Images of the Conquest in Tlacoachistlahuaca, Guerrero, A Story out of Many…

Abstract

The dance that was the object of the images presented in this photographic essay converses with many stories. It all depends on where, when and for who these stories are danced for. For the 17th Century missionaries, its first promoters, this dance was a way to instill and celebrate the arrival of a new religion. However, in the 19th Century, with the Independence, and the later victory of Juarez’s army on the French, that vision of the defeated changed sides and with this, dances also changed. Rural teachers took the place of the missionaries, spearheading a new way to think and present the past; the first pro-indigenous variants began taking the spotlight or they mixed or coexisted with the pro-Spaniard variants.
Thanks to a Casimiro Jiménez, probably from the neighboring state of Oaxaca, one of these pro-indigenous variants began spreading in the Mixtecan-Amuzgan region of the Costa Chica de Guerrero, between 1910 and 1915. My Amuzgan friends loved to rebuild their culture dissemination process, and it is currently the story they most like to tell. The other story, the one told through dance, also makes them proud because, despite their defeat, their ancestors shine for their bravery and their resistance. I hope that people who are knowledgeable and specialist in these topics are able to see, in the photos I present, the echoes of these stories, with surely much more protagonists than those that show up on the screen.