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More than Dolls: Being Otomí in Central Mexico

About "More than Dolls: Being Otomí in Central Mexico"

More than Dolls: Being Otomí in Central Mexico

More than Dolls: Being Otomí in Central Mexico

More than Dolls: Being Otomí in Central Mexico
LOCAL PRODUCER FOCUSES
ON ANCIENT MEXICAN CULTURE

The Otomí people of Central Mexico are frequently stereotyped by Mexicans and foreigners as drunken men whose wives are forced to sell dolls and other crafts in the streets of Mexico’s large cities and tourist centers.

Wyoming PBS presents a documentary – " More than Dolls: Being Otomí in Central Mexico" – that will show another, more positive view of an ancient culture that survives today.

Wyoming journalist and documentary producer Katharine Collins, and her husband, John, spent three summers volunteering in the Otomí community of San Ildefonso Tultepec, two hours northwest of Mexico City. After gaining the trust of several families, she was granted unprecedented access to their family life, which she captured on nearly 30 hours of video footage.

"Gradually the seeds of a documentary were planted in my mind," Collins said. "I decided to go back to San Ildefonso for a month in the Fall of 2001 to interview these family members and try to understand how they balanced being Otomí and surviving in the modern world."

Collins spent that month with Jeronimo and Cecilia Gonzales and their nine children, the same family she had lived with during her summer volunteer stints. During that time she interviewed members of three local families, and also two Mexican academics at the University of Queretaro, whose research and publications have focused on the Otomí.

"Materially, these families have so little,” she said. “But it was obvious from spending time with them and tracking them at work, in church, at home and in the corn fields, that they have a very clear idea of who they are and that they are immensely proud of being Otomí."

Corn – the mainstay of the diet, culture and spirituality of the Otomí – is skillfully woven throughout the stories of three men and women who challenge the negative stereotypes of the indigenous group.

Otomí children from very early ages are socialized as adults, and given adult responsibilities, according to Abel Piña, an anthropologist at the University of Queretaro, who has published a lengthy study of Otomí culture, and who appears in the documentary. The program provides numerous examples of families working together to survive.

Though the primary schools are poorly funded, and dropout rates are high at all levels, a few youngsters are beginning to finish high school and even attend post-secondary institutions, Collins said.

Wyoming PBS producer David Warrington edited the program. The sound track includes a blending of the bird sounds of San Ildefonso with music performed by Antonio Zepeda using pre-Columbian Mesoamerican wind instruments.

The production, mostly in Spanish with English subtitles, is the second bi-lingual documentary Collins has produced for Wyoming PBS. The station in May 2001 released “Resettling the West: Mexicans in Wyoming,” a 90-minute documentary that traces Mexican settlement in Wyoming.