How do indigenous festivals migrate? From Aranza to Las Vegas, recreating the P’urhépecha ritual with teacher Gil

Abstract

This paper presents part of the ethnographic work, carried out from 2007 to date, to document the experience of Pastorela rehearsalist, the distinctive ritual of Christmas and New Year’s celebrations among the P’urhépechas. In this case, we follow in the footsteps of «Teacher Gil» who, in his efforts to recompose the Purépecha pastorela in Las Vegas, demonstrates the difficulties, tensions, and disagreements between generations, genders, and nationalities. He thus points out the need to add a new dimension to studies on indigenous migrants in the United States: the fiesta as a unit of analysis; by analyzing it as a process, rather than a finished product, it ceases to be seen as something negative, a pure spectacle, or positive, an enhancer of ethnic empowerment; by taking into account the voice of the revelers themselves, the research is nourished by ethno-speakers, ethnodiologues or ethnocategories that make the phenomenon visible in its processual and relational complexity.