Cultural continuity and change in Gremio fiestas in Yucatan.

Festivals are intrinsically paradoxical and multidimensional emphasizing contradictory functions as the specific cultural moment dictates. Festival traditions allow for historical continuity while incorporating societal change. They are a means of flexible adaptation that supports both social solidarity and the status quo. Festivals buttress hierarchical, closed caste/class systems while fostering status and prestige building within those systems through consensus and cooperation. The very act of role reversal delineates the dominant status role. Despite the various forms that festival traditions may take and the different historical paths that lead to them, they are similar in function and structure.

Thus, Glenda Joy Driskell (1981:15) writes in the introduction to her ethnomusicological exploration of the festival tradition in Yucatan that, "the fiesta has been variously extolled as a source of cultural continuity, a foundation of village integration, and a bulwark against exploitation by wealthy Yucatecans. It has also been condemned by economists as an impediment to economic progress and as a mechanism of colonial control."

In a similar vein, Olga Najera Ramirez (1988: 146-147) discusses how the "festival represents a different world view because it encourages multiple dialogues, allows for alternatives to be expressed and therefore has revolutionary tendencies. From this perspective, it becomes more clear why the dominant society tries to control or repress traditional festivals."

Francisco Fernandez (1994:78) has found that "the function of social reproduction can operate as a parallelism or reflex of the social order (as is the case of the fiestas of Yucatan) or through rituals of reversal (as in the carnival)." Festivals serve as an integrating mechanism between social classes and competing economic systems. Specific to his study of patronal festivals in Merida, Fernandez concludes (1994:vii-viii) that:

 
      [t]he fiesta also expresses different levels of identity according to 
   the context in which it is performed. Special attention is given to the 
   fact that as a collective phenomenon, specific identities are constituted 
   in a process of social contrast. The analysis also establishes the 
   relations between the socioeconomic conditions of the places studied here 
   with the population's interest in the fiesta as a social event and as an 
   economic enterprise. 

Yucantan's gremio organizations, or work guilds, sponsor annual festival parades throughout the peninsula. This article presents a brief history of gremio festivals while emphasizing their functions and adaptations to the larger society, shared structure and ethos, and shifting ideologies. It explores not only the latent economic functions but also the functions of social integration, identity, and prestige of the festival tradition (Rodriguez 1991). After surveying the tradition's historical continuity, growth, and adaptation, I concentrate on an analysis of the function and structure of the tradition in the areas of group structure and membership, cooperation/competition between groups, parade behavior and symbolism, and expressions of embedded identity.

Historical Continuity, Growth, and Integration (1)