Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

322 reframing latin america
customs, the native language, local history, and folklore. Through my friendship
with Celsa I established invaluable contacts with other villagers who,
like Celsa, were active practitioners of oral tradition. Although my original
assignment from Dr. Lewis had been to compile data on rural agrarian practices,
which meant getting up before daybreak many mornings and spending
the day learning to cultivate the fi elds, I spent much of my free time
listening to oral remembrances of Celsa and her friends of whom many were
elders and keepers of local history, in the Nahuatl language, of course [. . .].
After a month in the village, Celsa asked me to be the padrino (godfather)
of her adopted six-month old daughter, Hilaria [. . .].
Although ignorant of my obligations at fi rst, I soon learned that one
of my duties as padrino was to ensure the well-being of my ahijada
(goddaughter) [. . .].
I mention the story of my goddaughter and the institution of compadrazgo
for several reasons: it established an important and lasting noncognate kinship
relationship with my main informant; it had the effect of making me
part of the community; and it increased my credibility as a recorder of life
in the village. When I became Hilaria’s baptismal godfather I also became a
member of her family and, through her family, of the community. Acceptance
of the institutional obligations of compadrazgo became a binding social
contract by which I gained many friends, entered village life as an active
participant, shared in its culture, and became a fi ctive kin. Furthermore,
having lived in the community for three months at that time (1961) and
having revisited it on six other occasions, most recently for four months, I
can truly say that I feel very much at home with the people of San Antonio.
The reliability of Celsa’s life history as an accurate description of the
everyday life of a peasant woman was the primary objective of the greater
part of my investigative research over the past twenty-fi ve years. Having
found a high degree of corroboration between Celsa’s stories and those of
other women in the village, I can safely say that Celsa’s World is not only a
representative life history of one individual but also an accurate and meaningful
description of the social landscape of rural Mexico in the state of
Morelos.
This Book [. . .] Although I did select material and organize her
conversations into episodic accounts, which are presented as chapters in
this book, as Celsa’s biographer I was more a conduit for her story than a
storyteller.
All names including that of the village have been changed in order to
protect the identity of the principal characters.