Tag Archives: Mexican tradition

Danza Del Venado

Informant Info:

  • Nationality: Mexican 
  • Residence: Los Angeles
  • Primary language: Spanish

Text:

A.E chose to inform me of an ancient dance from la Mayos, he has known the dance for as long as he can remember in the region of Sonora. It’s the dance that represents the native indigenous Mayos de Navojoa, Sonora. He learned to dance “El Danza Del Venado,” in primary school(elementary). Indigenous Mayos came and taught him, he recalls them speaking their dialect. He competed with other schools and won medals for the dance. A.E heavily emphasized the importance of the dance costume. The costume consists of: a bandana on the head of the person, and above that a real, dried head of a deer. there was another bandana covering the mouth, and a “ropon de manta” covering the body. A belt made of leather that had multiple “pezunas de venado” which in English means the little hooves of the deer. From the big toe, to the ankles up to the calves, there are “tenabaris” that make noise. It is important to note that they dance barefoot. In the dance, they hold “Bullis” that come from a tree and have seeds inside that make noise. This dance is often performed in festivals, one of them being Sabado de Gloria and el Dia de San Juan. The dance is performed by only one person representing “El Venado” and is accompanied by four people playing drums and other instruments while singing the song “El Vendo Baila” in the Mayo dialect. 

Analysis:

After interviewing A.E, I conducted some research to find out more about the origins of this cultural dance. El danza del venado originated in Sonora, Mexico and contains pre-hispanic origins. The Yaqui people started this ritualistic dance, however; since the Mayo people were close neighbors to the Yaqui, they also adopted this dance into their culture. For context, the Mayo Indian people were located in southern Sonora, and northern Sinaloa. The Yaqui Indians were located in southern Sonora as well. This deer dance is performed as a way of honoring the deer that is being hunted for the purpose of feeding the folk group. It is a way of paying tribute to the sacrifice being made, which is the deer. This dance form is a deeply cultural and historical form of ritual and festival entertainment. While in modern times it is used predominantly as a source of entertainment, historically El Danza del Venado was used as a form of respecting nature, especially after taking something(such as hunting a deer).

New Years Traditions

Informant Info:

  • Nationality: Mexican 
  • Residence: Los Angeles 
  • Primary language: English and Spanish 

Text:

E.S recalls living in a Mexican household, specifically every year when New Years came around. She says, “We have these certain rituals or traditions to ensure that we have a fresh start and a clean slate for the new year.” Some of these traditions include:

  • We wear red underwear to symbolize good luck 
  • We eat 12 grapes each for every month of the year, with every grape that we eat we make a wish or another word to describe it would be a resolution and this happens as fast as you can once the clock strikes 12
  • We also do a deep clean of the entire house either the day of or the day after New Years, we take out old clothes, rearrange furniture, put new curtains, regular cleaning 
  • E.S told me that these traditions are upheld to obtain the most luck possible to have a great year. 

Analysis:

The New Year is a significant time for everyone, regardless of where you are in the world. Every region celebrates New Years in their own way when the clock hits twelve. I also have grown up in a Mexican household, and there was lots of resemblance between the traditions of E.S’s family and mine. For example, my family also eats the 12 grapes, and each one has its own wish or resolution for the upcoming year. We wait till it’s New Years to eat them and make our wishes. Another tradition my family has is that we like to wish each other a Happy New Year and we embrace each other with hugs and kisses. I believe that we all hold and cherish our New Year’s traditions because we all hope for a better year. New Years can also be considered an opportunity for change in our lives and aspirations.

Día de Los Muertos

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 55
Occupation: Construction Field Manager
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: March 2021
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

CONTEXT/BACKGROUND:
The interlocutor (MP) grew up in Oaxaca, Mexico before immigrating to the US in his early twenties.

DESCRIPTION: (told in person)
(MP): “In Mexico, Día de Los Muertos is a famous holiday that celebrates your dead relatives. It’s on November 1st and 2nd, which technically makes it Los Días de Los Muertos but you and most people living here [in the United States] call it by the singular version.

Catholics families set up the ofrenda, the….the altar with pictures of their dead relatives they want to remember. It’s supposed to be in the house, kinda private, and they put stuff like comida y bebidas y floras (food, drinks, and flowers)… on it as like, an offering to them. Lots of panaderias (bakeries) and other merchants also sell those sugar skulls… los calaveras y pan de muerto (bread of the dead). For the ofrenda. It’s so that the souls of their loved ones can come visit them during these days, y’know?

They’ll also go to the graveyard and clean up their family’s graves and put offerings on that too. It’s a lot of prayer and celebration, since it’s supposed to be happy and all. I know big festivals and parades happen all over Mexico to celebrate too. In Oaxaca, we went to the one that happens at the Zocalo (Oaxaca City’s main square) and saw all the people dressed in costumes with the masks and the dancing and singing. It’s very family-oriented and a lot of fun.

FINAL THOUGHTS/OBSERVATIONS:
Having celebrated Día de Los Muertos before, I was already quite familiar with some of the traditions the interlocutor mentioned. Despite this, it was still eye-opening to hear about the holiday from someone who actually grew up in the culture from which the holiday.

Traditions commemorating the death of loved ones are prevalent in most, if not all cultures; however, I think that Mexico’s celebration of Los Días de Los Muertos is unique because it celebrates death as a positive thing rather than something that means grief, loss, and pain. I think it’s amazing to hear about the humor, joy, and happiness that surrounds death in this tradition.

Milagros

Nationality: American
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase
Residence: Laguna Niguel
Performance Date: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

–Informant Info–
Nationality: United States of America
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase Bank
Residence: Laguna Niguel, CA
Date of Performance/Collection: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Other Language(s): Spanish

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my co-worker/informant (MR).

HS: So what are milagros?

MR: So they literally mean “miracles”, but from the perspective of my Catholic family, they are kind of like a blessing that we would do in my parents’ hometown. Like not a lot of people would know saints from my hometown. People hear about Saint Jude, you know, or, La Virgen de Guadalupe, but there are also lesser-known saints that are only known in the small towns that they had an effect on.

HS: So what is an example of a saint that was special and important in your town just outside of Guadalajara?

MR: Well in Guadalajara the saint that everyone knows is Virgen de San Juan de Los Lagos, but in my mom’s town of Guanajuato, they all know the miracle baby Jesus.

HS: So what are some examples of Milagros that you have?

MR: So you’d ask your saint, for example, I had a major issue with my car motor that would have cost me thousands and thousands of dollars and I didn’t know what to do because there was no way that I could afford that expensive of a repair. So I asked my saint for a Milagro/blessing to help me with the situation and it ended up costing half as much, and so I promised my saint that when I return to my town I will visit and show my appreciation. Another time, at the beginning of COVID, I asked the Miracle Baby Jesus from my parents’ hometown of Guanajuato for a Milagro to protect me and my parents. Luckily my parents never got COVID so I plan on also showing my appreciation for fulfilling my Milagro when I am home.

Background:

My informant is my co-worker from my job. She is essentially my supervisor and she enjoys helping me to practice my Spanish and telling me a lot about her culture and heritage. She was raised in a Spanish-speaking household by two parents who both immigrated to the United States from Mexico. She comes from a devout Catholic family and has taught me a lot of traditions that I didn’t know pertain to Catholicism, seeing as to the fact that I myself was raised in a Catholic family.

Context:

These religious traditions were brought up while having a general discussion with my co-worker about her culture and traditions. We were discussing a tradition/ritual of crawling on one’s hands and knees to honor one’s saint when she brought up the topic of Milagros. She had told me about these traditions before but I asked her to go more in-depth for the sake of the collection project. We were sitting next to each other on the teller line at work and we would chat in-between customers.

Thoughts:

I found this tradition to be very interesting. Although not discussed in this transcription, my coworker showed me a list of tributes that she planned on giving to her respective saints once she arrived back in Mexico. Included in this list were 25 dollar coins for the Miracle Baby Jesus and some pictures of her family. While researching Milagros, I found a very precise explanation from an online article, a “person will ask a favor of a saint, and then, in order to repay the saint after the favor has been granted, one must make a pilgrimage to the shrine of that saint.” This is a very cherished and respected tradition in the social circles of my coworker, and she emphasized how personal a lot of Milagros get, going on to divulge some sensitive details about how the use of Milagros has helped her family through particularly hard times. I had never heard of anything like this before and found the tradition to be rather beautiful and unique. I also came to the realization that Milagros are a way to keep people who have left their hometowns connected to their community in some way. Because the saints that people make their Milagros to are usually particular to the region that they are from, Milagros provide people with an incentive to come back home after they have departed.

The article where I found a good explanation of Milagros:

https://zinniafolkarts.com/blogs/news/36153281-what-do-milagros-mean

Virgen de San Juan de los Lagos

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase
Residence: Laguna Niguel
Performance Date: 04/4/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

–Informant Info–
Nationality: United States of America
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase Bank
Residence: Laguna Niguel, CA
Date of Performance/Collection: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Other Language(s): Spanish

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my co-worker/informant (MR).

MR: So when you ask a saint for a blessing and then you have to make a promise to them. For instance, I would say a prayer, and then when it is fulfilled I would promise to come back to the saint’s temple and crawl from the beginning of the temple to the altar.

HS: What are some examples of saints that you have performed these acts for in the past?

MR: I’ve been to the temple of the Miracle Baby Jesus, or even another saint that is more well-known is the Virgen de San Juan de Los Lagos. She is the saint that cures sick people. So you ask her to heal you or anyone else. So people go to her temple in my home of Guadalajara but it is not just a place that you casually go to like a church here in the United States. It really varies. Some people trek for miles and miles and miles. People walk on foot from their homes for days. In my case, I just drive up to the entrance because I don’t have the time for all that. And then once you actually arrive at the temple itself, you crawl on your elbows and knees from the entrance to the altar and then leave a candle and family picture of us four, like my mom, my dad, my sister, and myself in an area where you’re allowed to leave stuff.

Background:

My informant is my co-worker from my job. She is essentially my supervisor and she enjoys helping me to practice my Spanish and telling me a lot about her culture and heritage. She was raised in a Spanish-speaking household by two parents who both immigrated to the United States from Mexico. She comes from a devout Catholic family and has taught me a lot of traditions that I didn’t know pertain to Catholicism, seeing as to the fact that I myself was raised in a Catholic family.

Context:

These religious traditions were brought up while having a general discussion with my co-worker about her culture and traditions. I had just watched an episode of one of my favorite shows that included a scene where Roman Catholic Mexcian crawl on their hands and knees to worship an idol and so I decided to ask my coworker about it. She had told me about these traditions before but I asked her to go more in-depth for the sake of the collection project. We were sitting next to each other on the teller line at work and we would chat in-between customers.

Thoughts:

I have been extremely interested in Roman Catholicism ever since I watched the Breaking Bad series. While watching the series, I had no knowledge of any traditions pertaining to the religion and was confused when out of nowhere, I saw Mexican drug lords peacefully giving up all of their material possessions and crawling on their hands and knees with other people trying to cross the border. This scene in the series made me curious about the tradition, and so, knowing that my coworker came from a devout Roman Catholic family, I asked her about the subject. She was quick to inform me that the drug lords were crawling on their hands and knees to ask the saint Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte for protection as they cross the United States-Mexico border, but that the tradition of crawling on one’s hands and knees to honor saints was widespread across all of Mexico out of respect for them. She also informed me that Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, is a cult and is not recognized by her church.

For more info on these saints:

Allison McNearney. “The Death Worshipping Cult of Santa Muerte: From Argentina to Canada, There Is No Religious Movement Growing Faster, Says an Expert. But How Serious Is Worshipping ‘Saint Death?’” The Daily Beast, The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC, 2015.

Graziano, Frank. Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico. Oxford University Press, 2016, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199790869.001.0001.