Latest news with #Zapotec
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide wins Spain's Princess of Asturias Prize for the Arts
MADRID -- Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide was awarded Spain's 2025 Princess of Asturias Prize for the Arts for her images that for decades have captured "the social reality not only of Mexico, but also of many places,' prize organizers said Friday. Iturbide became famous internationally for her sparse, cinematic and mostly black-and-white photographs of Indigenous societies in Mexico, with a particular focus on the role of women in them. In 'Our Lady of the Iguanas,' one of Iturbide's best-known images published in 1979, an Indigenous Zapotec woman in southern Mexico carries live iguanas on her head that form the shape of a crown. The award's jury said that Iturbide's photographs have 'a documentary facet' that show 'a hypnotic world that seems to lie on the threshold between reality at its harshest and the grace of spontaneous magic.' Iturbide's work has been displayed in the world's leading art institutions, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and many more. Her work has been published in numerous books. The photographer, born in Mexico City in 1942, traveled throughout Latin America during her career, but also to India, Madagascar, Hungary, Germany, France the United States and elsewhere. The 50,000-euro ($57,000) Princess of Asturias Award is one of several annual prizes covering areas, including arts, literature, science and sports. The awards ceremony, presided over by Spain's King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, and accompanied by Princess Leonor, takes place each fall in the northern Spanish city of Oviedo.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
He fought to stop the forest being felled. The price was 30 years in prison for a murder he says he did not commit
The meeting room in the prison of Villa de Etla, a town in Oaxaca, Mexico, doubles as a classroom with school desks and a small library. The walls feature motivational phrases such as 'First things first', 'Live and let live' and 'Little by little, you'll go far'. Pablo López Alavez, a 56-year-old environmental defender, has had nearly 15 years to contemplate these sentiments – and faces 15 more, after being imprisoned for murders he says he did not commit. The office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has described his detention as arbitrary. Some organisations argue that the true reason he is behind bars is his resistance to logging near his community, and have called for his release. But their call has fallen on closed ears: last month a retrial confirmed his 30-year sentence. Stocky and greying, dressed in the khaki reserved for inmates, López Alavez tucks himself into one of the chairs and rests his elbows on the desk. 'I imagine you'd like to know whether I'm within the truth, or if I am with the lies,' he says, before apologising for his Spanish. López Alavez comes from the Indigenous community of San Isidro Aloápam, and speaks a Zapotec dialect as his first language. His Spanish is occasionally stiff and legalistic – learned while defending himself in court. He traces the events that led to his arrest back to the 1980s, when the conflict between his community and its neighbour, San Miguel Aloápam, began with a land dispute. San Isidro was denied titles to nearby forests, while San Miguel was authorised to log them. López Alavez's family farmed and kept animals in San Isidro. For 20 years before his arrest, he was a community leader, resisting deforestation to protect their water sources. 'It takes two hours to bring down a great pine tree. But it takes more than 50 years for one to grow,' says López Alavez. 'We were thinking ahead: 'if we destroy it all, what would happen?'' Friction between the communities grew until two people from San Miguel were killed in contested circumstances in 2007, while people from San Isidro began to be arrested for alleged crimes. Then, in 2010, López Alavez says he was kidnapped. He was driving near San Isidro with his wife and grandchild when a pickup truck cut them off and armed masked men seized him. They took him to a field near San Miguel and threw him on the ground in front of a group of people. 'That's him,' López Alavez heard a voice say. 'Kill him.' He says one of the masked men came up to him and asked if he wanted to live. 'I told him that's no question to ask,' says López Alavez. 'If your mind is made up, pull the trigger.' They beat him instead, before taking him to another town where they handed him over to state police, who brought him to Villa de Etla's prison. Then they told him he was accused of murdering the two people from San Miguel. López Alavez has protested his innocence all along, saying he was not in town on the day the murders took place, but working in construction in a community eight hours away. He provided witness testimonies, and a certificate from that community's local police. I've lost everything I built in my community. Now my family is living in a rented house Pablo López Alavez Yet, in 2017, López Alavez received a 30-year sentence. In 2020, due to irregularities in the trial, the state court restarted the process. But last month it produced the same sentence. As well as describing López Alavez's detention as arbitrary, the UN has noted violations of due process in the trial, inconsistencies in the evidence against him and a lack of consideration of evidence provided by the defence. The UN concludeds that 'the true motive for the detention and trial of López Alavez is his activity as a defender of the human rights of his community.' Numerous organisations describe his case as part of a 'systematic and alarming' pattern of criminalisation of Indigenous environmental defenders across Mexico. *** Since then, López Alavez has kept repeating the number of years, months, and days he has been deprived of his freedom – precisely 14 years, 7 months and 25 days at the time he is speaking to the Guardian – as if he can see the tally on the walls of his mind. 'I've lost everything I built in my community,' he says. 'Now my family is living here in a rented house.' For a couple of years after his arrest, he says, the authorities in San Isidro kept talking about the defence of nature. 'But then fear won. And now they are quiet,' he says. 'People are afraid of ending up here with me.' López Alavez dwells on the cost for his family. 'When my wife left the community, she couldn't speak Spanish, she didn't know how to live in a city,' he says. 'She has suffered a lot trying to get justice.' Related: Killed, dismembered and scattered: the Honduran father and son who made a stand against illegal logging She still receives threats, he adds. 'Sometimes when she visits she tells me that someone followed her. If something were to happen to her, the government would never investigate it,' he says. By making furniture, López Alavez has been able to support his family from prison. His children did not finish school, pushed to work to help support the home. The greatest punishment is what they have done to his family, he says, and asks to pause for a moment to take his glasses off and rub his eyes. López Alavez plans to keep fighting his case at the state level. If that doesn't work, he will take it to a federal judge. He hopes that local interests might hold less sway there. But he has also made a direct appeal for the president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and her party, Morena, to live up to their discourse. 'They say there will be change, that they will fix the problems in Indigenous communities. I want to see it,' says López Alavez. 'I ask the president to intervene. I ask her to pay attention to the voice of this Indigenous Zapotec, who has spent 14 years, 7 months and 25 days in prison, accused of a crime he did not commit.'
The Guardian
24-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
He fought to stop the forest being felled. The price was 30 years in prison for a murder he says he did not commit
The meeting room in the prison of Villa de Etla, a town in Oaxaca, Mexico, doubles as a classroom with school desks and a small library. The walls feature motivational phrases such as 'First things first', 'Live and let live' and 'Little by little, you'll go far'. Pablo López Alavez, a 56-year-old environmental defender, has had nearly 15 years to contemplate these sentiments – and faces 15 more, after being imprisoned for murders he says he did not commit. The office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has described his detention as arbitrary. Some organisations argue that the true reason he is behind bars is his resistance to logging near his community, and have called for his release. But their call has fallen on closed ears: last month a retrial confirmed his 30-year sentence. Stocky and greying, dressed in the khaki reserved for inmates, López Alavez tucks himself into one of the chairs and rests his elbows on the desk. 'I imagine you'd like to know whether I'm within the truth, or if I am with the lies,' he says, before apologising for his Spanish. López Alavez comes from the Indigenous community of San Isidro Aloápam, and speaks a Zapotec dialect as his first language. His Spanish is occasionally stiff and legalistic – learned while defending himself in court. He traces the events that led to his arrest back to the 1980s, when the conflict between his community and its neighbour, San Miguel Aloápam, began with a land dispute. San Isidro was denied titles to nearby forests, while San Miguel was authorised to log them. López Alavez's family farmed and kept animals in San Isidro. For 20 years before his arrest, he was a community leader, resisting deforestation to protect their water sources. 'It takes two hours to bring down a great pine tree. But it takes more than 50 years for one to grow,' says López Alavez. 'We were thinking ahead: 'if we destroy it all, what would happen?'' Friction between the communities grew until two people from San Miguel were killed in contested circumstances in 2007, while people from San Isidro began to be arrested for alleged crimes. Then, in 2010, López Alavez says he was kidnapped. He was driving near San Isidro with his wife and grandchild when a pickup truck cut them off and armed masked men seized him. They took him to a field near San Miguel and threw him on the ground in front of a group of people. 'That's him,' López Alavez heard a voice say. 'Kill him.' He says one of the masked men came up to him and asked if he wanted to live. 'I told him that's no question to ask,' says López Alavez. 'If your mind is made up, pull the trigger.' They beat him instead, before taking him to another town where they handed him over to state police, who brought him to Villa de Etla's prison. Then they told him he was accused of murdering the two people from San Miguel. López Alavez has protested his innocence all along, saying he was not in town on the day the murders took place, but working in construction in a community eight hours away. He provided witness testimonies, and a certificate from that community's local police. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion Yet, in 2017, López Alavez received a 30-year sentence. In 2020, due to irregularities in the trial, the state court restarted the process. But last month it produced the same sentence. As well as describing López Alavez's detention as arbitrary, the UN has noted violations of due process in the trial, inconsistencies in the evidence against him and a lack of consideration of evidence provided by the defence. The UN concludeds that 'the true motive for the detention and trial of López Alavez is his activity as a defender of the human rights of his community.' Numerous organisations describe his case as part of a 'systematic and alarming' pattern of criminalisation of Indigenous environmental defenders across Mexico. Since then, López Alavez has kept repeating the number of years, months, and days he has been deprived of his freedom – precisely 14 years, 7 months and 25 days at the time he is speaking to the Guardian – as if he can see the tally on the walls of his mind. 'I've lost everything I built in my community,' he says. 'Now my family is living here in a rented house.' For a couple of years after his arrest, he says, the authorities in San Isidro kept talking about the defence of nature. 'But then fear won. And now they are quiet,' he says. 'People are afraid of ending up here with me.' López Alavez dwells on the cost for his family. 'When my wife left the community, she couldn't speak Spanish, she didn't know how to live in a city,' he says. 'She has suffered a lot trying to get justice.' She still receives threats, he adds. 'Sometimes when she visits she tells me that someone followed her. If something were to happen to her, the government would never investigate it,' he says. By making furniture, López Alavez has been able to support his family from prison. His children did not finish school, pushed to work to help support the home. The greatest punishment is what they have done to his family, he says, and asks to pause for a moment to take his glasses off and rub his eyes. López Alavez plans to keep fighting his case at the state level. If that doesn't work, he will take it to a federal judge. He hopes that local interests might hold less sway there. But he has also made a direct appeal for the president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and her party, Morena, to live up to their discourse. 'They say there will be change, that they will fix the problems in Indigenous communities. I want to see it,' says López Alavez. 'I ask the president to intervene. I ask her to pay attention to the voice of this Indigenous Zapotec, who has spent 14 years, 7 months and 25 days in prison, accused of a crime he did not commit.'
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why is there a statue of the first indigenous president of Mexico in Fresno?
Uniquely is a Fresno Bee series that covers the moments, landmarks and personalities that define what makes living in the Fresno area so special. The statue of Benito Juárez García, a Zapotec Indian who later became President of México, has stood in the heart of the city of Fresno for more than two decades. But why is the bronze statue of México's first indigenous president in Fresno? The statue of Juárez in Fresno's Courthouse Park was unveiled by the Oaxacan community in 2003, according to Vida en el Valle. Oralia Maceda and her late husband Rufino Domínguez, then coordinator of the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales (Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations) partnered with leaders of the Centro Binacional para El Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño (Binational Center for Oaxacan Indigenous Development), or CBDIO, to secure the funding and permits for the installation of the statue in Fresno. Then Fresno County Supervisor Juan Arámbula submitted a proposal to his colleagues for the statue to be placed in Courthouse Park next to the Hall of Justice. The proposal passed unanimously, according to a March 2003 Vida en el Valle article. In a recent interview, Arámbula said he was approached by the Oaxacan community and believed it was important to recognize Juárez for his accomplishments and his leadership in México during a critical time in history. Juárez was a Mexican politician, military commander, and lawyer who served as governor of Oaxaca state and was the 26th president of México from 1858 until his death in office in 1872 at age 66. A Zapotec, he was the first democratically elected Indigenous president in the postcolonial Americas. Maceda said the statue of Juárez, which was donated by then Oaxaca Governor José Murat Casab, represents an example of the struggle — and perseverance — that a Zapotec indigenous person endured in his time. 'A symbol of struggle, of resistance, and we as indigenous people outside our communities have to continue those examples or legacies, that we can do it,' said Maceda, who is of Mixtec origin. 'It doesn't matter if one doesn't speak Spanish or English. We have the strength and knowledge to fight for the rights we have as individuals and as a community.' Arámbula said the Courthouse Park is a place to recognize important contributions made by people from all the communities living in Fresno County. The Oaxacan community in the Central Valley is big, especially in Madera and Kern counties, according to the Mexican Consulate in Fresno. The consulate estimates about 30,000 Oaxacans live in the Central Valley, with approximately 150,000 across California. The indigenous community is mainly Mixtecos, Zapotecos, or Triquis, with a smaller number from another indigenous groups like Mixes or Chatinos. 'And I continue to believe that it's important to respect all people, no matter where they come from, and Benito Juárez is an excellent example to our youth today,' Arámbula said. Juárez's famous phrase is written at the foot of the Fresno statue. It reads, 'Entre las naciones como entre los individuos, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz' ('Between nations, as between individuals, respect for another's rights will result in peace.') Jesús Martínez, a former Fresno State University professor who was present at the unveiling of the statue more than 20 years ago, said Oaxacan immigrants play an important role in Fresno and the Central Valley. Martínez said Juárez is considered the greatest and most popular Mexican president of all time and having the statue of the 'Benemérito de las Américas' in Fresno is 'a very inspiring symbol.' 'This is a symbol of the belonging of Oaxacan immigrants here in the Central Valley and in Fresno,' Martínez said. He noted that when the French invaded México, Juárez was forced to flee the country, first to Cuba then to the United States, living in New Orleans where he organized with other Mexican leaders to fight back against the French. Martínez said during that period, Juárez was able to establish cordial bilateral relations between México and the United States and serves as a historical point to help historians analyze 'the difficulties that we may be finding nowadays or in recent periods. The fact that Benito Juárez, himself, was someone who had to flee and became a political refugee further adds to the dimensions of his presence and his relation with the U.S.' The Mexican Consulate and the Centro Binacional highlighted the legacy of Juárez during two separate ceremonies at Courthouse Park earlier this month. The ceremonies commemorated the 219th anniversary of the birth of Juárez. 'In the US there are more or less 10 statues of Juárez, and we are very fortunate to be among those places,' said Nuria Zúñiga, Fresno's head consul. 'On a personal level, Juárez is also a role model for public servants,' Zúñiga said. 'He was honest, austere and with an unquestionable vocation of service. Benito Juárez also represents something that under the circumstances, we need to reflect on: temperance during adversity.'
National Geographic
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- National Geographic
6 of Mexico's best festivals
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). Day of the Dead may be Mexico's most famous festival, but it's just one of 5,000 that take place in the country each year. These celebrations blend the culture of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica with rituals brought by their Catholic colonisers: some are devoted to God, others to the devil; some celebrate life, others death. Processions form to mark everything from saints to particular professions, and no event is too small — even a girl's quinceañera, or 15th birthday party, might turn a town on its head. Here's our pick of the festivals worth travelling for. 1. Día de los Muertos, Oaxaca de Juárez For weeks leading up to Day of the Dead, traditionally celebrated on 1 and 2 November, the walls of Oaxaca are flushed bright orange with freshly cut marigolds — fixed to doors, hung in garlands or, in some cases, cloaking entire buildings. According to legend, the flowers act as guides to souls revisiting the land of the living, where they're greeted by raucous street parties, decorated ofrenda (altars), painted faces and skeletal puppet parades. Join in by adding a picture of a lost loved one to a communal ofrenda and, typically, a sweet treat or drink they can enjoy on their journey home. Half an hour south of the state capital, you'll find the candlelit cemeteries of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán — one of several surrounding settlements that hosts its own festivities. 2. Fiesta de la Virgen de Guadalupe, Morelia Celebrations of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint — as she appeared to Juan Diego, the first Indigenous person of the Americas to be canonised — begin on 12 December. Across the country, crowds carry flower-wrapped representations of the Holy Virgin and worshippers don colourful headdresses to perform the Dance of the Matachines in her honour, with live music and fireworks to follow. Morelia, the capital of the central state of Michoacán, has the most fervent festivities — each year, around 150,000 pilgrims take part in a procession towards the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, its interior gleaming with gold. The Guelaguetza celebrations in Oaxaca include offerings to the Zapotec goddess of agriculture. Photograph by Gabriel Perez, Getty Images 3. Guelaguetza, Oaxaca de Juárez Guelaguetza (meaning 'offering') is a 3,000-year-old festival that traditionally honoured the Zapotec goddess of agriculture but now serves as a celebration of the state's dazzlingly diverse Indigenous culture. Oaxaca's 16 Indigenous groups are represented, with dancers, musicians and costumed carousers from each group travelling to the state capital for the last two Mondays of July. Their processions mainly take place in an open-air amphitheatre built into the Cerro del Fortín hilltop, for which tickets are required — but the festive spirit tends to spill over into city streets. 4. Fiesta Grande de Chiapa, Chiapa de Corzo This annual festival, held in January, is inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage List and is the chief claim to fame of this Chiapas highlands town. Honouring three Catholic saints (Saint Anthony Abbot, Our Lord of Esquipulas and Saint Sebastian), it sees parachico dancers wearing painted masks spinning amid crowds donned in folkloric costumes. Participants wear designs specific to their place of origin, with men parading in neon-woven serapes (traditional shawls) and women in meticulously embroidered pluming skirts. Soundtracked by beating drums and children's chattering maracas, the procession makes its way towards the grand doors of the Cathedral of Santo Domingo de Guzmán for a dedicated mass. Lighting a candle in honour of the Catholic Saints is a fundamental activity during festivities. Photograph by Gabriel Perez, Getty Images 5. Carnaval, Mazatlán This Pacific Coast city's multi-day Carnaval celebrations, held in the lead-up to Lent, has the same roots as its famous counterparts in Brazil and the Caribbean — but today, Mazatlán's iteration is mostly an excuse for a city-wide party. Neon lights shine from the sides of grand parade floats and dancers wearing bedazzled bikinis and feathered headdresses twirl to pounding tunes late into the night. The daytime procession tends to be calmer and more family-friendly, with fairground rides and the coronation of the Carnaval King and Queen. 6. Festival Internacional Cervantino, Guanajuato Among the few festivals tagged neither to pre-Hispanic ritual nor the Catholic calendar, this celebration of Spanish-language arts takes place in the central Mexican city of Guanajuato each autumn. Named after the Spaniard Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, its packed programme of live events includes performances of traditional Mexican folkloric ballet in the central hub Plaza de la Paz, music in repurposed baroque churches and pop-up nightclubs in subterranean catacombs. National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click To subscribe to(UK) magazine click here . (Available in select countries only).
