Women Vital to Retaining Yaqui Identity

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Among the Yaqui people of Sonora, Mexico, the daily work of women is vital to preserving and constructing the identity of a people with a history of displacement.

Kirstin C. Erickson, a University of Arkansas anthropologist, is the first scholar to examine the ways in which Yaqui women’s social and sacred use of the home space is “integral to Yaquiness,” the sense of ethnic identity and connection with the past.

In her book Yaqui Homeland and Homeplace: The Everyday Production of Ethnic Identity, Erickson aimed to “draw attention to a topic that has previously received little attention – Yaqui women as significant agents in the production of Yaqui identity, true participants in the complex workings of pueblo cultural and ritual life.”

To accomplish this, Erickson conducted ethnographic research for 16 months in several Yaqui pueblos, including living with a Yaqui family in the town of Potam, Sonora, for more than a year. Through this family, Erickson made contacts with their extended families and circles of friends and ritual kin. She participated in both ritual life and in the daily lives of women.

In the first section of Yaqui Homeland and Homeplace, Erickson presents an overview of Yaqui history and the importance of place to their identity. The Yaqui experienced forced relocation, displacement and outmigration from the establishment of a Jesuit mission in their territory in the early 17th century through colonial times and the modernization movement of the late 19th century. After the Mexican Revolution of 1910, exiled Yaquis began to return to their ancestral lands and pueblos. The construction of a large dam and concentration of land in large-scale farms in the 1950s brought the end of subsistence farming for the Yaquis. While Yaquis retain political control over their lands, they do not control the economy and much of the farmland has been lost to debt.

Place and space are important to Yaqui identity. Ancestors dwell in the land, and the land itself “holds promise of a sacred knowledge, a ‘way of knowing’ inaccessible through ordinary means,” Erickson wrote.

In conveying what it is to be Yaqui, the people who told Erickson their stories emphasized the endurance of their people during exile and slavery and their return to their sacred pueblos. Over and over again she heard stories of hardship and their struggle to return to their homeland.

In the second section of her book, Erickson had planned to examine women’s work experiences. She soon discovered that she could not separate gender from place and ethnicity. The Yaqui women she met described themselves first as Yaquis. For example, in their birthing stories, Erickson heard Yaqui women consistently link ethnicity to birthing behaviors and attitudes. The women emphasized an ability to endure pain that they believe distinguishes them from non-Yaqui women.

As a people, the Yaqui have endured for more than 500 years, and the women Erickson met felt an obligation to themselves and to their people to maintain this identity.

“The obligation they feel to one another is impressive. Their ritual practice reflects that obligation and encapsulates it: The saints and ancestors and Yaqui living now share a mutual interdependence,” she said.

In the home, the women’s identity as women and their Yaqui ethnicity are linked. Yaquis speak of the home almost exclusively as “la casa de mi mama” or my mother’s home.

“Houses may be constructed by men, but they are purposefully, vigilantly, and lovingly socialized by women,” Erickson wrote.

Yaquis are known for elaborate public ceremonies, such as processions throughout Lent and Holy Week, but the household ceremonies held in between large public events are both significant and frequent.

“While nearly all Yaqui life-cycle rituals have a church component, a significant portion of each ritual (notably, the component that is identified as uniquely ethnic) takes place within the confines of Yaqui domestic space,” Erickson wrote.

The household ceremonies, which blend Catholic and indigenous practices, set Yaquis apart from others in Sonora. By constructing altars, preparing food and transforming the home into a site for sacred activity, women become key actors in the production of Yaqui identity.

Yaqui women also weave complex relationships with family and ritual kin, such as godmothers, that preserve Yaqui identity and support economic survival. Through these relationships and household rituals, they display Yaquiness and recreate identity and community.

Erickson sees lutu’uria as an essential Yaqui value. The word is commonly interpreted as “truth,” but it also means “labor in service of others.” Yaquis understand lutu’uria as giving without asking for anything in return.

“As it connects and obligates individuals to one another, lutu’uria draws individuals and families into a vast network of reciprocal giving and mutual responsibility. It becomes foundational to the ritual system that binds Yaqui towns to the saints who, in turn, watch over them and bless them. Yet lutu’uria also creates self-identity and community. Lutu’uria, labor freely given in service to others, is a performance of Yaquiness that produces community itself,” Erickson wrote.

Erickson is an associate professor of anthropology in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas. Yaqui Homeland and Homeplace was published by University of Arizona Press.