Book presentation

The number estimated of people who speaks Huave is 20,000, concentrated in three Oaxaca municipalities: San Dionisio del Mar, San Francisco del Mar and San Mateo del Mar, where more Huave people live in; the later was object of analysis regarding Huave social organization, and  ritual symbolism still valid.

That study originated the book El Cuerpo de la Nube. Jerarquia y Simbolismo Ritual en la Cosmovision de un Pueblo Huave (The Body of the Cloud. Hierarchy and Ritual Symbolism in a Huave People Cosmovision), written by Saul Millan, to be presented on Thursday, May 15th, 2008, at 18:00, in the Popular Cultures Museum at Coyoacan.

Rodrigo Diaz, Carlos Zolla and David Robichaux will comment the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) publication, part of the Ethnography of Indigenous Peoples collection. This work won the 2005 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun INAH prize to the best social anthropology and ethnography doctorate thesis.

The book is about Huave people, who dwell part of the Tehuantepec Isthmus, Oaxaca, and studies the social organization forms known as “charge system”.

This system must be understood, as said by Saul Millan, as a Mesoamerican indigenous institution, widely spread and homogenous among indigenous groups in Mexico, that presents special characteristics between Huaves.

Differences include traditional government forms, a ritual system focused on regulating yearly temporary rainfalls, as they are people who are dedicated to shrimp fishing at the coast.

“The periodicity of rainfalls is crucial for them, so they organize their ritual cycle in order to keep symbolic control of precipitations; civil and religious authorities are the exclusive managers, meaning they are who ask for rain every year”.

The exclusiveness of the ritual is characteristic of the Huave organization; other peoples’ rituals can be conducted by any member of the community, no matter civil status, gender, age or public charge.

What Millan tries to demonstrate is how a traditional government system gets certain cultural specifications when linked to a ritual system directly related with rainfall.

Huave is a specifically organized society, through neighborhoods and territorial sections, where inhabitants participate in community charges by a rotation system. Responsibilities are equally shared.

The title of the book is related, in one hand, to regional mythology that considers, from millenary times, Huaves as “people of the body of cloud”, and, on the other, elder people who have occupied all the charges, are considered as if their body has grown”.

The concept is intimately related to the word Omba, meaning a direct focus on an animal alter ego or natural phenomena like thunder or wind. This interpretation is connected with gender division; in regional mythology, men are related to thunder and women to south wind.

“This research looks forward to set base for more specific knowledge of indigenous cultures forms of social organization, Huave, in this case, framed on the constitutional changes registered in Mexico, regarding plural and multiethnic society acknowledgement”.

Investigations like this manage to create more respect to uses and customs of the peoples that conform Mexico cultural panorama, as well as their organization forms, social and political hierarchy.

The new constitutional frame has allowed 80% of municipalities of Oaxaca to be governed under a state law of uses and customs, which guarantees free choice within the communities of their representatives. This means the federation recognizes their specific forms of social organization.

El Cuerpo de la Nube. Jerarquia y Simbolismo Ritual en la Cosmovision de un Pueblo Huave (The Body of the Cloud. Hierarchy and Ritual Symbolism in a Huave People Cosmovision) gives an opportunity to get closer to the characteristics that define these communities, which play an important role in Mexico’s cultural configuration.