican Virgin ofGuadalupe, and positioned in front of a lowrider car andcrossed Mexican and American flags. Confronted withsocial stigma, pachucos and their cultural heirs valueboldness, valor, the aesthetic of "cool," and stoicism inconfronting racism. Their symbolism reflects the interna-tional origins of their culture. Photo by Jose ManuelValenzuela Arce
eveiyday interactions with the Mexican popula-tion in the United States, in characteristic usagesof the terms "them" and "us," and in their culttu-al borrowings or reaffirmations of tradition thatare the resources of their resistance. Culturalidentity on the border often reinforces collectiveaction closely linked to the class situation, as wasthe case with the Chicano Movement in the '60s;or in a fundamental way, identit)' can define pop-ular youth expressions, as exemplified bypachuquismo and ckolismo.
Further Rmd'mgsBustamante, Jorge A, 1988, Identidad, ctilturalnacional y frontera, Amelia Malagamba(comp.). Ettcuentros: los festivaksinternanonidn de Id raza. Mexico: COLEF-CREA.Malagamba, Amelia. La tdniisiun y su mi/ituio enla poblacioii iufanlil de Jijiiaua. Tijuana:CEFNOMEX!Monsivais, Carlos. La cultura en la frontera. InEstudios fronlerizos. Mexico: ANUIES.Valenzuela Arce, Jose Manuel. 1988. A la hravaesef: cholos, punks, chavos, haiida. Tijuana,B.C., Mexico: El Colegio de la FronteraNorte.
. 1991. Empapados de sereno: elmovimiento urbano popular en Baja California(1928-1988). Tijuana, B.C., Mexico: ElColegio de la Frontera Norte.
, ed. 1992. Entre la magia v la historia:tradiciones, mitos y leyendas de la fronteraMexico-Estados Unidos. Mexico: El Colegio dela Frontera Norte.
, ed. 1992. Decadencia v auge de lasideutidades: cultura nacional, identidad cultural,moclernizacidn. Tijuana, B.C., Mexico: ElColegio de la Frontera Norte.
32 MEXICO BORDERLANDS
The Problem of Identity ina Changing Cuhure:Popular Expressions of Culture ConflictAlong the Lower Rio Grande BorderAmerico Paredes
Excerptedfrom Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border. 1993. Austin: CMAS Books, Cen-terfor Mexican American Studies, University of Texas.Conflict? cultural, economic, and physical
? has been a way of life along the borderbetween Mexico and the United States, and it isin the so-called Niieces-Rio Grande strip whereits patterns were first established. Problems ofidentity also are common to border dwellers,and these problems were first confronted by peo-ple of Mexican culture as a result of the TexasRevolution. For these reasons, the Lower RioGrande area also can claim to be the source ofthe more typical elements of what we call the cul-ture of the Border.Life along the border was not alwavs a mat-ter of conflicting cultures; there was often coop-eration of a sort, between ordinarv people ofboth cultures, since life had to be lived as aneveryday affair. People most often cooperated incircumventing the excessive regulation of ordi-nary intercourse across the border, hi otherwords, they regularly were engaged in smug-gling-Borders offer special conditions not only forsmuggling but for the idealization of the smug-gler. This soimds pretty obvious, since, after all,political boundaries are the obvious places wherecustoms and immigration regulations areenforced. But we must consider not only theexistence of such political boimdaries but the
Americo Paredes is Dickson, Allen, and Anderson Centenni-al Professor Emeritus ofAnthropology and English at theUniversity of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. from theUniversity of Texas at Austin, and has taughtfolklore theresince 1957. In 1989, the National Endowment for theHumanities honored Paredes with the illustrious CharlesFrankel Prize. In 1 990, the government ofMexico bestowedon him its highest award to citizens of other countries: LaOrden Mexicana del Amila Azteca.
circumstances of their creation. In this respect,the Lower Rio Grande Border was especially suit-ed for smuggling operations.To appreciate this fact, one has only to con-sider that when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgoofficially settled the conflict over territorybetween Mexico and the LJnited States, a ver)'well defined geographic featine ? the RioGrande itself? became the international line.But it was a line that ciU right through the mid-dle of what had once been the Mexican provinceof Nuevo Santander. Friends and relatives whohad been near neighbors? within shouting dis-tance across a few hundred feet of water? nowwere legally in different countries. If they wantedto visit each other, the law required that theytravel many miles up or down stream, to thenearest official crossing place, instead of swim-ming or boating directly across as they used todo before. It goes without saying that they paidlittle attention to the requirements of the law.When they went visiting, they crossed at the mostconvenient spot on the river; and, as is ancientcustom when one goes visiting loved ones, theytook gifts with them: farm products from Mexicoto Texas, textiles and other manufactined goodsfrom Texas to Mexico. Legally, of course, thiswas smuggling, differing from contraband forprofit in volinne only. Such a pattern is familiarto anyone who knows the border, for it still oper-ates, not only along the Lower Rio Grande nowbut all along the boundary line between Mexicoand the United States.Unofficial crossings also disregarded immi-gration laws. Children born on one side of theriver would be baptized on the other side, andthus appear on church registers as citizens of theother coimtry. This bothered no one since peo-ple on both sides of the river thought of them-selves as rnexicanos, but United States officialswere concerned about it. People would comeacross to visit relatives and stay long periods of
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 33
time, and perhaps move inland in search ofwork. After 1890, the movement in search ofwork was preponderantly from Mexico deep intoTexas and beyond. The ease with which the rivercould be crossed and the hospitality of relativesand friends on either side also was a boon tomen who got in trouble with the law. It was notnecessary to flee over trackless wastes, with thelaw hot on one's trail. All it took was a fewmoments in the water, and one was out of reachof his pursuers and in the hands of friends. Ifillegal crossings in search of work were mainly ina northerly direction, crossings to escape the lawwere for the most part from north to south. Byfar, not all the Mexicans fleeing American lawwere criminals in an ordinai7 sense. Many werevictims of cultural conflict, men who had reactedviolently to assaults on their human dignity ortheir economic rights.Resulting from the partition of the LowerRio Grande communides was a set of folk atd-tudes that would in time become general alongthe United States-Mexican border. There was agenerally favorable disposition toward the indi-vidual who disregarded customs and immigra-tion laws, especially the laws of the United States.The professional smuggler was not a figiue ofreproach, whether he was engaged in smugglingAmerican woven goods into Mexico or Mexicantequila into Texas. In folklore there was a ten-dency to idealize the smuggler, especially thetequilrro, as a variant of the hero of cultmal con-flict. The smuggler, the illegal alien looking forwork, and the border-conflict hero became iden-dfied with each other in the popular mind. Theycame into conflict with the same American lawsand sometimes with the same individual officersof the law, who were all looked upon as rinches?a border-Spanish rendering of "ranger." Menwho were Texas Rangers, for example, duringthe revenge killings of Mexicans after the Pizanauprising of 1915' later were border patrolmenwho engaged in gunbattles with tequileros. Sostereotyped did the figine of the rinche becomethat Lower Rio Grande Border versions of "Lapersecucion de Villa" identify Pershing's soldiersas rinches.A mnido [ballad] tradition of intercultiualconflict developed along the Rio Grande, in
' The uprising occurred on the Lower Rio Grande Borderand involved a group of Texas-Mexican rancheros attempungto create a Spanish-speaking republic in South Texas. Pizanaendeavored to appeal to other United States minoritygroups. [Original Editor's Note]
which the hero defends his rights and those ofother Mexicans against the rinches. The firsthero of these corridos isJuan NepomucenoCortina, who is celebrated in an 1859 corridoprecisely because he helps a fellow Mexican.Other major corrido heroes are GregorioCortez ( 1901 ) , who kills two Texas sheriffs afterone of them shoots his brother; Jacinto TreNniio(1911), who kills several Americans to avenge hisbrother's death; Rito Garcia (1885), who shootsseveral officers who invade his home without awarrant; and Aniceto Pizana and his sediciosos(1915). Some corrido heroes escape across theborder into Mexico; others, like Gregorio Cortezand Rito Garcia, are betrayed and captured.They go to prison but they have stood up forwhat is right. As the "Corrido de Rito Garcia"says,
. . . me I'oy a la penitenda/Ml) defender mi derecho.
... 1 am going to the penitentiarybecause I defended my rights.The men who smuggled tequila into theLInited States during the twenties and early thir-ties were no apostles of civil rights, nor did theborder people think of them as such. But in hisacdvities, the tequilero risked his life against theold enemy, the rinche. And, as has been noted,smuggling had long been part of the border wayof life. Still sung today is "El corrido de MarianoResendez," about a prominent smuggler of tex-tiles into Mexico, circa 1900. So highly respectedwere Resendez and his activities that he wasknown as "El Contrabandista." Resendez, ofcourse, violated Mexican laws; and his battleswere with Mexican customs officers. The tequi-lero and his activides, however, took on an inter-cultural dimension; and they became a kind ofcoda to the corridos of border conflict.The heaNy-handed and often brutal mannerthat Anglo lawmen have used in their dealingswith border Mexicans helped make almost anyman outside the law a sympathetic figure, withthe rinche, or Texas Ranger, as the symbol ofpolice brutality. That these symbols still are alivemay be seen in the recent Fred Carrasco affair.The border Mexican's tolerance of smugglingdoes not seem to extend to traffic in drugs. Thefew corridos that have been current on the sub-ject, such as "Carga blanca," take a negative viewof the dope peddler. Yet Carrasco's death in1976 at the Huntsville (Texas) prison, along with
34 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
Americo Paredes is a folklorist, prize-winning author, and singer of border corridos.Photo by Jane E. Levine, courtesy Texas Folklife Resources
two women hostages, inspired close to a dozencorridos with echoes of the old style. The sensa-tional character of Carrasco's death cannot bediscounted, but note should also be taken of theunproved though widely circulated charges thatCarrasco was "executed" by a Texas Ranger, whoallegedly shot him through the head at closerange where Carrasco lay wounded. This is a sce-nario familiar to many a piece of folk literatureabout cultural conflict? corridos and prose nar-ratives? the rinche finishing off the woundedMexican with a bullet through the head. It isinteresting to compare the following stanzas, thefirst from one of the Carrasco corridos and theother two from a tequilero ballad of the thirties.
El capitdn de los rinchesfue el primero que cayopero el chaleco de mallalas balas no traspaso.The captain of the Rangerswas the first one to fall.
but the armored vest he was wearingdid not let the bullets through.En fin de tarjto invitarleLeandro los acompano;en las lamas de Almirambafile el primero que cayo.They kept asking him to go,imtil Leandro went with them;in the hills of Almirambahe was the first one to fall.
El capitdn de los rinchesa Silvano se acercoy en unos cuantos segundosSilvano Garcia murio.The captain of the Rangerscame up close to Silvano,and in a few secondsSilvano Garcia was dead.
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 35
Similar attitudes are expressed on the Sono-ra-Aiizona border, for example, when the hard-case hero of "El corrido de C^ananea" is made tosay, Me (iganarun los chmfesal eslilo americano,como al hombre de delito,todos con jiistola eii mono.The sheriffs caught mein the American style,as they would a wanted man,all of them pistol in hand.The partition of Nuevo Santander was alsoto have political effects, arising from the strongfeeling among the Lower Rio Grande peoplethat the land on both sides of the river was equal-ly theirs. This involved feelings on a vei"y localand personal level, rather than the rhetoric ofnational politics, and is an attitude occasionallyexhibited by some old Rio Grande people to thisday. Driving north along one of todays highwaystoward San Antonio, Austin, or Houston, theyare likely to say as the highway crosses the Nue-ces, "We are now entering Texas." Said in jest, ofcourse, but the jest has its point. Unlike Mexi-cans in California, New Mexico, and the oldcolony of Texas, the Rio Grande people experi-enced the dismemberment of Mexico in a ven'immediate way. So the attitude developed, earlyand naturally, that a border Mexican was en sutiena in Texas even if he had been born inTamaulipas. Such feelings, of course, were thebasis for the revolts of Cortina and Pizaha. Theyreinforced the borderer's disregard of politicaland social boundaries. And they lead in a directline to the Chicano movement and its mythicconcept of Aztlan. For the Chicano does notbase his claim to the Southwest on royal landgrants or on a lineage that goes back to theSpanish conquistadores. On the contrary, he ismore likely to be the child or grandchild ofimmigrants. He bases his claim to Aztlan on hisMexican culture and his mestizo heritage.Conversely, the Texas-born Mexican contin-ued to think of Mexico as "our land" also. Thatthis at times led to problems of identity is seen in
the folksongs of the Border. In 1885, for exam-ple, Rito Garcia protests illegal police entry intohis home by shooting a few officers of CameronCounty, Texas. He makes it across the river andfeels safe, unaware that Porfirio Diaz has anextradition agreement with the United States.AiTested and returned to Texas, according to thecorrido, he expresses amazement:
Yo niniai huhiera creidoque mi pais tirano fuera,que Mainew me entregaraa la narion extranjera.
I never would have thoughtthat my countiy would be so unjust,that Mainero would hand me overto a foreign nation.And he adds bitterlv:
Mexicauos, lui lia\ que jiaren nuestra propia nacion,niinea vayan a buscara Mexieu proleccion.Mexicans, we can put no trustin our own nation;never go to Mexicoasking for protection.But the mexieanos to whom he gives thisadvice are Texas-Mexicans.
Special thanks to Victor Guerra, Centerfor MexicanAmerican Studies at the University of Texas, Austin.
Further ReadingsParedes, Americo. 1958. "W'Uh His Fislal in HisHand": A Border Ballad and Its Hero. Austin:University of Texas Press.
. 1976. A Texas-Mexican Cancionero:Folksongs of the Lower Border. Chicago:University of Illinois Press.
. 1993. Folklore and Culture on theTexas-Mexican Border, ed. Richard BauniaiAustin: University of Texas Press.
36 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
The Arizona-Sonora Border:Line, Region, Magnet, and FilterJames S. Griffith
The Aiizona-Sonora border was establishedas a resiih of the Gadsden Purchase of 1853. Itruns through desert and mountain countiy,from the western Cliihuahuan Desert over byNew Mexico through a zone of grassland andoak-covered hills to the classic Sonoran Desertwest of Nogales. The land gets more and morearid as one travels west, and the western third ofthe border is essentially devoid of human habita-tion. It is this stretch of the border, once a majorroad to the Colorado River, that has earned andkept the title. El Camino del Diablo, "The Devil'sHighway."There are six ports of entry on the Arizona-Sonora border. From east to west these pairedtowns are: Douglas/Agua Prieta, Naco/Naco,Nogales/Nogales, Sasabe/Sasabe, Lukevalle/Sonoyta, and San Luis Rio Colorado, which hasno corresponding town on the Aiizona side.Between these towns stretches the border, forthe most part marked by a three-strand barbedwire fence and a series of monuments. The bor-der monuments are spaced so that each one isvisible from its counter-part to the east and tothe west. The fence tra-verses valleys, moun-tains, lush thickets, andsparse desert shrub-bery.Wliere it crossestrue desert, trulydeserted country, it is asimple three-strandbarbed wire fence. Inother stretches itchanges to chain-linkor, as recently betweenthe two Nogaleses, tometal strips.In the local Span-ish, one enters the
Relampago, famed Mexican quarter horse, beats the Ameri-can Chiltepin in a race which was run on the stretch of theborder near Douglas. Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora,because temporarily imposed health regulations in 1959 didnot allow either of the horses to cross. Photo courtesy Uni-versity of Arizona Library's Southwest Folklore Center andRalph Romero, Jr.
count!")' illegally de alamhrc? "through the wire."One who does this is an alambrista? a "wireist."There are more sophisticated techniques as well.In 1990, customs officials discovered an elabo-rate tunnel leading from a warehouse in AguaPrieta to a similar structure in Douglas, Aiizona.Hydraulic equipment had been installed ateither end, and the whole set-up was capable ofhandling considerable quantities of goods. Atleast three roiridos have been written and circu-lated about "el Tiinel."The fence sei^ves other, more localized pm-poses from time to time. During the 1980s, aninternational volleyball game was regularly heldnear Naco. Each team played in its own country,with the chain-link fence serving as the net.To the east, in Agua Prieta, match racing haslong been an important form of recreation. In1957, a horse named Relampago (Lightening)won an important race and became the instanttarget of many challenges. One of the chal-lengers was Chiltepin (named after the fierylocal wild chile), from Pirtleville, on the U.S.side. Hoof-and-mouthregulations made itimpossible for eitherhorse to cross into theother's country. Thesolution: each horseran on its own side ofthe fence. Relampagowon that one, too.The internationalborder creates morethan a fence betweencountries. It also cre-ates a de-nationalizedzone, a region extend-ing for many miles intoeach nation.I keep being toldthat Nogales. Sonora,
MEXICO BORDERLANDS 37
THE AGUA PRIETA TUNNELBy Los Jilgueros del Arroyo
El estadu de SonomYa estd aganando la jamaQue tenia SinaloaPor la cuestion de la Mafia,Crimenes yfechoriasA la Im de la manana.Primew lo de los muertosQue afragoso le achacaron.Luego sigiiio lo del TiinelQue en la linea enrnntrawii.Pero lo hallaron solitoLa droga ya habia pasado.En la jaula ya no cabenLeones, tigres, y panteras.Ese desierto estd verdeY el bianco luz a cualquiera.Quanta droga habrd pasadog^Por el tunel de Agua Prieta?
The (Mexican) State of SonoraIs stealing the fame awaythat used to belong to SinaloaDue to the business of the Mafia,Crimes and acts of villainyIn the broad light of day.
First there were the bodiesThat they blame on the rough order.Then there was the tunnelThat they discovered on the border.But they came upon it desertedThe drugs had already passed.They no longer fit in the cageLions, tigers, and panthers.That desert is greenAnd the white stuff shines for anyone.How much drugs must have passedThrough the timnel at Agua Prieta?
"isn't the real Mexico." That is perfectly true, ofcoiuse, just as Nogales, Arizona, "isn't the realUnited States." Each is a border commiuiity,attracting business from the other side of theline. Folks cross the border each day to shop,work, and socialize. Each town has taken onsome of the character of its coimterpart on theother side of the line. For the traveler fromMichigan, U.S.A., or Michoacan, Mexico, the for-eign flavor starts long before one arrives at theborder crossing, and reminders of home persistlong after one has crossed over into the othercountry.The border attracts. Manufactured goodsgravitate to it on their way into Mexico, andenough vegetables are attracted northwards tofeed much of the western United States. Theborder region attracts tourists and travelers fromthe United States, seeking just to sample thecharms of a foreign countiy, or passing throughon their way farther south into Mexico. Anincreasing nimiber of businesspeople and
James S. Griffith is Director of the Southwest Folklore Centerof the University ofArizona. He is a native of southern Cali-fornia and has called the Pimeria Alta home since the early1960s.
investors are drawn here, too. It attracts touristsfrom Mexico as well as those in search of eco-nomic opportimities. These may involve theassembly plants known as maquiladoras on theSonoran side of the border, or they may lie far-ther north in the United States. Many opportu-nity seekers cross the border illegally.This brings us to another important fimctionof the border. As well as defining a subregionthat is neither one place nor another, as well asserving as a magnet that draws goods and peoplefrom both countries, the border is also a barrier.It is intended to filter out imdesirable influencesgoing in both directions. So United States Immi-gration and Naturalization Service and the Bor-der Patrol fight an unceasing and frustrating bat-tle to ensure that only authorized, docinnentedindividuals cross into the United States. On theother side, Mexican Customs fights an equallyendless campaign against the importation ofuntaxed goods, especially automobiles, intoMexico.Another battle ? a war, in fact ? is con-stantly fought across the length and breadth ofthe border region between drug smugglers andthose who woidd prohibit their traffic into theUnited States. This war touches the lives of every-one living within a hundred miles of the border.
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Jesus Leon, an itinerant puppeteer and craftsman, displays his puppet in his vending booth at the Fiesta de San FranciscoIn IVIagdalena, Sonora. The late Don Jesus also made tin frames with reverse-painted glass for holy Images, a tradition hehas passed on to his children. Itinerant craftsmen, known as pajareros, usually sell these frames with the holy Image ofthe regional patron saint, San Francisco de Quino, or of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Photo by David Burckhalter
The chapel of Kohatk village is located In the Tohono O'odham Nation In the Arlzona-Sonora borderregion. The pictures with reverse-painted glass in tin frames that flank the central cross were made byItinerant artisans from Imuris, known as pajareros. Photo by James S. Griffith
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 39
Gloria Moroyoqui carefully gathers cut tissue paper into a flower. In her kitchen workshop she makes paper flowers,pihatas, the decoratecJ, confetti-filled eggshells called cascarones, and other crafts she creates out of available materialslike scrap paper, cardboard boxes, popsicle sticks, and straws. Photo by Lyie Rosbotham
while at the same time it remains ahnost com-pletely invisible. Traces of it may be seen, ofcourse, in newspaper headlines, in robberies byaddicts, in the magical spells and prayers to darkpowers which show up in displays of religiousarticles for sale, and in restrictions on travel tosome deserted areas near the border. But manyborder residents shrug, remark that only drugpeople seem to be involved in the shoot-outs,and go on in their everyday way.The border has touched the region's NativeAmericans in special ways. The TohonoO'odham claim ancestral lands on both sides ofthe border, and many interpret the GadsdenPurchase agreement as having granted them theright to move freely across the border withintheir lands. But O'odham land is beingencroached upon by Mexican farmers and oth-ers in Sonora, and the stretch of the border thatruns through O'odham land is vailnerable tosmugglers. As a result, one needs a permit nowa-days to travel along the southern portion of theTohono O'odham Nation near the border, and
crossings are not as easy as they once were forthe O'odham themselves.Yaqui Indians live on both sides of the bor-der as well. Those living in soiuhern Aiizonaclaim as their homeland the valley of the RioYaqui, which is 300 miles south of the border.Especially at Easter time, Yaqui ritual musiciansand dancers who live in Mexico travel north withtheir necessaiy regalia and instruments, crossingthe border at Nogales and going on to Tucson tohelp their kinfolk perform necessary religiousceremonies in the United States. Their ritualequipment has long puzzled some U.S. Customsofficials, and a booklet was issued around 1980to convince government employees, for instance,that a long string of dried cocoon-husks is a legrattle rather than a device for concealing heroin.There is one more important observation tobe made about the Aiizona-Sonora border, or atleast about its central part. It rims right down themiddle of what is still, after almost 150 years, acultural region in its own right.Wiren Eusebio Francisco Kino, S.J. arrived in
40 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERtANDS
this region in 1686 as its first permanent Euro-pean resident, he called the countiy he movedinto "la Pimeria Alta," or "Upper Pima Country."This distinguished it fiom regions to the southwhere Piman languages were also spoken, as wellas fiom the lands to the soiuheast and southwest,occupied respectively by Seris and Opatas. Tothe north of the Pimerfa Alta were lands occu-pied by other peoples, most particularly theApaches. Three hundred years later, the PimeriaAlta is still a cultural region, even though it hasbeen divided between two nations that did notexist in Kino's day.The region is unified by several elements.There are still Piman speakers (O'odham intheir own language) on both sides of the border.Also, much the same in both coimtries is Mexi-can ranching culture, many of whose principalfamilies straddle the border. The traditional,Jesuit-introduced, folk diet based on wheat,cheese, and beef is consistent throughout theregion, as is the use of the unique tortilla grandede hanna? the huge wheat flour tortilla that canineasure well over a foot across, and whose lardcontent often renders it translucent. And finally,the region is bound together through a strongdevotion to the composite San Francisco whosestatue stands in Magdalena de Kino, Sonora.Although the image in Sonora represents St.Francis Xavier, the day on which the annual fies-ta is celebrated is October 4, the Feast of St.Francis of Assisi in the Roman Catholic calendar.This composite San Francisco is of tremendousregional importance, and his fiesta draws thou-sands of pilgrims from north of the border: Mex-ican Americans, Tohono O'odham, and Yaquis,with a few Anglos thrown in for good measure.Among the religious goods offered for sale to pil-grims at the Fiesta de San Francisco are colorful,reverse-painted glass frames for holy pictures.These frames are made by several extendedfamilies of craftspeople. Each frame consists of asheet of glass which has been painted with geo-metric or floral motifs on the back. Both opaqueand translucent paints are used, and a rectangu-lar space is left undecorated, for the holy card.The glass is then backed, first with a layer ofcruinpled tinfoil, and then with either cardboardor tin. The tinfoil gives a wonderful, shimmeringquality to the translucent paint on the glass.While holy pictures are inserted into many of theframes, others are left bare, so the purchaser can
insert a favorite saint's picture or even the por-trait of a family member.Many of these frames are purchased byTohono O'odham and are taken back across theborder to the altars of the small chapels whichdot the Tohono O'odham Nation. Others arebought by Mexicans, Mexican Americans, andYaquis, and used on home altars. Some, however,are bought by Anglo-Americans, especially in thepast ten years, dining which time the paintedframes have been exhibited in Tucson andNogales as traditional art. In Mexican and Indianhands, the frames are colorful decorations forbeloved holy pictures or family portraits. InAnglo hands, however, the frames themselvesbecome the icons? symbols of the region andof its traditions.In a like way, pitlatas and cascarones (decorat-ed eggshells which have been filled with confettiand inoimted on decorated paper cones, andwhich are broken over party-goers" heads toincrease the festive ambiente oi xhe occasion) arepiuchased by some Anglos for their original,intended use, by others for use as wall decora-uons. In this guise they become visible symbolsof the region and statements of their owners"sensitivity to the region. By the same token, somefolk Catholic shrines in Tucson and elsewherehave become tourist destinations for Angloswishing to understand regional traditions.This then, is the Aiizona-Sonora border.Belonging truly to neither nation, it ser\'es as akind of cultural buffer zone for both, cultivatingits own culture and traditions. Like other bor-ders, it both attracts and repels. Like them, it isboth barrier and filter. It is above all a sUmulat-ing cultural enxdronment. After 30 years as a resi-dent, I can honestly say that I can think of noother place I would rather be.
Further ReadingsGriffith, James S. 1988. Southern Arizona Folk Arts.Tucson: University ofArizona Press.
. 1992. Beliefs and Holy Places: ASpiritual Geography of the Pimeria Alta. Tucson:University of Arizona Press.Weisman, Alan. 1991. La Frontera: the United StatesBorder with Mexico. Tucson: University ofAjiizona Press.
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 41
The Epic Tradition of theFounding of Nuevo LaredoManuel Ceballos-RamirezTranslated by Olivia Cadaval
Perder la tinra, perder la lengua, jwrder lascostumbres, es perder el cimiento de la x'ida.dejar de ser. Pedro CasalddligaEn Nuevo Laredo existe una de las tradicionesmas significativas que contribuye aforjar la identidadde los habitantes de lafrontera noiie mexicana. Setrata de una tradicion historica que asegura que, en1848 al perder Mexico la pequena pobladon de Laredo
? a causa de lafirma del Tratado de GuadalupeHidalgo entre Mexico y los Estados Unidos? muchosde los laredenses la abandonaron. Segun la tradicion,la poblacion de Laredofue abandonada par sus habi-tantes porque no se resignaron a pertenecer a unanueva nacion y decidieron emigrar a la margenderecha del Rio Bravo yfundar otro asentamiento quebautizaron con el nornbre de Nuevo Laredo, en recuer-do de la poblacion perdida. Ademds, la tradicion ase-gura que, no contentos con trasladarse ellos mismos allado mexicano, tambien desenterraron a sus muertos,cruzaron sus restos y los reinhumaron en Nuevo Lare-do con elfin de que no yacieran en territorio extranjero.To lose the earth, to lose the language, tolose the customs, is to lose the foundationof life, to stop existing. Pedro Casaldaliga
In Nuevo Laredo there is an historical tradi-tion that is central to public expressions of civicidentity at the border. It is the story of how, in1848, when Mexico lost the small town of Laredoto the L'nited States because of the signing of the
Manuel Ceballos-Ramirez, a native ofLaredo, Tamaulipas,received his Master's from the Universidad de Monterrey andhis Ph.D. from El Colegio de Mexico. At present, he is Coor-dinator of the regional office ofEl Colegio de la FronteraNorte in Nuevo Laredo, Director of the Municipal HistoricalArchives, and Professor at the Universidad Autonoma deTaniaulipas.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, many of its inhabi-tants abandoned their homes and emigrated tothe other side of the Rio Bravo, where theyfounded a settlement they called Nuevo Laredoin memory of their lost home. The traditionadds that they disinterred their dead, movedtheir remains across the river, and reinterredthem in Nuevo Laredo so they would not lie inforeign territory.This nationalistic tradition has been repeat-edly cited throughout the history of Nuevo Lare-do. In September of 1848 the governor ofTamaulipas lamented "the deep pains" that theTreaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had caused butrecognized the "worthy and faithful Mexicans"who had moved to the Mexican side and found-ed Nuevo Laredo. At the end of the century,Juan E. Richer, author of the first known histoiyof Nuevo Laredo, wrote:Celebrating the peace of 1848, many ofthe residents of the lost Laredo, not wanti-ng to lose their nationality, or to formpart of a nation whose race, ideas, cus-toms, language, and religion were totallydifferent from their own, crossed the riverand established themselves between twosmall ranches . . .The tradition achieved a culminatingmoment of glory during Nuevo Laredo's Centen-nial Celebration in 1948. It became part of theofficial shield of the city, whose motto, "Alwayswith the Homeland," refers to the events of foun-dation. The tradition has also been evoked insculptures, murals, poems, songs, hymns, streetnames, schools, as well as in political speeches.The civic monimient to "the Foimders" built in1958 has the following words inscribed on it:A city as patriotic and Mexican in its veryessence as Nuevo Laredo knows that a city
42 U.S. MEXICO BORDERLANDS
The mural at the water plantin Nuevo Laredo commemo-rates the town's epic begin-nings. When Laredo becamepart of the United States in1848, the Mexican residentsof Laredo, rather than losetheir citizenship, crossed thenewly-established border andfounded Nuevo Laredo, carry-ing with them the disinterredremains of their ancestors.Photo by Luis Barrera
is not only a present and a future, but alsoa past; in order to settle in this site theybrought the revered remains of theirancestors, making them part of Mexicanhistory.Some local historians have questioned theaccuracy of the narrative because of its lack ofhistorical documentation. But the historicalrecord does include similar exoduses motivatedby similar nationalistic concerns. And in thislight, the stoiy of the founding of Nuevo Laredoappears not only as a documentary problem butalso as a problem in the histoiy of ideas? theircharacter and their diffusion, persistence andreproduction. In this sense, the narradve of thefoundation of Nuevo Laredo can be consideredas an epic and still more as a charter myth. ,\s anepic, it is a deed of historic importance accom-plished with great effort and difficulty. As a char-ter myth, it is a stoiy that informs the conduct ofa social group and symbolically expresses its atti-tude in confronting the world.These two ideas, epic poem and origin myth,are immanent in the behavior valorized in tradi-tion about the founding of Nuevo Laredo. Onoccasions when their civic identity is in question,this tradition roots Nuevo Laredoans and main-tains them "always with the homeland." As longas this city occupies an important geopoliticalposition on the international border with theUnited States, the foundation myth of NuevoLaredo will be fundamental to the expression ofits civic identity.
Citations and Further ReadingsBenavides, Manuel. 1941. Nuevo Laredo,Tamaulipas: su historia y sus hombres. NuevoLaredo: Imprenta Rfos.Ceballos Ramirez, Manuel. 1989. Lafundarion deNuevo Laredo: el?mentos para la interpretacidn deuna tradidon epica. Mexico: UniversidadAutonoma de Tamaulipas-Miguel AngelPorri'ia.
. 1991. La historia y la epopeya en losorigenes de Nuevo Laredo. Nuevo Laredo: Col.Cuadernos de la Facultad Ni'nu. 5,Universidad Autonoma de Tamaulipas.Richer, Juan E. 1958. Resena Historica de NuevoLaredo. Nuevo Laredo: Impresos del Norte(la. ed. 1901).Saldivar, Gabriel. 1945. Historia compendiada deTamaulipas. Mexico: Editorial Beatriz deSilva.Salinas Dominguez, Manuel L 1981. Los origenesde Nuevo Laredo. Ciudad Victoria:Universidad Autonoma de Tamaulipas.Sosa, Octaviano. 1948. Creadon y denominacionde la Villa de Nuevo Laredo. En Centenario eNuevo Laredo. Nuevo Laredo: Comite ProPrimer Centenario.Villareal Pena, Ismael. 1986. Seis Villas del Norte.Ciudad Victoria: Universidad Autonoma deTamaulipas.
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 43
Border, Culture, andMaquiladoras:Testimonies ofWomen WorkersMaria Eugenia de la OTranslated by Olivia CadavalAclnalmciite hi nidmlna iiiiii/iiHatiura deexportacioji represenla lafonna mds conspicua del cap-ital extranjero en Mexico. Estas fdbricas tuvieron sufiiiir/'n en 1 965 cotno parte de iin proyecto alternativodr indnstrializacidyi para lafrontera norte del pais,asi como niedida preventiva de empleo para cienlos detrabajadores inexicanos que retomarian de EstadosUnidos al termino del Programa de Braceros.La presencia de la industria maquiladora en laregion fronteriza ha generadoformas especificas deindustrializacion y desarrollo regional, asi como feno-menos sociales tales como la masiva presencia demujeres, quienes tradicionahnente se han empleado enestas fdbricas, lo que ha estimulado la formanon depatrones culturaks especifuos.The border iiuKiniladora iiukistiy, the mostconspiciioiis form of foreign investment in all ofMexico, was established in 1965 to absorb thelabor freed up at the end of the Bracero Pro-gram, under which many Mexican workersserved as migrant laborers on U.S. farms. Grant-ed special dispensations in taxes, tariffs, and vari-ous forms of regulation by Mexican and U.S. gov-ernments, American-based companies like Gen-eral Electric, RCA, and Kenworth have builtassembly plants along the border. The presenceof the maquiladoras has generated specific formsof industrialization and regional development,unique social phenomena such as the massiveconcentration of women workers, and specificcultural patterns that have been stimulated bythese conditions.The border is a frontier between two differ-ent economic and sociocultural worlds. It is alsoa place of refuge that shelters migrants frommany areas of Mexico. Day by day a great cultur-al mosaic is created by the presence of indige-nous peoples, border crossing guides, and maleand female workers including punks and cholos(a kind of neighborhood youth identity), tomention a few of the border identities.
This cultural mosaic tends to be masked bythe daily environment of maquiladora workers,which has been shaped to create conformityamong workers through the more than 20 yearsof these border industries. The striictiuing ofworker interactions throughout the borderindustrial complex has produced a standardiza-tion of experience throughoiu the spheres oflabor, family, and neighborhood. The environ-ment created by work has become the mostimportant single factor in the expression ofsocial identit)' among border workers.Of course, the expression of identity mayalso be a point of resistance, a disruptive coun-terstatement to the dominant discourse:Here there are many girls that are realcholas . . . but the majority of the women
.say they are a disaster. They paint graffition doors, walls, and the bathrooms, andthey fight too much. They know theywon't be hired, so they get dressed well,normal like anyone. But once inside, theybegin to dress chola.
Overall, the dominant maquiladora modeldefines workers as a unique and socially specificgroup. In this context, then, can we speak of aunified worker's identity or culture? Several com-plicating factors prevent this: principal amongthem are the cultures of distinct social groups atthe border, brought there by massive migratoiyflows that sen'e the internationalization of pro-ductive processes. Cultural practices at the bor-der are thus in constant reformation, reformulat-ing and creating border identities.This complexity should not cause us to losesight of the fact that for maquiladora workersthere are only two formative environments thatbring together social and cultural life. The first isthe work environment in the maquiladoras. Thesecond is dailv life in the workers' neighbor-
44 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
Maquiladora workers attach electricharness wires for refrigerators, whoseassembly will be completed in theUnited States. Mexico's regionalindustrialization program based onforeign-owned assembly line plantshas attracted many migrants from theinterior of Mexico to the border.Photo by Olivia Cadaval
hoods of the border, which is increasingly com-ing under the control of the maquiladora man-agers.In structuring the work en\ironnient,maquiladoras have always used motivational pro-grams that combine control, supenision, andthe elimination of production problems. Thistype of management achieves its ends by manip-ulating workers' subjective values with rewardsand prizes directly related to production. Amongthe prizes commonlv offered bv the maquilado-ras are holiday trips to the interior of the coim-try, and hats, jackets, and T-shirts bearing leg-ends such as those used by RCA: "RCA and I area team," "I am part of RCA," or "I collaboratewith RCA." According to the workers, theseprizes are awarded
... to achieve higher qualitv. They give uspastry, ice cream, and parties, there inTaxca, or even take the whole productionline to eat in Tenampa. Wlien we achievegood production or rejection ratios, per-haps 100% or even only 70, we go Mththe supendsor, the boss of the workgroup, and all the operators. ... In Taxca,they know how to value and recognizequality and their workers. In Taxca, theworkers think thev are the best even
though there are no studies. There is onlyone level above your super\'isor, but every-one knows all the posidons and the levelof performance of everyone else, so itworks out well. . . . They tell us that thisplace is our place but I don't think so. Forexample, there is this person that hires us.He tells us that we are pure garbage andthat is why we are here. We have told thisto the bosses, but they do nothing. Foranother example, I talked to one of thebosses, and he said I had a bad attitude.Well, what I had said was, 'Just hear meout. We are taken advantage of all thetime, but however much we complain, wearen't given the power to change any-thing."
In the world of the maquiladora there are
Maria Eugenia de la O Martfnez, cunently a doctoral can-didate in Sociology at El Colegio de Mexico, is a researcher inthe Department ofSocial Studies at El Cole^o de la FronteraNorte. Her principal areas of research include restructuringindustrial processes in norihem Mexico, women's pariicipa-tiun in industry, and occupational culture and society on thenorthern Mexican border. She has aforthcoming publication,Innovacion tecnologica y clase obrera. Estudio de casode la hidustria Maquiladora R.C.A.
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 45
poor working conditions, punishments, and theglaring disadvantage of being a woman.
... I liave to take two buses, really ioiu-?two going and two coming. Sometimesthe public bus doesn't meet the factorybus and I have to pay. Then we have tobe there at six so I have to get up veiyearly. . . . The work is very hard, veiy dirty.You work with metals, and all the time youare shaking off shaNangs and picking outsplinters. . . . When 1 cut off that fingerthey sewed back on, I grabbed it andthrew it into my jacket pocket. . . . Andthen there was the supervisor who walkedin with a female maintenance worker thatrepaired small things. And after a littlewhile, he got her pregnant. Although hewas married, he continued to pursue her.She already had a girl. When she felt bador needed something, the superx'isorauthorized her time card. And the officerealized he signed her card when shewasn't there, so they fired them both.As the border industries developed, compa-ny control spread to the daily life of the workersoutside the factoiy environment. Workers' freetime is now managed by the maquiladorathrough sports, dances, gymnastics, birthday cel-ebrations, festivals, and beauty competitions.According to management these types of activi-ties make workers feel at home. This feeling ofbeing "in a family," is explicitly mentioned in theinvitations to workers and their kin.Workers in the maquiladora in Juarez havetheir own nightclub, the Malibu, which has roomfor about 3,000 people and operates when itdoesn't conflict with work schedules. Its regularsplayfully call it the "Maquilu," a border-beachhybrid, and often party there till dawn. The Mal-ibii nightclub and other similar installationsencourage values and needs desired by themaquiladora management. Norma Iglesiasquotes workers as saying that before they beganto work in the maquiladora, they didn't go out tohave a good time, biu preferred to stay at home.That changed with work at the maquiladora.The factory environment does allow manyworkers to escape, for a time, their poor livingconditions. They spend a large part of their freetime in the plant's recreational facilities, wherethey can meet their friends and even bring theirfamily to events organized by the company, hi
their imaginations contrasts are sharpenedbetween the modern, industrialized ambience ofthe factoiy and the extreme poverty of workers'neighborhoods.Workers sometimes use company incentivesin their own sin"vival strategies, rotating fromone maquila to the next in search of good prizesor bonuses for signing on. They seek "good"companies, easier schedules, and better trans-portation benefits. They seek better workingconditions, and especially look for a fun socialenvironment where they can find all they needfor their recreation. Networks among the work-ers help one pick out the best plant. Most work-ers have a friend or relatives in one plant oranother.Is there a workers' culture on the border?For more than 20 years workers have shared a setof common experiences of work and life inmaquiladoras, but it is premature to speak of a
"workers' culture," if we vmderstand by this avision of the world defined by class interests.Similarities in the composition of the work force,in the workers' condition as migrants, and in ageare not by themselves sufficient to constitiue aculture. Part of workers' culture also resides inthe family, the neighborhood, and the border-land context in which distinct roles and identi-ties like the pimk, the student, the single moth-er, and the chola converge. Maquiladora work-ers' culture is rather a sector shared by, oraccessed through, many larger cultural worlds.As one maquila worker put it:
. . . well, it's veiy difficult. It's not thatthere was no other work? it's where oneends up, the last place you go. If you don'tget something in one place, and there'sno way, this leaves going to a maquila. . . .I always said, I am ne\'er going to work in amaquila, biU yet here I am.
Citations and Further ReadingsDe la O, Maria Eugenia. 1992. Sindicalismo ycontratacion colectiva en las maquiladorasfronterizas. Los casos de Tijuana, CiudadJuarez, y Matamoros. Frontera Norte 4(Dec).Iglesias, Norma. 1985. La flor mas bella de lamaquiladora: Historia de vida de la mujer enTijuana, B.C. Mexico, D.F.:SEP/CEFNOMEX.
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The Mixteco Presencein TijuanaFrancisco Javier Moreno B.Translated by Olivia Cadaval
A mas de 3.000 kilometros de sii higar de origen,los mixtecos encontraron en Tijuana, Baja California,un territorio base para asentarse y distribuirse. A estaciudad llegan y se quedan, o bien de esta salen haciaSan Qiiintin, al sur del estado, o bien hacia el norte, alos campos y calles de California. En ese movimiento seha idoforjando en Tijuana una comunidad mixtecade mas de 5.000 miembros que se llaman a si mismospaisanos, mixtecos o oaxaquenos y que los demds losnombran inditos, oaxacas, marias, surenos. Se asientala mayoria de los mixtecos en la colo7iia Obrera, alsuroeste de la ciudad, entre lomas y caiiadas quemucho les recuerda a su natal Mixteca o "pueblo denubes".Since 1960, many Mixtecos have migratedmore than 3,000 kilometers (2,000 miles) fromtheir home villages in the state of Oaxaca toTijuana, settling there and using their commimi-ty as a way station for further migrations south toSan Quintin or north to California. In Tijuana aMixteco community of more than 5,000 mem-bers call one another paisano (fellow countiy-man), mixteco, or oaxaqueno (Oaxaca), while oth-ers call them inditos (little Indian), oaxacas,marias (term for Indian migrant street vendors)
,
or surenos (southerner). The majority of the Mix-tecos have settled in the Obrero district in thesoutheast of the city, among hills and narrowcanyons reminiscent of the landscape in theirnative Mixteca or "country of clouds."In the cultural mix of Tijuana, to whichindigenous and mestizo peoples from all over
Francisco Moreno luas bom in Hermosillo, Sonora, where hereceived his B.A. in Education and Sociology. He studied forhis Master's in Regional Development at El Colegio de laFrontera Norte in Tijuana, Mexico. He has been a researcherof the Department of Cultural Studies at El Colegio de laFrontera Norte addressing themes on traditional culture, oraltradition of migrant Mixteco groups in Tijuana, and ele-mentary education in Mexico.
Mexico continue to migrate, Mixtecos insist thatthey are an accepted and recognized part ofurban society. At the same time most of themcontinue to explore their remembered tradi-tional culture. Mixtecos in Tijuana still valuethis cultural heritage, although they perceivethat in their present lives it is of little use tothem. They still desire aspects of the life in Mix-teca, and they retiun there when they can to cel-ebrate feasts, to check on land holdings, or forother family matters. Mixteca remains a focus ofcollective memory.The Mixtecos have achieved recognitionamong ethnic groups in Tijuana for the way theycelebrate the Day of the Dead. To this traditionalfeast in the popular religious calendar of Mexi-co, Mixtecos have added mysdcism and symbol-ism beyond the common Catholic practices inTijuana. Each year members of the Mixteco com-miuiity are asked to assist in the design andpreparation of Day of the Dead altars at educa-tional and recreational centers. The city's prima-ry and secondai7 schools hold competitions inDay of the Dead altars, in which Mixteco influ-ence has become quite evident in expressivestyles not commonly seen in other cides ofnorthern Mexico.In Tijuana Mixtecos speak their own lan-guage among themselves but learn Spanish andEnglish for social and economic survival. Eachregion of Mixteca from which migration comeshas its own dialect, but these sociolinguisdc dif-ferences are minimized in Tijuana.Mixtecos draw social distinctions on the basisof "having made it" economically, giving prestigeto the older and more successful members of thecommunity, to bilingual Mixteco teachers, andto those with relatives on the other side of theborder who send support. Mestizos among theMixtecos often distinguish themselves in the eth-nic slurs they use, the fights they provoke, andthe socioeconomic advantage they take. On their
MEXICO BORDERLANDS 47
Curriculum in the Escuela Bilingue El Pipila includes Mixteco language and culture. Photo by Ricardo Garcia
side, Mixtecos often want to Ijeconie like mesti-zos, speaking Spanish, dressing urbanely, andgaining access to higher levels of consumption ?although some Mixtecos live better than mestizosin the Obrero district of Tijuana.Among Mixtecos, women have greater con-tact with mestizos in the rest of the city, forwomen sell diverse products in the marketplaces. Mixteco men work mostly in the United
.States. A large number of yoimg Mixtecos nowwork in mat/uiladora ?iiisemh\y plants, as domes-tics, as masons and construction workers, and asgardeners. Some have become public employees.Mixtecos see language as the key to culturalidentity. The permanent flow of migrants to andfrom Oaxaca has supported the continued use ofMixtecan in Tijuana. And in daily classes, Mixte-co teachers transmit knowledge and pride intheir language, using it to explain and celebratethe value of their tradidons, especially foods, fies-tas, songs, and stories.The rinal, ethnic, and commimity based cul-ture of Mixtecos in Tijuana is undergoing atransformadon whose outcome cannot be com-pletely predicted. Many families continue to pre-serve their culture, while others let traditionalpracdces fall by the wayside, for there is no com-munal obligation to keep the faith as there is inthe Mixteca. Most insist on the community basisof Mixtecan culture, biu now also recognize the
existence of individualism. The necessities andopportunities they encounter in the city' obligethem to adopt this other kind of identit)'. Distinc-tion and stratification are becoming more visible,measured in income and expressed in socialostentation.With all ol this, members of the Mixtecocommunity in Tijuana aspire to find a better wayof life. They honor their cultural heritage, butfinding it not respected and, furthermore, acause of discrimination, they continue to losewhat they value as they confront the need tosearch for ways of being coimted in the largersociety. At the same time that they demandrespect for their rights as citizens, as workers,and as human beings, they are adopting manyaspects of Mexican border cultine.Mixtecos perceive their future in Tijuana isone of hope and possibility. Confronted withreturning to the extreme poverty of the Mixteca,the majority seems ready to remain in Tijuana.The cost is a change of identity, never being thesame again. The benefit is survival.Furthn ReadingMoreno Barrera, Francisco J. 1992. La tradicionoral de los mixtecos en Tijuana. In Entre lamagia y la historia: Tradiciones, mitos y leyendasde lafrontera, ed. M. Valenzuela. Mexico: ElColegio de la Frontera Norte.
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Mixteco Women on theMigration RouteLaura Velasco OrtizTranslated by Hector Antonio Corpordn
Siguiendo el viaje de algunas mujeres mixtecasque salieron de su pueblo y se instalaron, hasta ahoraen Tijuana, aparece el dinamismo de la migracion.Cambios como la adolescenda, el noviazgo, elcasamiento o la union, la llegada de los hijos y a vecesla muerte, son sucesos tenidos por los vaivenes de lamigracion.
. . . Una vez que se sale del pueblo la vida cani-bia. O se encuentra novio, o se casa, o se tieneun hijo. Ya no es la misnia que salio . . .Doiia Guadalupe SantilldnBack home it rains hard. That's whyrivers overflow and bridges fall down.When our house was flattened, everythinggot soaked, totally destroyed, even thebirth certificates.I was born in San Miguel Aguacate, adistrict of Silacayoapan, in the Mixtecaregion of Oaxaca. As a child I helped myparents pull the weeds in the field. Other-wise, I looked after the cows. I didn't lastlong in school, because the teacher hitme a lot, and I would spend a lot of timehiding under chairs.I married at age 13. WTien I turned17, I left San Miguel, traveling with myhusband to Veracruz and Tres VallesPotreros to cut sugar cane for BossManuel. I used to cut 120 or 125 bundlesper week, and my husband, 80 or 85.They paid us 50 pesos for our combinedwork. Of course, the money was given tohim. He was the man.When my parents died, I left thatman. He beat me a lot. I put up with himbecause of my parents. But, "It's over," Itold myself? and grabbed my childrenand moved to Mexico City, and fromthere to Juarez. Along the way 1 would sellpeanuts, seeds, candies, and apples. One
day my oldest son said to me, "Look moth-er, let's go to Tijuana. They say there isplenty of help for poor people there."And here you have me in Tijuanatelling you all this. Go back? No, I won'tgo back. Everything there is very sad. I tellmy children, "If you want to return, goahead? to each his own." My life is here.Doha Guadalupe Santillan'The Mixteca region of Oaxaca still maintainsthe humble beauty of many of Mexico's indige-nous regions ? and also their poverty, erosion,uncultivated parcels of land, and old trucks thatcome and go loaded with migrants. Listening tothe stories of Mixteco women who have migratedfrom their community, one sees in their facesthe imprint of these landscapes. Doha Santillan'sdeparture from home, though less common thanthat of men, is a familiar indi\adual and culturalexperience. Mixteco women do domestic work inmiddle and upper class homes in cities like Mexi-co City, Oaxaca, Puebla, and more recently,Guadalajara, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, and Tijua-na. They also work as street vendors.For a long time Mixtecos have been part ofthe labor migrations to agricultural fields in "Ver-acruz, Morelos, and what could be called thenorthwestern agricultural strip of Mexico?Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja California? and evenfurther to the fields of California, Oregon, Wash-
'Xhese testimonies by Mixteco women who settled in theborder city of Tijuana are not intended to be a unified por-trait of the female migration from the Mixteca region of Oax-aca. In addition to expressing individual and often imiqueexperiences, they reflect different sub-regions of Oaxaca.The majority' of the families established in the Obrera neigh-borhood of Tijuana are from the Silacayoapan district, espe-cially from the towns of Sanjeronimo del Progreso, SantaMaria Natividad, and Nieves Ixpantepec, and in notably less-er proporuon from the district of Huajuapan de Leon andJuxtlahuaca.
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 49
ington, Aiizona, and occasionally. Idaho. Mixtecowomen use this route in lesser proportion thanthe men. and their e.xperience of it differsmarkedly, for unlike most men. they usually trav-el in the company of a family member.In migration, one's environment is continu-ally changing? a picture that emerges in experi-ences narrated by some of the Mixteco womenwho left their towns to settle for the present inTijuana. One's experiences of adolescence,engagement, marriage, birth, and death, areshaped by the to-and-fro activities of migration.To create their cultiue, Mixteco men and womenmigrants have combined urban and rural knowl-edge; they have spanned short and long cultiualdistances. In this versatile, regional, migrant cul-tiue, migration is a 'permanent event' thatbecomes part of life, not a brief experience thatcan be told as an adventure. For these migrants,adventure is all of life. In the shortest time, unex-pected change can happen.
I married at the age of 14. My hus-band was 35. I did not love the unfortu-nate man ? I was already too grown up,and he was from another town. Butbefore, when a man asked for the hand ofa girl and the mother said yes, there wasno question. You had no choice but tomany.
I went with him to live in his town, butnot for long because he was killed in thehills. He used to sell dried pepper that hewould bring from Pinotepa Nacional. Onhis way back, he was attacked on the roadby robbers. So, after 1 1 months I was backat home.I stayed there for a while, and when Itinned 16 an aunt took me to Mexico Cit)'to work. I took care of a woman who livedalone ? I swept, washed, and ironed forher. When my oldest brother became wid-owed he came to get me, but my employeroffered to raise my wages, and she gavehim a tip. That's how I ended up stayinglonger with her. But then my mother
Laura Velasco Ortiz received her Master's in Social Psyrhalo-gy at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico. For tlic last \i.\years she has been studying Mixteco migration to the north-west border ofMexico. She is a researcher at the Departmentof Cultural Studies ofEl Colegio de la Frontera Norte andauthor of the articles, "Notas para estudiar los cambios en elcom,portamiento migratorio de los mixtecos" and "Migracionfemenina v reprndiircion familiar: los mixtecos en Tijuana. "
became ill, and then there was no choice.I had to return home to care for mybrother's children and my mother.Dona Elisa HernandezAlthough the reasons a woman first migratesare different in each case, fairly constant factorsare her youthfulness and a contact with anothermigrant that shapes her future. The majority ofMixteco women became migrants in their adoles-cence, just like the majority' of all migrants in oiu"country.As far back as I can remember, myparents used to send us to haul water on adonkey from a distant river. In those daysschool was not mandatory like nowadays.Not at all! One was dedicated to keepinghouse ? getting up early to make tortillasor going to the fields to help plant corn.That was the life there ? corn, cows, andgoats. When things went well we harvesteda lot of corn. Othenvise we sold the ani-mals.My mother worked veiy hard. Whenthere was a shortage of corn ? as we havehad in recent months without a good crop
? my father would go to yoke the animal,while she bought or borrowed corn, carry-ing it on her back for three or four kilo-meters (two to two-and-a-half miles).That's how it was until we, the chil-dren, grew up and began to make it onour own. My parents had never gone out-side the town. My brother was the first,and then I followed. He went to MexicoCity to work as a bricklayer, and my auntgot me a job with a lady in her house. Iwas able to visit home regularly.
I finally decided to leave homebecause it was vei"y difficult for me. Mymother would have me prepare six orseven kilos (13-15 pounds) of tortillas?there were aboiu eight of us in the family
? for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It wastoo much. That's why one day I said, "No,I won't stay here any longer," and left.Dona Paz Vera
In some cases, like that of Dona Paz Vera,migration is the alternative of choice, while inothers it is a result of marriage.At the age of 15 1 met a man of 27. He wasa migrant who traveled to and from the
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After years of struggling for aplace to ply their trade, Mixtecovendors cleaned and rebuilt thefountain in the Plaza de SantaCecilia. Today it is one of themajor craft markets for bordertourists in Tijuana. Photo byLaura Velasco Ortiz
Mixteco women vendorsarrange their display on theircart in the Plaza de Santa Ceciliain Tijuana. Photo by LauraVelasco Ortiz
fields of Sinaloa . . . We dated for a yearbefore I married him . . . when I was 17years old, he went to the United States.He later returned and said to me, "Thistime we go together" . . . And we went towork in San Qiiintin, Baja California.Doiia Natalia FloresBut migration is also sometimes inherited,the destiny of progeny. For families with amigrant tradition, mobility is a fundamental strat-egy for survival. Children experience their par-ents' migration as personal and family destiny,integrating it into their lives as an inevitable partof the future.
I migrated when I was 14 years old, aboutfive years ago, now. I left with my fatherand a younger brother. My mother couldnot come because she was nursing, andthere was no one else to take care of thehouse. It took us a month to reach Tijua-na because we left without money. Myfather would play the saxophone while mybrother and I passed the hat. I am nowmarried to a man I met here. He is frommy town back in Oaxaca and works on theother side, the United States.Dona Juana Flores
It could be said paradoxically that change is
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 51
a constant in these women's experience ?change in residence, life cycle, and historicalmoment. These combine to shape the life of awoman who first leaves home under circum-stances that bring together personal reasons,family ties, and misfortime.Once you leave your hometown, lifechanges. You either find a boyfriend, getmarried, or have a child. You are not thesame one that left.Dona Guadalupe Santillan
In the course of migration unforeseen eventstake place. Guadalupe migrated for the first timeto Mexico City, and later returned to her town,where she lived for some time. There she gavebirth to a child and after a period again migratedto agricultural fields in the northwest:
After my return home from Mexico City Itook care of my widowed brother's chil-dren. I spent seven years raising themuntil I luarried my second husband. Istayed three years with him and had threechildren. My husband migrated regularlyto Culiacan imtil one day he foimd anoth-er woman and did not return. I was leftalone with my children and my mother,without anyone to wait for. And so I alsowent to work in Culiacan. My childrenstayed home with my mother. In the fieldsI met another man. I started to live withhim, and together we went to work inObregon. Dona Elisa Hernandez
Migratoiy routes of Mixteco women areshaped by events of the life cycle. For example,marriage in the life of the young woman whomigrated at 14 to do domestic work in MexicoCity might cause her to choose a different migra-tion alternative, perhaps to northern Mexico withher new husband, or with her children aloneafter a separation. The arrival of children coin-cides with a return to the place of origin. Thegrowth of the children again changes women'smigrations. Wlien the children reach adoles-cence they usually get married, and then thewomen seem to stabilize themselves. They settlefor longer periods, and like their parents, carefor their grandchildren while sons and daughtersmigrate to California or Baja California.
Constant migration makes 'place of destina-tion' a relative concept ? referring to a monthin Mexico City, another in Culiacan, others onthe coast of Hermosillo, afterwards a few years inTijuana, or many more in the United States. Butthe 'final destination' seems to be a Mixteco'sown place of origin. This seems the principalethnic feature of this migratoiy movement: theconstant link with the commimity of origin.In this venture women play a notable role.By preserving the home, whether in their Mixte-ca towns or in intermediate destinations? Mexi-co City, Ensenada, Tijuana? they make it possi-ble for other members of the family, men andwomen, to achieve the mobility necessary fortravel on old routes or new ones. Their keepingof the home fires includes not only awaiting andwelcoming, but also supporting family memberswho remain at home.Tijuana is one such migrant home basemaintained by women at an intermediate desti-nation. Its location on the Mexico-United Statesborder allows cross-border mobility for somefamily members, especially the men, to travelbetween the agricultural fields in northern Mexi-co and southwestern United States. Mixtecowomen in Tijuana, in domestic roles and as wageearners, support the growth of the largest ethnicgroup that settled in Baja ("alifornia.
Further ReadingsAi'izpe, Lomdes. 1979. ludigeuas en la Ciudad deMexico. El caso de las "Manas". Mexico:Setentas Diana.Ayre, L. 1977. La poblacion mixleca en el estado deOaxaca segun el censo de 1970. Mexico: SEP-INAH.Chimal, C. 1990. Movimiento perpetuo:Mixtecos en California. Mexico Indigeua 4Oan.).Crummett, M.A. 1986. La Mujer rural y lamigracion en America Latina: Investigacion,politicas y perspectivas. In La mujery lapolitica agraria en America Latina, ed., Leon,M., et al. Bogota, Colombia: Siglo XXI yACEP.Yanez, R. 1985. Pimtos de encuentro en unacomunidad mixteca en Tijuana. Migracionde los mixtecos de Oaxaca a Baja California.Educacion de Adultos 3(2).
52 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
The Texas-MexicanConjuntoManuel Pen a
One of the most enduring musical traditionsamong Mexicans and Mexican Americans is theaccordion-based ensemble known as conjunto(and as musica nortena outside of Texas). Popularfor over 100 years? especially since its commer-cialization in the 1920s? this folk ensembleremains to this day the everyday music of work-ing-class Texas Mexicans and Mexican norteiios(northerners). During the course of its long his-toid, the conjunto evolved into a tightly orga-nized style that speaks mtisically for the aestheticand ideological sentiments of its adherents. Inthe process, this music of hiunble beginningsalong the Texas-Mexico border has spread farbeyond its original base, gaining a vast audiencein both Mexico and the United States.The diatonic, button accordion that anchorsthe conjiuito made its first appearance in north-ern Mexico and south Texas sometime in the1860s or '70s. The first accordions were simpleone- or two-row models? quite suitable for themusical capabilities of the first norteiio andTexas Mexican musicians who experimentedwith the instrument. A strong regional styledeveloped by the turn of the century, as theaccordion became increasingly associated with aimique Mexican guitar known as a bajo sexto.Another local folk instnmient, the tambora derancho (ranch drimi), also enjoyed prominenceas a back-up to the accordion. In combinationwith one or both of these instrimients, the accor-dion had become by the 1890s the instnmient ofpreference for working-class celebrations onboth sides of the Texas-Mexico border.In Texas, these celebrations were organizedfrequently? too frequently for some Anglos,
Manuel Pena is an anthropologist who specializes in Mexi-can American folklore and music. He is a visiting scholar atthe University ofHouston and has an upcoming book, TheMexican American Orquesta: Music, Culture and theDialectics of Conflict.
who voiced their disapproval of fandangos, or
"low-class" dances, in the newspapers. For exam-ple, the Corpus Christi Caller and the San AntonioExpress on more than one occasion expressedAnglos' negative attitudes toward tejano musicand dance. In one report, the Express equatedmusic and dancing with idleness and concludedthat "these fandangos have become so frequentthey are a great curse to the coimtry" (August 20,1881). This topical attitiide developed early onand persisted well into the 20th centuiy.Despite Anglo disapproval, the conjiuito andits dances thrived among tejano workers, eventu-ally eclipsing all other forms of music for danc-ing. Yet, popidar as it was, the conjuntoremained an ad hoc ensemble imtil the 1930s.No permanent combination of instrimients hadbeen established prior to that time, perhapsbecause creative and material forces had not yetciystalized to spur radical stylistic development.To be sure, some changes had been wrought bythe 1920s, as the button accordion and the bajosexto by now formed the core of the emergingstyle, while such common European dances asthe redowa had been regionalized and renamed.The redowa itself had been transformed into theveils bajito. in contrast to the waltz, which wasknown as a vals alto. Indeed, most of the reperto-ly for the dance, or fandango, was of Eiuopeanorigin and included the polka, mazurka, andschottishe, in addition to the waltz and redowa.One regional genre from Tamaulipas, Mexico,the huapango, rounded out the usual repertoiyof conjiuitos until World War II.Beginning in the 1930s, an innovative singerippled through the emerging conjunto tradi-tion, as performers like Narciso Martinez(known as "the father" of the modern conjunto),Santiago Jimenez, Lolo Cavazos, and othersbegan to strike out in new stylistic directions.This new surge of innovation must be attributed,at least in part, to the active commercial involve-
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 53
Pedro Ayala was one of the early accordionleaders and innovators in the conjunto tradi-tion. Photo courtesy National Council for theTraditional Arts
ment of the major recording labels in the musicof the Hispanic Southwest. From the 1920s, com-panies such as RCA Victor (Bluebird), Decca,Brunswick, and Columbia (Okeh) began exploit-ing the musical traditions in the Hispanic South-west, hoping to repeat the success they had expe-rienced with African American music since theearly '20s. Under the commercial impetus of thebig labels, which encouraged record and phono-graph sales, radio programming and, especially,public dancing (much of it in cantinas, to thedismay of Anglos and "respectable" Texas Mexi-cans), musicians like Narciso Martinez began toexperiment. By the end of the 1930s, the conjun-to had begun to evolve into the stylistic form theensemble reached during its mature phase in thepost-World War II years.Without a doubt, the most important changecame in the 1930s, when Narciso Martinez beganhis recording career. Searching for a way tostamp his personal st)'le on the accordion,Martinez abandoned the old, Germanic tech-nique by virtually avoiding the bass-chord but-tons on his two-row accordion, concentratinginstead on the right hand, treble melody but-tons. His sound was instantly distinctive and rec-ognizable. Its brighter, snappier, and cleanertone contrasted with the older sound, in whichbajo sexto and the accordionist's left hand bothplayed bass-and-accompaniment, creating a
"thicker," drone-like effect. Martinez left bassina
and chordal accompaniment to the bajo sexto ofhis most capable partner, Santiago Almeida.Narciso Martinez's new style became thehallmark of the surging conjunto, just as Almei-da's brisk execution on the bajo sexto createdthe standard for future bajistas. Together, thetwo had given birth to the modern conjunto, amusical style that would challenge even the for-midable mariachi in cultural breadth and depthof public acceptance. Indeed, by the 1970s itcould be said that the conjunto, known in thelarger market as milsica noriena, was the mostpowerful musical symbol of working-class cul-ture. Martinez, however, remained an absolutelymodest folk musician until his death. He neverlaid claim to anything but a desire to please hispublic. Yet, as Pedro Ayala, another of the earlyaccordion leaders, acknowledged, "after Narciso,what could the rest of us do except follow hislead?"In the years following World War II youngermusicians rose to prominence ? la nueva gen-eracion (the new generation), as Martinez himselfcalled the new crop of accordionists. Led byValerio Longoria, who contributed a number ofinnovations to the rapidly evolving style, the newgeneration quickly brought the conjunto to fullmaturity' after the war. Longoria started his trail-blazing career in 1947; however, his greatest con-tributions date from 1949, when he introducedthe modern trap drums into the ct)njunto. Com-
54 U.S. MEXICO BORDERLANDS
bined with the contrabass, introduced in 1936 bySantiago Jimenez, the drums rounded out themodern ensemble, which after 1950 consisted ofaccordion, bajo sexto (sometimes guitar), drums,and contrabass (electric bass after about 1955).Longoria also is credited with another major con-tribution: he introduced vocals into the ensem-ble, which prior to World War II had restricteditself almost exclusively to instrumental music.
-?Vlter Longoria's move, most of the older genres
? redowa, schottishe, etc. ? were abandoned asthe polka and the vocal, in the form of the can-cion ranchera (either in vals or polka time),became the staples of the modern conjimto.Several highly innovative performers fol-lowed Valerio Longoria. Among the most notableis Tony de la Rosa, who established the mostideal conjunto soimd in the mid-1950s? aslowed-down polka st\le, delivered in a highlystaccato technique that was the logical culmina-tion of Narciso Martinez's emphasis on the trebleend of the accordion. Los Relampagos del Norte,a group from across the border (Reynosa), madesignificant contributions in the 1960s, synthesiz-ing the more modern conjunto from Texas withthe older nortent:) tradition to create a style thatreached new^ heights in popularit)', both in Mexi-co and the U.S. Wlien the leaders of Los Relam-pagos, Cornelio Reyna and Ramon Ayala, wenttheir separate ways, the latter formed anotherconjunto, Los Bravos del Norte, and that groupwent on to make significant contributions in the1970s that kept the norteno tradition at its peak.But perhaps the label of "greatest" belongs toa conjunto that had its origins in Kingsrille,Texas, in 1954? El Conjunto Bernal. Led bvaccordionist Paulino Bernal and his brother, bajosexto player Elov, El Conjunto Bernal began earlyon to lift the conjunto style to new heights, as theBernals' absolute master)' of their instruinentsallowed the group to probe the very limits of theconjimto st)ie. Bolstered by some of the finestsingers and drummers within the tradition. ElConjunto Bernal came to be acknowledged as
"the greatest of all time." The successes of ElConjunto Bernal's musical experiments, especial-ly in the 1960s, have never been duplicated.Since the 1960s, the conjunto has remainedrather static, despite the advent in the 1980s ofso-called "progressive" conjuntos, which incorpo-rate newer, synthesized sounds into the basicstyle. Neither these newer conjuntos nor thosewho pursue the older st\ie have succeeded intranscending the limits set by El ConjuntoBernal, but this relative lack of innovation has
not slowed the spread of the music. Thus,despite its reladve consenatism, the tradition hasexpanded far beyond its original confines alongthe Texas-Mexico border. In the last 30 yearsthe music has taken root in such far-flung placesas Washington, California, and the Midwest, aswell as in the entire tier of northern Mexicanborder states, and even in such distant places asMichoacan and Sinaloa.As it spreads its base in the LInited States,norteno conjunto music, especially as synthe-sized by Los Bravos del Norte and its successors(e.g., Los Tigres del Norte), continues to articu-late a Mexican working-class ethos. In its suiisticsimpliciU', its continuing adherence to the can-cion ranchera and working-class themes, andmost importantly, in its actualization in weekenddances, the conjunto remains the bedrock musicfor millions of people whose eveiyday culture isMexican at its core. More than that, however, theconjunto represents a clear musical and ideologi-cal alternative to the Americanized forms thatmore acculturated, upwardly-mobile MexicanAmericans have come to embrace. AccordionistPaulino Bernal best summarized the musico-ide-ological significance of the conjunto when herecalled the sharp status differences that existedamong Mexican Americans of an earlier era:
... at that time there was a division ?that he who liked the orchestra hated theconjunto. That's the way it was: "Wlio'sgoing to plav, a conjunto? Oh no!" Thosewho went with Balde Gonzalez [a middle-class orchestra] were not going to go overhere with a conjunto. (personal inteniewwith the author)Thus, although nowadays it is patronized bymany ethnically sensitive, middle-class MexicanAmericans, conjunto condnues to represent analternative musical ideolog)', and in this way ithelps to presei"ve a Mexican, working-class cul-ture wherever it takes root on Ainerican soil.Endowed with this kind of symbolic power, con-junto has more than held its own against othertv'pes of music that appear from time to time tochallenge its dominance among a vast audienceof working-class people.
Finilier ReadingPeiia, Manuel. 1985. The Texas-Mexican Conjunto:History of a Working-Class Music. Austin:Universitv of Texas Press.
EXICO BORDERLANDS 55
La Onda Bajita:Lowriding in the BorderlandsMichael C. Stone
The term "lowriders" refers to automobilesthat have been lowered to within a few inches ofthe road in the expressive style of la onda bajita,
"the low wave," or "the low trend." It also refersto the people who craft them and to those whoown, drive or ride in them. On both sides of theU.S.-Mexico border and throughout the greaterSouthwest, lowriders and their elaborately craft-ed camtos, camichas. or ranflas? other namesfor their vehicles? contribute their particularstyle to the rich discourse of regional Mexican-American identities. Paradoxically expressed inautomotive design, lowriders" sense of regionalcultural continuity contribiUes a distinctive socialsensibility to the emergent multicultural mosaicof late 20th-centui7 North America (Gradante1982, 1985; Plascencia 1983; Stone 1990).A synthesis of creative imagination and tech-nical master)' pushed to their limits, cars withstate-of-the-art hydraulic technology performstiuit hopping, but raise their "ride" for dri\'ingclearance. Skid plates shower sparks into thenight when dipped to drag over the pavement,while neon art illuminates windows, trunk, andtmderchassis. Cultiual and religious icons deco-rate body and interior in bold murals and etchedglass, as lowrider caravans move slowly across acomplex southwestern social landscape.Lowriding first drew widespread attention inthe late 1970s, sensationalized in "cruising" filmslike Boulevard Nights, biuiesqued in Cheech andChong's classic. Up in Smoke, and framed as cul-tural curiosity in print (King 1981; Trillen andKoren 1980). In a more serious vein. Low Rider
Michael Stone is a doctored laiKliddlf' in Social Antliropat the University of Texas at Austin, and liolds an M.A.from Stanford University. He has published and has a forth-coming work in such diversejournals as Studies, Social Sci-ence and Medicine, Human Organization, and tiieHandbook of Texas.
magazine, together with the music of bands likeWar, and the Luis Valdez film, Zoot Suit, evokedimages of social and material realities of barriolife in shaping and broadcasting the bajito identi-ty and style. As a public forum on Mexican-Amer-ican identity. Low Rider imgaz'me recast pejora-tive stereotypes? the culturally ambiguouspocho-pachuco (Paredes 1978; Valdez 1978; Vil-lareal 1959), the dapper zoot-suiter (Mazon1984), the street-wise cholo homeboy, the pinto orprison veterano, and the wild vato loco (Johansen1978) ? as affirmative cultural archetypesemerging from the long shadow of Anglo domi-nation.The style apparently arose in northern Cali-fornia in the late 1930s, but evolved in Los Ange-les, where its innovators responded to Holly-wood's aesthetic and commercial demands. Yetlowriders also assume a critical stance. They dis-tinguish "low-and-slow" style by asking, "Whosecars are high?" (Trillen and Koren 1980). Theycensure hot rodders, "who raise their cars, mak-ing all kinds of noise and pollution, racing downthe streets killing themselves, if not others." Bycontrast, lowriding expresses pride in handcraftsmanship learned through communityapprenticeship and mechanical work in the mili-tary, auto detail shops, and garages, and pride ineconomy? the pracdcal need to maintain one'sown vehicle inexpensively.From southern California, migrants trans-ported the style throughout the Southwest. CesarChavez recalls that by the 1940s, farmworkersfound cars essential to moving quickly from jobto job. Cars also embodied social status: "Wewere traveling around. . . . You always wanted togo into the dance [looking] right . . . [to] comein with good cars? we were migrants and thecars meant quite a bit" (Gutierrez 1980:43).Migrants brought lowriding east into Texas.Innovator Richard Salazar says lowriders fromLos Angeles foimded an early El Paso club, the
56 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
Gustavo "Sleepy" Grado, a Juarez muralist, etched his car window with traditional lowrider motifs ? a figure of Christand a chain. The steering wheel is welded chain. Photo by Lyie Rosbotham
Imperials. Don Ainerico Paredes recalls thatposnvar Ciystal Cit\', Texas, aficionados wouldconvene at the Dair)' Queen to see which car waslow enough to knock over a cigarette pack. Butlowriding was part of a broader "'car culture"(Flink 1975) of antique and custom shows, hotrods, stock cars, drag racing, and demolition der-bies. The Nevarez and Salazar brothers, earlybajito creators, first exhibited in national customshows that added EI Paso to the circuit in theearly 1970s.Lowriding selects from the symbols of thedominant Anglo culture, and asserts countermeanings that express values in Mexican Ameri-can experience. A San Antonio native recalls,
Culturally we lived in two worlds. Acrossthe street from our house on GuadalupeStreet, the jukebox from Julio's Cantinablared out Mexican conidos and conjuntomusic. We learned the words to JorgeNegrete's songs long before we everheard of Frank Sinatra. The Malt House
. . . was West San Antonio's most famous
hamburger and chicken fried steak drive-in. It had a bilingual jukebox [where] wefirst heard Little Richard and EKis Pres-ley. No one forced us to choose; we easilyaccepted both musical traditions (Romo1986:57).One veteran explains his nostalgia for
"oldies" music, period clothing, and cruisingdrive-in movies and burger joints as reminders of
"the best decade of life . . . [my] teen-aged years"(Gradante 1985:73). Another says, "Lowriding isthe Chicano American Graffiti,'" referring to thepopular Anglo "cruising" film. Lowriding rede-fines these prevailing cultmal forms with thefluid, multiple, and often conflicting meaningsof its bicultural world, celebrating a Mexicanoheritage that is also irrevocably American.Lowriding also contests the conformity of massyouth cultiue, and softens the hard edge ofindustrial culture. As El Paso lowrider alumnusGeorge Salazar (now a Justice Department attor-ney, drug rehabilitation acti\dst, and Rio GrandeFood Bank chairman) obsen'es,
MEXICO BORDERLANDS 3/
The Latin can express his flair for theromantic ahnost anywhere, even taking aproduct off a General Motors assemblyline and giving it an identity. Maybe ... asmore Mexican Americans . . . enter thegoverning institutions of our country, thesame warmth will infect the system. Wliynot? If we can make something as Ameri-can as a car reflect our culture, we canprobably do it with anything (Weisman19,SC):l()n.Lowriding is a declaration of cultinal pride,a historically resonant expression of contempo-raiT Mexican American identity. Rooted in work-ing class experience, lowriders' hand-craftedimprovisations upon industrial style are a self-affirming response to the homogenizing forcesof mass production and Anglo cultural ideals.
('.il(ili(iu\ find Further ReadingsFiink, JamesJ. 1975. The Car C.ultiire. Gambiidge,MA: MIT Press.(iradanic, William. I9<S2. Low and Slow, Mean
?ukI ( ;ican. Satural I listory 91:28-39.
. I9.S."). .\v\ among the Low Riders. InFolk Art in J'exa.s. ed. Francis EdwardAbernethy. Dallas: SMU Press/TexasFolklore Society.Gutierrez, Jess. 1980. Inteniew: Gesar Ghavez.LowRider'^(]2)A:^.lohanseii, jason Carlos. 1978. The Mvth of theBaio Loco, \iie\tri} 2( 1 1 ):(i-7.King, \Va\ne. "Low Riders Are Becoming LegionAmong Chicanos." Neiv )orl; I'itncs, 9 MayI98I.'
Mazon, Mauricio. 1984. The Zoot-Suit Riots: ThePsychology ofSymbolic Annihilation. Austin:LIniversity of Texas Press.Paredes, Americo. 1976. A Texas-MexicanCancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border.LJrbana: L'niversifv of Illinois Press.
. 1978. The Problem of Identity in aGhanging (ailtiue: Popular Expressions ofGultme Gonflict along the Lower RioGrande Border. In View across the Border: TheUnited States and Mexico, ed. S. Ross, pp. 68-94. Albuquerque: L'niversitv of New MexicoPress.Plascencia, Luis F.B. 1983. Low Riding in theSouthwest: Gultinal Symbols in the MexicanGommunity. In History, Culture and Society:Chicano Studies in the 1980s, ed. Mario T.Garcia, et al., pp. 141-175. Ypsilanti, MI:Bilingual Review Press.Romo, Ricardo. 1986. An Insider's View of theWestside. In Art Among Us/Arte Entre Nosotros.eds., Pat Jasper and Ivay Turner, pp. 50-58.San Antonio, TX: San Antonio MuseimiAssociation.Stone, Michael G. 1990. Bajito y Suavecito: LowRiding and the Glass of Glass. Studies ni LatinAmerirnn Popular Culture 9:^!^-\2(^.Trillin, Gahin, and Ed Koren. 1980. Low andSlow, Mean and Glean. The New Yorlierv>4:7()-74.Valdez, Luis. "Once Again, Meet the ZootSuhers." Los Angeles Times, 13 August 1978.Villareal, Jose Antonio. 1959. Pocho. Garden City,New ^'ork: Anchor Books.Weisman, .\lan. 198(i. La Frontera: The U.S. Borderwith Mexico. .San Diego: Harcourt. Brace,Jovano\'ich.
58 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
Mortars and MetatesAlice Fay Lozanoas told to Ian Hancock
Alice Fay Lozano is one oftlie Mexican Afro-Semi-noles. The Seminoles originally came westfrom Florida,first to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma inthe 1830s, and then to Nacimiento in norihem Mexicosome 12 years later. In both instances, they were dis-tancing themselvesfrom slave raids into their settle-ments. In 1870, some of the Nadmiento people camenorth again into Texas to serve as Scoutsfor the U.S.Ar)ny, settling in Brackettvilk after' they were dis-charged in 1914. The word seminole is a Creek Indi-an reinteipretation of the Spanish cimarron, mean-ing, among other things, 'fugitive. " When the Britishwere using Africans and Native Americans as slavesin the Crown Colonies during the 1 7th and early 18thcenturies, a number of those people threw off their yokeof bondage and escaped south into Spanish Florida.Indian Cimarrones, or Seminoles, were not subject tothe same harassment as the African Seminoles, and notall of them left Florida, though almost all of theAfrican Seminoles did. In Oklahoma, nearly all of theIndian Seminoles remained, while the African Semi-noles continued on to Mexico, and subsequently toTexas.Today, the Seminoles in Mexico (known locally asMuscogosj arefewer than 200, and a similar numberlive in and around Brackettville 30 miles north of theTexas border. Although there are Afro-Seminole com-munities elsewhere? in Oklahoma, Florida, and theBahamas? the Border Seminoles are differejit. Wliileretaining their language and many of their traditions.
Alice Fay Lozarw is a Black Seminole from Nacimiento de losNegros, Coahuila.
Ian Hancock is Professor of Linguistics and English at theLhuversily of Texas at Austin. His major work has been jiiiththe English-related Creoles and Roniani. His pioneering luorkin Brackettville, Texas, brought to light thefact that theSeminole Maroons of this community have maintained a dis-tinct language, Afro-Seminole Creole, closely related to Gut-lah. He earned his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental andAfrican Studies at the University ofLondon.
both groups have adopted newer elements of culture:those of the hontera. norteiia. Ms. Lozano lives mostof the time in Nacimiento, sometimes spending timewith relatives in Del Rio, but prefening the peace andspirituality of her home at thefoot of the Mexicanynountains. During an afternoon, talking in heryardabout an African-looking mortar, which sat on theground notfarfrom a Mexican grindstone, she com-mented that the two really represented the Indian andAfrican heritage of her people. I asked hei' to elaborate.
From the yard around my hacienda in ElNacimiento de los Negros I can look down acrossthe valley to some other homesteads and seemen tending their goats and cows, and womenhanging their washing out to diy. Here at thefoot of the Sierra Madre range, an hour's drivefrom Melchor Miisquiz, Coahuila State's capitalcity, everything is hushed and peaceful. Only thewind, and the noise of the animals pushingthrough the brush, break the silence.In my yard you'll find a mortar and pestle,which we call maata en maatastick in oiu' ownspeech, and you'll find a grinding stone, in Span-ish called a metate y tejolole. More than anythingelse, these two tools for preparing food symbol-ize the dual heritage of our Black Seminole peo-ple, for one is African, and the other Indian.The mortar is far too hea\'y for me to lift; itconsists of an upright oak log about a foot acrossand two or three feet high, with a depression cutinto the top several inches deep. The pestle isaboiU five feet long, and is also ciU from oak. It isabout three inches in diameter except for thelast foot on each end, which is wider, and round-ed so that it can crush the dried corn kernelsand other things we use it for. The metate isabout a foot square with four small feet, and iscarved out of one piece of stone. It has a flat topwhich cuiTes inward slightly, and the tejolote, orgrinder, looks like a fat stone cigar and is used
.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 59
Alice "Nina" FayLozano enjoys thetranquility of theSierra Madre moun-tains that surroundthe Muscogo com-munity of Nacimien-to de los Negros innorthern Coahuila,Mexico. Photo byDavid Bosserman
with both hands to mash peppers and otherthings on the surface. Sometimes we also use amolcajete, which is like a small stone mortar andpestle, and is used with just one hand.Things are different now, because some ofthe homes in Nacimiento have electricity andelectric blenders, but food processed that waydoesn't come out the same, and it sure doesn'ttaste as good. Another sign of the changingtimes can be seen inside the panti^; pro\'isionsfrom Musquiz, or even from Del Rio across theborder, are our staples now, but it wasn't alwayslike that. In the early days, everything we ate wegrew and prepared ourselves. In leaner times wewould go up into the Sierra Madre to cut downthe royal palms growing there, from which wecould make a floin" called kunteh. We'd mash andsoak the fibers, strain them through a fine sieve,and use their starchy sediment to make tortillas.We don't need to do that any more, but peoplein Nacimiento still use the nattiral medicinesthat grow all around. Plants in the area arebrewed into teas to remedy all kinds of ailments.Even the yerba loca is boiled with water as a painreliever, especially during childbirth.Much of our daily fare is Indian in origin.Some dishes, like suffki (a kind of cornnieal por-ridge) we brought with us from Florida; its nameis from the Creek language. Others, like toli(sweetened and spiced cornmeal pudding) or frybread probably come from Mexican Indians. We
also make and eat chorizo, tamales, and all kindsof other regional foods, which are not exclusiveto the Seminoles. One popular African dish issweet potato pudding, which we call tettiih-poon.Some of these we make at any time, while othersare for special occasions, such as birthdays orftmerals or the New Year.The Border Seminoles differ in some waysfrom Seminole commimities elsewhere, becauseof our special connection with Mexico. Semi-noles in Oklahoma or Florida or the Bahamasfor example, don't share that histoiy, and wouldfind some of the things we eat untistial.Some people think we already spoke Spanishbefore we reached Mexico, having learned it firstin Florida. But one thing is certain, wherever welearned it: Spanish has taken over as our mainlanguage in Nacimiento. Only a handful of olderfolk still speak Seminole. The settlement evenhas more oiUsiders living there today than Semi-noles themselves, who have moved out to othertowns, or up to Texas, especially to Brackett\ille.With the new interest in our people, and theestablishment of the Seminole Center and Muse-imi in Del Rio, and the attention the Folklife Fes-tival has brought us, our own grandchildren arebeginning to take a renewed interest in their spe-cial histoiy. Our language and culture, our ownunique blend of African and Native Americanand Mexican, may yet suivive to be enjoyed bythe generations to come.
60 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERtANDS
The Chinese inBaja CaUforniaMaricela Gonzalez FelixTranslated by Hector Antonio Corpordn
Las incursiom's iniciales de la jwblacion china aBaja California se suscitaron entre 1860 -y 1880,cuando los chinos de California inaugiiraron la Bahiade San Diego con la industria de la pesca del abulon.Posteriormente los chinos arribaron en mayor numerocon la apertura de las tienas a la agticultura en elValle de Mexicali en los primeros anos de este siglo.Luego de haberse iniciado la expropiacion de las tierrasy las dotaciones ejidales a fines de la decada de lostreintas, los chinos quedaron excluidos delproceso decolonizacion y explotacion de la tierra. Con ello los chi-nos empezawn a concentrarse en las actividades comer-dales y de servidos hasta ese momenta poco desarrol-ladas, al liempo que sus asentamientos se empezawn aubicar en la dudad.The (Chinese played an important role in the19th centui7 development of the California andBaja California coast and border region. Theycreated the first abalone fishing industry alongthe coast and were a major part of the work forcethat transformed the border region into the pro-ductive Imperial Valley on the California sideand the Mexicali Valley on the Baja Californiaside. Chinese have always lived in separate com-mimities, but their presence has greatly con-tribiued to defining the culture of the region,particularly that of Mexicali.Chinese were attracted to C>alifornia in themiddle of the 19th centuiy by the discovery ofgold and the territorial expansion of the UnitedStates, which offered job opportimities, highsalaries, and possibilities of acquiring farm land.The majorit)' of the migrants were poor farmers
Maricela Gonzalez received her B.A. in Sodology at the Uni-versidad Autonoma de Baja California in Mexicali and is aresearcher at the Museo Regional at the Universidad. In 1977,she Tvorked in a maquiladora in Mexicali. She is author ofEAproceso de aculturacion de la poblacion de origenchino en la cuidad de Mexicali, xohich examines the accul-turation process of the Chinese community in Mexicali.
from the pro\ance of Canton, who were fleeingpoverty and war.Chinese first came to Baja Californiabetween 1860 and 1880. They extended the SanDiego Bay abalone industiy along the Baja Cali-fornia coast down to Bahia de Tortugas. Chinesemigration from the U.S. to the northern borderstates of Mexico was accelerated by a series ofanti-Chinese movements in the United States,culminating in the first Chinese exclusion law in1882. Chinese settled primarily in Baja Califor-nia, Sonora, Sinaloa, and Tamaulipas.Chinese later arrived in greater nimibers,drawn by the land and employment promotionsof various foreign companies during the lastdecades of the 19th centui^, which were aimedat attracting tenant farmers to this scarcely popu-lated region. At the turn of the centui^y, the Col-orado River Land Company built irrigationworks and opened the Mexicali Valley for agri-cultural development.Chinese contractors from California provid-ed the company with the necessary labor to workthe xdrgin lands of the Mexicali Valley at a lowcost. The Colorado River Land Company leasedthe land to independent Chinese contractors,who in tiun sub-leased it to Chinese farmers, hithis way, the company indirectly controlled thedifferent phases of farming production, makingthe Chinese intermediaries for LJnited Statesbusinessmen in the exploitation of Mexicanresources.The relationship between United Statesinvestors, Chinese contractors, and Chineseworkers substantially changed after the Mexicangovernment stopped Chinese immigrauon in192L Other factors contributing to the changewere the government's 1936 expropriation ofland owned by foreign companies in Baja Cali-fornia and the growth of the Mexican popula-tion in the peninsula. Chinese and other foreigngroups?Japanese and East Indians? were
U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS 61
excluded from the subsequent redistribution ofthese lands. As a result, they began to concen-trate on commercial and service activities mainlyin Mexicali, leaNang their earlier, rural agricultur-al pattern of settlement.Another important movement of Chinese tothe region occurred dining the 1930s anti-Chi-nese movement in Mexico. After the Mexicangovernment cancelled Chinese immigration in1921, various state congresses approved discrimi-natoiy legislation prohibiting marriages betweenChinese and Mexicans, creating special zones toisolate the Chinese, and deporting illegal Chi-nese immigrants.Part of the life histoi"y of an elder Chineseman from Mexicali illuminates those years ofconflict:We left Mexico when I was 12 or 13 yearsold, more or less in 1931 or 1932. We leftMexico City due to the anti-Chinese cam-paign. In those days almost all the Chi-nese were discriminated against andinsulted by Mexicans. I remember thatwhen we went to school other kids threwstones and called us chaks.Although there were many peoplewho tried to prevent those kids frombothering us, there were always othersready to insult us. So that when somedidn't offend us, others were devoted todoing so. They would insult us withoiUreason, only because we looked Chinese.Almost daily we were attacked withstones, and unfortimately, we lived inthat situation for more than two years.The government at that time clearlysought to get the Chinese out of thecounti7, one way or another. As a result,many mixed families were broken. A hus-band would not be allowed to take hiswife with him, much less his children whowere born in Mexico. These things tookplace in various states of the Republic.One could not live in that constantharassment. The government of that timedid not want the Chinese in Mexico.
It seems that at that time a group ofpeople with vei7 strong interests hadcome together, and were devoted toharassing the Chinese. That group, if 1remember correctly, was named the Anti-Chinese Party or something like that ? 1don't remember the name exactly. Andin spite of the government's knowing oftheir activities, it did nothing to stoptheir cruelties, like those that are said tohave happened in the state of Coahuila,where dozens of Chinese lost their livesin confrontations with Mexicans. And inEnsenada we know that some Chineseconnnitted suicide because of that.Today the Mexican Chinese community sup-ports itself through small- and medium-sizedcommercial activities like restaurants, real estatebrokerages, money exchange centers, hotels,and a variety of retail stores. Recently arrivedChinese usually come with six month residencepermits to work in these establishments. Chinesein this western border region have lived for along time in a contradictoiy situation of eco-nomic integration and sociocultmal segregation,a condition which continues today, as exchangesbetween Chinese and Mexican populations inthe region remain predominantly economic.
Further ReadingsCrighton Miller, Stuart. 1969. The Ameriran Imageof the Chinese, 1785-1882. Berkeley and LosAngeles: University of California Press.Gonzalez Felix, Maricela. 1990. Elproceso deacidturacion de la poblacion de origen rhino en lacuidad de Mexicali. Mexicali: Universidad deBaja California, Instituto de InvestigacionesSociales.Hu de Hart, Evelyn. 1985-1986. The Chinese ofBaja California Norte 1910-1934. InProceedings of Pacific Coast Council onLatin American Studies. Volume 12. SanDiego: San Diego State University Press.
62 U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCESharing Common Ground:Social Dancing in the U.S.A.Vivien Chenwith Magaly E.Janad and Chan Moly SamDancing is sheer pleasure for socializing,exercise, and self-expression. Dancing means cel-ebration ? people gathering together, with foodand drink, at weddings, birthdays, graduations,anniversaries, holidays, block parties, forfundraisers, or just at end-of-the-week get-togeth-er parties. These social events take place in a vari-ety' of settings, from private homes to publicparks. Dancing brings people together and con-tinues to play a role in courtship.Most of us learned to dance by going to par-ties, by observing our elders or peers, or by study-ing the technique of particularly good dancers.More recendy, young people get a lot of their
"moves" from videos and television. From theseresources and experiences, we each develop ourown style. Music is almost inseparable from socialdancing and, for most of us, provides the inspira-tion to dance.As an open and adaptive communicative sys-tem, social dance is alwavs up-to-date and reflec-tive of its times. Looking closer, one finds thatdances are also stronglv shaped by their commu-nity expressive traditions and social structures.Most dance steps and styles derive their movesfrom those of earlier dances and movementrepertoires.Dancing brings members of a community'together and strengthens cohesiveness by empha-sizing shared ethical and aesthetic values. Per-forming a common vocabulaiy of movement, intime to a shared repertoire of music, one partici-pates in a culture.The United States is blessed with a diversityof communit)' dance traditions and new danceforms that have developed from interactionsbetween commimities. This exciting Americanmix has had a profound impact on the popular
"American Social Dance" has been made possible with sup-portfrom the recording industries Music Peifoitnance TrustFunds.
cultiues of nations across the world. The danceprogram at this year's Festival explores socialdancing traditions in five communities? anAppalachian communitv' in soiuhwest Virginia,hoquois communities in upstate New York, andAfrican American, Bolivian, and Cambodian
.American communities of Washington, D.C. Tra-dition-bearers will teach dances in workshops,participate in conversations on a variet)' ofthemes, and demonstrate skills, repertoires, andperformance styles from their communities. Ineach of these communities, dance is centrallyimportant in the expression of cultural identity.Consider the interplay of dance, community, andidentity among two Washington area communi-ties, Bolivian and Cambodian Americans.
Bolivian Dance in Washington, D.C.For recent immigrant communities such asBolivians in Washington, D.C, dance sustains animportant part of their cultural heritage, reaf-firming shared values in a new and rapidly chang-ing environment. Music and dance also bringreminiscences of youth, courtship, and the cultur-ally familiar. When away from "home," peopledevelop an increased awareness of cultural dis-tinctiveness, and actively embrace what was oncetaken for granted. Cultural activities may becomecrucial in expressing one's group identity' and inpresenting it to the greater American public.The Bolivian commimity is one of the largestLatino communities in the Washington, D.C.area. A majority of the commimitv' came from thecities of La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, andOrin'o, and are of middle class mestizo back-groimd. In Bolivia, the population is comprisedof 60% indigenous Aymara and Quechua peo-ples, 30% mixed Indian and Spanish (mestizo),and 10% European (primarily Spanish). Boliviawas under Spanish colonial rule from 1544 to1824 when a republic was established. Boliviabecame a democratic republic with a constitution
AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE 63
Men perform the caporalesdance at Elena and AndresPuna's wedding in Virginia.Photo by Marlon Vasquez
in 1967. There has been ongoing immigration tothe U.S. for more than 30 years, as well as fre-quent comnumication between Washington, D.C.and Bolivia as himdreds of families retiun eachFebruaiy to take part in two-week long Carnivalcelebrations in Oriiro.Cultural organizations in the Washingtoncommunity engage Bolivian youth and families infolkloric dances and other social activitiesthroughout the year. Weekend practice sessionsprovide opportimities for socializing, and July4th, Hispanic, and Chern' Blossom parades downConstitution Avenue provide public recognitionof the Bolivian community and its cultme.During the past 20 years Washington's Boli-vian community has come to include "revived"folk traditions as part of its social dance reper-toire to a greater extent than before. Dora Castel-lon, president of Comite Pro Bolivia, an unil^relhi
Vivien T.Y. Chen, curalor o) the Ai?ietican Social Dance pro-gram at the Festival ofAmerican Folklife, has researched, per-formed, and taught dancefor several years. She received aMasters degree in Dance and Dance Education from NeiuYork University.Magaly E. Jarrad is a dancer, choreogap/ier, scholar, andteacherfrom Oruro, Bolivia. She has received prizesfor herchoreographies at the Carnival in Oruro. Ms. Jarrad currentlydirects a children 's ballet theater in Glen Bumie, Maryland.Chan Moly Sam is a Cambodian master dancer, choreograph-er, and scholar. Her publications include Vl^mer FolkDance (1987), Khmer Court Dance: A CoiTiprehen,siveStudy of Movements, Gestures, and Postures as AppliedTechniques (J 987), and Khmer Court Dance: A Perfor-mance Manual (1989).
cultural organization, obser\'es how social life wasa few decades ago:Growing up in Bolivia I loved to watchmy father doing the cueca, but I wasn'tallowed to dance it. These dances werelooked down upon because theybelonged to the middle and lower class-es. The upper class would go to the ballsand dance to music from outside thecountiy, from the United States, likewaltzes and rock-and-roll.As a result of the nationalization of mines in1952 and agrarian reform in 1953, indigenouscommimities that were previously kept immobileh\ a feudal-like political economy inigrated tocities and abroad. They introduced their musicand dance traditions to a wider society, andindigenous styles of dances such as the huaynowere infused into the social dance repertoire.Huayno and other mestizo dances have sincebecome part of the repertoire in the Washington,D.C. community.Sixteen-year-old Andy Lopez participates indancing as a way of maintaining his Bolivianroots:
In the United States, there are so many dif-ferent cultures, and everybody seems toknow where they come from. So sinceschool doesn't deal with any part of ourculture, the only way for us to really findout what our culture is, or just keep ourculture, is for us to dance and stick with it.
64 AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE
Angel Quinteros, who devotes his Sundays toperforming and teaching Bohvian dance,explains, "I love doing dances like ca/ximlcs; itmakes me feel very powerful."For many members of the Bolivian communi-ty, dancing is a passion and an essential ingredi-ent at weddings, birthday parties, sweet 15 parties(quinceanera), baptisms. Carnival, and Virgin Maiycelebrations. At house parties all generations par-ticipate. Seniors are often energetic and talenteddancers, while children experience dancerhythms from infancy. Three clubs in northernVirginia feature live bands, while social dancingat smaller parties is inspired by record-playingdeejays.Dancing at social fimctions includes coupleand group dances: the cumbia, cueca, morenada,caporales, diablada, taquirari, huayno, camivalito,salsa, merengue, disco, and slow dances. Thisdance repertoire is an artifact of the complex cul-tural and social interactions that have taken placeover the past 500 years in Bolivia and now in Boli-vian communities in the U.S. It is a record of theinter-relationship of indigenous communities,Einopean immigrants (Spanish, English, French,and Germans), enslaved Africans (brought towork in mines and plantations) , nationals ofneighboring countries and of the United States,and the international entertainment industiy.Traditionally, indigenous dances such asthose of the Aymara and Quechua feature sepa-rate lines and circles ofwomen and men, andsmall rimning steps moving from side to side thattrace small semicircles, recalling agriculturalplanting movements. Mestizo dances have beeninfluenced by European spatial patterns, dancesteps such as skips, hops, and jumps, and the phe-nomenon of dancing in couples.Most Bolivian parties start with a pan-Latindance like the cumbia, a Colombian dance with astrong African-derived rhythm. In cumbia,dancers tiun waists, hips, and shoulders as theystep from side to side. Next come livelier dances
? morenada, diablada, and caporales? that arefeatiued at the pre-Lenten festivity of Carnival.Although dances for the actual Carnival proces-sion require much practice, their basic steps canbe fairly easily done as social dances.The diablada dance represents the symbolicstruggle between good and evil. According to tra-ditional belief, the mines in cities like Oruro andPotosi, where much of the popidation earns a liv-ing, are inhabited by Supay, owner of the miner-als. Supay was later interpreted by Evnopeans asthe diablo, or devil. The commimity prays to the
Virgin Mary and Archangel Michael to keep thedevils in their place and to prevent them fromharming its miners. The diablada featiues a timein 2/4 marching time and boimcy steps, jumps,and kicks while the dancer turns from side toside.Two dances recall the exploitation ofenslaved Africans brought by Spaniards to workin the mines and plantations dining the colonialperiod. According to some, the morenada repre-sents the forced march of slaves toward the minesof Potosi in the Andes. According to others, itrepresents the movements of slaves crushinggrapes in vineyards in the Xingas tropical planta-tion area. The dance is said to have been first per-formed by the descendants of slaves. Morenada isoften danced in a circle, with small, slow, sidesteps and occasional turns, and is accompaniedmusically by the matracas, which simulate thesound of chains or of cranks turning the winepresses.The caporales, a dance created within the last20 years, borrows features from the indigenousAymaran cullaguada (turning steps from one sideto the other with frontal jumps and kicks), has adriving rhythm from negrilos del patador (an Afro-Bolivdan regional dance), and combines shouldermovements from the Brazilian samba. Borrowinga personage from the morenada dance, thedance depicts the harsh treatment of slaves by thecaporale (foreman) and his wife on plantationsduring the colonial period. Caporales has gainedenormous popularity in recent years and is espe-cially attractive to teenagers, who enjoy the chal-lenge of learning and performing it. Genderroles are very defined in this dynamic dance. Boysand men perform stomping, strong, percussivemovements while girls and women perform small-er, flirtatious, and swinging hip movements.The cueca is a popular courting dance forcouples. Influenced by the Spanish snnllanes in itsspatial pattern, the cueca is done with a polka-likestep. It has four parts. After an introduction andsaliUe, the man dances behind the woman as theytravel in a small circle, he pursuing, she teasing,both twirling handkerchiefs. They meet anddance side by side in the quimba section, and fin-ish together in the zapateo with fast tapping foot-work. Drinks are often offered to the dancersbefore the dance is repeated.In internationally popular dances such asmerengue and lambada, couples dance apart orin a closed position. Originally from the Domini-can Republic, the merengue seems to have result-ed from a confluence of European contra dance
AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE 65
and an African style of movement. Its rhythm isfast, and when danced in a closed position, part-ners move as one by taking little side steps as theyturn.After a few slow dances like bolero, partiestraditionally close with a carnivalito or hiiayno,during which everyone joins in or is pulled fromtheir seats. These are joyous dances in fast, 2/4time featuring small rimning, stomping, hopping,and jumping movements. The hiiayiio begins as acouple dance with partners holding hands orlinking arms. As momentum gathers lines areformed, and dancers wind around the room incircular, zig-zag, or intersecting patterns. Oftenthe bandleader or deejay will give directions suchas "pull the ears" or "hands on hips," "do turns,"
"dance on one foot," or "slow down." It is notimcommon for women to dance with each otherin these dances. Using a variety of culturalresources, Bolivians in the D.C. area enjoy eachother's company and dance out rich identities tothemselves, to each other, and to their neighbors.Cambodian American Dancein Washington, D.C.Among the Cambodian communirv in theWashington area, social dancing helps to bringindividuals and families together at weddings.New Year's, birthdays, graduations, and fundrais-ers. The selection of dances and the way they aredanced at parties reflect distinctive cultinal histo-
r-y, aesthetics, and ethical ideas as well as recentinfluences of an American context.The roots of Cambodian dance span milleniain Southeast Asia. Throughout its 2,000-year his-tory, Cambodian culture has had a fertile inter-change with the cultures of India, China, andIndonesia. From the 9th to the 1 5th centuries,the Angkor Empire fostered a subtle intermin-gling of Indian and indigenous elements to pro-duce a culture regarded by many scholars asamong the richest and most creative in SoutheastAsia. At its largest, the Pilimer Empire rangedfrom the border of China into present-day Thai-land, Laos, and southern Vietnam. Cambodiabecame a French protectorate in 1863 andgained independence in 1953. Since 1975, afterthe fall of Cambodia to Khmer Rouge forces, theCambodian commimity in Washington, D.C. hassteadily grown to about 15,000. While many immi-grated from urban Phnom Penh, a significantnumber also caine from more riual areas in theprovinces of Battambang, Siem Reap, and Ki\m-pong Thom.Cambodian social dance uses leaf and flower
hand movements, two of the four basic gesturesof classical dance: tendril (chanol), leaf (/crtrj,flower (chip), and fruit (kuong). These representthe cycle of fertility and were performed rituallyto visualize the creative spirit of plants and flow-ers. Vuthy Kheav, 30, who grew up on a farm inSiem Reap province, remembers dancing the ramvoug, raw kbaih, and lam lean in the rice fields atthe completion of planting and hai-vest, to theaccompaniment of the tro, a two-string fiddle, andskordai, a hand drum. Sochietah Ung, 35, learnedto dance at seasonal festivals that featured freemovies and social dancing in the evenings. ChanMoly Sam recalls that "Evei"y New Year celebra-tion in Phnom Penh, you heard the pattern ofthe drum from dust to dawn, or sometimesthroughout the night, for three days."Ram \'ong is always the first dance at anysocial event, often followed by ram kbach andlam leav. These are all circle dances done in cou-ples in a coiniterclockwise direction in 4/4 time.In ram vong the female leads while the male pur-sues her, traveling from side to side, seeking eyecontact. Ram kbach, a slow, graceful dance thatconveys harmony, is performed with one legcrossing in front of the other as the body inclinesdiagonally from one side to the other. In lamleav, a courtship dance from Stung Trengprovince, the partners move in intenvoven pat-terns. fJimer leu, from the northern provinces,features a three-count wiist movement. In sara-
x'tiiiu, partners face each other, moving their armsriivthmically, raising and lowering them, openingand closing them like the wings of a bird. Thedances allow participants the freedom to do varia-tions and improvisations. For example, in time tothe rhythmic pattern of saravann music, a skillfulcouple can travel foi'wards, backwards, or side-wards to elaborate on the image of a bird risinginto the air, soaring, and landing. These dancesembody the value of attentiveness in male andfemale relationships, and they are an importantpart of courtship.The dances also express the value of balanceand harmony. Dancers cultivate internal balanceas their gestures flow rhythmically with the music.Symmetrical movements alternate from one sideto the other. Moderation is valued; one shouldnot overdo or neglect movements.Many Cambodians are equally at ease withEuropean-derived dances. Popular western musicand social dances were introduced to Cambodi-ans by Filipinos and the French. In the early1900s, the Cambodian court received the gift of alarge band in residence from the Philippines.
66 AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE
Nara and Sambonn Lekand friends dance the ramvong, a traditionalCambodian circle dance.Photo by Sambonn Lek
The Filipino musicians taught marching music toCambodian royal and symphonic bands, partici-pated in court ensembles, and performed in jazzbands at nightclubs. The musicians introducedLatin rhythms into Cambodian dance, foundingbig bands that played at ballroom dances. Theydeveloped a kind of music that came to be calledphkng manila, or Filipino ensemble music. Thismusical innovation greatly expanded the Cambo-dian repertoire.Mr. Lek Chhan, a distinguished dancer nowin his seventies, learned European dances? thetango, Boston, cha-cha-cha, rumba, foxtrot, waltz
? from his French professor in Phnom Penh.Fellow students also taught each other withrecordings and attended nightclubs and bars.Western music was also disseminated by Frenchhigh school teachers; and in some militaiy acade-mies, high ranking officers received formal train-ing in European-derived dances. The madisonwas in vogue by the 1950s, and the twist intro-duced by the popular entertainer Chum Kemupon his return from France in the early 1960s.At parties in the Washington area, musiciansusually play dances in pairs, juxtaposing fast andslow tempos. Contemporai-y bands usually featmemale and female vocalists, lead, rhythm, and bassguitars, and a drimi set or synthesizer. In adopt-ing European-derived dance music such as cha-cha-cha or tango, Cambodians retained therhythms and composed Klimer melodies andlyrics to each song; they simplified the dance
steps. Dances like the cha-cha-cha and madisonare interpreted with deft and subtle hip, back,and foot movements.At social events in Cambodia, danceexpressed social relationships and values, and thedance floor often became an arena of gesturaleloquence. Traditionally, yoimg men and womenwere only allowed to socialize with each other atNew Year's, which provided a rare and importantopportunity to meet, dance, and talk. Womenwould sit together on one side of the room whilethe men sat on the other. A man would offer sam-peah, a greeting of respect performed to invite ayoung woman to dance and to take his leave onparting. There was no physical contact in tradi-tional Cambodian dances.Traditionally, yoimg women were kept closeto the family. As they reached their middle teensthey entered c/iaul mlob, or "went into shadow,"meaning they were not to be seen in public, espe-cially by young men. Young men were freer incomparison and were encouraged to explore theoutside world and society.Wliile women were encoinaged to showinterest in the court dance traditions, men weregroomed to be good social dancers. In an oldergeneradon, men danced a flamboyant expressiverole compared with women's modest one. Herexecution of social dances was not expected to beas creative or as varied as her partner's. Membersof older generations expected that at socialevents, behavior was performed and evaluated
AMERICAN SOCIAt DANCE 67
and everyone was watching. A young man seekinga young lady chose his movements carefully, withan eye to impressing her family members presentat the event. Moderation and attentiveness werehighly valued, while wild and self-involved move-ments were looked upon with disfavor. While theseparation of the sexes is no longer practiced inthe AjTierican context, the connotations of move-ment still persist.At wedding receptions, the bride and groomand their parents initiate the celebration with theram vong. As revered elders, the parents are thefirst to give blessings to the new couple throughdance. At other functions, the host or anotherprominent person leads the circle dances.In the Washington cominunity, seniors par-ticipate in social dancing but only minimally infast genres like the twist, disco, and rock. Young-sters have free range of the floor, often dancingin separate groupings of boys and of girls.Community members note that while dancemovements have remained essentially the same,there have been changes in gender roles. Influ-enced by the role ofwomen in Ainerican society,Cambodian women have become less confined,more assertive, and more nearly equal as dancepartners. Many people feel that the dancing isbetter now with opportunity for more fun.Phavann Chhuan talks about the importanceof dance and commiuiity for young people sort-ing out their identity:We get the kids to social functions asoften as we can, to expose them toKhmer cultiue, to give them both views.Maybe through peer pressure or groupparticipation they'll see that it's accept-able to do Cambodian dance as well asinclude other dances with it. We want tobring them up in an environment wherepeople accept different cultures, wherethe kids will not forget their heritage.Shaped by traditional ideas of beaiUv, order,and the individual, social dance is a rich anddeep language for communicating ideas andidentities. Like a language it is a formal set of cat-egories and transformaUons that keeps us intouch with centuries of meaning. Yet it is alwaysopen to change to serve the needs of themoment. It is a tool for living that enables us tocomprehend the voices and actions of others,respond to them, and make them our own.Washington social dance repertoires contin-ue to evolve and grow as new dances are taught
by relatives, friends, and home videos. MarcoCastellon added some football moves to caporalesand brought it down to Oriuo, Bolivia, where hetraded steps and videos with students there.(They showed him a new version of caporalesthat incorporates a freeze, taking inspirationfrom hip-hop.) Lashmi Sam brought the newestCambodian American dance "Hai-vesting theShrimp" from Seattle and is teaching it to neigh-bors in Reston.Thr iiiilliiiy. ii'niil In lliinik muiix dinuns /mm ihe Bolivian amiCambodia II lommuiiiliesjut \lianng llieir knowledge and wisdomwith us, including Adela Baldarrama, Hugo Carillo, Phavann andNatalie Chhuan, Gonzalo Gutierrez, Katherine Guzman, JhaninaHerbas, Vuthy Kheav, Leh Chhan, Sambonn and Nara Lek, AndyLopez, Maria Lopez, Melina Mendez, Jhonny Meneses, Sesane Ouk,Shirley Pena, Nelson Perez, Angel Quinteros, Sam-Ang Sam, RithySok, Sokhon Soum, Samnang Sun, Sody Teh, Rady and SaroeumTes, Sochietnh Ung, Chinary Ung, Jugo and Alex Urresty, LuisVillarroel. Maria Villrgas, and Danett Zepeda.
Furlher Ri'tidingsHeredia, Augusto Beltran. 1962. The Histoiy of theCamivale. Oruro, Boli\ia: The Department ofFolklore.Nash, June. 1979. We Eat the Mines and the MinesEat Us: Dependency and Exploitation in BolivianTin Mines. New York: C'olumbia UniversityPress.Pin, Chap. 1962. Danses Populaire au Cambodge.Phnom Penh: Institut Bouddhique.Prado, Benjamin Torrico. 1971. Indigenous in theHeart ofAmerica. La Paz, Bolivia: Los Aniigosdel Libro.Sam, Sam-Ang, and Patricia Campbell. 1991.Silent Temples, Songful Hearts: Traditional Musicof Cambodia. DanbiuT, ConnecticiU: WorldMusic Press.
Suggested ListeningCambodian Traditional Music, Vo\. 1.Smithsonian/Folkways 4081.Cambodian Traditional Music, Vol. 2.Smithsonian/Folkways 4082.Instruments and Music of Bolivia.Smithsonian/Folkways 4012.Word of Love. Sann Huy Film 'Video Production,CD 2.Souvenirs Klimer Air Lines. Chlangden Productions,CD 034.Dream of You. Preah Vihear Production, CD 2.
68 AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE
Generations of African AmericanSocial Dance in Washington, D.C.:Hand Dancing, Hip-Hop, and Go-GoLeeEllen Friedland
Wliat do the Motown sound and hip-hopmusic have in common? Each is the musicalinspiration for a vital dance tradition that thrivesin the African American communitv of Washing-ton, D.C.And these two st)les of Black dance? thesmooth partner coordination and intricate turnsof "hand dancing" performed to Motown clas-sics, and the rhythmic steps and weight shiftswith elaborate, syncopated arm and torso ges-tures done to the rhythmic polyphony of hip-hopmusic? what do they have in comnion? Eachserves as a generation's prime marker of identityand vehicle for artistic expression. Together witha third style, go-go, they provide artistic alterna-tives to people of different ages and aestheticsensibilities.Hand DancingHand dancing was born and bred in Wash-ington, D.C, during the Motown era, whichbegan in the late 1950s. It is essentially a smoothversion of the Lindy Hop that features almostconstant hand holding and tinning betweenpartners, and several step patterns used to keeptime.' As musical tempos increased through the1960s, with successive Motown hits by groupssuch as the Supremes, Foin- Tops, and Tempta-tions, hand dancing stsle developed to suit thefast beat and new rhythms.
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Like popular dance styles before and after it,hand dancing soon became a favorite pastimefor teenagers and young adults. It largelyeclipsed the older st)'les at house parties,cabarets, and clubs in Washington's Black com-mimity. Deejays provided the music for danceevents and built reputations on the breadth oftheir record collections and their skill in craftingsong sequences.Local television shows such as the "Teenara-ma Dance Show," which ran from 1963-67, fea-tured local teenagers and put hand dancing inthe spotlight. Indiwdual dancers cultivated dis-tinctive styles, often incorporating regional varia-tions that developed within the cit). Just by theway they danced, hand dancers could be recog-nized as hailing from Southeast, Southwest, orNortheast Washington. This intra-city variation,and the markedly contrasting dance styles seenon nationally broadcast shows like "AmericanBandstand," helped to fortifS' local opinion thathand dancing was imique to Washington, D.C.^As the Motown era faded into funk and discoin the 1970s, however, hand dancing was largelyreplaced by "free dancing" styles, in which part-ners do not hold hands. Most of the Blackteenagers who had grown up hand dancing inWashington made an easy transition to the newfree dancing st)ies, and kept pace as youngadidts with the new trends in popular Black cu\-
Some version of tlie Lindy Hop. also known as swing or the Jitterbug, was popular from the 1920s through most of the 1950s.Dance historians consider African American dancers t]ie primary innovators of the Lindy form. See Stearns (1964) . Arthur Murray's1954 dance manual describes single, double, and triple Lindy Hop steps. Variations of these steps are among those performed byWashington-area hand dancers.
~ I am indebted to Washington deejay Robert Frye. "Captain Fly," for insight into tlie relationship between Motown music and handdancing. Captain Fly chronicles the progression of popular musical style through the 1950s and 1960s on his radio show, "OldiesHouse Party," every Saturday on Washington-area station WPFW (89.3 FM). Along with otlier deejays devoted to the "oldies butgoodies" format, he is a dedicated historian of oldies music and an inveterate record collector.
^ I am grateful to many veteran hand dancers for sharing their knowledge with me, including Florence Barber, Jerome Bettis. PhilClark. Bobby L. Conwav. Lewis Fountain, Althia Harris. Ron Patterson, Preston Walker, and Wayiie Williams.
AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE 69
Hand dancing partners improvise an elaboratearm gesture between turns. Photo by LeeEllenFriedland
Veteran deejay CaptainFly (Robert Frye) is hostof the "Oldies HouseParty" radio programon WPFW-FM. Photoby LeeEllen Friedland
70 AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE
ture. Sometime in the mid-1980s, however, asrap became more commonly heard on the radioand hip-hop grew into a major cultiual move-ment, hand dancers? by this time mostly intheir forties and fifties? began to revive theirgeneration's "own" music and dance. Thisreturn to artistic roots planted firmly in theMotown era led to a revival of "oldies but good-ies" music at Washington-area clubs, cabarets,and radio stations that is still going strong.Hip-HopHip-hop is not just a dance style; it is a multi-faceted world of expression that includes dance,music, a deejay's skilled mix of live and recordedsounds, verbal art (including rapping and otherforms), visual arts (such as graffiti), clothing,body adornment, and social attitude. Hip-hop isshared by yoimg people of different culturalbackgroiuids throughout the United States, binits basic aesthetic ideas are deeply rooted inAfrican American culture.In Washington's Black commimity, hip-hopincludes social dancing, done by couples (whodo not hold hands); and exhibition dancing,done by individuals or sets of dancers who dotheir most impressive moves and choreographedroutines to demonstrate their prowess.Hip-hop dancing is done to any type of hip-hop music ? rapping, singing, or instrumental
? with an appropriate beat and tempo. This canalso be imadorned rhythm playing, such as a syn-thesized drum track or an impromptu beatpoimded out by hands or with sticks. Socialdancing is most often based on relatively simplepatterns of stepping and weight shifting, whichare overlaid with multiple rhythmic layers of ges-tures done with the arms, head, and segments ofthe torso.Exhibition dancing can include any moveused in social dancing, biu it features a widerrepertoire of fancy stepping patterns; body wavesand isolated movements of body parts (as in
"popping"); gestures, facial expressions, andother forms of mimicry; acrobatic tumbling,splits, jiuTips, and spins; and choreographed rou-tines that combine any niunber of different ele-ments. Not all dancers choose to develop theextraordinary skills of exhibition dancing, but
Folklorist LeeEllen Friedland has studied European- andAfrican-derived social dance traditions in the United Stalessince 1975. She is director ofEthnologica. a Washington,D.C., consultingfirm that specializes infolklife and culturalheritage research.
nearly eveiyone that participates in hip-hop doessocial dancing.Dancing generally happens at clubs,cabarets, and parties that featiue hip-hop music.But it can also erupt spontaneously in responseto music in schoolyards, neighborhood streets,and homes. Often these informal performancesare interspersed with mimicry and acrobatics.Deejays are the favored source of music forhip-hop dance events. Like those in older gener-ations in the Black commvmity, hip-hop deejaysare valued for their skill in gauging the fitbetween the music and the dancers" mood, fortheir ability to string together inspiring musicalsequences, and for their collections of soimdrecordings and equipment that allows the great-est range of musical creativity. Most hip-hop dee-jays are also adept at "mixing," a range of music-making skills including such techniques as "cut-ting" and "scratching" that involves the manualmanipulation of discs on multiple turntables andthe interpolation of additional soimds generatedby synthesizers, electronic rhythm machines,pre-recorded tapes, verbal art performed by thedeejay or others, and a variety of percussioninstruments.Go-GoThough hip-hop culture proxddes the frame-work for much of the music and dance amongyoimg people in the Black community, anotherstyle, one unique to Washington, D.C., providesan artistic alternative for many teenagers: go-go.Unlike hip-hop, which except for a deejay's mix-ing uses pre-recorded music, go-go is danced tolive bands that generally include multiple per-cussionists (playing a trap set, congas, and a vari-ety of small, hand-held instruments) and a mixof keyboard synthesizers, bass, horns, guitars,and vocalists. This "big band" sound is especiallywell-suited for large public venues such as clubs.The music is fimk-derived and incorporates ele-ments of Afro-Cuban and jazz styles.'*Go-go dancing has the same basic structureas hip-hop social dancing? stepping and weightshift patterns overlaid with multi-rhythmic arm.
* My thanks to Michael Licht of the D.C. Commission on theAlts and Humanities for an overview of go-go activities inWashington, D.C. The Arts Commission regularly includesgo-go in its cultural programming and currently co-sponsors(with the Malcolm X Cultural Educauon Center) a Cio-goHoUine that lists local go-go events {202 543-GOGO). TheArts Commission has also published a pamphlet on go-go,
"What's the Time?"
AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE 71
V SI
r\i ^
*?? ft ^ Kim, Tyrone, Brian, and iVlil<e, members of thehip-hop dance group, the Nasty Boys, practicea synchronized routine. Photos by LeeEllenFriedland
head, and torso gestures? but it is adapted tothe slower beat and distinctive go-go rhytlims.Though go-go and hip-hop dancing both drawon the same fundamental African Americanmovement repertoire, go-go dancing has its dis-tinctive patterns and frequently uses mimicry likethat in movement play and exhibition dancing togenerate new dances. Though go-go is veiy popu-lar with teenagers in Washington's Black commu-nity, it has generally coexisted with hip-hoprather than replaced it altogether. Teenagers"interest in go-go appears to fade as they neartheir twenties and return to the artistic frame ofhip-hop.
Further Readim^sFriedland, LeeEllen. 1983. Disco: Afro-AmericanVernacular Performance. Dance ResearchJournal lE,{2):27-35.1984. Street Dancing, 'Rapping' andDJ Mixing: Traditional African-AmericanPerformance and Contemporary UrbanCulture, hi Smithsonian Festival ofAmericanFolklife Program, ed. Thomas Vennum, Jr., pp.43-45. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonianhistitiuion.
George, Nelson, Sally Banes, Susan Flinker, andPatt)' Romanowski. 1985. Fresh: Hip Hop Don'tStop. New York: Random House.Hager, Steven. 1984. Hip Hop: The IllustratedHistory ofBreak Dancing, Rap Music, andGraffiti. New York: St. Martin's Press.Hazzard-Gordon, Katrina. \990. Jooki)/': The Riseof Social Dance Formations in African-AmericanCulture. Philadelphia: Temple UniversityPress.Jones, Bessie, and Bess Lomax Hawes. 1972. StepIt Down: Games, Plays, Songs, and Storiesfromthe Afro-American Heritage. New York: Harperand Row.Stearns, Marshall, and Jean Stearns. 1964. JazzDance: The Story ofAmerican Vernacnlar Dance.New York: Schirmer.Thompson, Robert Farris. 1974. African Art inMotion. Berkeley: Universit)' of CaliforniaPress.
. 1983. Flash of the Spirit: African andAfro-American Art and Philosophy. New York:Random House.
72 AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE
Hip-Hop DanceAnthony Hovington
Hip-liop culture sprang from the hearts ofyoung African Americans and Latinos as a way toexpress themseh'es in the inner cities of NewYork. Beginning around 1973, it became a pow-erful influence on popular culture across theglobe.To put the dancing being done today in per-spective, I intenaewed members of the RockStead}- Crew, one of the first b-boy crews toemerge with hip-hop. The term "b-boy" wascoined by DJ Kool Here. It means break-boy. Thedance was done to the "break" of the record, thefunkiest part, the part that was mostly a hard-dri-ving beat. An example of a "break" would be adrum solo in aJames Brown record. The RockStead\- C.rew still performs and a.spires to makehip-hop dancing an accepted art form, like balletand tap dancing.
"Crazy Legs," of the Rock Steady Crew inNew York, said that hip-hop dancing started as away out of violence. It kept young people out oftrouble. Due to the influence of hip-hop, gangmembers began to settle their differences bydancing rather than fighting.Opinions vaiy on the importance of namesin hip-hop dancing. Pee-Wee Dance of the RockStead\- Crew says the crew is named that because
"we steady be rockin." Crazy Legs got his namebecause he is quite bowlegged and does someunique things with those legs. Pee-Wee Dance isnamed for his diminutive stature. Also, he is 32years old, so he is called "the dance that won'tdie."Some dancers name their moves as well.Break dancing gave us the "continuous back-spin," "windmill," and the "whirl." Crazy Legsinvented the continuous backspin while Pee-WeeDance invented the whirl. The continuous back-spin was a method of using one's legs to contin-ue spinning when the dancer would otherwisehave come to a stop. Pee-Wee Dance describesthe whirl as a move where he spins while low to
the ground, comes back up to his feet, andthen lowers himself again while maintaining hisspin. Although there is structure to their rou-tines, many times the best performances are theones that happen instantaneously in a momentof creativity.There is a tradition inxolved with hip-hopdancing. Older generations continuously passon what they've learned to younger genera-tions. Almost all the dancers agreed that theylearned to dance by going to parties or by get-ting together with peers when they wereyoimger. Little kids learn by watching theirelders dance then going home to practice. Pee-Wee Dance studies st)'les that are similar butcame before, namely buck dancing and theLindy Hop. He frequents the Schomburg Cen-ter in New York to research and to keep hismind focused on the tradition of hip-hop danc-ing. This style of dancing dates back to Africabecause there is one common thread ? themusic. The music is percussive. It is based onthe beat. African communities used the drumas a primaiy form of communication and mod-ern-day dancers rely on the beat as well.Hip-hop dancing needs to be nurtured andaccepted by those within the communities thathip-hop comes from, places like New York,Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Detroit, andMiami, that have large concentrations ofAfrican Americans. As inner city youth strive forsomething to call their own, hip-hop dancing isone way to pro\ide them with the means tocontrol their own energies and to display themat will. Therefore, hip-hop culture and itsdances will continue to influence popular cul-ture in the years to come.
Aiilhony Hovington received his B.A. in African AmericanStudiesfrom Duke University. He works as a Database Man-ager at the National Endowment for the Arts. He is Vice-Pres-ident of the Washington Chapter of the Zulu Nation.
AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE 73
Iroquois Social Dances:A Life of Dance in the Dance of LifeLin ley Logan
In traciitional communities of the Iroquois,more properly the Haudenosaunee (People ofthe Longhouse), introduction to dance comes atan early age. Expectant mothers participating indance introduce the developing infant to therhythmic movements and melodies. As newbornsand infants, children are passed among proud,dancing relatives, accustoming them to the feel-ing of dance and the lifelong socializationprocess one embraces through it. Strengtheningcommimity solidarity, social dances continue toprovide an entertaining enxdronment that bindspeople together in friendship, courtship, andsocial identity'.The world is sustained by a continuousrenewal of cycles, a balance of life's positive andnegative energies. The Ongweh-ohweh-kah (realpeople), as the Haudenosaimee refer to them-selves in ceremony, understand this and theimportance of paying tribtite to it. Among thepeople of the Longhouse, ceremonial dancesexpress respect in ritual for the po,sitive energiesof renewal in nature. Ceremonial prayer, song,and dance, reinforce each other's significance inthe people's expression of gratitude for the life-sustaining gifts from the Creator. In the ceremo-nial Great Feather Dance, for example, youngpeople are encouraged to dance real hard andyoung men are told to "yell out in happiness sothe Creator will look down to see, hear, andknow your joy." Social dance events, like ceremo-nial events, open with an address recognizing thelife-sustaining gifts from the Creator. In both,the importance of all life forms in the naturalworld is acknowledged, starting with that closestto the Mother Earth and continuing on to thatin the male realm of the sky.Social dances, unlike ceremonials, are notconfined behind the doors of Longhouse com-munities. They may fulfill their purpose of enter-tainment within a context of ceremonial activi-fies but they may also be held as their own event.
and may even be done oiUside Iroquois commu-nities, as at this year's Festival.The Iroquois word for social dances?guyno,so,ohn anndwadek, note,gawdoe? literallymeans "a group of songs for entertainment pur-poses." Social dance events, or socials, are foreveryone's participation within the commimityand always held in the evening to avoid interfer-ing with the day's responsibilities. In addition toproviding entertainment, socials may honor par-ticular events, welcome guests, or raise fimds tomeet an emergency need. Social dances aresometimes presented oiuside of their communi-ties and are a useful, educational, and entertain-ing way of presenting Iroquois culture.The Longhouse is central to Iroquois cul-ture. Originally developed as the structure forextended matriarchal clan family life among theIroquois, the Longhouse was the place for allcommimal activities. At present the Longhousecontinues to fimction in tradidonal communitiesas the center for activities such as socials, cere-monies, meetings, condolences, weddings, andfimerals. The Longhouse is a himible environ-ment. It has an entrance facing east welcomingthe sun, and most Longhouses have separateentrances for men and women. Traditionally,families or clans sit together in the double row ofbenches along the walls. All Longhouses areheated by woodstoves, and the fire plays an inte-gral role in the observances that are part of thedance. The singers who provide music for thedances usually sit at the center or heart of theactivities.All Iroquois commimities have socials eventhough not all commimities have Longhouses. In
Linley B. Logan, an enrolled member of the CattaraugusSeneca community, greiu up in the Tonawanda Seneca com-munity's Longhouse. He is Program Assistant in the Officeof Public Programs of the National Museum of the AmericanIndian.
74 AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H^ ^^ij^H
beans, and squash) in a procession called "Giversof Life." Women's social dance, the Women'sShuffle, done to a different set of songs, express-es gratitude for the fertility of Mother Earththrough fmrowing, massaging movements.The cycles of life and renewal are embracedin the Corn, Robin, and Pigeon dances. Corn isan essential fact of Iroquois life and its dance isperformed in a double line that symbolizes plant-ed rows. The Pigeon Dance, done in remem-brance of the passenger pigeon, recalls imbal-ance, loss of life, and the importance of recogniz-ing and acknowledging the cycles of life.Approximately a third of the Iroquois socialdance repertoire results from a willingness toshare with other cultures. The Alligator, Friend-ship, Rabbit, Roimd, Snake, and the DelawareSkin dances are not of Iroquois origin. The Rab-bit Dance, acquired from Western culturalgroups, is a partner's choice dance in whichwomen can choose a male partner. Partners holdhands, with the male on the inside of the circle.Other adopted dances that differ from tradition-al Iroquois norms include the Alligator Dance,borrowed from the Seminoles and Miccasukeesfrom the far Southeast, in which, in a mannersimilar to the Rabbit Dance, partners lock armsand proceed with the male in the interior of thecircle.The instrmnents that accompauN' socialdance songs are the water drimi played by thelead singer and cow horn rattles played by theback-up singers. The water drum is hollowed oiU,traditionally, but not always, from a single pieceof wood approximately five to seven inches indiameter. Individuals have been known to makethem with small, manufactiued wooden casks orPVC pliuubing pipe. The hollow vessel is coveredwith a stretched piece of leather, which issecured with a cloth- or leather-wrapped hoop ofash wood. Water is poured into the hollow body,and the drum is set upside down, allowing theleather to soak. The wet leather is then stretchedtighter to produce the proper resonance. Waterbrings the drum to life.Rattles used for instrumental accompani-ment originally were made of elm bark, biuEuropean contact and introduction of the cowhas lead to rattles made of cow horn. The rattle'ssoimd comes from lead shot, beebees, beads, orany combination of these placed inside.Ceremonial instruments differ from theirsocial counterparts in use, material, size, andownership. The ceremonial rattles, dependingon their application, are made from squash,
gomds, or snapping tmtle shells. Ceremonialdrinns are larger than those used for socialdances. Ceremonial instrimients are never usedfor other purposes, and in 1974 the OnondagaCouncil of Chiefs of the Iroquois Confederacypassed a resolution forbidding the sale of reli-gious objects, expresslv inc luding ceremonial lat-tles. Protecting cultural interests for the secmit)'of the Seventh generation (seven generationsinto the futme), is integral to cultural identity.Through joyous movement, dance expresses thestrength and pride in identity that emanate froma relationship of respecltul coexistence with thenatural world. Children are encomaged to expe-rience the joy in dance at an early age, as oiu"elders, watching our children learning to dance,become proudly encomaged about the future ofthe Seventh generation.
Furlher ReadingsBuck, Hubert Sr., and Sadie Buck. 1990. Askanye.Brantford, Ontario: Soimd of the Drinn,Woodland Cultural Center.Conklin, Harold C and William Sturtevant.1953. Seneca Indian Singing Tools atColdsprings Longhouse. Proceedings of theAmerican Philosophical Society 91: 262-290.Cronk, Michael Sam. 1989. Writing WhileThey're Singing: A Conversation aboutLonghouse Social Dance Songs. New YorkFolklore \ 4 {?,-i):49-m.Crouse, William Sr. 1986. Ga'noh go:h, gasto se'sha-sho'oh [Dnims and Rattles]. Coloring book.Salamanca, New York.Jamieson, Wilma. 1942. Music life of the SixNations. In Six Nations Indians Yesterday andToday. Six Nations Agricultiual Society.Lafrance, Ron. 1992. Inside the Longhotise:Dances of the Haudenosaunee. In NativeAmerican Dance Ceremonies and SocialTraditions. Washington, D.C.: SmithsonianInstitution National Museiun of theAmerican Indian.Logan, Linlev. 1992. Dancing the Cycles of Life.In Native American Dance Ceremonies and SocialTraditions. Washington, D.C.: SmithsonianInstitiuion National Musemu of theAmerican Indian.Social Dances and their Origins. Onkwehonweneha (Iroquoian Institute Newsletter) #7(Spring 1990).
/6 AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE
"Circle up Four onthe Old Dance Floor":Old-Time Dancing in Chilhowie, VirginiaSusan Eike Spalding
A circle of 50 or more smiling dancers com-pletely rings the dance floor, holding hands. Atthe first notes of the fiddle, they begin a resilientbounce downward in time with the music, andsome dancers clog, setting up a group rhythmthat can be seen, heard, and felt. The caller says,
"All join hands and circle to your left," and theold-time square dance begins at the congenialChilhowie Lions" Club in southwest Virginia as italways does on Friday nights. At the caller's com-mands, the dancers weave patterns that involvethe whole group, as they drop back to changepartners or take hands in a "right hand chain"?right hand to the partner, left hand to the nextperson all the way around the circle. Wlien thecaller says "circle up four," the dancers form setsof two couples each on the periphery of the cir-cle. They make designs together by taking hands,going under each other's arms, or changingplaces, all at the caller's command. They circleup four again and again, each time making newdesigns, imtil the caller finally directs them intoseveral concluding patterns that involve every-one, as indi\'iduals and couples travel in linesdown the dance floor and join with friends tobuild a community by ones, twos, and fours.Throughout, the sounds of dancing feet keeptime with the bluegrass, countiy, or old-timemusic played by the band.Old-Time Dancing HistoryOld-time square dancing probably has itsroots in several kinds of dance: English coimtn'
Susan Spalding, a Certified Movement Anahst and memberof the board of directors of the Congress on Research inDance, recently completed her Doctorate in Dance at TempleUniversity. She has co-edited a book ofpapersfrom two con-ferences she coordinated, entitled Communities in Motion:Dance, Tradition and Community. Her video donimen-tary Step Back Cindy: Old Time Dancing in SouthwestVirginia appeared on PBS in 1991.
dancing, Scottish and Irish reels, .\frican ringplays, and Native American social dances. Somebelieve that from coimtiy dancing came "sets" orcoordinated group patterns; from reels camecouples traveling in paths around each other ingroups of foiu"; from ring dances came the circlewhich begins and often ends the old-time squaredance. From all the above-mentioned traditionscame the expressi\'e indi\idual footwork knownvariously as flatfooting, clogging, or buck danc-ing. Along the way, old-time square dancing hastaken in elements of the popular dances of thetimes, such as African American Charleston stepsand rhyming calls of western club square dancefigiues. In this centvuT, old-time dancing hasbeen a regular recreation for European Ameri-cans, African Americans, and Native Americansin the central Appalachian region. It has evolvedto its present form over a period of 300 years ofinteraction among these groups.Each area has its own characteristic style,and people from one region can tell whereanother dancer comes from by the way he or shedances. North Carolina, Kentucky, and Virginiadancers have distinct movement styles and incor-porate different elements in their square dances.Even within southwest Virginia, each area has itsown particular qualities. The stylistic choicesmade by dancers over generations have beeninfluenced by a variety of factors, including poli-tics, economics, and patterns of migration. Forexample, old-time dancers in the coalfieldsregion have chosen to include many African-American elements in their dance because oftheir historical experience. During the first thirdof the 20th centuiy many African Americansoutherners were brought in to work in themines, and interethnic solidarity' was forged byoppressive living and working conditions. Incommon dance halls provided by the coal com-panies people of both groups coidd see eachother's dancing and trade ideas. As a result, the
AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE 77
local dancing became more percussive, andmore angular in appearance than the dancing ofother areas such as the Blue Ridge.In Chilhowie, dancing has been influencedin part by its location in the southern portion of
"The Great Valley" of Virginia, east of the coal-fields and west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Itstands on a major traffic corridor rimning fromPennsylvania to Tennessee which has continuallybrought new residents and new ideas to the Val-ley since pre-Columbian times. Valley residentshave developed a love of variety, which is evidentin the many different kinds of dances enjoyed inan evening, in the frequent changes within eachsquare dance, in dancers' desire to learn andpractice new steps, in the varieties of music usedfor old-time dancing, and in the several callerswho share the microphone at Chilhowie. EveiyFriday night at the Lions' Club, along with old-time square dancing, dancers do clogging, inwhich each person improvises footwork in timewith the music. Each evening also includes sever-al waltz and two-step tunes and at least onemixer, such as a Paul Jones or a Broom Dance.In addition to gathering on Friday nights, manydancers attend one of the area's several other
old-time dance establishments on Saturday nightand one or two nights during the week. Some gettogether on Mondays to practice new forms suchas coimtiy-western line dancing or western clubsquare dancing.Even though they may be lifetime area resi-dents whose parents danced, some dancers atthe Chilhowie Lions' Club have learned onlywithin the last 15 years due to the local renewalof interest in old-time dancing. Chilhowie resi-dent Evelyn Stiugill theorizes that this cultinalrevitalization is part of a growth in regional self-esteem. "We have learned to appreciate all thethings we were ashamed of We get out our oldquilts and things we used to make. We have hada revival of appreciation of our heritage."Dancing has become the primaiy form ofrecreation for many Lions' Club dancers. AsGene and Jane Salyers responded when askedabout other recreation, "I don't know what wedid do before we danced!" Dancing is said to be asource of fellowship, and a commimity ofdancers has developed as a result of seeing eachother several times weekly at dances and lessons.Dancer and musician Bill McCall, rememberingthe unexpected condolences sent by dancers on
Two girls observe and learn clogging techniques from more experienced dancers in Chilhowie, Virginia.Photo by French Sturgill
78 AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE
the death of his mother, says, "I think people areas congenial as they ever were. I think the reasonwe don't show it is because we don't visit [as weonce did]. I think this [dancing] has sort of over-come some of that." Care is taken that everyonehas an opportimity to dance. Caller Kirby Smithsays, "If yon don't have someone to dance with,come on your own. We'll make sure you getsomebody."Chilhowie's Old-Time Dancing:Form and StyleBy the beginning of this centuiy, old-timesquare dancing had reached its present form.Louise Widener, born in 1899, describes most ofthe figines danced today as having been done incountiT homes in her youth; a whole circlewould break into small circles of foin-, and all thesmall circles would dance at the same time,
"making puzzles" by holding hands and goingunder each other's arms.Today, each square dance includes an initialcircle left and right, swing, promenade, and alarge group pattern such as right hand chain, fol-lowed by at least six different two couple pat-terns, and, finally, two to four large group pat-terns. Many people keep clogging steps goingthroughoiu, so that the group rhythm on whichthe dance depends is audible, and the downwardpulse of the whole group on each beat is \isible.At the direction of the caller everyone workstogether in pairs, in groups of four, and in thegroup as a whole to produce clear designs andsynchronized dancing.In the first half of this centuiT. old-timedancing in the valley surroiuiding Chilhowie wasprimarily a rural, home-centered recreation. Insome communities dances were held every nightin different homes for two weeks around Christ-mas. In others they were held more or less week-ly in homes year-round, as well as in conjunctionwith cooperative work parties, such as quiltings,corn shuckings, and barn raisings. A fiddle usual-ly provided the music, soinetimes accompaniedby banjo, guitar, and bass. At home amongfriends, everyone could take part.Today's old-time dancing, though it nowoccms in public places, still inspires individualexpression in the footwork and group coopera-
tion and teamwork in the many small and largepatterns. Old-time dancing is still, above all,inclusive rather than exclusive, encouragingeveryone to participate, and seasoned dancersare always ready to teach newcomers.
Fuiiher ReadingsAbrahams, Roger. 1992. Singing the Master: TheEmergence ofAfrican-American Culture in thePlantation South. New York: Pantheon Books.Feintuch, Burt. 1981. Dancing to the Music:Domestic Square Dances and Community inSouthcentral Kentucky (1880-1940). /ouma/of the Folklore Institute 18:49-68.Friedland, LeeEllen. Forthcoming. SquareDance. In The International Encylopedia ofDance, ed. SelmaJeanne Cohen. Berkeley:University of California Press 1983.Hall, Frank. 1984-85. Improvisation and FixedComposition in Clogging. Journalfor theAnthropological Study ofHuman Movement3:200-217.Matthews, Gail V.S. 1983. Cutting A Dido: ADancer's-Eye View of Mountain Dance inHaywood Coimt)', N.C. Master's Thesis,Indiana University.Szwed, John, and Morton Marks. 1988. The Afro-American Transfonnation of Emopean SetDances and Dance Suites. Dance ResearchJournal 20:29-36.Wliisnant, David E. 1980. Finding the WayBetween the Old and the New: TheMountain Dance and Folk Festival andBascom Lamar Lunsford's Work as a Citizen.AppalachianJournal 7 {\-2)
.
Woodside, Jane, and Susan Spalding, eds.Forthcoming. Communities in Motion: Dance,Community and Tradition.
Suggested ViewingJohnson, Anne, and Susan Spalding. 1990. StepBack Cindy: Old Time Dancing in SouthwestVirginia. Video documentaiy includingChilhowie Lions' Club dancers. Wliitesburg,Kentucky: Appalshop, Inc.
AMERICAN SOCIAL DANCE 79
METRO MUSICMusic in MetropolitanWashingtonPhyllis M. May-Machunda
Washington, the capital cirs\ has long beenknown for its official culture and public celebra-tions such as presidential inaugurations. Inde-pendence Day pageantry, military band concerts,state funerals, and embassy receptions. Yet it hasanother reality, one sometimes hidden behindofficial functions. Washington, the residentialcity, burgeons with cultures transplanted frombeyond urban, state, and national boundaries aswell as hybrid traditions newly rooted in anurban environment.Metropolitan Washington, with over fourmillion residents, is cinrently home to more thanone million African Americans, 250,OOO HispanicAmericans, nearly 250,000 Asian/Pacific Ameri-cans, and thousands of other peoples fromaround the world. Unique forces have shapedthe cultural development of the distinct yet inter-
"Metw Music" lias been iiKiilr jiossible ivil/i llie supporl of lliereroiding iniliisliies Miisie I'ei/iiiiiitiiiee Iriisl I'iiiiils.
dependent residential communities located onthe banks of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers.Evolving as a center designed to meet the needsof national politics and government, the city nei-ther developed a culture based on a manufactur-ing economy nor drew a large European immi-grant populadon as did New York and Baltimore.Instead, it developed a strong workforce gearedto service and government. The metropolitanarea has been enriched by a continual influx ofpeople from the South and, more recently, immi-grants from Central America, the Caribbean,Southeast Asia and the Horn of Africa. For thou-sands who have moved to the area, the city hasbeen a focal point of ardent dreams, expandinghopes, and magnificent intentions. Viewing thecity as an environment of distinctly Americanpossibilities, people have flocked to Washingtonthroughout its 200-year histoiy, in search ofrefuge, a better life, and greater opportunitiesfor freedom, education, power, respect, employ-ment, and financial security. While some have
The D.C. Harmoneerssing at a Gospel programin Washington. The Har-moneers, founded in1952, are one of nearly80 gospel quartets activein the D.C. area. Photocourtesy D.C. Commis-sion on the Arts
80 METRO MUSIC
come with abundant wealth, others have broughtlittle more than themselves, their values, andtheir traditions to sustain themselves in theirtransition to a new situation.Music is among the most vital of these intan-gible traditional resources that help to supportthese Washingtonians. To luiderstand the tradi-tional musics of Washington, we may first look atthe variety of communities that create and carryon these traditions.Urban dwellers characteristically belong tomultiple communities svich as those based onoccupational, religious, residential, social/recre-ational, familial, and ethnic affiliations. A mem-ber of a community may or may not share mem-bership with the people who participate in thevarious areas of his or her daily life. For example,some Korean Americans in Washington may live,work, and socialize together, but many middle-class African Americans in Washington typicallydo not. The people with whom African Ameri-cans work may not be the same people who livein their neighborhoods or with whom they social-ize on a regtilar basis.Each community has developed particularinstitutions and networks of support facilitatingsocial interaction and exchange of information.Some of these communities are defined by geo-graphical boimdaries, such as a neighborhood,and traditions may emerge out of that experi-ence. Other communities may lack geographicdefinition biU share common characteristics suchas age, ethnicity, occupation, social interests, oreven family relationship. The sharing of values,perspectives, and experience creates a basis forthe existence and growth of tradition. Music pro-vides a channel for the expression of community-based values.In large cities such as Washington, traditionalcommunities find economical and efficient waysto disseminate information about their activities.Washington has dozens of ethnic and neighbor-hood newspapers, bilingual and special interestradio and television programs, church bulletins,flyers, and multi-colored posters announcingupcoming community events not mentioned bymainstream media. Churches, neighborhoodschools, restaurants, community centers, andlocal festivals are a few of the institutions that
Phyllis May-Machunda is an AssistanI Professor ofHuman-ities and Multicultural Studies at Moorhead State Universityin Moorhead, Minnesota. She was formerly on staffin theOffice ofFolklife Programs as afolklorist and ethnomusicolo-gislfrom 1985-1989.
support traditional performance. Such communi-ty institutions not only disseminate informationabout the traditions but also may offer a place toconstruct, rehearse, transmit, and present it aswell.Music is a central part of festive occasionsand celebrations as well as an integral featine ofeveryday life. People mark what they feel is dis-tinctive and valuable through the use of music,frequently accompanied by dance and ritual. Forinstance, various Asian communities of Washing-ton have maintained some of the seasonal cere-monies of their homelands, such as Lao or Chi-nese New Year's celebrations. These elaborateand colorful ceremonial events incorporatemusic, costumes, parades, food, and dance anddraw community members from the entire east-ern seaboard.Washington has long been a center of gospelmusic. Gospel music thrives in a variety of formsin this city, ranging from the harmonies of tradi-tional quartet groups to the sounds of more con-temporaiy soloists, ensembles, and choirs, someof which blend classical techniques with more tra-ditional African Ainerican gospel music. AfricanAinerican churches have served as a primary con-duit for the transmission of musical aesthetics,even for those who have studied music privately.Hundreds of churches support numerous choirs,smaller family groups, and other ensembles andsoloists who provide their memberships withgospel music. They have offered sympathetic andnurturing performance environments for thosewho have directed their skills to the glorificationof the Lord. Gospel music is central to a varietyof community events in addition to regular ser-vices: for example, pastor, choir, and churchanniversary celebrations, as well as funerals arefilled with gospel music. Some churches regularlyhouse rehearsals and sponsor concerts by com-munity artists oiUside of their own membership.These activities and frequent performances atother churches in and out of the city provideopportunities for mutual exchanges of ideas,news, and repertoire.Some of the newest and most intense secularmusical performances in Washington arise fromAfrican American youth. Go-go, a dance musictradition born in this city, is usually performed bysmall bands. Layered rhythmic patterns areblended with call-and-response, percussive instru-mental riffs, and quotations from familiarmelodies, frequently overlayered with rap andaccompanied by coordinated movement. Lesscomplex in their multi-layered structures but
METRO MUSIC 81
THE MUSIC PERFORMANCE TRUST FUNDSEach year since the 1970s, the Music Perfor-mance Trust Funds (MPTF) have generouslysupported musicians performing at the Festivalof American Folklife.The MPTF was founded in 1948. At that timenew technology had made long-playing phono-graph recordings possible. But sound recordingsinitially caused performers to lose employmentand income, since people could listen to theserecordings over and over again without paymentto the musicians. Negotiations between therecording industry and the musicians' unionestablished a pool of funds to compensate per-formers. The recording industiy contribiUesmoney to MPTF from the sales of LP, cassette,and CD albums.MPTF support of free, live, public perfor-mances like those at the Festival has many impor-tant benefits. The exposure that reiativelv little-
known musicians receive at these performancesimproves the chances that they will be offeredrecording contracts. When musicians alreadyhave recordings on the market, the perfor-mances stimulate increased sales. The events alsohelp raise the level of understanding for a widerrange of music and build greater audienceappreciation for live performance.To date, the MPTF has spent more than$340 million on its projects. MPTF has enabledthe Smithsonian to research and present rich tal-ent at the Festival every year for two decades. Ithas been crucial in oiu" ability to offer many rela-tively unknown musicians "equal time" withestablished career musicians. Many of today'swell-known artists in fact had their first introduc-tion to the commercial world when they playedtogether with professional musicians on MPTF-fiuided projects.
related in their uses of rhytiimic patterns, repeti-tion, and call-and-response structures are severalother forms that have dominated many of theexpressive and competitive play energies ofD.C.'s youth, including female activities such ascheering, double dutch (a form of jump ropingincorporating multiple ropes), and collegiateperformance genres such as stepping, a type offraternal "cheer."The urban environment offers special oppor-tunities for cultural contact and exchange amonga variety of communities and ethnic groups. Oneexample is in the Adams Morgan and Mt. Pleas-ant neighborhoods, long recognized as the cen-ter of cultural actixaty in the city for Hispanic andAfrican people from the U.S., Central and SouthAmerican, the Caribbean, and Africa. The His-panic population in this part of the city consistspredominately of refugees from Guatemala andEl Salvador, with smaller numbers from Mexico,Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Some groups, such asCubans, arrived in more than one wave of migra-tion, each from a different social class and carry-ing a different set of cultural traditions. Many ofthese commimities celebrate select traditions par-ticular to their own cultures. However, in othercases, where fewer community members can passon specific traditions, many residents of Adams
Morgan have been forced to focus on other tradi-tions similar to their own. This sharing of tradi-tions has resulted in a synthesis or pan-ethnicstyle, celebrating a multicultural heritage. In thisurban milieu Hispanic, Caribbean, and Africanmusicians constantly create new urban perfor-mance forms by drawing fragments from knownrepertoires and styles and transforming theminto new expressions through the use of new har-monies, updated texts, and changes in tempo,rhythmic configurations, or performance style.These traditional musicians often learn to play ina variety of musical styles from outside their owncultures in order to satisfy the tastes of theirdiverse audiences. The events for which they per-form are rarely attended solely bv their own eth-nic communities. The musicians are able toswitch musical styles as easily as others switchdialects within a language to commimicate totheir chosen audiences.Music is ephemeral, yet enduring. It embod-ies the values and aesthetics of a culture throughwords and restructuring of soimd. It is flexibleenough to incorporate melodies or poetiy him-dreds of years old, yet able to address the mostcontemporaiy issues with relative ease. An inte-gral part of living, traditional culture thrives inurban Washington, D.C., through music.
82 METRO MUSIC
Suggested ListeningAdams, Tom. Right Hand Mom. Rounder 0282.Ganga: Livefrom Berlin. InternationalManagement.Jackson, John. Don't Let Your Deal Go Down.Arhoolie 378.The Johnson Mountain Boys. Blue Diamond.Rounder 0293.Kouyate, Djimo. West African Kora Music. Music ofthe World TlOl.Mulvihill, Brendan and Donna Long. TheMorning DeiiK Green Linnet 1128.Oboade. Kpanlogo Party. Lyricord 7251.
Hasan Mohammed, originally from Ethiopia, performs atthe Twins Restaurant in Washington. Photo by BalshaGebretsadik, courtesy D.C. Commission on the Arts
Li Tian Xiong is a jinghu player with theHan Sheng Chinese Opera Institute. Thetroupe was founded in 1977 by DavidLee to promote Peking Opera in theWashington area. Photo by Wei-Ye Jia,courtesy D.C. Commission on the Arts.
METRO MUSIC 83
KIDS' STUFFKids' Stuff:Children's Traditions of Play andPerformance in Metropolitan D.C.Diana Baird N'DiayeNowhere is the essence of childhoodrevealed more authentically than in play. A viva-cious and expressive play culture is still createdand shared by children within the Washington,D.C. metropolitan area despite TV, Nintendo,other toys and entertainment manufactured byadults, and in the face of ever more difficult real-ities of growing up in the city. The 1993 Smith-sonian Festival of American Folklife highlightssome of these traditions of children's play andperformance. The Festival presents forms thatinvite participation by the whole group such asclapping games, ring plays, call-and-responsesinging, and double dutch. Also presented aregenres, such as rhythmic bucket brigades, thatare consciously created for an audience.The program explores the ways children ineach generation create, learn, and breatherenewed vitality into forms of play and expressivetiaditions and the ways they teach them to theirpeers and to yoiuiger friends and siblings. Chil-dren in metro D.C. accimiulate extensive knowl-edge and master skills while engaged in creativeplay shaped by tradition on city streets, in subur-ban backyards, at recreation centers, at Saturdayand Sunday schools organized by ethnic commu-nities, and in school playgrounds.Many people think of a tradition bearer asan elder who has acciunulated knowledge andacquired expertise in a long lifetime of practice.But children's traditions are learned, performed,and passed on within a very short time span,among people who have yet to live two decades.
Curator of "Kids ' Sliilj. " Dniiin Ban/I NDiaye h an anlhro-potogist on the sill11 nf ihr Sniilh\(iiii/iii iiiilcr for FolklifePrograms and Ciillimil Sliidit's mid llic jiairnl of two kids,Alhouri, 14, and Mame N 'Gone. 12, who have providedvaluable expertisefor this project. Ms. Baird N'Diaye contin-ues to be involved in issues ofeducational outreach at the
.Smithsonian and educational reform in the metropolitanWashington area.
So it is somewhat paradoxical that many of theclapping games and songs featured in the pro-gram hark back many centinies, and even the rel-atively new plav traditions presented have beeninvented dining the past few generations. Formsof play are tenaciously long-lasting as each newgeneration claims ownership. In a painting com-pleted in the 16th centiuy, Dutch painter PieterBruegel (the Elder) documented a great varietyof children's games played in his native city ofAmsterdam. It is remarkable how many of thegames that he depicted can be recognized onplaygroimds in and around Washington, D.C.today.In the Washington metro area, as elsewhere,local street play traditions are taught mainly bychildren to other children. Some remain localand specific to the commimities in which they arecreated and performed. Others travel by word ofmouth, observation, and imitation throughneighborhoods and towns, across state andnational borders, and sometimes even across con-tinents. The demographics of the metro regionguarantee a large and diverse children's culture.The cultiual composition of the city is reflect-ed in the neighborhood traditions that childrenbring to the Festival. Some children are AfricanAmerican and have parents and grandparentswho are long-term residents in the metro area orhave migrated from states fiuther south. Otherchildren and their families hail from differentparts of the Spanish-speaking Americas, whilemore recent immigrants from coimtries in Africaand Asia bring games from their homelands.European traditions in music and play songs,transmitted informally and through institutional-ized play in nurseiy schools and kindergartenclassrooms, can also be foimd at the Festival.Longtime residents of the metro area lamentthe fragility of childhood and the increasinglydangerous tiun of children's games. The nightlynewscasts too often remind us that for many chil-
84 KIDS' STUFF
Members of the championshipfifth grade double dutch team atSeaton Elementary School in theDistrict of Columbia show somedeft moves on Easter Monday'straditional African American fam-ily event at the National Zoo.Photo by Diana Baird N'Diaye
dren growing up in the cit}', giin-play and pre-tend games of gangster have tinned all too realwith deadly consequences.Children's culture has always reflected thecircumstances of its creation, and those timesand places have rarely been idyllic for inany chil-dren. Rhymes and games such as "Ring Around aRosey" that seem so innocuous today representchildren's experience of the epidemics of bubon-ic plague that ravaged Europe. The words do notseem threatening because the situation they com-ment on is far away. Yet there are modern-dayexamples. In the 1950s the dangers of contract-ing polio may have been reflected in children'suse of "cooties." And some scholars have pointedto the cinrent children's game of booger tag orbooger touch as reflecting anxiety over contract-ing AIDS. The tales told by contemporary citychildren may not always be palatable to adultsbut they both reflect and provide a way of deal-ing with the situations of real life. In this play ofthe imagination children seek control over theconditions they meet every day. In these formsthey sometimes gain the powers of eloquentexpression and cultural transcendence.Kids' Stuff encourages participation and dia-logue as well as demonstration and observation.You are invited, young and old, to join in this cel-ebration of children's play and performance.
Further ReadingsBabcock, W.H. 1888. Games of WashingtonChildren. American Anthropologist\o\ 1: 243-284.
Cole, Joanne. 1989. Anna Banana: 101 Jump RopeRhymes. New York: Morrow Junior Books.Schwartz, AlNin. 1989. I Saw You in the Bathtuband Other Folk Rliymes. New York: I Can ReadBooks, HarperCollins Publishers.Walker, Barbara K. 1992. Laughing Together:Gi^ks and Grinsfrom Around the Globe.Minneapolis: Free Spirit Publishing.Warren Mattox, Cheryl. 1989. Shake It to the Onethat You Love the Best. El Sobrante, CA:Warren Mattox Productions.
Suggested ListeningCabral, Len. Nho Lobo and Other Stories. StorySoimd Productions 101.Cabral, Len. Anansi Stories and Others. StorySound Productions 102.Harley, Bill. Dinosaurs Never Say Pkase. RoimdRiver Records 103.Harley, Bill. Cool in School. Roimd Ri\er Records104.Harley, Bill. Come On Out and Play. Round RiverRecords 107.Harley, Bill. Groiiniups are Strange. Roimd RiverRecords 106.Jenkins, Ella. Littlejohnny Brown.Smithsonian/Folkways C-SF 45026.Paz, Suni. Candories para el Recreo/Children's Songsfor the Playground. Smithsonian/Folkways C-SF 45013.'^Seeger, Pete. American Game and Activity Songs forChildren. Smithsonian/Folkways C-SF 45025.
KIDS' STUFF 85
City PlayAmanda Dargan Cf Steven Zeitlin
This essay is adapti'd from the authors ' recent hook CityPlay. Copyright ? 1 990 by Rutgeys, The Stale Univer-
sity. Reprinted by permission ofRutgers UniversityPress.When John Jacob Rascob and his partnerstransformed the New York skyline by erectingthe Empire State Building, they probably neverconsidered that beneath the tower's express ele-vators the old Siinfish Creek had once formed anatural swimming hole: nor did they imaginethat, across the East River in Queens, childrenwould use the switching on of the building'slights to tell the time for coming in from play.Indeed, the architects of American cities did notdesign stoops for ballgames or sidewalks forjumping rope, and no one considered the haz-ard to kites when they put up telephone wires.Yet as a result of countless design decisions likethese, a yoimg person's experience of New Yorkgradually changed ? as streets were paved,buildings grew upward, cars pushed childrenfrom the streets, rowhouses filled once vacantlots, and the increasing density led to rooftopgames and cellar clubs.We begin with the idea that we can under-stand a place ? in this case New York City? byexploring the traditional activities that give itmeaning. These highly localized and repeatedactivities shape our experience of the city.Through play, harsh and imposing city objectsoften made of metal and concrete are imbued
Amanda Dargan is the director of the Folk Arts Program atthe Queens Council on the Arts in New York. She is theauthor ofseveral books and articks on family folklore andchildren 's play traditions.Steven Zeitlin is the director and co-founder of City Lore, anorganization dedicated to the preservation ofNew York City 'sliving cultural heritage. He is the co-author ofa number ofbooks on American folk culture including A. Celebration ofAmerican Family Folklore.
with human values, associations, and memories.Play is one of the ways we develop a sense ofneighborhood in a large city. Play is one of theways a city street becomes "oiu" block."Barging out of doors with play on theirminds, city children confront stoops, hydrants,telephone poles, lampposts, cars, brick walls,concrete sidewalks, and asphalt streets. Childrenleaping froin the dooi-ways as He-Man andSheera, or Captain Blood, Superinan, or theKnights of the Round Table, have at their dispos-al an array of swords and shields, which to theiminitiated more closely resemble dentedgarbage can lids and discarded imibrellas. Forthe would-be circus performer or ballet dancer,the stoop provides the perfect stage. Those withball in hand have manhole covers, cars, hydrants,and lampposts to define a playing field. Jumpingoff ledges, using discarded mattresses and boxsprings as trampolines, or riding bikes up rampsmade from scrap wood, they enjoy the dizzyingthrills of vertigo. Each kind of play? vertigo,mimicry, chance, physical skill, and strategy?has its own city settings and variants.In the crowded, paved-over city, urbandwellers joyfully locate play by incorporating fea-tures of the urban landscape into their games;they transform the detritus of luban life intohomemade playthings and costimies; and theyexert control over their environment, creatingand passionately defending private spaces.In his essay "Fun in Games," Ei"ving Goffmanspeaks of play as "focused interaction," in whichrules of pla)^!^ transformation tell players howthe real world will be modified inside theencounter. With the outside world held at bay,players create a new world within. A kind ofmembrane forms aroimd them. They often expe-rience a sense of intimacy, the closeness of shar-ing a world apart.Certain kinds of action outside the gamesuch as an ambulance going by or a building
KIDS' STUFF
ffi IT'.
Girls perform "cheers" at theMarcy Projects in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Photo bySteven Zeitlin, courtesy QueensCouncil on the Arts
manager yelling out the window can cause theplay scene to "flood out," bursting the mem-brane. Wlien we think of playing fields, we thinkperhaps of diamonds, gridirons, courts, and play-grounds, but a playing field can in fact be any-where. It is more akin to an energy field thatrepels forces oiuside its domain of interest andenvelops the players with a force as powerful astheir concentration.Within play worlds, time has its own mea-sures: "We played until it got too dark to see,"many people told us. Children play while the lastreflection of twilight in the sky still dimly silhou-ettes a flying ball; they will play while hunger isstill possible to ignore. "The heat of day, the chillof rain, even the pangs of hunger," wiites Bar-bara Biber, "are not sufficient to intrude on theabsorption of a child at play." Play time is mea-sured not according to minutes and hours butaccording to the rules and structures of play;time often goes by in a "split second," meteredby the turning of a rope or the rhythm of arhyme; "Doctor, doctor will I die? / Yes, mychild, and so will I. / How many moments will Ilive? / One, two, three, four . . ."In play, rules and boundaries are defined bythe players themselves. This is first base ? andso it is. This sidewalk square is jail, this brokenantenna is a ray gun ? and through the magicof play, they are. Transformation is the processof recasting the rules, the boundaries, theimages, the characters of the real world withinthe boundaries of play. This is at the heart ofplay; taking a space or an object and devising anew use for it, thereby making it one's own.As they transform the cit)' for play, childrenmanifest a remarkable imagination. A playful
order prevails. Hydrants, curbs, and cornices ofthe city become a gameboard. The castoffs of cityliving? bottle caps, broomsticks, and tin cans?become playing pieces. "The older kids," writesSam Levenson, "taught the younger ones the artsand crafts of the street." Growing up in an EastHarlem tenement, he recalls how
ashcan covers were converted intoRoman shields, oatmeal boxes into tele-phones, combs covered with tissue paperinto kazoos ... a chicken gullet intoRobin Hood's horn, candlesticks intotrumpets, orange crates into store coun-ters, peanuts into eariings, hatboxes intodrums, clothespins into pistols, andlumps of sugar into dice.
Street toys are not "found objects"; they aresearched for. A great deal of effort often goesinto locaUng and shaping precisely the rightobject for play. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, forinstance, prized caps for the sidewalk game ofskelly were fashioned by filing a Moosehead Alebottleneck on the curb to produce a glass ringsmooth enough to glide along concrete. In Asto-ria, the best skelly pieces were the plastic caps onthe feet of school desks.Neighborhoods provide different raw mate-rials. In Chinatown, mothers who work in thegarment industiy provide sought-after items.Jacks are often made from buttons? each "but-ton jack" consisting of a set of five or six buttonssewn together. Children use rubberbandshooked together to create a "Chinesejumprope." The elastic is stretched between the feetof two girls while a third does cat's cradle-like
KIDS' STUFF 87
carded refrigerator box, "We're just kids! I amfive and he is three and we rule eveiything!"The scholarly interest in children's folklorein the United States dates from the work ofWilliam Wells Newell, who helped to found theAmerican Folklore Society in 1888. Like many ofthe scholars who docimiented children's gamesafter him, Newell was primarily interested in tra-ditional games and rhymes which had sin-\'ivedacross generations of children. Collecting fromboth adults and children in Boston, New York,and Philadelphia, Newell believed that the
"quaint" rhymes of children were "sin"\'ivals" and
"relics" of ancient song and poeti^.Contemporaiy folklorists believe that chil-dren's rhymes and games are more interestingbecause of the way they comment on the presentrather than the past. Nonetheless, through a cen-tuiT of collecting, scholars have emphasized tra-ditional rhymes and games, transmitted throughthe generations in fixed phrases. The rhymesand games gathered in these works echo oneanother, and their texts affirm the consenatismof children, who pass on rhymes with small varia-tions from one generation to the next. In NewYork, some of the rhymes have a distinctiveurban flavor:
A boy plays with stilts in the Lower East Side of Manhat-tan, New York. Photo by Martha Cooper, City Lore
stiuits with her legs. Sometimes, the ropes arefashioned from white elastic bands which moth-ers bring home from the factories.
"Play," writes Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett,
"is an arena of choice in many contexts wherelife options are limited." In a crowded city withits contested arenas, the freedom to play is hard-ly regarded as a basic human right. In some partsof the city where space is uncontested, a childcan mark the boundaries of a play space with apiece of chalk, and nothing more is needed; chil-dren can "frame" their play space with boimd-aries based on mutual agreement. More often,however, the task of establishing play spacestakes on a different character as young and oldbattle for autonomy and control. Perhaps thetoughness sometimes perceived in city childrenmay come from the himian battles they fight toearn and maintain the right to playfully trans-form some autonomous space in the city.Through it all, children strive to gain controlover their play worlds. As Alissa Duffy chanted asshe and a friend jimiped up and down on a dis-
I won't go to Macy's any more,more, more.There's a big fat policeman at the door,door, door.He'll grab you by the collar and makeyou pay a dollar.I won't go to Macy's any more,more, more.
I should wony, I should care,I should many a millionaire.He should die, I should ciy,I should many another guy.
Flat to rent, inquire within,A lady got put out for drinking gin.If she promises to drink no moreHere's the key to 's front door.Bin though scholars and laypeople have alongstanding interest in the consei-vatism of tra-ditional rhymes and games, improxasation hasalways played a major role in children's play.Bess Lomax Hawes writes about the "apparentlyparadoxical co-existence of rules and innovationwithin play." She obsei-ved children playing agame whose object was to step on all the sidewalk
88 KIDS' STUFF
A boy plays skelly in the neighborhood ofSunnyside in Queens, New York. Photo bySteven Zeitlin, courtesy Queens Council onthe Arts
cracks, an exact inversion of another popularneighborhood game, "step on a crack, breakyour mother's back." She suggests that "onlythose cultural items which are susceptible to vari-ation have much chance of survival." Yet, thoughscholars have noted the impro\isatory qualit\' inchildren's lore, this kind of play has rarely beenthoroughly documented, nor has it received thekind of attention paid to traditional children'sgames.Our work emphasizes the improvisatory sideof children's lore; children may be jimiping tothe same rhymes, and playing the same games,but they are impro\'ising with the materials,negotiating the rules, and imaginatively fittingthem into various cit)' spaces. After all, before agame can be played, the players must agreeupon the rules; and in the city, figiuing out therules? deciding just how an abstract set of regu-lations will apply to this space at this moment?is as important as the game itself. Traditionalgames and rhymes are testaments to the conser-vatism of children; but the ways the games areactually played at any given moment, the waysthey are adapted to particular urban settings,and the ways they are improvised upon reveals acreativity that is no less important to the legacy.
"Play as a medium of adventure infuses allaspects of city life," notes Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.As 'poets of their own acts,' players inthe city occupy space temporarily: theyseize the moment to play as the opportu-nity arises, inserting the game into theinterstices of the city's grid and sched-ule. . . . Wliile lacking the kinds of insti-
tutions and spaces controlled by thepowers that be, players transform themundane into an adventure by means ofa rope, a ball, a dance or a haircut inspaces occupied for the moment. Thoseadventures lead in many directions. . . .
Further ReadingsBronner, Simon J. 1988. American Children'sFolklore. Little Rock, Arkansas: August House.Dargan, Amanda, and Steven Zeitlin. 1990. CityPlay. New Brimswick, New Jersey: RutgersUniversity Press.Hale, Ethel, and Oliver Hale. 1938. "FromSidewalk, Gutter and Stoop: Being aChronicle of Children's Play and GameActivity." Manuscript, 2 packages. New YorkPublic Libran'.Hawes, Bess Lomax, and Bessie Jones. 1972. StepIt Down: Games, Plays, Songs, and Storiesfromthe Afro-American Heritage. New York: Harperand Row.Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1983. TheFiUure of Folklore Studies in America: TheUrban Frontier. FolkloreForum 16: 175-233.Mergen, Bernard. 1982. Play and Playthings: AReference Guide. Westport, Connecticut:Greenwood Press.Nasaw, David. 1985. Children of the City: At Workand at Play, 1900-1920. New York:Doubleday.Opie, lona, and Peter Opie. 1969. Children'sGames in Street and Playground. Oxford:Clarendon Press.
KIDS' STUFF 89
FESTIVAL RESEARCH REPORTThe JerusalemFestival ProjectAmy Horoxvitz
Once, I was sitting on the steps by agate at David's Tower. I had placed mytwo heavy baskets at my side. A group oftourists was standing aroimd their guideand I became their target marker.
"You see that man with the baskets?Just to the right of his head there's anarch from the Roman period ? just tothe right of his head!"
"But he's moving, he's moving," Isaid to myself. Redeinption will onlycome when their guide tells them, "Yousee that arch from the Roman period?It's not important. But next to it, to theleft and down a bit, there sits a manwho's bought fruit and vegetables for hisfamily." Yehuda Amichai, 1987
I wonder, Leah, what would it takefor two women ripened by age, experi-ence, and heartache to build a bridge ofpeace rather than a fortress of war?I do not stretch out my hand to youin strength. This kind of strength meansvictory at war and I do not wish for anymore wars for either of us. Nor do Istretch it out in weakness, for weaknessis succumbing to the status quo and Iwon't accept that. Let us both stretchout our hands in equality and acknowl-edge each other's humanity and rights.I ask you to please extend a specialsalute to the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem,The Street of Sorrow. It is a road thatyou and I have been traveling for a longtime.Can we take fate into om^ own handsand say, "Enough!"Wliat will it really take?Hala Deeb Jabbour, 1986
For reasons that Mr. Amichai and IVIs. Jab-bour's words make clear, the Jerusalem Festivalproject? begim in the summer of 1992 by theCenter for Folklife Programs and Cultural Stud-ies to produce a living exhibition at the Festivalof American Folklife? has a complicated anddifficult task. Its goal is to document and presentthe cultural expression of the people who live inthis ancient city. And accomplishing this meansresisting the magnetic pull of the historic sitesand addressing the realities of the people them-selves who dwell in Jerusalem in 1993. In theAugust heat, they pause to reflect and catch theirbreath in a city that has captured imaginationsfor millennia.Like many urban centers, Jerusalem is a cityof cities. Israelis, mainlyJews, live in WestJerusalem. Palestinians, with a Sunni Muslimmajority and a sizable Christian minority, live inEastJerusalem. There are exceptions to thesegeneralities, and as politics constantly reshapethe socio-geographical landscape, lives are pro-foundly affected. You become aware ofimmarked cleavages in the city by the color ofthe municipal buses, by the languages spoken onthe stieet and written on signs, by the clothespeople wear, and by the music spilling out of carradios. The boundaries between Jewish and ArabJerusalem are never really forgotten in thecourse of daily life.Over 40 Jewish ethnic groups live in WestJerusalem; in East Jerusalem Muslims live togeth-er with Christian neighbors belonging to some ofmore than 15 Orthodox and Western churchesrepresented throughout the city. In both Eastand West Jerusalem, residents with roots in Asia,
Field research for theJerusalem Festival project has been madepossible by the generous support of the Nathan CummingsFoundation, Ruth Mott Foundation, Miaosoft Corporatioti,and David Schoenhach.
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In this map (1580), the world is seen as a clover leaf, and Jerusalem is its center, surrounded by Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Africa, Europe, and America interact with peoplewho can trace their roots for generations in thiscity.Who are the women, men, and children ofJerusalem? How do they earn the money it takesto rent an apartment, buy winter olives, and paytaxes? How do they stitch together the traditionsthat they learned from their parents with thedemands and tensions of contemporan- life inJerusalem? How do they hand this cultural legacyover to their children?Each Jerusalemite has his or her own reasonsfor living in the city. For some, it is where theirforbears have always lived; for others where theirforbears have always prayed to live. Still others
Amy Horowitz is Curator of theJenisakm Festival project atthe Centerfor Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies at theSmithsonian Institution. She holds an M.A. inJewish Stud-iesfrom New York University and is a doctoral candidate atthe Department ofFolklore at the University ofPennsylvania.She has been Artist Representativefor the African Americanacapella group, Sivecl Honey In The Rock for 16 years.
came because of a job, a spouse, a college eckica-tion. For those arriving from war and oppressionelsewhere Jerusalem is a refuge, for those unableto return she is a longing.The Jerusalem Festival project has askedthese people to share their knowledge with usand with the American people. In response theyinvited us into their homes and taught us aboutthe way they live their lives, the problems theyface, the traditions they teach their children,the songs they sing, the fabrics they embroider,the stories they heard from their grandparents,the prayers they know by heart, the foods theyeat, the Jobs they do, the jokes they tell, the ritu-als that accompany birth, adulthood, and death.In July of 1992, two parallel research teams,one Israeli and one Palestinian, agreed to partici-pate with oiu" Center in a research project direct-ed by Dr. Galit Hasan Rokem, a folklorist fromHebrew University, and Dr. Suad Amii'y, an archi-tect from Bir Zeit University. Together wedesigned a plan by which 40 Palestinian andIsraeli scholars, students, and community mem-bers would help us explore the diversity of cultur-
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Local community members ancJ scholars jointly carried out research for the Jerusalem Festival project.Serene HIeleh interviews a Palestinian oud player, Abu Ghranam at his home. Photo by Yacub Arefheh
al life in Jerusalem with an eye to presenting aselection of the flndings at the Festival of Ameri-can Folklife.The two research teams worked over the pastyear on different terrains and imder differentconditions to discover and document their con-temporaiy cultural traditions. Like any road toJerusalem, their joiuneys were filled with imex-pected twists and turns and constant negotiationsto overcome obstacles. These scholars dugbeneath the CNN soundbites and their own pre-conceived notions. They confronted their ownfeelings about their ancient heritages and uncer-tain futures as they walked between sunbakedstones. They recorded tales and memories oflocal residents colored by time and by re-tellingacross generations and continents. They gath-ered accounts of pilgrims who made the journeyto Jewish, Christian, and Moslem holy places forthousands of years, and they documented pre-sent-day tourists who walk those paths today.They examined cultural aspects of headlines,punch lines, demonstration lines, and bus lines.They looked at holidays, soccer games, and thesounds of sellers in the market. They recorded
calls to prayer and the calls to action.As we listened we began to imderstand some-thing about how people try to live ordinary livesunder extraordinaiy conditions. Daily existencein Jerusalem is franted by war and conflict, heroicdevotion and unquestioning conviction, check-pciints and strikes, and the relentless cameras,expectations, assumptions, and interruptions ofoutsiders who claim to have the answers to sup-port their version of the truth about Jerusalem.The aesthetic cultural expressions thatemerge in contemporai")'Jerusalem are as com-plexly layered as those of any heterogeneousurban en\'ironment in which people create anartistic dialogue between traditional repertoires.Unlikely combinations of aesthetics and culturalideas are brought together by modern technolo-gies like cassettes, faxes, 747's, and microwaves.The result is folklore in motion; Hebrew prayersvocalized in Greek and Turkish melodies changeto Qtiranic recitations amplified in Arabic fromlocal minarets and then again to Armenian folkpoetry sinig to a western rock beat. The result iscontact culture; French croissants laced with alocal herb called zaiar. Eastern Etiropean gefilte
92 RESEARCH REPORT
School girls stop for a moment from play In the Nachlaot neighborhood. West Jerusalem is made up of over 40 Jewishethnic groups including communities from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Photo by Amy Horowitz
fish sei'ved next to Middle Eastern dumplingscalled kubbeh.Cultural expression in Jerusalem is often adiscourse of conflict: jokes about the Hebrew orArabic dialects spoken by various ethnic orurban groups, songs about the 1967 war as a vic-toiy and about the same war as the beginning ofoccupation. Kurdish Jews in Jerusalem sing bal-lads to their old friends in Iraq. PalestinianChristians combine lyrics about Christ and theintifada in Palm Sunday hymns.The Jerusalem Festival project searchedamidst the monuments and ancient inscriptionsfor the human beings inhabiting the city today.In our research, we tried to guard against devel-oping a romantic picture of ancient stone andolive tree that omits the daily conflicts, televisionantennas, laundry lines, and soda bottles sharingthe landscape with holy sites. We encouragedourselves to record the scene complete withlaundry flapping and women scrubbing walkwaysclean of relentlessJerusalem dust. We also triedto avoid romanticizing our approach, our schol-arly clarity, and our own attempts at deconstruc-tion lest our cultural vocabulary be taken as anew icon or an authority in itself. Ours is to be apicture, not //(f picture.
Cultural Sketches froma Work in Progress
^alatimo's small pastiy shop is a renownedlandmark in Jerusalem's Old City for local Pales-tinians and Arabs throughout the Middle East.The store is tucked slightly back from one of themain streets, Bab Khan Ezzeit, crowded withevei7 kind of small market shop. As we duck intothe shop we can hear the bells chiming nearby inthe Holy Sepulchre.Zalatimo is bending over little balls of doughwhich he .swiftly rolls out into circles. He pausesand welcomes us in Arabic, Salam Aleikum,(peace be with you). Then he tosses the doughin the air, stretches and lays it out, and fills itwith nuts. In an instant the pastry is ready to bebaked in the old stone oven.Zalatimo's father, Daoiid Zalafimo, came toJerusalem from Beirut in 1860 and opened up afamily business. Today, his sons and grandsonshelp him prepare the traditional pastry calledmutabak. The family tradition is so renowned thatpeople often say "let's go to the Old City andhave a Zalatimo."Zalatimo works almost without pause. Soontrays of pastiy sit cooling in the back room
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It takes Bashir more than a month to com-plete a window. He carves designs manu-ally using hand tools and occasionally anelectric drill, carefully slanting the angle toallow light to pass through. Photo byJoan Wolbier
between ancient pillars that have stood theresince the Roman period.In 1917 ten Ainienian craftsmen werebrought from Turkey toJerusalem to helprestore the ceramic tiles in the Dome of theRock. Armenians were enduring persecution andStefan and Berge Karkashian's father was chosenand took refuge in the Armenian Quarter of theOld City. In Jerusalem, they established a thriv-ing ceramic industry and became integrated intothe cultural life of the Palestinian community.Today potteiy adorned with exquisiteregional designs? symmetrical Islamic patterns,floral arabesques, and Armenian Christian andPersian themes? is displayed in their shop onVia Dolorosa along with plaques designed byPalestinian artist Kamal Boulatta and othersinscribed with Jewish prayers and astrologicalsigns. All the painted brush work is hand doneby Palestinian women each with a special style.Their artistry helps to make this potteiy uniqueamongst the crafts of the Old City. Stefan saysthat he feels his father's shadow and memorybehind each ceramic piece in the shop.
We find Bashir Musa AJ Muaswis, the onlylocal craftsman of plaster-cai'ved stained-glasswindows, intensely focused in his studio in theHaram (the Muslim Holy Shrine which includesthe Dome of the Rock and AJ Aqsa Mosque).Working in a tradition practiced in the Muslimworld since the 12th centuiy, he is helping torestore the stained-glass windows of these holymonuments. The windows create a diffused andspiritual light that reflects on the richly colored7th century floral mosaic inside the Mosque.These designs decorate the interior space sincehuman and animal imagery is forbidden by thetraditions of Islam. The task of carving the plas-ter is painstakingly slow. The angle of the cut hasto be just right in order to catch the light cor-rectly.Today, the month-long Muslim celebrationof Ramadan is drawing to a close. In the ninthmonth of the Islamic calendar, Muslims fast dur-ing the daylight hotus to commemorate thedivine gifts of the Qiuan and the Prophet Muh-ammad. Soon Mtisa will join with thousands ofneighbors as the Haram fills with daily prayers.Musa learned this craft from a family friend.
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Workers prepare the traditional challahdough on Thursday at Motti Lendner's bak-ery in Beit Yisrael. Photo by Pete Reiniger
Dawoud Abdeen, who had carved some of theearlier plaster windows at Al Aqsa Mosque. Wlienthe Mosque was damaged by arson fire in 1969,the Waqf (Muslim Endowment) searched forartisans who could assist in the restoration. Theylocated Abdeen when they noticed that he hadsigned his name in 1920 on one of the windowsthat had been burned in the fire. By now an oldman, he asked Musa's father for assistance.Musa, then a yoimg boy, accompanied his fatherand soon began helping out. He tells us that he
"stole the secrets of the craft with his eyes."Yiddish speech and Hasidic dress dominatethe narrow streets in Beit Israel, the neighbor-hood where Motti Lendner's grandfather, hav-ing arrived from Rimiania, started a bakery atthe turn of the century. Motti, a third generationbaker, says that today the Orthodox Jewish resi-dents come on Thursday afternoons to buy thechallah that is his trademark, hi his rolled upshirtsleeves he labors evei7 day alongside hisworkers. His bakery produces only speciallybraided challah bread eaten as part of the Fridaynight Sabbath ritual. Motti explains that there
are secrets to braiding the dough, special touch-es that insure that the loaves will be knackedig(Yiddish for crispy), making a cracking noisewhen you bite into it.Motti and the other bakers talk with usamidst mounds of dough: "The verse in Genesis:
'thou shalt earn your bread with your own sweat'is said exactly about this bakery," Motti declares.
"This is truly hard work . . . the neighbors herepray for my health and hope I'll keep their sup-ply of challahs until the Messiah will come."Shmuel Shmueli is a Jewish healer who wasborn in Jerusalem. For generations his familypassed down the mystical wisdom of Kabbalah (atradition that originated in the Middle Ages).Shmueli draws on this spiritual knowledge whenhe prays at the Kotel (the "Western" or "WailingWall"), the most sacred ofJewish sites, and leadsspecial pilgrimages to the tombs of holy sages.And he incorporates his family's healing andmystical traditions when he builds and decorateshis sukkah, a festive booth where people gatherevei7 atitumn to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot(Festival of the Tabernacles). According to one
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Pvabbalistic belief, Lhhpizin, guests seated in thesiikkah are joined by Biblical patriarchs who eachrepresent a different quality of the divine spirit. Aspecial chair and candle are placed in theirhonor.Shmiieli decorates his sukkah walls with spe-cial blessings and pictures of sages from differentgenerations. The picture of his own spiritualleader, the Rav Sharabi, hangs next to themedieval philosopher and physician Maimonides,whose medicinal system he uses in his own heal-ing work.1 hoiisands of Kurdish Jews came toJerusalem in 1951 after living for generations inKurdistan. Theirjotnney to Jerusalem was one ofgreater cultinal distance than aeronautic miles.At home they kept their ancient traditions ofpraying in Aramaic, cooking Kurdish foods, andobserving special rituals like Saharatia? a cele-bration of the Torah. At the same tiine theyraised their children as Hebrew-speaking Israelis.In the 1970s an ethnic revival inovementinspired some of the old-timers to formalize theirweekly song and dance get-togethers into anensemble called Sheva Aliayot. Yaacov Yaakov, acommimity leader, explains:The 1950s were years of cultural denialand great shame. We took off our famil-
iar garb and tried to say "I am notKurdi!" Bin there were those who weptsecretly. Then a few began somewhatembarrassedly to dance the old Kurdishdances again.Their repertoire is sung in Hebrew, Arabic,and ^Aramaic and accompanied by the zorneli, atraditional double reed instrimient with a pierc-ing and captivating voice. Group member Miri-am Yehoshua is out of breath after the last song:Only we the elders who came from Kur-distan know what to dance when thezorneh plays. If they ask me how, I'll saythe same way you imderstand Tchai-kovsky, my feet imderstand the zorneh.Wlien people weave art and food, song andprayer in a conflicted city their expressions areloomed on the intricate and tense realities oftheir daily lives, the weight of histoi-y and thelonging for a more seciue futine. The culturalcreations ofJerusalem's people present a pre-cious opening through which to see and appreci-ate the himian faces of this enigmatic city. Wehope to provide future Festival goers with aunique opportimity to enter this doorway and lis-ten and talk to Jerusalemites on the Natit)nalMall in Washington.
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SMITHSOKTIAN INSTITUTION1993 Festival ofAmerican FolklifeJuly 1 -July 5
General Information
Festival HoursOpening ceremonies for theFestixal will be held on the MainDance Stage in the AmericanSocial Dance area at 11:00 a.m..Thin sday, July 1st. Thereafter,Festival hours will be 11:00 a.m. to5:30 p.m. daily, with dance partiesevery evening from 5:30 to 7:00p.m., and evening concerts from7:00 to 9:00 ij^^m.SalesTraditional food from the U.S.-Mexico border region, ethnicIndian food from me,tropolitanD.C..._ and southern AfricanAmerican barbecue will be sold. \See the site map for locations.A variety of crafts, books, andSmithsonian/Folkways recordingsrelating to the 1993 Festival will besold in the Museimi Shop area onthe Festival site.PressVisiting members of the pressshould register at the Festival Presstent on the Mall near MadisonDrive and I'ith Street.
First AidA first aid station will beavailable near the Administration-area on the Mall. The Health Unitsin the Museums of.AmericanHistoid and Natural History areopen from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Restrooms/TelephonesThere arc outdoor facilities tt>rthe public and visitors withdisabilities located near all of theprogram areas on the Mall.Additional restroom facilities areavailable in each of the museumbuildings during visiung hours.Public telephones are availableon the site, opposite the Museumsof American History and NaturalHistor)', and inside the museimis.Lost and Found/LostChildren and ParentsLost items may be turned in orretrieved at the Volunteer tent inthe Administration area. Lostfamily members may be claimed atthe Volunteer tent also. We adviseputting a name tag on youngsters.Metro StationsMetro trains will be runningevei7 day of the Festival. TheFestival site is easily accessible tothe Smithsonian and FederalTriangle stations on the Blue andOiange lines.Evening Dance Partiesand ConcertsTraditional dance music isplayed evet)' evening, 5:30-7:00p.m., at the Main Dance Stage inthe American Social Dance area.Come dance.An evening concert feati^ringgroups from the Metro Musicprogram will follow the danceparty from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Services for Visitorswith DisabilitiesTo make the Festival moreaccessible to visitors who are deafor hard of hearing, an audio loopis installed in the American SocialDance tent. Four sign languageinterpreters are on site eveiy day atthe Festival. Check the printedschedule and signs for interpretedprograms. Oral interpreters areavailable for individuals if a requestis made three full days in advaiKe.Call ( 202 ) 786-24 1 4 (TTY) or ?(202) 786-2942 (voice).Large^print copies of the dailyschedule and audiocassetteversions of the program book andschedule are available at Festival _information kiosks and theVolunteer tent.Wlieelchairs are available at theFestival Volunteer tent. Volunteersare on call to assist wheelchair -users and to giiide visitors with__visual impairments. There are afew designated parking spaces forvisitois with disabilities along bothMall drives. These spaces havethree hour time restrictions.
Informacion General
Horario del Festivall.a ceremonia de apertura alFestival se celebrara en elescenario principal del Pabellon deBaile Social, el l*"'" de julio a las1 1:00 a.m. A partir de ese dia, lashoras del Festival seran de 1 1 :00a.m. a 5:30 p.m. diariamente confiestas bailables cada noche de 5:30a 7:00 p.m.y conciertos de 7:00 a9:00 p.m.VeritasHabra comida tipica de lafrontera Mexico-Estados Unidos,comida etnica de la comimidadIndia del area metropolitana deWashington, D.C., y barbacoa siid-africana americana a la venta.Consulte el mapa del Festival paralocalizar los puestos de comida.Se podra comprar ima variedadde artesanfas, libros, y discosrelacionados con los programas delFestival de 1993 en la carpadesignada Tiehda del Museo,localizada en la ExplanadaNacional.PrensaLos miembros de la prensa quevisiteii el FestivaJ deberaninscribirse en la carpa destinadapara la prensa en el Festivallocalizada en Madison Drive y lacalle 12.'Primeros AuxlliosUna unidad de la Cruz RojaAmericana se instalara en imacarpa cerca del area de laAdministracion. Las unidades desalud en los museos de HistoriaNorteamericana y de HistoriaNatural estaran abiertos desde las10:00 a.m. hasta las 5:30 p.m.
Servlclos Higienicos yTelefonosHabra facilidades para uso delpi'iblico y \isitantes conimpedimentos-eerca de todas lasareas de los diferentes programasen la Explanada. Ademas, podrautilizar los banos de los museosdurante las horas d^ visita. ?Telefonos publicos seencuentran en la Explanada^enfrente de los museos de HistoriaNorteamericana y de HistoriaNatural, y adentro de los museos.Personas y ObjetosExtraviadosLas personas que estenextraviadas o que hayan extraviadoa sus familiares, pueden pasar porel Puesto de Voluntarios, en el areade la Administracion, paraencontrarse con su grupo.Recomendamos que los ninosUeven puestas tarjetas con susnombres. Los objetos extra\'iados oencontrados podran entregarse oreclamarse en el mismo puesto.Estaclones del MetroLos trenes del Metro estaranfuncionando diariamente dmanteel Festival. Puede Uegar a laExplanada Nacional facilmente sitoma el Metro hasta las estacionesSmithsonian o Federal Triangle enlas li'neas azul o naranja.Actividades BailablesNocturnasTodas las noches habra mi'isicabailable tradicional en el escenarioprincipal del Pabellon de BaileSocial desde las 5:30 hasta las 7:00p.m. Lo invitamos a que venga abailar.
Conjuntos del programa deMusica Metropolitana continuarancon conciertos desde las 7:00 hastalas 9:00 p.m.Servicios para Visitantescon ImpedimentosPara hacer el Festival masaccesible a visitantes con impedi-mentos del oido, un recodo deamplificacion de sonido serainstalado dentro del Pabellon deBaile Social.Todos los dias se encontraranen el lugar del Festival cuatrointerpretes dactilologicos. Consulteel horario y los letreros en cadaarea para ver.su localizacion.Interpretes verbales seranproveidos si son solicitados conima semana de anticipacion. Porfavor llame al (202) 786-2414(TTY) o (202) 786-2942 (voz).Para el beneficio de visitantescon impedimentos de la vista,copias del itinerario imprimidas enletra grande y grabaciones delprograma estaran disponibles enlos kioscos de informacion y en elPuesto de Voluntarios.Sillaide ruedasy voluntariosestaran disponibles en el Puesto deVoluntarios para asistir a personasque usen silla de ruedas y paraguiar a los visitantes que tienenimpedimentos de la vista. Losvisitantes con impedimentospodran estacionarse en losespacios reservados para estoscasos que estan localizados aambos lados de la ExplanadaNacional. Estos estacionamientostienen un li'mite de uso de treshoras.
Participants in the 1993Festival of American Folklife
U.S.-MEXICOBORDERLANDS
Tijuana, Baja CaliforniaOlga Lidia Cortes - Mixteca hatand basket makerGuadalupe Isabel Flores de Estrada
- Mixteca altar maker, cookJuvencio Extrada Maceda - Mixtecostoryteller, oral historian,candlemakerGloria Lopez Lopez - Mixtecavendor, altar maker, cookElia Hilda Maceda Flores - Mixtecaaltar maker, cookOfelia Santos Lopez - Mixtecavendor, oral historian, hat andbasket maker, altar maker, cook,weaverFrancisco Paulino Sierra Cruz -Mixteco school teacherCathedral City, CaliforniaCarmen Moreno - guitarist, singer
Sailta Catarina, Baja CaliforniaBenito Peralta Gonzalez - Pai Paistoryteller, oral historian
Tecate, Baja CaliforniaJose Luis Lee Sandoval - furnituremaker
Mexicali, Baja CaliforniaTfilln Uuii'nsitarid d<- TeatroAngel Norzagaray NorzagarayHeriberto Norzagaray NorzagarayLoreto Ramon Tamayo RosasAlejandra Rioseco de la PeiiaAndres Garcia MorenoPedro Gabriel Gonzalez Castro
San Simon Village, ArizonaTohuno O'odhrim Sinng BandBlaine W.Juan - violin, dancerJoseph Alonzo Garcia - violin,dancerFrank N. Pedro - guitarVictor Augustine Garcia - violinNacho J. Feleys - snare drumMike L. Francisco - bass drum,dancerLupe Lopez - Tohono O'odhambasket makerMarie Leon -Tohono O'odhambasket makerNogales, SonoraMaria Gloria Moroyoqui deRoques - Yaqui cook, piiiata andflower maker, herbalist
Imuris, SonoraAnastasio Leon - birdcage and
" frame makerFrancisco Silva - birdcage andframe makerMagdalena, SonoraFelipe de Jesus Valenzuela -regional historianTumacacori, ArizonaMaria Rodrigufz - tortilla maker,flower maker, cook
Tucson, ArizonaReynaldo B. Hernandez - INSborder patrol, storytellerArturo Carrillo Strong - author,oral historian
Los Hermanos Cuatro - YaquiNorteno BandJesusJuan Yucupicio - electric bassAlbert M. Yucupicio - accordionAngel M. Yucupicio - drumsPeter S. Yucupicio - hajo sextoCiudad Juarez, ChihuahuaBrigada por La PazAlonso Encina Herrera - muralistJesus Alberto "Pee Wee" RodriguezMedina - muralistGustavo "Sleepy" Grado Tiscareho -muralist
Miguel Angel "El Tandy" SandovalLira - muralistOscar Ramirez - guitar maker
Los Akgres del Norte - Norteno BandJose Flores Cordova - accordionDiego Hidalgo Alvarez - bajo sextoEmilio Chairez Muiioz - lololoche
El Paso, TexasAgustin Castillo - woodcarver,furniture makerCarlos Callejo - Chicano muralistRomiilo Frias - lowrider.
El Divisidero, ChihuahuaGuadalupe Carrasco Leyva -quilter, cookPaso de Lajitas, ChihuahuaBaltazar Rodriguez Puentes - ^ranching crafts
Lajitas, Texas\ Adolfo O. Rodriguez - ranchingcrafts
Presidio, TexasRichard Mark Bernholz - INSborder patrol, storytellerNacimiento, ChihuahuaGertrude Factor Vasquez - oralhistorian, cook, herbalistAlice Fay Lozano - oral historian,cook, herbalistDel Rio, TexasEthel I. Warrior - oral historian,cookWilliam F. Warrior - oral historian,storytellerLaredo, TexasAiinando Flores - blacksmithMaria Paredes de Solis - quilterMonterrey, MexicoEl Palom.o y el Gorrion - NortenoBandCirilo "El Palomo" Luna Franco -accordion, composerMiguel "El Gorrion" Luna Franco -drums, composer, vocalsMoises Garcia - guitar
Hebbronville, TexasOmar Galvan - vaquero,
.
ropemaker, cook, stoi"yteller
Kingsville, Texasfoe O. Mendietta - vaquerohorsehair braiderSan Diego, TexasCanuto Soliz - vaquero,leathenvorker, storyteller,
' guitarist
Elsa, TexasLos Hermanos Layton - ConjuntoBandAntonio V. Layton - guitar, vocalsRene Layton - drumsNorfilia Layton Gonzalez - vocalsGilbert Gonzalez - bass guitarBenigno Layton - accordion, vocals
Brownsville, TexasJulius Collins - shrimper,netmaker, cook
AMERICANSOCIAL DANCESquare Dancers fromSouthwest VirginiaLois B. Buchanan - Glade SpringRichard C. Buchanan - GladeSpringCarl Farris - CViilhowieVirginia Lee Farris - ChilhowieErnest French - MeadowviewNancy Haworth - AbingdonWilliam R. Haworth - AbingdonMildred Holley - ChilhowieGlenn Orfield - MeadowviewSandra Orfield - MeadowviewGeorge V. Owens - MeadowviewMai7 D. Owens - MeadowviewDavid E. Salyer - AbingdonJanie Salyer - AbingdonKirby Smith - caller - AbingdonJack Stevens - MeadowviewLala Stevens - MeadowviewEvelyn W. Sturgill - Chilhowie
French Sturgill - ChilhowieBarbara Vance - ChilhowieJames Vance - ChilhowieSouthern Country BandHoward Burchette - mandolin,fiddle, guitar, vocals - AbingdonBarton Fritts - bass - Mountain City,TennesseeWilliam C. Kelly - fiddle -ChilhowieAJ Lambert - guitar, mandolin,banjo, vocals - AbingdonWilliam H. McCall - guitar, vocals -AbingdonSteve Starnes - mandolin -AbingdonCambodian American DancersPhavann Chliuan - Rockville,MaiylandChhomanath Chhuan - Rockville,
"
MarylandJohn Kheav - Ft. Washington,MarylandVuthy Kheav - Ft, Washington,MarylandSesane Ouk - Sterling, VirginiaSorabe Phann - Bel Air, MaiylandChan Moly Sarn - Reston, VirginiaPhillip Rithy Sok - Sterling,VirginiaNareine Sokhon - Potomac,MarylandSareth C. Sokhon - Potomac,MarylandSoum Sokhon - Potomac, MarylandJammy Samnung Sun - Herndon,VirginiaNadin Samnung Sun - Herndon,VirginiaNady Samnung Sun - Herndon,VirginiaSody T. Tek - Alexandria, VirginiaRady Tes - Ft. Washington,
, MaiylandSochietah Ung - Washington, B.C.Kagnol BandKagnol Mol - leader, guitar, organ -Chantilly, VirginiaHamany Mol - manager - Chantilly,VirginiaSophy L. Hoeung - vocals -Alexandria, Virginia
Coiy Long - vocals - Silver Spring,MarylandMony Ouv- guitar - Woodbridge,VirginiaNew Hello BaudSamnang Sim - leader, lj.eyboards -Herndon, VirginiaVutha Pao - lead guitar - FallsChurch, VirginiaPhal Soeung - vocals - Herndon,VirginiaFarom Tan - guitar - Woodbridge,VirginiaChhin Bim Yan - vocals - Herndon,Virginia
Bolivian DancersJuan Leonardo Alanes - Riverdale.MarylandAdela Baldarrama - Silver Spring,Maiyland 'Carlos Ballesteros - Arlington,VirginiaMelody Ballesteros - Aiiington,VirginiaNancy Ballesteros - Arlington,VirginiaMarco A. Castellon - Silver Spring,Mar)'landPaola Castellon - Silver Spring,MaiylandLuis H. Fuentes - .Alexandria,Virginia 'Luz Fuentes - Alexandria, V/irginiaMagaly Jarrad - Glen Biunie,MarylandAndy Lopez - Gaithersburg,Mar)landJhonny V. Meneses - .Alexandria,VirginiaMaria Teresa Mojica - Oakton,VirginiaAngel F. Quinteros - Arlington,VirginiaLeslie Quinteros - Arlington,VirginiaLillian Quinteros - Aiiington,VirginiaGiovani Ricaldez -Arlington,VirginiaRosemaiy L. Sejas - Aj lington,Virginia
Alex Urresty - Gaithersburg,MarylandJugo Urresty - Gaithersburg,Maryland
Geneiacion LuzCharlie Barrionirevo - keyboards,vocals - Falls Church, VirginiaFermin Barrionuevo - keyboards -Falls Church, VirginiaMairricio Barrionuevo - director,percussion, vocals -
' Springfield, VirginiaJiran Carlos Cueto - guitar, vocals -Aiiington, VirginiaLelis Cueto - percussion -Arlington, VirginiaRaul Monterrosa - piano -Arlington, VirginiaJulio Robles - bass, vocals -Arlington, Virginia
OllantayEnriqire Coria - rharango-Alexandria, VirginiaJose Raiil Dirran - chamngo, flute -Silver Spring, MarylandJose Raiil Gonzalez- chamngo
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Alexandria, VirginiaBoris Torrico - flirte - Aiiington,VirginiaRodolfo Tonico - percussion -Arlington, Virginia
Iroquois DancersBi ad Bonaparte - MohaVvk Nation,Akwesasne *Sadie Buck - Seneca, Six NadonsNorman B. Hill, Jr. - Casaiga,TonawandaSue Jacobs - Cayuga, Six NationsLuAnn Jamieson - Seneca,J TonawandaScott Logan - Seneca, TonawandaMite McDonald - Mohawk Nation,AkwesasneRobert Shenandoah - OnondagaNationKeith Shenandoah - OnondagaNationSherri L. Waterman-Hopper -Onondaga Nation
Hand DancersFlorence K. Barber - Washington,D.C.Lawrence Bradford - Washington,DC.Kenny Cheeks - Foresrville,MarylandWilliam H. Eley - Hyattsville,MarylandRobert "Captain Fly" Frye - deejay -Lanham, MarylandLeroy Green - Capitol Heights,MarylandCynthia Jefferson - C.apitol Heights,MaiylandAddie Robinson - Washington,DC.Cynthia Shelton - Hyattsville.
. MarylandLuvenia Shelton - Washington,D.C.Howard Watkins - FortWashington, Maryland
Hip-HopAuthony Hoxington - Silver Spring,MaiylandJohn "Super Cool" Mackey - deejay
- Morningside, MarylandDenise Richards - Washington,D.C.
The Nasty BoysRosetta Fultz-Mackey - Hyatts\il.le,MarylandBrian Robinson - Temple Hills,MaiylandChuck Sanders - Washington, D.C.Kimberty Simpson - DistrictHeights, ManlandMichael Smith -Washington, D.C.Tyrone Thornton - Washington,D.C.
KIDS' STUFFPlayground TraditionsBailey's Elementary School- FallsChurch, VirginiaCarmen Boatwright-Bacon -preseViter, facilitatorLinh AirHerber HernandezJacqueline MachadoLinda MakCarol OvandoSrey SaingLiiis ValenciaOther Bailey's students
Brightwood Elemenlaiy School -Washhigton, D.C.Jean Alexander -presenter,facilitatorBrooke Andrews-BondgieeLi Nida BlakeMelissa CarreraMykia CarrollMichelle Davis -Carmen DouglasGioria DouglasLeslie EustaquioV'ictoria FashotoDottve Gav
Stephania GomezCarole GreenPorgha HarrellCristine HoltYolanda HughesGeorgette JonesGrace KellyCandice KemierKathr\'n Kot)Crystal LittleAlicia MiddletbnTamisha MillerOlslani OyezbolaOlushola PyneKimberlee RoateKelia SpeightWendy ThomasDaphne VassorMarie WilliamsCherell WilsonRaymond Elementary School -Washington, D.C.Dorothy Walker - presenter.facilitatorIdyis AlexanderLaTasha AndersonTikia AndersonDominique BrownAisha ClarkMalika FateenShawn te JohnsonAntoinette TitterStephanie W'illiamsTadana WrightChinese Yo-Yo and ShuttlecockWashington School of ChineseLanguage and Culture- Rockville,MaiylandLily Liu Chow - principalChinese Yo-yo:Bor-Shan Zhu - teacher, facilitatorHong Yong Chow - teacherTom ChiCathy K. ChowJames RungElain SzuMike WangAnita Wu
.
Leonard WuJacob Yeh
Chinese Shuttlecock:Ivy Chen - teacherWilson Lin ,,Peter SchwartzAlbert TsouBucket BrigadeBarnett W'illiams - percus.sionist,presenterDraper African Drummers -Washington, D.C.James BarberReginald BellJames DudleyJavon MilesLorenzo NeilNeighborhood Cheel^Charles Barrett Reneation Center
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Alexandria, VirginiaMaurisette Daniels - cheerleadingcoordinatorVanessa Williams - assistant'coachLynique Scott - captainLaToya Pittman - co-captainLany Tolliver - mascot
,
Kellv AmolegbeTamika Brooks .Cliawmia DowdyBridget DupreeCassandra FountainTamar GreenQuiana HuffLaToyaJohnsonTamika MooreTasha WashingtonDalecia Williams^
IMt. Vernon Recreation CenterCheerleaders - PAex3.nAT\.2i, VirginiaMisty Copeland - coachNaila Alexander - coachShanta Baker
- Nanah Bangura-Yonnie IhediohaTahnia MartinDestiny PorterShereva PrettyLatresa RandolphCamille Reed
Michelle RossEvern SharpeJamie ShippJessica SouthallNatalia SpinnerKimberly StewartMarcellena ThorntonNannie Lee Recreation CenterCheerleaders - A\eyi2t.ndT\?L, VirginiaTonya Banks - coachChristina CopelandLaresa DeanRashanda GrimesDanielle HawkinsIvona HawkinsTina JohnsonTysheeaJohnsonCarlita ReedLaquita WliiteRacha WhiteDouble Dutch Jump RopeD.C. Metropolitan Police Boys andGirls Club, Greater Washington AreaDouble Dutch LeagueMontgomei"y Gardner - presenter,facilitatorOfficer Zenobia Mack - presenter,facilitatorGarrison Elementary School
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Washington, D.C.Rebecca Herndon - presenter,coachSheila Pickett - assistant coachTeam A (4th Grade)Larrissa CampbellCherri StarksAngelina WatkinsTeam B (5th Grade)Jennifer ColeOctavia FreemanEboni McPhersonLaKetha Welcher
P.R. Harris Educational Center
-
Washington, D.C.Charlene Jones - presenter, coach
Shantay FairLisa NockRhashelia OutingTomika Yoimg
Seaton Elementary School
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Washington, D.C.Montez Delaney - presenter, coachShirley Williams - assistant coachTeam A (5th Grade)Memuna FofanaChristinaJohnsonCrystal McClaiyJennifer McClelandTeam B (6th Grade)Haja FofanaJovannajoynerLaShonda LucasLaKesha SimmonsTeam C (5th Grade)Beatrice BrooksKitea LewisLaQUanda MorganRegina Williams
Storytelling and Narratives ofChildhoodLen Cabral - Cranston, RhodeIslandBill Harley - Seekonk,MassachusettsMendel Denise Service -Washington, D.C.
METRO MUSIC
Baltimore Korean DancersJi Eiin AhnSoon Hee AhnAyang By ChiNanhui KangEiui Soo Kim
?Hvimijoo KimJung Sook LeeHye Sook Limhmcr Sook Park
Chu Me YiAnn YimJum Bok YimThe Country Gentlemen - BluegrassCharlie Waller - guitar, vocals -Gordons\ille, VirginiaJimmy Bowen - mandolin, vocals -Nashville, TennesseeGreg Corbett - 5-string banjo,vocals - Troy, North CarolinaRonnie Davis - upright bass, vocals -Charlottesville, VirginiaGanga - Bengali Folk MusicHitabrata Roy - dotara - FallsChurch, VirginiaMinati B. Roy - khmak - FallsChurch, VirginiaBroto Roy - tabla - Falls C>hurch,VirginiaIvi ishnakali Roy - ghungar- Falls(;hinxh, Virginia
Gospel PearlsBeatrice Cooper- Washington,D.C.Paulette Goodin - Capitol Heights,ManiandBrenda Little - Washington, D.C.Verna Locus - Washington, D.C.Connie Monroe - Washington,DC.Sam Hubbard and "Reverb"- GospelSam Hubbard - Washington, D.C.Steve Langley- Washington, D.C.Reginald Moore - Washington,b.c.Bruce O'Neal - Washington, D.C.Victor Pinkney - Clinton, MainlandJohn Jackson - Piedmont bluesguitar - Fairfax Station, Virginia
Johnson Mountain Boys- BluegrassTom Adams - banjo - Gettysburg,PennsylvaniaDudley Connell - guitar, vocals -Germantown, MarylandDave McLaughlin - mandolin -Winchester, Virginia
Eddie Stubbs - fiddle -Gaithersburg, MarylandEarl Yager - bass - Spring Grove,PennsylvaniaDjimo Kouyate - Senegalese griotWashington-, D.C.
Utile Bit A BluesWarner Williams - guitar -Gaithersburg, MarylandJay Simierour - harmonica -Poolsville, Maryland
.\ndy Vorhees - bass - Poolsville,Maryland
Alfredo Mojica and His Orchestra -Latin Dance MusicAlfredo Mojica, Sr. - band leader -Silver Spring, MarylandRalph Eskenazy - keyboards -WTieaton, MarylandAdrianne Galler Lastra - bass -^Wlieaton, MaiylandJose Lopez - percussion -Gaithersbiug, MarylandHeather McKay - guitar - Potomac,ManlandAlfi'edo Mojica, Jr. - percussion -Bethesda, MarylandEugene Okonsky - piano - SilverSpring, MarylandScott Young - saxophone -Wheaton, Maryland
Irish Music & DanceWinifted Horan - dancer - NewYork, Neyv YorkDonna Long - piano - Baltimore,MarylandBrendan MuKihill - fiddle -Alexandria, VirginiaOdadaa - Ghanaian Music & DanceYacub Addy - master drummer -Alexandria, Virginia
Siboney - Cuban MusicNelson Rodriguez - director -Washington, D.C
Veltones - Doo WopJoe Herdon - Washington, D.C.LarryJordan - Washington, D.C.Sunny Payton -Washington, D.C.George Spann - Washington, D.C.Moe Warren - Bladensburg,Maryland
Thursday, July 1
AMERICANSOCIAL DANCE
11:00
12:00
1:00
2:00
3:00
4:00
5:00
DanceStage
Opt-ning
SquareDancing fronSouthwest-Vrrginia ^
Hand DancinifioniWashington,DC.
CanibodiarAmerican
IrocjuoisDances x
NarrativeStage
Culturat;ontaci iDance
Popula
Hand DancingMemories fromthe '50s &: 'fiOs
Daive &( :c>mnuiniti
Strutting \,:StuB
MaJe & FemaleIdentities in
Motown I.i\es:The HandDance Revival
The BohviaiiCarnival5:30-7:00Dance Party7:00-9:00Evening Concert AcappellaVoices: SamHubbard withReverb/Vellones^sr
METROMUSIC
11:00
Friday, July 2
AMERICANSOCIAL DANCE
11:00
12:00
1:00
2:00
3:00
4:00
5:00
DanceStage
BolivianDance's
IroqnciisDances
Hip-Hop:DC. Snie
SquareDancing fromSouthwestVirffinia
Canib()clianAmericanDances
NarrativeStage
DJ.s. Callers.Sc Singers:Inspiring theDance
"Hip-Hop. \oDon't Stop"
CielebratingLife's Passages
Dam ing WlioWe .\re; Dance& Identirv
Male & FenIdentities
ThroughGenerations
Free Stalingwith Rhythm,BreakingDown the Beat
Striuting YourStutl
5:30-7:00Dance Party7:00-9:00Evening Concert
Los HernLavtoi
Bluegras:the MaMountainBoys/Country
METROMUSIC
11:00
Saturday, July 3
AMERICANSOCIAL DANCE
11:00
12:00
1:00
2:00
3:00
4:00
5:00
DanceStage
CaiiibodiaiiAmericanDances
SquareDancing fronSouthwest
,\fricanAmericanHand DancingfromWasliington.D.C.
BolivianDances
Irvquoi;Dances
AfricanAmericanHand Dancing
NarrativeStage
D.j.s, Callers,
.i: Singers:Inspiring theDance
Sacred Js:Secular Dance
sh,,,.'.-
Tradition Jv:Innovation inBolivian Dance
TiaditK)]nno\atioIroqiHiDane.
CulturalContact inDance
Struttini; \tSivitl
The Boli\iaCarni\al5:30-7:00Dance Party,7:00-9:00Evening Concert
AmericanHand Dancing
, Blues N.ght:l.iitle Bit ABlu. ohnJackson
METROMUSIC
11:00
Sunday, July 4
AMERICANSOCIAL DANCE
11:00
12:00
1:00
2:00
3:00
4:00
5:00
DanceStage
iroquo.sDances
Hip-Hop:D.C Sr\Ie
Cambodian
.\mericanDances
SquareDancing fromSoulltwesi\'irginia
^ BolivianDances
NarrativeStage
PIa\ing withRhvihm
Dancing WlioWe Are: Dance
L<: Iden tin
CambodianCourt & SocialDance
C^ulturalContact in
Strutting YourStuff
?Hip-Hop. YouDon't Stop"
Ceremonial &Social Dance
Hip-HopBlock Part>
5:30-7:00Dance Party
7:00 - 9:00Evening Concert
Los Alegres delNorte:Norteno
An Evening ofLalin'Sounds:AlfredoMojica/Siboney ^z
METROMUSIC
11:00
Monday, July 5U.S. - MEXICO BORDERLANDS
11:00
AMERICANSOCIAL DANCE
11:00
12:00
1:00
2:00
3:00
4:00
5:00
DanceStage
Hand D.incin"
W.lshinKlon.D.c:.
' SquareDancing from'Southwest
CambodianAmerican
.\lritanAmericanHand DancingfromWashington.D.c:.
IroquoisDances
NarrativeStage
BolivianDances
DancingThmnghlicneralions
Dances otCourtship
Cuhur.ilContait inDance
Male & FemaleIdentities in
D.J.s, Callers,& Singers:Inspiring theDance ^r
Dancing WlioWe ,\re: Danci& Identit\
Ihe BolivianCarnival
CambodiiCourt c<: So
5:30-7:00Dance Party7:00-9:00Evening Concert An Evening ofWest AfricanMusic andDance: ^Odadaa DjunoKouvale
METROMUSIC
11:00
?Information () First AidQ Beverage Concession ^ Restroomsdl Food Concession @ Accessible toMobility Impaired
MADISON DRIVE
Social DanceMain Stage
Festival Site Map
^ Ramada Stageo oO'odhamBasketWea\ers Ramada Food\va\sONogalesFlowerMaker Miisic Stage ^
o Juan Soldado Allar '/*>^^ PajarerosOavofthe .Dead Altar ""D \ ?rn\ I - I Chinese Furniture Maker 'flGuitar MakerFurniture MakerRanching Crafts ^\Qiiiltcrs V?* Muralist\Mixteco Area ^ Black Fisherman BlacksmithSemmoles\ El Ranchilo Foodwavs-\y El Ranchito Stage?=? nVaqueros ' ' oowrider El Bordo StageU.S. - Mexico Borderlands
/bhinteers
LiseuniSalesihop
?CD Kids' StuffThe National Mall
letrolusic
INDEPENDENCE AV'ENUE S. Dillon Ripley Sackler African Art Hirshhorn \ \ ^t[ I. EnlamCenter Gallery Museum Museum /\i..,i.,Mji \laiicl Av<- & "ill Si Exi

MADISON DRIVE
Sorial nanceMain Si age
o
Information (J) First AidQ Beverage Concession RestroomsQ Food Concession @ Accessible toMobility Impaired
American Social DanceO
Social DanceNai laiive Stage
o
:<D::0JEFFERSON DRIVE
Festival Site Map
Metro(SniitliMnii.in)
Aclniiiiistiation
o a
^ Raiiuula Si.igiO V^ Q Ramada FoodwavsO'odhaniBasketWeavers Nogalcsluan Soldado Altai FloweiMaker^V Paiarerc Music StageOav of the ? _Dead Altar? \ r-.r-l\ I I Chinese Furniture Maker \ rn Siiniii<)le> 1-1>1U1 111.111 HI.KkMllllh(luitar Maker n \ PI ^''V"""^'-J-l J_J \ Kl Ranc Into FoodwavsFurniture Maker |_J [I V^ D^Ranching Cral IS r-V "P^ V> ? Fl R.imliilo StageQ... ^ p\ ,.,g?.- o
^?- MixleCO Area louiider FIBordo StageU.S. - Mexico Borderlands
K^A PressRedX '.ross Volunteers
MuseumSalesShop
o @0 Kids' StuffThe National Mall
MetroMusic
H THE NATIONAL MALLwNational Gallery of Art
S. Dillon Ripley Sackler African Art Hirehhorn \ \ ^ !J"'',",'?'!'j'.t ftTnTsi'T^Center GaUerv Museum Museum * > ,M.,rvU?l Av.J, -.1, s, h.?
ContributingSponsorsThe Festival ot .\mei-ican Folklife issupported in part by Federalappropriations and SmithsonianTrust Funds. Additionally,
United States-Mexico Borderlands hasbeen made possible with thesupport and collaboration of th^Cons^jo Nacional para la Cultura ylas Artes - El Programa Cultural delas Fronteras, El Colegio de laFrontera Norte, Texas Commissionon the Alts, Cei-veza Tecate -Imported Beer, Texas FolklifeResotirces, University of AiizonaLibrary's Western Folklore Center,Tumacacori National HistoricalPark, Universidad Autonoma deNuevo Leon - Centro deInformacion de Historia Regional,Universidad Autonoma de BajaCalifornia, Gobierno de Nuevo
.
Leon, Mexican Cultural Institute,and the recording industries MusicPerformance Trust Fimds.
American Social Dance and MetroMusic have been made possiblewith the support of the recordingindustries Music PerformanceTrust Funds.
In KindContributorsGeneral Festival SupportArtex Manufacturing Co., CAilverCity, CaliforniaBell Haven Pharmacy, Alexandria,VirginiaBell Atlantic Paging, Rockyille,MaiylandBen and Jern's Ice Cream ofAdams Morgan, Washington,D.C.
Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream ofAlexandria, VirginiaCoca Cola Co., Capital Heights,MainlandCompiUer Tech Senices, Fairfax,VirginiaDimkin Donuts, Fairfax, VirginiaEmbassy Care Drug Center, Inc.,Washington, D.C.Faxland, Falls Church, VirginiaKeebler Co., Jessup, MarylandK mart, Springfield, VirginiaKrispy Kreme Doughnut Co.,Alexandria, VirginiaMakita U.S.A., Inc., Dayton, NewJerseyOcean Spray Cranberries, Inc.,Lakeville, MassachusettsPlav It Again Sports, Springfield,VirginiaRandy's Carpets, Washington, D.C.Shamrock Supply Co., Alexandria,VirginiaShurfire Distributors^ Lanham,ManlandSugar Association, Washington,D.C.Rev. Dan Thompson, Annandale,VirginiaUtz Quality Foods, Inc., Hanover,PennsylvaniaWilliam B. Riley Coffee Co.,Baltimore, Mainland
U.S. -Mexico BorderlandsColortyme Rent to Own,Alexandria, VirginiaC^rolynn's Sewing Center,Alexandria, VirginiaFischer's Hardware, Springfield,VirginiaFestival of Flowers, Alexandria,VirginiaG Sc L Metals, Inc. of Merrifield,VirginiaLee's Gas- Supplies, Manassas Park,Virginia ^Moimt Vernon Music, ,\lexandria,VirginiaNova Color Acnlic Paint, CulverCity, CaliforniaTandy Leather, Fort Worth, Texas
A merican Social Dan ceGain's Restaurant, Washington,D.C.Office Depot, Connecficut Ave.,NW, Washington, D.C.Office Depot, Store 193, Rockville,MaiTlandStaples, Inc. - The Office SupplyStore, W'ashington, D.C.Syms, Falls Church, Virginia
Special ThanksGeneral FestivalWe extend special thanks to all thevolunteers at this year's Festival.Only with their assistance are weable to present the programs of the1993 Festival of American Folklife.Man' Cliff, Folklore Society ofCireater WashingtonBetty Beuck DerbyshireJudy GoodrichGeorge Haas, Jr., Lisa Lumber Co.Lisa Haas, Lisa Lumber Co.Smoot LimiberJan Truitt
U.S. - Mexico BorderlandsEsther AcevedoEduardo BarreraFrancisco BarrientosJavier BecerraJulia Bendi'mez PattersonJorge A. BustamanteSalvador Calderou RodriguezNestor Garcia Canclini ,Manuel Ceballos RamirezJames CliffordManuel CosioJose del ValJohn DwyerRoberto Ibarra EscobedoMarco Aiitonio EspondaDon GarateJuana GarzaMark GlazerGuillermo Gomez PenaPaloma GorostizaJoe Graham
Jose GriegoVictor GuerraRamon GutierrezRiciv JoachimSaul JuarezRobert KieneJose Luis KrafftRiuh LechugaMargarita MadridAmbassador Jorge MontanoLuz Maria Valdez de MontanoMario MontaiioJim McNuttSalvador NeriFlorencio Ortiz and LosMatachines de la Santa CruzAmericoParedesRaymond ParedesMaria Teresa PomarIrais QuinonesManuel Rios MoralesMaria del Carmen RamosGaiy RehbeinAl RendonMichael RitchieMarcela Villegas RodriguezLucia Rubalcaba01i\ia RuizRoberto SalmonGeorge SanchezJose Luis SanchezJorge SomarribaSusan SpaderLawrence D. Ta)lorBeatriz Torres AbelaireEliseo TorresPatricia Torres MejiaTony ValderramaCarlos Velez IbahezCaleb VidaurriCassandra VidaurriAndy WigetRamon XilotlMaiyJane YonkerGloria Ann YoungDavid YubetaAntonio Zavaleta
Photographic Resources:Carmen AmatoDa\id BurckhalterAlfonso CardonaRoberto CordobaMargara de Leon
Juana Elizondo-GarzaLillian M. SalcidoKath)' VargasAmerican Social DanceAfrican Dance Club and FriendsCharlie AhearnMaiy AlvarezPaul AusterlitzAdela BaldarramaFlorence BarberBarnard Elementary SchoolRobert BarronBarry Berge)"Dana Evert BoehmTesTionnarithFred BrownArchie BurnettEd CabbellRichard CadimaCambodian-American Heritage,Inc.Cambodian Network CouncilMaria-Teresa CamperoHugo CarilloDora CastellonMilton CastellonCecilia'sLek ChhuanJohn ChingCity LoreThe ClubJohn CohenVicky CopeComite Pro BoliviaD;C. Commission for the ArtsMartha DavisThe Eclipse (Rea Hon)Embassy of BoliviaEthnic Folk Arts CenterKeenan FaulknerFolk Arts Program, NationalEndowment for the ArtsFlower FilmsCarol FosterJohn Frosch-SchroderRobert Fiy .Freddy FuentesLuz FuentesJudith GrayJames R. Gundlach, Jr.Gonzalo GutierrezKatherine GuzmanBilly Hampton
Betsy HarrisMiranda HatacostiKatrina Hazzard-GordonJurrettajordon HeckscherJhanina HerbasGlenn HinsonGeorge HoltYavonne JacksonJose and Maraya JaldinPhil JamisonDanielajarradTomjarradCarl Jones (CJ)Sotie KenmanoSali Ann KriegsmanLa Copa ClubJim LeaiySambonn and Nara LekMichael LichtMaria Lope*Nick ManningRick MarchMelina MendezGordon McCannJerry MinarMissouri Cultural Heritage CenterWilliam MobleyCarolina MontanoNicole OeurSylvia PanfilShirley PenaNelson PerezProgressive ProductionsDenise RichardsBrian RobinsonRock Steady CrewBachealy and Kiriroath SamLaksmi SamTes SaroeumNeil SellingLuis and Rosario SejasDan SheehyRoberta SingerSnack Food AssociationSolar Eclipse Social ClubWalter SorianoSothira Sotie"Star Bar and GrillCharles StephensonDavid A. TaylorJas. Funk ThomasMarlon and Magaly VasquezLuis VillarroelMaria Villegas
WandaWoman ?ance/ExerciseStudioLiz Wells, Snack Food AssociationWayne WliiteWHMM Channel 32 TVWPFW Radio-Elliott WileyJane WoodsidePatricia ZeballosDannet Zepeda
Metro MusicCamilla Bryce-LaporteD.C. Commission on the Aits andHumanitiesSusan LevitasMichael LichtJoe Wilson
Kids ' ^tuffArt from the Heart of the CityFreida AustinBailey's Elementary School, FairfaxCounty, VirginiaBetty BelanusGordon Braithwaite, D.C. Dept. ofParks & RecreationKimberly CampMarguerita ChammcjrrowFana ChisolmLily Chow, Washington School ofChinese Language and CultureCity Lore: Center for Research inUrban Folk CultureMartha CooperClaire CuddyD.C. ArtworksD.C. Metropolitan Police Boys andGirls ClubAmanda DarganVioletta De la Peha ^Maria DemarestNorma FleishmanArturo FloresCarol FosterCarol FranzFreedom Hill Elementary SchoolEffie GamesCoding Saturday AchievementAcademyTom Hamilton, Mayor'sEmpowerment Program
Sally HanSarah HefnerPeg KoetchLibrary of Congress: AmericanFolklife CenterEileen Lorenz, MontgomeryCounty Public SchoolsMargirerit,e LuksOfficer Zenobia MackMaria MarablePhyllis May-MachundaGeorgia McGuireMame N'Gone N'DiayeNetwork of Educators on theAmericasOffice of Pacific American MfairsPilipino-AmericanRaymond Elementaiy School,Washington, D.C.Kate RinzlerOfficerJan RoddyRutgers University PressMarilyn Thornton, Shaw~Neighborhood Center,Washington, D.C.Truxton/Siusum CordaNeighborhood Services CenterBruce UnderwoodDorothy WalkerWalter Reed WildCat SteppersVanessa Williams'WPFW RadioSteve Zeitlin
Jerusalem Research ProjectIbtihaj Abou GoshYacoub Abu ArafehReem Abu KishikRula Abu KishikAlbert AghazarianTamar AlexanderNazmi al-Ju'beh
-Musa Alou.shAmerican Colony HotelSuad Amiry .Hannan AshwariShlomit AtsmanYaron AvituvHusien BarghouthiRoni BeerCarol Ann BernheimShlomi Brosh ,
Noami ChazzanRachel DamaiyGil DarynRaanan Dinin^Abu-Jareer DiriniHani Nour El-DinJaleel EliasTayseer EliasRita Mendes FlohrRuth FreedRivka GonenTsipporah GreenfieldYael HaklaiBilal HammadGalit Hasan-RokemMahmoud HawariYael HaynounDebbie HershmanSubhi)yeh Idris HilloSerene HlelehHougha FamityFaisal HusseiniMayyadajarallahPennyJohnsonKamiliyajubranMayor Teddy KoUekTayseer Masriyeh H;izboimNida MasannatHagit MatrasArlene and Zali MillerReuvan NamdarIman 'OunRachel RabinowitzIttai RosenbaimiHila RosenthalNirit RosslerAvner RothenbergSabreen Music CenterShifra Safra ^ ?Hagar SalamonEdwin SeroussiAmnon ShiloahMegina ShlainHamdan TahaSalim TamariVera TamariNaim L. TaraziShalom TsabarBracha YanivOman Yekutieli
Festival Staff
Director, Centerfor FolkUfe Programs&" Cultural Studies: RichardKurinFestival Director: Diana ParkerAdministrative Officer: BarbaraStricklandDesigner:]Qa.n WolbierAssistant Designers: Carmina Angulo,Rebecca LepkowskiDesign Intents: Tanja Bos, WendyGoodman, Jackie SonProgram Book Editor: Peter SeitelSign Editor: Carla BordenPublication Review: Arlene ReinigerTechnical Coordinator: Pete ReinigerAssociate Technical Coordinator-Connie Lane'Carpenters: Chris Insley, CharheWehrCrew Chiefs:]uV\e Dobo, LisaOgonowskiExhibit Wbr/ifrs;Jeannette Buck,Haden Garrett, Beth Knight,Jennifer Koch, Kevin Livingston,.Terr)' Meniefield, Alf WalleTechnical Creiu Clerk/Typist: RlieaJonesParticipant Coordinator: EmilyBoteinAssistant Participant Coordinator:Lidya MontesSupply Coordinator: David LesanskyAssistant Supply Coordinator: AshleyCIayborneLogistics Coordinator: Craig StinsonSound Coordinator: Tim KidwellSound Technicians: Beth Curren,Mary Margaret Delaney, Kim -Frame, Tom Gartland, GreggLamping, Dean Languell, BruceLoiighiy, Tim Smyser, SusanWliiteStage Managers:}e{{ Anthony,Teresa Ballard, Beth Curren,
Maiy Margaret Delaney, KimFrame, Maurice Jackson, JohnKemper, Al McKenney, EsterPerez, Mark PinyearFiscal Manager: Heather BesterFiscaljechnician: Kay StubliClerk/Typists: Linda Benner,Ramona DowdalAssistant to the Festival Director: AnnDancySpecial Events Coordinator:]ohnFranklinAssistant Special Events Coordinator:
.
Linda BennerSocial Coordinator:Johaii RashadInformation/A ccess ibility Coordinato r:John FranklinSign Language Interpreters: CandasBarnes, Jean Lindquist,Francisco Roman, Hank YoungVolunteer Coordinator: LynyonneCottonAssistant Vohmleer Coordinator:Alison WilsonChief Volunteers: Karen Adams,Priscilla Flowers, MarilynGaston, Phyllis Lesansky,Tatiana Maldonado, SydneyMarch, Virginia McCauley,Beverly SimonsSmithsonian/Folkways RecordingsDirector: Anthony SeegerSmithsonian/Folkways RecordingsAssistant: YusefJonesRecordings Mail Order Manager:Dudley ConnellDocumentation Coordinators:JeffPlace, Guha Shankar, LoriTaylorDocumentation Intern: AndrewShahriariFood Concessions Coordinator: PeterSeitelProgram Book Sales Coordinator: . '
Debra WimpfheimerPublic Information: Man' Combs
United States-Mexico BorderlandsProgram Curator: Olivia CadavalResearch Advisor: Peter SeitelCoordinator: Hector AntonioCorporanProgram and Participant Assistant:Lidya MontesResearch Assistants: CarminaAngulo, Patricia BowmanProgram Assistants:Jo^e^ph Amisi,Jennifer Balbes, Tiffany Belka,Angela Jancius, CynthiaVidaurri, -Elena Williams, LisaYarger,Translators: Tiffany Belka, OliviaCadaval, Hector AntonioCorporan, John McDowell,Rene Hdracio QuintanillaCollaborating Institutions:Centro de Informacion de HistoriaRegional, UniversidadAutonoma de Nuevo Leon .Consejo Nacional para las Culturas
. y las Artes - El ProgramaCultural de las Frontera_sEl Colegio de la Frontera Norte(COLEF)El Paso Hispanic Chamber ofCommerceEmbajada de Mexico enWashington, D.C.John E. Conner Museum,Texas A & I University-Institute of Texan Cultures
, Institute Cultural de MexicoInstitute de Bellas Artes del Estadode Baja CaliforniaInstituto Nacional IndjgenistaInstitute Mexicano de Ciiltura, SanAntonioLaredo State UniversiH'
Mexican Cultural InstitiUeMuseo Regional de la UniversidadAiUonoma de Baja California enMexicaliNational Museum of the AmericanIndianNew Mexico State Universit)', LasCruces, New MexicoPinieria Alta Historical Society,Arizona - .Texas A & I UniversityTexas Folklife ResourcesTumacacori National HistoricalPark, ArizonaUniversity of Arizona Library'sSouthwest Folklore CenterLJniversity of Aiizona - Biueau ofApplied Research inAnthropolog)'University of New Mexico,AlbuquerqueUniversity of Texas - BrownsvilleUniversity of Texas, Center forMexican-American StudiesUniversity of Texas - Pan AmericanU.S. Immigration andNaturalization SemcePresenters and Researchers: EnriqueAviles, Norma Can tii, JessicaChapin, Andrew Connors,Maricela Gonzalez Felix, Mai"yLou Gortarez, EverardoGarduno, James S. Griffith,Celso Garza Guajardo, Ian F.Hancock, Pat Jasper, EnriqueLamadrid, Laiua Larco,Francisco Javier Moreno, DanielSheehy, Emily Socolov. MichaelC. Stone, Jose ManuelValenzuela Aice, MeynardoVasquez, Laura Velasco Ortiz,Thomas Vennum, Jr., CynthiaVidaurri
Researchers: Maria Eugenia de la O,Enrique Madrid, AngelNorzagaray Norzagaray, ManuelPena, Kathy Raglan. MichaelJames Ritdiie, Suzie Reyes,Irene Vasquez Valle, KathyVargas, Felipe dejesiisValenzuelaPresentation Cuordiiiator: BettvBelanus
American Social DanceCurator: Vivien Ta-Ving ChenP)'og)am Advisors: LeeEllenFriedland, Joan Frosch-Schroder, Robert Fiye, GonzaloGutierrez, Glenn Hinson,Anthony Hovington, AdrienneKiieppler, Martin Koenig, EthelRaim, Denise Richards, SallySommer, Jane Woodside, VickiRisner WulffCoordinators: Marianne Hicks,Arlene ReinigerProgmm Assistants: Hallie Stone, LizSullivanFieldworkers: Enrique Aviles, SherrillBeriyman-Millef , PaolaCastellon, ChhomanathChhuan, Phavann C^hhuan,LeeEllen Friedland, RobertFiye, Anthony Hovington,Magaly E.Jarrad, Laura Larco,Linley Logan, Lidya Montes,Jaime Ortega, Deni.se Richards,Chan Moly Sam, Sally Sommer,Susan Eike Spalding
Presenters: Marco Castellon, GilkaWar'a Cespedes, LeeEllenFriedland, Robert Fiye, AnthonyHovington, Magaly E.Jarrad,Linlev Logan, Gail Matthews-DeNatale, Frank Proschan,Denise Richards, Chan MolySamKids' StuffCurator: Diana Baird N'DiayeCoordinator: Marjorie HuntProgram Advisors: Bftty Belanus,Paddy Bowman, Camila Biyce-Laporte, Peg Koetsch, PhyllisMay-Machunda, Kate Rinzler,Dorothy Walker, Steve ZeitlinFieldworkers: Freedom HillElementaiy School studentsPresenters: Paddy Bowman, CamilaBiTce-Laporte, Marjorie HuntProgram Assistants: Karen Adams,Cybil Brown, Linda Lenoir
Metro MusicCoordinators: Richard Kennedy,Thomas Venniun, Jr.Presenters: Enrique Aviles, PhilippaJackson, Richard Kennedy,Michael Lieht, Bariy LeePearson, Jeff Place, ThomasVennum, Jr.Intern: Ann Kaplan
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You can hear the zoorld onSmithsonian/FolkwaysRecordingsOver two thousand Folkiuays titles on cassetteOver 100 Smithsonian/Folkiuays titles on CD and cassette
Folkways and Smithsonian/Folkwaysare two of the ways the CenterforFolklife Programs and CulturalStudies supports the continuity andintegrity of traditional artists andcultures. Folkways Records, foundedby Moses Asch in 1947, luas acquiredby the Smithsonian Institution in1987 to ensure that all the recordingsremain available as a service toscholars, musicians, and the generalpublic. All 2,000 titles capturing the
.world's music, spoken word, andsounds are available on Folkiuayscassettes. The Smithsonian/Folkwayslabel wasfounded in 1988forreissues and nexu recordings on CDand cflssette.You can hear the musicaltraditions featured at previousFestivals:1989Musics (f the Soviet Union (SF 40002)Tuva: Musicfrom the Center ofAsia(SF 40017)Bukhara: Musical Crossroads ofAsia(SF 40030)1990Puerto Rican Music in Hawui'i-(SF 4-0014)Hawaiian Drum Dance Chants: SoundsofPower in Time (SF 40015)World Music of Struggle: We ShallOvercome (In collaboration withCokimbia Recordings: Columbia47850, from live recordings at the1990 Festival.)
.4 nortefio gtoup pltnstradilional rnusic/rom theU.S. - Mexico bordn:
1991Roots ofRhythm and Blue\: A Tribute tothe Robert /ohnson Era (In collabora-tion with Columbia Recordings,from live recordings at the 1991Festival.)Music ofIndonesia 1: Songs BeforeDawn (SF 40055)Music ofIndonesia 2: IndonesianPopular Music (SF 40056)MusicofIndonesia 3: Musicfrom theOutskirts ofJakarta (SF 40057)Music ofIndonesia 4: Music ofNiasand North Sumatra (SF 40420)1992Drums ofDefiance: Music of theJamaican Maroons, the Earliest FreeBlack Communities in lite Americas(SF 40412)New Mexico: Native AmericanTraditions (SF 4040^)Neiu Mexico: Hispanic Traditions(SF 40409)
Coming SoonBorderlands: From Conjunto toChickenscratch; Music of the Rio GrandeValley and Southern Arizona(SF 40418). September 1993.This recording featines musicaltraditions of the U.S. - Mexicoborder region, similar to thosepresented at the 1993 Festival ofAmerican Folklife. The recordingswere licensed from four local recordcompanies that specialize in music ofthis region, and represent a varietyof borderland genres. Compiledwith the assistance of the TexasFolklife ResoiHce Center, Austin,Texas. September 1993.
Look for these and many other' Folkwaysrecordings in the Festival Museum salesarea, ask for them at your local recordstore, or order directly by mail or phonefrom Smithsonian/Folkiuays Recordings,414 Hu ngerford Drive Suite 444,RockviUe^MD 20850; phone 301/443-2314, fax 301/443-1819, Visa andMastercharge accepted.
Recent Smithsonian/ FolkwaysReleases on CD and Cassette:
Pete Seeger. Darling Corey and GoofingOff Suite (SF 400i8). The twoinfluential 1950s Pete Seegerrecordings reissued here reveal thetraditional roots upon which he drewand his innovations that have sincebecome traditions of their own.Folk Masters, Great PerformancesRecorded Live at Wolf Trap (SF 40047)
.
A selection from the Folk Mastersconcerts at Wolf Trap in 1992, thisrecording vividly represents thebreadth of American music and thebrilliance of the ardsts and groups.LonnieJohnson: The Complete FoMvaysRecmdings (SF 40067). Historicrecordings by a legendary arristreissued in a single albiun with newnotes.Plains Chippeiun/Metis MusicfromTurtle Mountain: Drums, Fiddles,Chansons and Rock & Roll (SF 4041 1 )
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A rich portrait of the vital anddiverse musical traditions of thePlains Chippewa/Metis communityin North Dakota.Richard Hagopian, Armenian MusicThrough the Ages (SF 40414),Armenian classical and folk stylesplayed by an "ud virtuoso.Music ofIndonesia Volume 4rMusic ofMas and Notih Sumatra; Hoho,Gendang Karo, Gondang Toba(SF 40420) . Rarely heard choralsinging and instriunental music fromthree ethnic groups on NorthSumatra and Nias.Henry Couiell Piano Music: TiuentyPieces Played trt the Composer(SF 40801). Henry Cowell's avant-garde pi^no compositions"performed by the composer in 1962are carefully remastered andreissued with new liner notes. CDonly.John Cage and David Tudor:Indeterminacy (SF 40804/5).Originally issued in 1959, thisrecording explores a ^new aspect ofform in instrumental and electronicmusic" featuring stories byJohnCage read to music by David Tudor.
MahaliaJackson: I Sing Because I'mHappy; Interview luith Songs(SFSP 90002). 1952 inteniews withMahalia Jackson, interspersed withseveral of her songs. Published toaccompany th^ book Got To Tell It:MahaliaJackson. Queen of Gospel byJules Schwerin, Oxford UniversityPress 1992. Cassette only.Commg SoonMusic and Dance Traditions ofSt.Lucia, West Indies (SF 4041 6)
.
A selection of St. Lucian traditionsproduce'd in collaboration with theFolk Research Centre of St. Lucia.August 1993.New Lost City Ramblers Volume 2,1963-1973: Out Standing in Their Field(SF 40040). Compiled from sevenFolkways albums released by the trioconsisting ofJohn Cohen, TracySchwartz, and Mike Seeger. August1993.Bosnia: Echoes from an EndangeredWorld (.SF 40407). Rich and beautifulMuslim traditions, recorded inBosnia before the recent conflicts.
display a unique confluence ofTurkish and European influences.September 1993.Bunggtidfbunggridj: Wangga Songsfrom Northern Australia by AlanMaralung (SF 40430) . Dijeridu-accompanied .songs learned fromspirits and performed by AlanMaralung. Produced incollaboration with the InternationalInstitute for Traditional Music,Berlin. September 1993.Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, LiveRecordings 1956-1969. Off The RecordVo/wmfi (SF 40063). Recorded at .concerts and informal gatherings,these recordings reveal the creativityof this renowned performer.October 1993.Bill Monroe and Doc Watson, Live DuetRecordings 1963-1980Off The Record Volu me 2 (SF 40064)
.
In the 1960s, Bill Monroe and DocWatson both found new urbanaudiences, sometimes playingtogether. These imique recordingsdocument their Joint performances.October 1993.
Look for these in your record stores, or order directlyfrom folkways MailOlder, 414 fiungerford'Drive Suite 444, Rockville MD 20850. Phone301/443-2314; Fax 30I/443-J8I9. Visa and Mastercharge accepted.For a free catalogue of all Folkways cassettes and Smithsonian/Folkiuaysrekases,fill in the card below, fax 202/287-3699, or telephone 202/287-3262.
Please send me a free copy of theWhole Folkways Catalogue.NameAddress
City
State Zip
stamp
Smithsonian/Folkways Recordings414 Hungerford DriveSuite 444Rocl<viile, MD 20850
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTIONThe Center for FolklifePrograms & Cultural Studies
Presents the annual Festival of American FolklifeProduces Smithsonian/Folkways Recordings,Videos and Special ProductsMaintains a collection of recordings, photographs,and field notes documenting cultural traditions fromacross the United States and around the worldPublishes research and documentary studies ofcultural traditions and issuesCreates educational materials for teachingabout culturesOrganizes seminars, conferences, classes,and more.
Ifyou uiould like to learnmore about what the.center'does and how you can helpin its work, pleaseJill inand return the attachedpostcard. Thank you foryour interest.
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Please send me more information about theCenter for Folklife Programs & Cultural Studies.NameAddress
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Center for Folklife Programs & Cultural StudiesSmithsonian Institution -955 L'Enfant Plaza, S.W. Suite 2600Washington, D.C. 20560
SMITHSONIANINSTITUTION CONTRIBUTINGSPONSORS
Secretary: Robert McC. AdamsUnder Secretary:Constance Beriy NewmanAssistant Secretaty for Education andPublic Seniice:]an\es EarlyAssistant Secretaty for the Sciences:Robert HoffmannAssistant Secretary for the Arts andHumanities: Tom FreiidenheimAssistant Secretary for External Affairs:Thomas LovejoyAssistant Secretaryfor InstitutionalInitiatives: Alice GreenBiirnetteAssistant Secretary forFinance andAdministration: NancySuttenfieldSecretary Emeritus: S. Dillon RipleyAssistant Secretary Emeritus:Ralph RinzlerCenter forFoLKLiFE Programs &Cultural StudiesDirector: Richard KiirinAdministrative Officer:Barbara StricklandFestival Director: Diana ParkerDirector, Srnithson ian/FolkwaysRecordings: Anthony SeegerSenior Folklorist: Peter SeitelSenior Ethnomusicologist:Thomas Vennum, Jr.Director, Quincentenary Programs:Olivia CadavalProgram Analyst: Richard KennedyFolklorists/Curators: Vivien Chen,Diana Baird N'Diaye, AmyHorowitz, Marjorie HuntProgram Managers: Carla Borden,John FranklinTechnical Coordinator-: Pete ReinigerProgram Specialist:Aiiene L. ReinigerFiscal Manager: Heather BesterDesigner:]oa.n WolbierArchivist:Jeffrey PlaceFolkiimys Program Specialist:Dudley Connell
Media Specialist: Guha ShankarAssistant Archivist: Lori TaylorFolkways Assistant:YusefJonesFiscal Technician: Kay StubliClerk Typists: Linda Benner, LidvaMontesResearch Associate: Betty BelanusFolklife Advisory Council: RogerAbrahams, Jacinto Alias, JaneBeck, Pat Jasper, BarbaraKirshenblatt-Gimblett, BerniceReagon, John Roberts, CarolRobertson, Gilbert Sprauve,Jack Tchen, Ricardo Trimillos,Carlos Velez-IbahezNATIONAL PARKSERVICE
Secretary of the Interior: Bruce BabbittDirector: Roger KennedyRegional Director, National CapitalRegion: Robert G. StantonDeputy Regional Director, NationalCapital Region: Chnsandra L.WalterAssociate Regional Director, PublicAffairs & Tourism:Sandra A. AlleyChief United States Park Police:Robert E. LangstonAssistant Chief United States ParkPolice: Andre R. JordanCommander; Special Forces:Maj. Carl R. HolmbergSuperintendent, National CapitcdParks - Central:Arnold M. GoldsteinChief Maintenance, National CapitalParks - Central:William L Newman, Jr.Acting Site Manager, National Mall:Erin BroadbentEmployees of the National CapitalRegion and the United StatesPark Police
The Festival of American Folklifeis supported in part by Federalappropriations and SmithsonianTrust Fluids. Additionally,
United States -Mexico Borderlandshas been made possible with thesupport and collaboration of theConsejo Nacional para la Cultinay las Artes? El Programa Cultiu-al de las Fronteras, El Colegio dela Frontera Norte, Texas Commis-sion on the Alts, Cerveza Tecate
? Imported Beer, Texas FolklifeResoinces, University' of AiizonaLibraiy's Western Folklore Cen-ter, Universidad Autonoma deNuevo Leon ? Centro de Infor-macion de Historia Regional, Uni-versidad Autonoma de Baja Cali-fornia, Mexican Cultural Institute,and the recording industriesMusic Performance Trust Funds.
American Social Dance and MetroMusic have been made possiblewith the support of the recordingindustries Music PerformanceTrust Funds.