Indians danced, drummed and delighted tourists in their annual fiesta in this mountain city. But their celebration masked the deep misery and neglect faced by indigenous groups across Mexico.
Each July, tens of thousands of tourists gather for dances, crafts and light shows in the three-week festival called Guelaguetza in Oaxaca, 220 miles southeast of Mexico City.Exhibits showcase embroidered costumes and crafts, while plays bring to life the Zapotec, Mixtec and other civilizations that thrived here before the Spanish conquest of the 16th century.
Women in woven shifts, red ribbons in their braids, twirled with pineapples on their shoulders in a harvest tribute from the rugged Pacific coast of Oaxaca state. As drums beat and horns blared, men in huge feather headdresses leaped in a re-enactment of the death of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma at the hands of his Spanish captors - called the Dance of Feathers.
"For me, it's the best: to dance the Dance of Feathers," said a Zapotec Indian, Ezekiel Chavez Maces, 25. "But it's a shame for those of us who belong to these ethnic groups. There is so much marginalization."
Mexico has as many as 20 million Indians. They are among the country's poorest inhabitants and suffer its highest rates of illiteracy and infant mortality.
But the hard life of most Indians is hidden in the countryside, away from richly embroidered festivities such as this one.
In Oaxaca's tree-shaded plaza, down the hill from the festivities, 800 impoverished Indians gathered this week to demand government help. Some 250 riot police lined the streets Monday, ensuring that they didn't march into the state's most important tourist event of the year.
The Indians accused the government of ignoring promises to pave streets, build health clinics and help farmers.
"We are dying of curable diseases!" one man shouted to a government official trying to negotiate an end to the embarrassing protest.
The cries evoked those of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which rebelled in neighboring Chiapas state in 1994, demanding democracy and basic services for poor Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Chol Indians.
Although most Indians in Mexico reject the Zapatista's violence, they share their demands.
In neighboring Guerrero state, peasants of mixed Spanish and indigenous blood united in the Peasant Organization of the Southern Sierra with similar demands.
Angering Guerrero's Indian population, state police clashed with the peasants June 28, killing 17 of them as they headed to a rally against the state government.
Marcelino Diaz, leader of the Guerrero Council-500 Years in Resistance, said Indians are struggling against oblivion.
"There are three types of Indians: The dead Indian who built the pyramids . . . (then) there's the Indian of folklore, who promotes tourism with pretty images and adorns government speeches," Diaz said.
"Then there's the living Indian who fights, who is hungry, who needs justice, who has concrete problems such as housing and food, who agrees with the Za-pa-tis-ta demands," he said.
President Ernesto Zedillo has promised to help Mexico's Indians with national programs of education and economic development, saying Mexico is a "multicultural country."
But Oaxaca's archbishop emeritus, Bartolome Carrasco, accused the government of ignoring Indians. They "are a sector not only forgotten, but seen as an obstacle that has to be removed for the modernization of the country," he said.