Mixtec Indians
Ñuu Savi, People of the Rain
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Exploring the border between art and anthropology...
This website is an essay in context. It was born out of a series of multimedia presentations I gave on the publication of my novel A Man of His Village.
A Man of His Village recounts the odyssey of a migrant farm worker, Florentino Cruz, a Mixtec Indian who journeys north from Mexico to Alaska.
The Mixtec, Ñuu savi, the People of the Rain, are one of the original peoples of the Americas. They are not well known to Northamericans. To give an audience a feel for the outer and inner world of Florentino Cruz is a way of lowering the barrier of difference and alienness that can separate us in art as in life.
True, it's the writer's work, the responsibility of the novelist, to achieve this effect within the frame of the novel; but when people turn out for a public event, they expect—I don't want to say a broader communion than literature offers, but one based on a more varied social input. And so I not only read from A Man of His Village, but I play a Mixtec hymn from a Lila Downs CD, I share the contents of a letter written to my father by a Mixtec elder, and I set up around the event space a collection of photographs that depict Mixtec village life in the 1960s and '70s.
The photos give a feel for the contemporary world of Florentino Cruz, the chrysalis he emerges from and leaves behind. The landscape of highland Oaxaca, the structure of the houses, the crops, the women weaving, the potters on the road, the market scenes, the house shrine, the sweat bath—this is the world Florentino was born into in 1971, the world of the mountain Mixtec, different indeed from the world he enters as a migrant farm worker, the world of Tijuana and San Diego and Seattle of the 1980s and '90s.
Many of the conflicts Florentino encounters in his voyage north grow out of the immense contrasts in experience and expectation. This is true for immigrants always everywhere. The recovery of identity ought to be a stage in our growth, not an end point. The particulars of biography amount to little; a heroically lived life is always beautiful. Big-hearted man and big-hearted woman are never vanquished.
In A Man of His Village the quest for corn and cash becomes a quest for meaning. Often during times of trial we wake to our common humanity. Florentino's mortal and solitary flight through the wilds of Alaska has an equivalent in many of our lives.
This website is an essay in context. It was born out of a series of multimedia presentations I gave on the publication of my novel A Man of His Village.
A Man of His Village recounts the odyssey of a migrant farm worker, Florentino Cruz, a Mixtec Indian who journeys north from Mexico to Alaska.
The Mixtec, Ñuu savi, the People of the Rain, are one of the original peoples of the Americas. They are not well known to Northamericans. To give an audience a feel for the outer and inner world of Florentino Cruz is a way of lowering the barrier of difference and alienness that can separate us in art as in life.
True, it's the writer's work, the responsibility of the novelist, to achieve this effect within the frame of the novel; but when people turn out for a public event, they expect—I don't want to say a broader communion than literature offers, but one based on a more varied social input. And so I not only read from A Man of His Village, but I play a Mixtec hymn from a Lila Downs CD, I share the contents of a letter written to my father by a Mixtec elder, and I set up around the event space a collection of photographs that depict Mixtec village life in the 1960s and '70s.
The photos give a feel for the contemporary world of Florentino Cruz, the chrysalis he emerges from and leaves behind. The landscape of highland Oaxaca, the structure of the houses, the crops, the women weaving, the potters on the road, the market scenes, the house shrine, the sweat bath—this is the world Florentino was born into in 1971, the world of the mountain Mixtec, different indeed from the world he enters as a migrant farm worker, the world of Tijuana and San Diego and Seattle of the 1980s and '90s.
Many of the conflicts Florentino encounters in his voyage north grow out of the immense contrasts in experience and expectation. This is true for immigrants always everywhere. The recovery of identity ought to be a stage in our growth, not an end point. The particulars of biography amount to little; a heroically lived life is always beautiful. Big-hearted man and big-hearted woman are never vanquished.
In A Man of His Village the quest for corn and cash becomes a quest for meaning. Often during times of trial we wake to our common humanity. Florentino's mortal and solitary flight through the wilds of Alaska has an equivalent in many of our lives.
Inquiries to Tanyo Ravicz: tanyo@tanyo.net
