Oaxaca, Oaxaca: The People
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Zapotec
Zapotec refers to a native people of Mexico, their language family consisting of more than 15 languages, and their historic culture and traditions. Today, most of the Zapotec languages are endangered.
The Zapotec people are centered in Oaxaca, to the south of central Mexico. In Pre-Columbian times they were one of the major Mesoamerican civilizations. Archeological evidence shows their culture goes back some 2500 years. They left archaelogical evidence at the earlier and impressive ancient city of Monte Albán; in the form of buildings, ball courts, magnificent tombs and grave goods including finely worked gold jewelry. Monte Albán was the first major city in the western hemisphere and the center of a Zapotec State that dominated much of what we know of as the current state of Oaxaca.
The Zapotecs developed a calendar and a logophonetic system of writing that used a separate glyph to represent each of the syllables of the language. This writing system is considered to be the basis of the other Mesoamerican writing systems developed by the Maya, Mixtec, and Aztec civilizations. In the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, there were Zapotec and Mixtec artisans living in the city whose occupation was to fashion jewelry for the Aztec Tlatoanis, or rulers. These included the famous Motecuhzoma II. Relations with central Mexico go back much further however, as attested by the archeological remains of a Zapotec neighborhood within Teotihuacan and a Teotihuacan styled "guest house" on Monte Albán. Other important Pre-Columbian Zapotec sites include Lambityeco, Dainzu, Mitla, Yagul, San Jose Mogote, and Zaachila.
The most famous Zapotec person in modern times was Benito Juárez, generally regarded as Mexico's greatest President.
There are over 400,000 Zapotec people living in Mexico today.
For 3.5 millenia people who have been recognizably Zapotec have inhabited the central valleys and surrounding mountains of today's Mexican state of Oaxaca. From their origins as hunter-gatherers, whose ancestors settled in the region as long as 10 - 13 millenia ago, the Zapotec peoples learned to adapt to the varied environments of the state, domesticated a number of wild species that are now important cultigens, organized urban centers and developed great political entities. Several studies estimate that the number of Zapotecs at the time of the Spanish conquest was between 350,000 and half a million. The history of these people has not garnered the same attention that has been given that of the Maya and "Aztec," and indeed for many years the early traces of civilization that dot Oaxaca were attributed to "Olmecs." However, current evidence indicates that the Zapotec were probably the first to develop a number of features that were to be characteristic of all subsequent Mesoamerican culture: the first city-states, the first use of a base-twenty numerical system, the first use of a rebus writing system, and the invention of the calendrical system.
The Zapotec call themselves always by some variant of the term "The People" (Be'ena'a). The implications of this term are many: 'THE people of this place,' 'The true people,' 'Those who didn't come from another place,' 'Those who have always been here.' In fact, both scientific evidence and the origin myths about Zapotecs demonstrate a great antiquity in Oaxaca for the Zapotec and their precursors.
"The People" tell that their ancestors emerged from the earth, from caves, or that they turned from trees or jaguars into people, while the elite that governed them believed that they descended from supernatural beings that lived among the clouds, and that upon death they would return to such status. In fact, the name by which Zapotecs are known today resulted from this belief. In Central Valley Zapotec "The Cloud People' is "Be'ena' Za'a." The "Aztec" soldiers and merchants who dealt with these people translated their name phonetically into Nahuatl: "Tzapotecatl" (perhaps because the initial stem of the word was useful in their rebus writing), and the Spanish conquerors in turn transformed this name into "Zapoteca." The Mixtecs, a sister culture of the Zapotecs, also received their "Aztec" name due to their identity as "Cloud People" (Ñusabi in Mixtec proper), but in their case the Nahuatl translation was literal, as "Mixtecatl" translates directly as "Cloud Person."
The Zapotec and Mixtec elite of prehispanic times shared many customs and beliefs, and it is likely that they may have shared more in common with other Mesoamerican elites than with the bulk of Zapotec common people. The Spaniards documented Zapotec society as it functioned at the time of European arrival in Tzapotecapan ("Zapotec Territory," in the "Aztec" language). Their chronicles tell of a specialized and stratified society, with a class of political leaders, a priesthood and commoners. No intermarriage occurred between the governing nobility and the common folk. These last were farmers and artisans who paid tribute to the nobility, which in turn lived in magnificent ceremonial centers and managed affairs of state, cultivated the knowledge of the sacred cycles of nature, communed with the gods, and conducted warfare. While commoners could attain great wealth, they themselves could not aspire to noble status, nor eat certain foods, nor use clothing and ornaments that were reserved for the nobility.
There are currently 422,937 speakers of some Zapotec language, which is the minimum criterion used to establish the population of Zapotecs, according to statistics compiled by the Mexican government (INEGI, 1980 census) and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Even though the majority of these people reside in their native state of Oaxaca, an important nucleus of Zapotecs also lives in both the Mexican capital (Mexico City) and in Los Angeles, California. In their home state, Zapotecs live throughout the central valleys, the eastern and southern mountain ranges, the Pacific coast and in the Istmus of Tehuantepec.
As in antiquity, the majority of today's Zapotecs lead a subsistance lifestyle (Mexico's INEGI estimates the proportion who do so at 60%), and additionally produce a number of craft items, principally textiles and pottery. Prehispanic marketing cycles are alive and well, and can be seen at the mercantile exchanges that Zapotecs from the entire state continue to organize on a weekly rotating schedule at major regional market centers. At such markets one can find tropical products, seafood, the toasted "travelling tortilla" (totopo) from the isthmus, pottery and woven wraps from the central valley, sandals and coffee from the heights of the Northern Sierra, and the full assortment of products resulting from Zapotec specialization and effort. One can also hear the Zapotec language flow in such market settings, as a great majority of today's Zapotecs are bilingual in their mother tongue and Spanish. The majority of the monolingual Zapotec population are women, and the lack of literacy is three times greater among Zapotecs (41%) than among the general Mexican population. Even though Oaxaca is the most "Indian" state of modern Mexico, racism thrives and markedly limits the health, quality of life and potential of hundreds of thousands of Zapotec whose hard work and ambition is often not valued for any more than traditional menial and brutal tasks. As a result, there is a high rate of out-migration among the native population of the state, focused primarily on Mexico City and Los Angeles, California. This has created important sociocultural vacuums and distortions in the rural communities of Oaxaca, and has created the need among Zapotecs to develop skills in coping with new and completely unknown challenges in pursuing their livelyhood. Even though these folk have primarily been utterly disenfranchised people, literally slaving in the basest forms of drudgery, among the second generations of such migrants there is a growing number of professionals, including physicians, engineers and professors. Some of these folks are assimilated without a trace into the world they have entered in order to escape the limited destiny of today's Mexican Indian. It is an understandable trade-off, if also tragic in the context of a legacy more than 3 millenia in the making. Even so, a few of these folk struggle on behalf of the rights of their people, both in their native Oaxaca and in the new environs where their needs have taken them.
This is the reality about life for The Cloud People in the late twentieth century. This site documents the past and present of our people, and is dedicated to promote a Zapotec future with dignity, one that will harmonize with the long term evolution of the unique culture that our forebears bequeathed us.
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Mixtec
The Mixtec (or Mixteca) are a Native American people centered in the Oaxaca state of Mexico. "Mixtec" is also the name of their historic language.
The term Mixtec (Mixteca in Spanish) comes from the Aztec word of Mixtecapan, or place of the clouds. The Mixtecs call themselves 'ñuu savi', 'ñuu djau', 'ñuu davi', 'naa savi', etc, depending on the local variant of their languange, the "Sa'an Davi", "Da'an Davi" or "Tu'un Savi".
In Pre-Columbian times, the Mixtec were one of the major civilizations of Mesoamerica. Important ancient centres of the Mixtec include the ancient capital of Tilantongo, as well as the sites of Achiutla, Cuilapan, Huamelupan, Mitla, Tlaxiaco, Juxtlahuaca, and Yucuñudahui. The Mixtec also made major constructions at the ancient city of Monte Albán (which had originated as a Zapotec city before the Mixtec gained control of it). The work of Mixtec artisans who produced work in stone, wood, and metal were well regarded throughout ancient Mesoamerica. The Mixtec were conquered by the Aztec Emperor Auizotl about 30 years before the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadores. They put up a fierce and bloody resistance to Spanish rule until they were subdued by the Spanish and their central Mexican allies lead by Pedro de Alvarado.
The Mixtec area, both historically and today, corresponds roughly to the western half of the state of Oaxaca, with some Mixtec communities extending into the neighboring state of Puebla to the north west and also the state of Guerrero. The Mixtec people are often subdivided into three geographic and cultural areas: The Mixteca Alta or Highland Mixtec living in the mountains in, around, and to the west of the valley of Oaxaca; the Mixteca Baja or Lowland Mixtec living to the north and west of these highlands, and the Mixteca de la Costa or Coastal Mixtec living in the southern plains and the coast of the Pacific Ocean. For most of Mixtec history the Mixteca Alta was the dominant political force, with the capitals of the Mixtec nation located in the central highlands. The valley of Oaxaca itself was often a disputed border region, sometimes dominated by the Mixtec and sometimes by the neighboring people to the east, the Zapotec.
The Mixtec language was estimated to be spoken by about 300,000 people at the end of the 20th century, although the majority of Mixtec speakers also had at least a working knowledge of the Spanish language.
The Mixtec are better known in the anthropological world for their Codices, or phonetic pictures in which they wrote their history and genealogies in deerskin in the "fold-book" form. The most known story of the Mixtec Codices is the legend of Lord 8 Deer, named after the day in which he was born, and with a personal name of Jaguar Claw, whose epic is told in several codices, including the Codex Bodley and Codex Nuttal, in which he manage to conquer and unite most of the Mixteca region.
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