Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2020

Abstract

This essay explores the idea of cultural hybridity in the hill town of Cuetzalan, Mexico. It focuses on two entities within the town: the tianguis, or informal Sunday market, and the Santuario de Guadalupe, also known as the Iglesia de los Jarritos, or “Church of the Clay Pots.” Hybridity, the essay shows, is not a facile outcome of the intermingling of different cultures, but the result of historical political struggle — in this case between the indigenous Nahua Indian population and the mestizos who moved to the Sierra Norte de Puebla during the nineteenth century. I conclude that by embodying socio-political and aesthetic oppositions, in tension with one another, hybridity creates stimulating places and facilitates the survival of marginal cultures.

Comments

This essay was originally published in Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review Vol. 31, No. 2 (SPRING 2020), pp. 71-84 (14 pages)

https://iaste.org/category/tdsr/

Published By: International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE)

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