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The Traje De Tehuana as National Icon: Gender, Ethnicity, and Fashion in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Francie Chassen-López
Francie Chassen-López*
Affiliation:
University of KentuckyLexington, Kentucky
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Extract

“Is fashion in fact such a trifling thing? Or is it, as I prefer to think, rather an indication of deeper phenomena—of the energies, possibilities, demands, and joie de vivre of a given society, economy and civilization?” So wrote Fernand Braudel in The Structures of Everyday Life.

Type
Tibesar Lecture
Information
The Americas , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , October 2014 , pp. 281 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014

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References

I am very grateful to Deborah Poole, Mary Kay Vaughan, Gabriela Cano, Jürgen Buchenau, Víctor Macías-González, Bill French, Bill Beezley, Monica Udvardy, and the two anonymous reviewers of The Americas for their insightful comments and suggestions. In addition, I am indebted to Martina Escobar de Aguilar, Gilberto Martínez Fabián, Patricia López Hernández, Julín Contreras, and Rosa Osório for sharing with me their knowledge of the traje, as well as for allowing me access to their own collections. I am grateful also to Drs. Maria Isabel Granen Porrúa and Alejandro de Ávila for access to trajes in the collection of the Museo Textil of Oaxaca and their ongoing support for this investigation.

1. Braudel, Fernand, The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization & Capitalism 15th-18th Century, Vol. 1, Reynolds, Siân, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 323.Google Scholar

2. Fossey, Mathieu de, Le Mexique (Paris: Henri Pion, Editeur, 1857), pp. 384–385 Google Scholar. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. Here, I have used a few phrases from Michelle Suderman’s translation in Fossey, Mathieu de, “Ancient Presence: The Unexpected Beauty of Indigo,” Artes de Mexico, Tehuana, La, 49 (2000), p. 83 Google Scholar. While tehuana refers to the women of the city of Tehuantepec, it is also commonly used to denote all women from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. I have used it in this generic sense here. The terms istmeño or istmeña refer to male or female inhabitants of the Isthmus respectively.

3. Gaetano Moro in Garay, José de, Survey of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Executed in the Tears 1842 and 1843 with the Intent of Establishing a Communication between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and under the Superintendence of a Scientific Commission, appointed by the Projector Don José de Garay (London: Ackermann and Co., 1844), p. 94.Google Scholar

4. Charnay, Désiré, Ciudades y ruinas americanas: México, 1858-1861, Recuerdos e impresiones de viaje (1863; repr., Mexico: Banco de México, 1994), p. 253 Google Scholar. Murphy, John McLeod noted, “In morals they are loose, and full of intrigue, but in habits they are temperate and industrious.” “The Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Its Inhabitants and Resources,” Journal of the American Geographical Society 1:6 (June 1859), p. 177.Google Scholar

5. Tenenbaum, Barbara A., Mexico and the Royal Indian: The Porfiriato and the National Past, Latin American Studies Center, Series No. 8 (College Park: University of Maryland, 1994), p. 24 Google Scholar; Florescano, Enrique, Etnia, estado y nación: ensayo sobre las identidades colectivas en México (Mexico: Aguilar, 1997), pp. 436–454.Google Scholar

6. Gracida, Manuel Martinez, Los indios oaxaqueños y sus monumentos arqueológicos (Oaxaca: Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca, 1986)Google Scholar, and “Las velas tehuantepecanas,” Ethnos\:2 (1923), pp. 22-27; Manuel Brioso y Candiani, La evolución del pueblo oaxaqueño, 4 vols. (Mexico Imprenta: “A Su Orden,” 1941-1943). See Deborah Poole on Martínez Gracida, “An Image of ‘Our Indian’: Type Photographs and Racial Sentiments in Oaxaca, 1920-1940,” Hispanic American Historical Review 84:1 (2004), pp. 35–82 Google Scholar (quote is from p. 63). And on Brioso y Candiani’s theories, see “Siempremuertas: el sacrificio desde Zehotaba hasta Donají,” Acervos 17 (2004), pp. 46-52.

7. Cervantes, Francisco Ruiz, Oaxaca en la numismática y la filatelia, cited in Poole, , “An Image,” p. 66.Google Scholar

8. El Imparcial, January 22, 1907, pp. 1-2, and January 23, 1907, pp. 1-2.

9. In 1910, Juana Cata supposedly dressed the tehuanas, and Isabel Arias accompanied the young women to Mexico City. See Bernal, Ángel Bustillo, La Revolución Mexicana en el Itsmo [sic] de Tehuantepec (Mexico: Editora Mexicana de Periódicos y Revistas, 1968), p. 15 Google Scholar. National Geographic Magazine reported on the wonders of the Isthmus and its people: Helen Olsson-Seffer, “The Isthmus of Tehuantepec: ‘The Bride of the World’s Commerce,’” National Geographic 21:12 (December 1910), pp. 991-1002. See also Corey, Herbert, “The Isthmus of Tehuantepec,” National Geographic 45:5 (May 1924), pp. 549–578.Google Scholar

10. Vaughan, Mary Kay and Lewis, Stephen E., introduction to The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940, Vaughan, and Lewis, , eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 120 Google Scholar; López, Rick A., Crafting Mexico: Intellectuals, Artisans, and the State after the Revolution (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 30–32.Google Scholar

11. According to Maureen Gosling and Ellen Osborne’s documentary film on Juchitán, Blossoms of Fire (San Francisco, Film Arts Foundation, 2000, 74 minutes), the Spanish edition of Elle in the 1990s was still describing istmeñas as bossy matriarchs, and U.S. National Public Radio did a similar story. See also Howell, Jane, “Constructions and Commodifications of Isthmus Women,” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 25 (2006), pp. 1–23 Google Scholar; Dalton, Margarita, Mujeres:género e identidad en el Istmo de Tehuantepec, Oaxaca (Mexico: CIESAS, 2010)Google Scholar; Campbell, Obdulia Ruiz, “Representations of Isthmus Women: A Zapotec Woman’s Point of View,” in Zapotee Struggles: History, Politics, and Representations from Juchitán, Oaxaca, Campbell, Howard, Binford, Leigh, Bartolomé, Miguel, and Barabas, Alicia, eds. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1993), pp. 139–141 Google Scholar; and Saynes-Vázquez, Edaena, “Galán Pa dxandí’ – ‘That Would Be Great if it Were True’: Zapotec Women’s Comment on their Role in Society,” Identities 3:1-2 (1996), pp. 183–204.Google Scholar

12. Charlot, Jean, The Mexican Mural Renaissance, 1920-1925 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), pp. 142–145 Google Scholar; Marnham, Patrick, Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), pp. 159–167 Google Scholar; Rivera, Diego with March, Gladys, My Art My Life: An Autobiography (New York: Dover Publications, 1991), pp. 72–73.Google Scholar

13. As seen here, the popularity of the traje began in the Porfiriato and was well established by the 1920s, so this trend cannot be attributed to Frida Kahlo. Writers debate just when she began to wear the traje, whether while in the United States or Mexico. See Sierra, Aída, “Geografías imaginarias II: la figura de la tehuana,” in Del Istmo y sus mujeres, Lozano, Luis Martín, coord. (Mexico: Museo Nacional de Arte, 1992), p. 52 Google Scholar; Turok, Marta, “Los ajuares de Frida: eclecticismo y etnicidad,” in El ropero de Frida, Rosenzweig, Denise and Rosenzweig, Magdalena, eds. (Mexico City: Zweig Editoras, 2007), p. 5 Google Scholar; Henestrosa, Cibeles, Andrés Henestrosa en la niña de sus ojos (Mexico: Miguel Angel Porrúa, 2006), p. 37 Google Scholar; and Zavala, Adriana, Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition: Women, Gender, and Representation in Mexican Art (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2010), p. 235.Google Scholar

14. Outline in Geduld, Harry M. and Gottesman, Ronald, eds. Sergei Eisenstein and Upton Sinclair: The Making and Unmaking of Que Viva México! (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), pp. xxviii, 159–169 Google Scholar. See also Eisenstein, S. M., Que Viva México! (New York: Arno Press, 1972)Google Scholar and the DVD Que Viva Mexico! (1979; New York: Kino Video, 2001).

15. Williams, Adriana, Covarrubias (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), pp. 60–70.Google Scholar

16. Alfred A. Knopf published Mexico South in New York in 1946 (quote is from p. xxii). See also El sur de México, DVD, direction and photography by Miguel Covarrubias, reconstructed by José G. Benítez Muro (Mexico: Fundación Covarrubias and Fonca, 1998). For an analysis of the exoticization of the Isthmus Zapotees as native other, a process that began in the colonial period, see Campbell, Howard and Green, Susanne, “A History of Representations of Isthmus Zapotee Women,” Identities 3:1-2 (1996), p. 157 Google Scholar. See also Zeitlin, Judith Francis, Cultural Politics in Colonial Tehuantepec: Community and State among the Isthmus Zapotees, 1500-1750 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 144 Google Scholar. Interestingly, I have found no mention of die istmeño male homosexuals, the muxe, in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sources.

17. Landes, Joan B., “Republican Citizenship and Heterosocial Desire: Concepts of Masculinity in Revolutionary France,” in Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, Dudink, Stefan, Hagemann, Karen, and Tosh, John, eds. (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 103 Google Scholar. Sommer, Doris analyzed the “erotics of nationalism” in Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 5–29, 273–289.Google Scholar

18. Florescano, Enrique, Imágenes de la Patria a través de los siglos (Mexico: Editorial Taurus, 2006), pp. 123–140 Google Scholar; Tuñón, Julia, “Introducción,” in Enjaular los cuerpos: normativas decimonónicas y feminidad en México, Tuñón, comp. (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2008), pp. 26–27 Google Scholar; Widdifield, Stacie, The Embodiment of the National in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexican Painting (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996).Google Scholar

19. Margarita de Orellana, “Dressing Mexican”; Gutierre Tibón, “The Two Chinas”; Pedro Angel Palou, “Mirrah-Catarina’s Puebla”; Guillermo Prieto, “José Agustín Arrieta’s Chinas”; and Ricardo Pérez Montfort, “The China Poblana as National Emblem,” Artes de México, La China Poblana, 66 (2003), pp. 65-70, 74-80. Adriana Zavala notes that the china poblana “was associated with licentiousness,” Becoming Modern, p. 24. The Andalusian Manola or maja, with her lace mantilla and sequined skirts, served as an influence for both the china and the tehuana. See Monroy, Julieta Pérez, “Modernidad y modas en la ciudad de Mexico: de la basquina al túnico, del calzón al pantalón,” in Historia de la vida cotidiana en Mexico, Vol. 4: Bienes y vivencias. El siglo XIX, Staples, Anne, coord. (Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Econòmica, 2005), p. 56 Google Scholar. Liberals also published a short-lived newspaper, La Chinaca (1862-1863).

20. López, , Crafting Mexico, pp. 9–12 Google Scholar; Vaughan, Mary Kay, Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), p. 197 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this paper, race denotes a generic identity that lumps indigenous ethnicities together, while ethnicity refers to Zapotees and/or other indigenous groups in Mexico. As Peter Wade explains, “Racial and ethnic identifications … overlap, both analytically and in practice. At an abstract level, both race and ethnicity involve a discourse about origins and about the transmission of essences across generations. Racial identifications use aspects of pheno-type as a cue for categorisation, but these are seen as transmitted intergenerationally—through the ‘blood’— so that ancestral origin is important; likewise ethnicity is about origin in a cultural geography in which the culture of a place is absorbed by a person (almost ‘into the blood’) from previous generations.” Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2010), 2nd ed., pp. 16-20.

21. Sierra, , “Geografias imaginarias II,” pp. 38–43 Google Scholar. See also Earle, Rebecca, “Nationalism and National Dress in Spanish America,” in The Politics of Dress in Asia and the Americas, Roces, Mina and Edwards, Louise, eds. (Brighton, U.K.: Sussex Academic Press, 2007), pp. 163–181.Google Scholar

22. Montfort, Ricardo Pérez, “Notas sobre el estereotipo de la tehuana,” Acervos 19 (2000), pp. 45–52 Google Scholar; “El reino de las tehuanas. Apuntes sobre la creación de un estereotipo femenino nacional,” in Montfort, Pérez, Expresiones populares y estereotipos culturales en México. Siglo XIX y XX. Diez Ensayos (Mexico: Casa Chata, CIESAS, 2007), pp. 147–173 Google Scholar; Florescano, , Imágenes, pp. 170–176 Google Scholar. Both Bill Beezley and Jürgen Buchenau have assured me that a photo of Mrs. Calles in tehuana dress hangs in the Calles Archive.

23. Charro refers to the figure of the colorfully dressed horseman, with silver spurs and sombrero, evidently less threatening a companion for the china than the chinaco guerrillero. Tehuanos spell the title with an “s,” thus, “La Sandunga.”

24. The tropical music also included huapango and tango. On H.P., see Gibson, Christina Taylor, “The Music of Manuel M. Ponce, Julian Carrillo, and Carlos Chavez in New York, 1925-1932” (PhD diss.: University of Maryland, 2003), pp. 190–191.Google Scholar

25. Montfort, Pérez, “El reino de las tehuanas.” See Águila o Sol, directed by Miguel Delgado in 1937, remastered DVD (Northridge, Calif: Laguna Films, 2003)Google Scholar; and La Zandunga directed by Fernando de Fuentes in 1938, remastered DVD (Woodland Hills, Calif: Phoenix Entertainment Group, 2006). On women and gender in the Golden Age of Mexican film, see Tuñón, Julia, Mujeres de luz y sombra en el cine mexicano: la construcción de una imagen, 1939-1952 (Mexico: El Colegio de México and Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía, 1998).Google Scholar

26. Pérez Montfort, “Notas sobre el estereotipo,” p. 149; Poole, “An Image of ‘Our Indian,’” pp. 67-68.

27. Lipovetsky, Gilles, The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, Porter, Catherine, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 1 Google Scholar; Root, Regina, ed., The Latin American Fashion Reader (Oxford: Berg, 2005), and Couture & Consensus: Fashion and Politics in Postcolonial Argentina (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), p. 95 Google Scholar; Entwistle, Joanne and Wilson, Elizabeth, “Introduction: Body Dressing,” in Body Dressing, Entwistle, and Wilson, , eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 1–4 Google Scholar. See also Lipsett-Rivera, Sonya, Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750-1856 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012).Google Scholar

28. Victor M. Macías-González, “Masculine Consumption and Interior Decoration in 19th C. Mexico,” p. 2. I am grateful to the author for sharing this yet unpublished paper. See Masiello, Francine, “Gender, Dress, and Market: The Commerce of Citizenship in Latin America,” in Sex and Sexuality in Latin America, Balderston, Daniel and Guy, Donna J., eds. (New York: New York University Press, 1997), pp. 221–233 Google Scholar; Hendrickson, Carol, Weaving Identities: Construction of Dress and Self in a Highland Guatemala Town (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Femenias, Blenda, Gender and the Boundaries of Dress in Contemporary Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Franco, Jean, “Sense and Sensuality: Notes on the National Period, 1812-1910,” in Franco, , Plotting Women Gender and Representation in Mexico (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 79–101 Google Scholar, and “Women, Fashion, and the Moralists in Early Nineteenth-Century Mexico,” in Critical Passions: Selected Essays by Jean Franco, Pratt, Mary Louise and Newman, Kathleen, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 461–475.Google Scholar

29. Poole notes that like race, the traje becomes a “slippery signifier.” “An Image of ‘Our Indian,” p. 41.

30. Entwistle and Wilson, “Introduction,” pp. 1-4; Entwistle, Joanne, “The Dressed Body,” Body Dressing, pp. 36–37.Google Scholar

31. Bourbourg, Charles Brasseur de, Viaje por el Istmo de Tehuantepec (1861; repr., Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1984), pp. 147–161, 175–184 Google Scholar. Here I have borrowed a few terms from Covarrubias’s translation in Mexico South, p. 226. See Campbell and Green on Brasseur’s gaze, “A History of Representation,” p. 159.

32. Until recently, Juana Cata appeared in historical accounts as a spicy anecdote, the Zapotee lover of Porfirio Díaz. Enrique Krauze, who wrote Televisa’s telenovela biography of Porfirio Díaz, El vuelo del águila (shown in 1994 and 1995), portrayed Juana Catarina Romero (Salma Hayek) as a ribbon vendor who seduced Diaz. See Chassen-López, Francie, “Distorting the Picture: Gender, Ethnicity, and Desire in a Mexican Telenovela (El vuelo del águila),” Journal of Women’s History 20:2 (June 2008), pp. 106–129.Google Scholar

33. By the nineteenth century, the ponchos worn by Argentina’s gauchos were also produced in Manchester and Birmingham. Root, Couture and Consensus, p. 22.

34. Juana Moreno Romero, interview by Francie Chassen-López, Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, July 20, 1996; Chinas, Beverly, “Viajeras,” in Markets in Oaxaca, Cook, Scott and Diskin, Martin, eds. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976), p. 173.Google Scholar

35. Juana Moreno Romero, interview; Samuel Villalobos, “Doña Juana C. Romero,” Istmo, June 1, 1941, p. 3.

36. Zeitlin, , Cultural Politics; Gallegos, Laura Machuca, “Haremos Tehuantepec.” Una historia colonial (siglos XVI-XVIII), (Mexico: CONACULTA, 2008).Google Scholar

37. Chassen-López, Francie R., From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca: The View from the South, Mexico 1867-1911 (University Park: Penn State University, 2004), pp. 60–70 Google Scholar; Arguello, Ana Rosa Suárez, El camino de Tehuantepec: de la visión a la quiebra (1854-1861), (Mexico: Instituto Mora, 2013).Google Scholar

38. Buffington, Robert M. and French, William E., “The Culture of Modernity,” in The Oxford History of Mexico, Meyer, Michael C. and Beezley, William H., eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 400.Google Scholar

39. On the economy, see Cervantes, Francisco José Ruiz, “Promesas y saldos de un proyecto hecho realidad (1907-1940),” in Economía contra sociedad El Istmo de Tehuantepec, 1907-1986, Aoyama, Leticia Reina, coord. (Mexico: Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1994), pp. 27–61 Google Scholar; Aoyama, Reina, “Historia del Istmo de Tehuantepec,” in Del Istmo y sus mujeres, pp. 27–31 Google Scholar; Chassen-López, , From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, pp. 133–186.Google Scholar

40. Chassen-López, , From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, pp. 60–68 Google Scholar, and Regiones y ferrocarriles en la Oaxaca porfirista (Oaxaca: Carteles Editores, 1990), p. 23 Google Scholar; Garner, Paul, “The Politics of National Development in Late Porfirian Mexico: The Reconstruction of the Tehuantepec National Railway 1896-1907,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 14:3 (1995), pp. 339–356.Google Scholar

41. By 1907, Romero’s Santa Teresa mill processed 90,000 kilograms of sugarcane; by 1910, production had almost quintupled. Ruiz Cervantes, “Promesas y saldos,” p. 53; Juana Moreno Romero, interview; José Manuel Villaseñor, interview by author, May 29, 2009, Tehuantepec, Oaxaca.

42. Buffington and French, “The Culture of Modernity,” pp. 401-407.

43. Ibid., p. 422; Bunker, Steven B., “‘Consumers of Good Taste’: Marketing Mentality in Northern Mexico, 1890-1910,” Mexican Studies 13:1 (1997), pp. 229–231 Google Scholar. The phrase, “consumers of good taste,” comes from a Monterrey reporter cited by Bunker. Bunker notes that 28 percent of Chihuahuans were literate. Literacy was much lower in Tehuantepec and its one newspaper, El Eco del Istmo, antithetical to Romero, had very little advertising.

44. Macías-González, Víctor M., “Hombres de mundo: la masculinidad, el consumo, y los manuales de urbanidad y buenas maneras,” in Orden social e identidad de género: México, siglos XIX y XX, Aceves, María Teresa Fernández, Escandón, Carmen Ramos, and Porter, Susie, coords. (Guadalajara: CIESAS and Universidad de Guadalajara, 2006), pp. 281, 274 Google Scholar; Septién, Valentina Torres, “Un ideal femenino: los manuales de urbanidad, 1850-1900,” in Cuatro estudios de género en el México urbano del siglo XIX, Cano, Gabriela and Valenzuela, Georgette José, coords. (Mexico: UNAM and Miguel Angel Porrua, 2001), pp. 102–103.Google Scholar

45. Auslander, Leora, “Beyond Words,” American Historical Review 110:4 (October 2005), pp. 1043, 1017–1022 Google Scholar, and Cultural Revolutions: Everyday Life and Politics in Britain, North America, and France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009)Google Scholar. See Appadurai, Arjun, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Barthes, Roland, The Fashion System, Ward, Matthew and Howard, Richard, trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press [1967], 1990)Google Scholar; and Bunker, Steven Blair, “Creating Mexican Consumer Culture in the Age of Porfirio Díaz” (PhD diss., Texas Christian University, 2006), pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

46. By 1907, there were 18 manufacturing establishments in Tehuantepec, including an alcohol factory and a soap factory; the rest were mainly workshops. Ruiz Cervantes, “Promesas y saldos,” p. 52.

47. Orlove, Benjamin, ed., The Allure of the Foreign: Imported Goods in Postcolonial America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).Google Scholar

48. Bauer, Arnold J., Goods, Power, History: Latin America’s Material Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 152.Google Scholar

49. Perrot, Philippe, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century, Bienvenu, Richard, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 6–8 Google Scholar. See also Lipovetsky, , Empire of Fashion, pp. 25–33 Google Scholar. Consumption is “key to understanding the formation of new subjectivities” (no matter the gender) throughout the nineteenth century. Macías-González “Hombres de mundo,” P. 290.

50. Grazia, Victoria de, “Introduction,” in The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, Grazia, de with Furlough, Ellen, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 1–4 Google Scholar; Bunker, “‘Consumers,’” p. 249, and “Creating Mexican Consumer Culture,” pp. 179; Macías-González, “Masculine Consumption”; Franco, “Sense and Sensuality,” pp. 97-98, and “Women, Fashion, and the Moralists,” p. 471.

51. Juana Moreno Romero, interview. According to tehuana artist Julin Contreras, some tehuanos criticized Juana Cata for not wearing the traje that she had so influenced. Contreras, interview by author, June 8, 2009, Oaxaca, Oax.

52. On department stores and consumption, see Bunker, Steven B., Creating Mexican Consumer Culture in the Age of Porfirio Díaz (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012), pp. 99–133 Google Scholar; and Parcero, María de la Luz, Condiciones de la mujer en México durante el siglo XIX (Mexico: INAH, 1992), pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

53. Juana Moreno Romero, interview. On the Barcelonettes, see Bunker, “Creating Mexican Consumer Culture,” pp. 187-205; Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato, “Networks and Entrepreneurship: The Modernization of the Textile Business in Porfirian Mexico,” Business History Review 82 (Autumn 2008), pp. 475-502; and Proal, Maurice and Charpenel, Pierre Martin, Los barcelonnettes en México (Mexico: Clio, 1998)Google Scholar. On French department stores, see Perrot, , Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, pp. 58–79.Google Scholar

54. Nearby Juchitán had reached 13,891 inhabitants. Chassen-López, , From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, pp. 101–102, 242 Google Scholar. Also part of this urban network, San Jerónimo had 4,026 inhabitants by 1910, and Ixtaltepec had 4,899.

55. Vasconcelos, José, Ulises Criollo (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econòmica, 1982), pp. 319–321.Google Scholar

56. Frederick Starr was quite surprised to encounter two to three hundred women vendors when he entered the public market of that city in 1899. Starr, In Indian Mexico: A Narrative of Travel and Labor (Chicago: Forbes and Co., 1908), p. 162 Google Scholar

57. See commercial transactions in the Archivo de Notarías de Oaxaca, Jueces Receptores, Tehuantepec, vols. I-XII, 1875-1906. In a 2006 tour of the chalet, guided by Juana Cata’s descendant Lourdes Basich, I was able to view the large counter and the tarimasxhat were used in Juana Cata’s store. Bunker, in Creating Mexican Consumer Culture, p. 104, describes these as a “massive wooden shelving system located behind the counter.” Emilio García Romero, grandson of Camilo Romero, generously gave me a photo of his grandfather’s store, validating its impressive size.

58. Francois, Marie Eileen, A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance in Mexico City, 1750-1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), pp. 176, 190, 222.Google Scholar

59. Gillow, , cited by Esparza, Manuel in Gillow durante el porfiriato y la revolución en Oaxaca (1887-1922), (Oaxaca: n.p., 1985), pp. 48–49.Google Scholar

60. Covarrubias, , Mexico South, p. 271 Google Scholar. This chalet appears nowhere in Covarrrubias’s or Eisenstein’s films lest it mar the image of primitiveness. See Beezley, William H., “The Porfirian Smart Set Anticipates Thorstein Veblen in Guadalajara,” Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico, Beezley, , Martin, Cheryl English, and French, Willian E., eds. (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1994), pp. 178–182.Google Scholar

61. Inventario y Avalúo de los bienes pertenecientes a la testamentaría de doña Juana C. Romero, Archivo Histórico Judicial, Oaxaca, Oax., Sección Tehuantepec, Serie Civil, 1907-1917, exp. 8/1917.

62. Romero, Juana Moreno, interview; Rito, Nicolás Vichido, Imágenes istmeñas: investigaciones, análisis y aconteceres en el Istmo de Tehuantepec (Mexico: CONACULTA, 2003), p. 51 Google Scholar; Gilberto Martínez Fabián, interview by author, June 1, 2009, Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. I am greatly indebted to Victor Manuel Hernández Gutiérrez, who accompanied me on various interviews in Tehuantepec in 2009.

63. Zavala, , Becoming Modern, pp. 37–47 Google Scholar. See illustrations in El Mundo Ilustrado, for example, September 6 and 20, 1896.

64. In the 1850s, John McCleod Murphy marveled at the tehuanas’ “love of gay costumes” in “The Isthmus of Tehuantepec,” p. 177. Covarrubias noted the istmeñas’ “passion” for new materials and that they were “fanatical” about fashion. Mexico South, pp. 246-247. See also Juana Moreno Romero, interview.

65. Villalobos, Samuel, “Doña Juana C. Romero,” Ex-alumnos, April 30, 1954, p. 3 Google Scholar; Juana Moreno Romero, interview. See also Pétriz, César Rojas, “Juana C. Romero, humildad y esplendor,” Da’ani Béedxe 7 (September-October 1993), pp. 8–9 Google Scholar. Today there is a statue of Juana Cata in Tehuantepec’s main square. Dressed in Western clothing, she is depicted as a schoolteacher, seated, with an open book on her lap.

66. Rebecca Earle, “‘Two Pairs of Pink Satin Shoes!!’ Race, Clothing and Identity in the Americas (17th to 19th Centuries),” History Workshop Journal 52 (2001), pp. 175-195; Aizpuru, Pilar Gonzalbo, “Del decoro a la ostentación: los límites del lujo en la ciudad de México en el siglo XVIII,” Colonial Latin American Review 16:1 (2007), pp. 3–22 Google Scholar. Studying the impact of European commodities on the Tswana of South Africa, Comaroff, John and Comaroff, Jean characterized the result as “a pastiche of African and European elements.”Google Scholar The Tswana “crafted a distinctive sartorial style, a bricolage that tailored industrial materials to a heightened awareness of setswana” (Tswana customs and style as opposed to European modes). This became their “ethnicized apparel.” As in Mexico, folk costume was most associated with women and, consequently, became the symbol of cultural identity, albeit a colonial one. Nevertheless, this case also underlines the transnational influence on the re-creation of indigenous dress at the same time that it reveals the durability of indigenous cultures and their skill at adapting foreign elements. Comaroff, and Comaroff, , Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier, Vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 261, 256–259.Google Scholar

67. Hovey, Edmund Otis, “The Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Tehuantepec National Railway,” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 39:2 (1907), p. 90 Google Scholar. It is not clear exactly when the sewing machine arrived on the Isthmus, but Langner and Arrillaga’s dry-goods store offered sewing machines for sale by 1891, according to the Bureau of the American Republics, Bulletin No. 9, Mexico, prepared by Arthur W. Ferguson (July 1891), p. 313.

68. The municipal council of Mexico City tried to regiment dress on a number of occasions, although working-class Mexicans resisted these impositions. See Piccato, Pablo, “Urbanistas, Ambulantes, and Mendigos: The Dispute for Urban Space in Mexico City, 1890-1930,” in Reconstructing Criminality in Latin America, Aguirre, Carlos A. and Buffington, Robert, eds. (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000), p. 139 Google Scholar; Castellanos, Esteban Maqueo, “Algunosproblemas nacionales” (Mexico: Eusebio Gómez de la Puente, 1909), pp. 105–108 Google Scholar; and Mauricio Tenorio Trillo, “1910 Mexico City: Space and Nation in the City of the Centenario,” Journal of Latin American Studies!?, (1996), pp. 91-92.

69. See Chassen, Francie R., “‘La rebelión contra los pantalones’: Oaxaca, 1896,” in Historia, sociedad y literatura de Oaxaca. Nuevos enfoques, Silva, Carlos Sánchez, coord. (Oaxaca: Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca and Instituto Estatal de Educación Pública de Oaxaca, 2004), pp. 135–148.Google Scholar

70. On the endurance of Isthmus Zapotec culture, see Campbell, Howard, Zapotec Renaissance: Ethnic Politics and Cultural Revivalism in Southern Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and Campbell, Binford et al., Zapotec Struggles.

71. Juana Moreno Romero, Interview, July 20, 1996; Caritina Romero, interview by author, June 4, 2009, Tehuantepec, Oaxaca.

72. Root, Regina, “Searching for the Oasis in Life: Fashion and the Question of Female Emancipation in Late Nineteenth-Century Argentina,” The Americas 60:3 (2004), p. 364 Google Scholar; Root, ed. The Latin American Fashion Reader. In contrast, the pollera dress of cholas in Bolivia, marked as indigenous despite Spanish shawls, wide skirts, and bowler hats, is rejected by the mestizo middle classes. See Stephenson, Marcia, Gender and Modernity in Andean Bolivia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), pp. 142–143.Google Scholar

73. See Marta Turok on the towns aligned with the juchitecas and those aligned with the tehuanas with respect to dress. Turok, “Los ajuares,” p. 54. Gilberto Martínez Fabián, interview.

74. “Only the old women’s costume here shows clearly its Indian origin. The showy tehuana dress, admired everywhere for costume balls, is a far cry from its true beginnings.” Cordry, Donald and Cordry, Dorothy, Mexican Indian Costumes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), p. 173 Google Scholar. On transnational encounters and hybridity, see Hansen, Karen Tranberg, “The World in Dress: Anthropological Perspectives on Clothing, Fashion, and Culture,” Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004), pp. 369–392.Google Scholar

75. See Codex Vatieanus 3738 (Vaticanus A, Codex Ríos), available at the website of the Foundation for the Advancemente of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., http://www.famsi.org/research/graz/vaticanus3738/img_page061r.html, accessed November 11, 2013.1 am grateful to my archaeologist colleague Chris Pool for the citation.

76. See Linati, Claudio, Trajes civiles, militares y religiosos de Mexico (1828), (Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM, 1956)Google Scholar; Ávila, Alejandro de, “Un huipil colorado: tiempos del textil oaxaqueño,” in Historia del arte de Oaxaca: arte contemporáneo, Vol. 3 (Oaxaca: Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca and Instituto Oaxaqueño de las Culturas, 1997), p. 242 Google Scholar; and Orozco, Gilberto, Tradiciones y leyendas del Istmo de Tehuantepec (Mexico: Revista Musical Mexicana, 1946), p. 23 Google Scholar. Long necklaces of gold coins advertised tehuanas’ commercial prowess and functioned as their dowry. See Cordry, Donald and Cordry, Dorothy, Mexican Indian Costumes, p. 278 Google Scholar; Dalton, Margarita, “Alquimia de prestigio: el oro herencia de las zapotecas del Istmo,” in Alquimia de prestigio: el oro y las mujeres del Istmo, Tamburrino, Amelia Lara, coord. (Oaxaca: Fideicomiso del Centro Cultural Santo Domingo, CONACULTA, 2002), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

77. Worn throughout Mesoamerica, the “huipil is a simple garment … sacklike with openings for the head and arms and is made from rectangular strips of cloth as they are taken off the backstrap loom (not shaped or fitted by cutting). It may be long or short, narrow or wide,” Cordry and Cordry, Mexican Indian Costumes, p. 50; Orozco, , Tradiciones, pp. 23–24.Google Scholar

78. Covarrubias, , Mexico South, pp. 248–259 Google Scholar; Beatty, Edward, “Approaches to Technology Transfer in History and the Case of Nineteenth-Century Mexico,” Comparative Technology Transfer and Society 1:2 (2003), pp. 175–176, 182.Google Scholar

79. De Ávila, “Un huipil colorado,” p. 240. Zapotec poet Andrés Henestrosa suggested that perhaps the word “‘holán” might actually derive from Holland, a prized source of lace. “La tehuana: oro, coral y bambú,” in Del Istmo y sus mujeres, p. 19.

80. Juana Moreno Romero, interview; Vichido Rito, Imágenes istmeñas, p. 51; Father José Inés Romero, interview by author, June 2, 2009, Tehuantepec, Oaxaca.

81. Covarrubias, , Mexico South, pp. 261–263.Google Scholar

82. On the traje de media gala, see Gilberto Martínez Fabián, interview. On fiestas titulares, I am grateful for information provided by Margarita Toledo, Luis Villalobos Mimiaga, and Víctor Hernández Gutiérrez.

83. She had these manufactured in Puebla. Toledo Morales, cited in Pétriz, César Rojas, “Juana Catarina Romero: impulsora del comercio y la industria en el istmo,” Da’ani Béedxe/Cerro del Tigre 7 (1993), p. 14.Google Scholar

84. The postcard erroneously identifies this vela as the “Vela Fracua”; Vela “Fragua” is correct. It is the vela of blacksmiths and artisans, since the Spanish fraguar means to forge metals.

85. The only woman on this list of elite merchant creditors is “Doña Romero, Juana Catarina, of the commerce of Tehuantepec.” Periódico Oficial del Estado de Oaxaca 9:88, November 2, 1891 Google Scholar. See Chassen-López, Francie, “Patron of Progress: Juana Catarina Romero, Cacica of Tehuantepec,” Hispanic American Historical Review 88:3 (2008), pp. 393–426, 394 Google Scholar; Archivo Histórico Judicial de Oaxaca, Sección Tehuantepec, Serie Civil, 1909-17, exp. 8/1917.

86. Auslander, , “Beyond Words,” pp. 1017–1018 Google Scholar, and “The Gendering of Consumer Practices in Nineteenth-Century France,” The Sex of Things, pp. 79–112.Google Scholar

87. Poole, , “An Image of ‘Our Indian,’” pp. 67–68 Google Scholar

88. Hesterberg, Annegret, “A Second Skin,” Artes de Mexico, tehuana, La, pp. 88–89.Google Scholar

89. Covarrubias, , Mexico South, p. 247 Google Scholar; Dalton, , Mujeres, pp. 239–280 Google Scholar; Orozco, Salvador Sigüenza, coord., with Acevedo, Maria Luisa, El vestido oaxaqueño, CD (Mexico: Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 2002).Google Scholar

90. López, , Crafting Mexico, pp. 36, 68.Google Scholar

91. Ibid. All clothing is subject to change over time and receives transnational influences. According to Mina Roces and Louise Edwards, there are types of attire that “hold symbolic capital” and that can “shift through time and space.” Dress functions “as a visual marker for status, identity and legitimacy—how dress or undress includes or excludes individual or groups from political power, citizenship or prestige,” Roces, and Edwards, , “Transnational Flows and the Politics of Dress in Asia and the Americas,” in The Politics of Dress, p. 3 Google Scholar. Indigenous and lower-class are not synonymous terms. There are many indigenous people who are middle class and others who are quite wealthy.

92. Concha Michel, a folk singer who was deeply involved in the cultural revolution, also wore the “authentic” traje in opposition to what she called the “false” and “hideous” china poblana attire with its “rubbish embroidery.” Olcott, Jocelyn, “‘Take Off that Streetwalker’s Dress’: Concha Michel and the Cultural Politics of Gender in Postrevolutionary Mexico,” Journal of Women’s History 21:3 (2009), pp. 44–45.Google Scholar

93. Tuñón, Julia, “Femininity, ‘Indigenismo,’ and Nation: Film Representation by Emilio ‘El Indio’ Fernández,” in Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico, Olcott, Jocelyn, Vaughan, Mary Kay, and Cano, Gabriela, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 88.Google Scholar

94. Zavala, , Becoming Modern, pp. 3, 13.Google Scholar

95. Villegas, Cosío, cited in Florescano, Imágenes, p. 301 Google Scholar; Toledano, Lombardo, “El sentido humanista de la revolución mexicana,” originally published in the Revista de la Universidad de Mexico 1:2 (December 1930), reprinted in Conferencias del Ateneo de la Juventud, Luna, Juan Hernández, comp. (Mexico: UNAM, 1962), p. 178.Google Scholar

96. Covarrubias, , Mexico South, pp. 264–265.Google Scholar

97. Sierra, “Geografías imaginarias II,” p. 54; Today tehuana trajes are available for sale on the Internet.

98. De Ávila, “Un huipil colorado,” p. 255.