Hound Dog
Jan 28, 2010, 7:32 AM
Post #6 of 10
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Re: [Hound Dog] Radio stations in Oaxaca
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Further to this subject.
Every year we spend at least a few weeks in Teotitlan Del Valle, Oaxaca, a Zapoteco village famous for its carpets about 30 kilometers east of Oaxaca City. We are fortunate to have friends there and are privileged to spend time with families in that village whenever we desire to do so which is as often as possible.
This posting is about intercommunication among Zapoteco villagers in Oaxaca State and the notion that communications among various villages can be improved by foreigners introducing radio signal interrelationships to, supposedly, improve inter-village understanding and, perhaps, harmony.
Teotitlan Del Valle sits in a valley about 20 kilometers from and approximately 4,000 feet below another Zapoteco village known as Benito Juarez and both of these villages have been there long before the arrival of the Spanish so the folks and their ancestors for countless generations pretty much know or knew each other. Access to either village is over a mountain dirt road easiliy passable normally in about 30 minutes or less. During our last visit to Teotitlan we asked our host, a prominent Teotitlan village elder, to accompany us in our car to Benito Juarez so we could enjoy the magnificent view of the valley from a mirador above that village. The mirador is in a state park with a gated entrance about a kilometer or so beyond the village of Benito Juarez and the park is manned by a state park employee.
As we approached Benito Juarez which we had to traverse in order to reach the mountaintop public park, we were detained by citizens of Benito Juarez and our host, an important Teotitlan elder and civic functionary, was told by the folks of Benito Juarez that we could drive no farther but would have to park our car, which, incidentally, was not his car but our car with Jalisco plates, at that point and proceed on foot quite some distance to the park.
This we did and OK, I know this is a boring story but here is the point. Had we, as foreign residents of Chiapas or Jalisco, desired to traverse Benito Juarez in order to visit the state park, there would have been no controversy at all. However, for reasons beyond our discernment, the elder and civic leader from Teotitlan was dissuaded from proceeding by the citizens from Benito Jurarez blocking access to the village. There were rules of procedure we could not fathom but we had no intention of violating them. We got to see the park but we played by their rules whatever those rules governing interrelationships among the indigenous of Teotitlan and Benito Juarez might have been.
Not our rules. Not our game.
Radio communications established by foreigners, indeed.
(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Jan 28, 2010, 7:40 AM)
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