108. David Tavárez, Historian and Linguistic Anthropologist

David Tavárez, originally from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, completed a degree in anthropology and visual environmental studies. He had several ideas for his future career, wavering between being a scientist or a filmmaker. He secured a place at the Writers Workshop in Iowa and an internship at the American University in Cairo. He spent a year in Cairo after graduation and supplemented that summer by writing about the Baltics for the Let’s Go Europe travel series.

Studying Indigenous Culture and Christianity
David worked as a journalist for a couple of years then decided to pursue a PhD at the University of Chicago in 1994, focusing on indigenous history. His interest was drawn to two languages, Nahuatl and Zapotec, which have a rich store of texts dating back to the 1530s. David discovered documents related to the arrival of Christianity in Mexico. These documents included calendars, cosmological manuals, and ritual songs written in Zapotec alphabetic script.
After graduating from the University of Chicago, he worked at Bard College in Latin American and Iberian studies. He then moved to Vassar, a selective institution with a vibrant student body. David currently lives in Rhinebeck, New York, where he is a full professor in the anthropology department at Vassar. His first book, The Invisible War, explores how indigenous people in central Mexico confronted the church in colonial Mexico and managed to work with their ancestral beliefs while also embracing Christianity. He has translated several books into Spanish and collaborated with other scholars on a book on the great indigenous historian of colonial Mexico, Chimalpahin.

The Indigenous Languages of the Americas
David's most recent book, Rethinking Zapotec Time, compiles two decades of work. The book, which received awards from the Native American Indigenous Studies Association, the Latin American Studies Association, and the New England Council of Latin American Studies, is a labor of love, aiming to understand the world of the ritual specialist and the Christians they confronted, as well as how they managed to survive and share ancestral beliefs and knowledge with others. The indigenous languages of the Americas before the 20th century were the most voluminous in terms of producing works. By the early 17th century, there were over 100 works, mostly religious, printed, and manuscripts. By the end of the colonial period, there were 1000s of works, mostly mundane literature, such as petitions, wills, and testaments. This diversity is comparable to Greek and Roman literature, but there are gaps and can only be reconstructed from later translations. Mexican songs, such as the Cantares Mexicanos, feature difficult language and are lyrical, sometimes difficult to understand. The most famous song is the Song of the Women of Chalco, which features warriors from a defeated polity dressing up as women and taunting the Aztec emperor Axayacatl. There are many convergences between indigenous intellectuals from the 16th century to present. This work highlights the physical and intellectual growth of different indigenous communities through colonial times and post-colonial legacies.

The Zapotec Time-space Continuum
The Zapotec conception of time is an eternal, 260-day calendar with specific meanings. They believed in a time-space continuum, where every day had divinatory meaning and moved people to specific regions in the cosmos. They had a notion of the cosmos as having three main domains: sky, earth, and Underworld, with other domains beyond the underworld relating to ancestral time and its origins. Time was seen as a way to think about Earth and the cosmos, rooted in geography and cosmology. They believed that everyone was taken on an eternal journey through space and time, allowing communication with ancestors. While their notion of the time-space continuum may not date back to Einstein or quantum physics, they believed that time and space were interconnected.

Influential Harvard Courses and Professors
David mentions Rosemary Joyce, and taking classes with Noam Chomsky at MIT. He believes that there are many ways to approach and learn about remote worlds through experimental means, such as working with film and visual arts. David discusses his interest in working with ritual specialists and documentary filmmakers. He shares his desire to place students in the past through films and visual arts, such as Aguirre, the Wrath of the God by Werner Herzog, and The Mission. 

Timestamps:

04:37: Indigenous history, language, and culture in Mexico

12:01: Indigenous perspectives on Spanish conquest and religion in Latin America

17:09: Indigenous Christian texts in the Americas, focusing on the complexity of colonialism and the diversity of indigenous experiences

25:00: Zapotec conception of time and its connection to geography, cosmology, and ancestral communication

31:08: History, filmmaking, and academia with a Vassar College professor

Links:

Vassar Faculty: https://www.vassar.edu/faculty/tavarez

Guggenheim Fellows: https://www.gf.org/fellows/david-tavarez/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.ca/stores/David-Tavarez/author/B003XJJ3M6?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

 

Featured Non-profit:

The featured non-profit of this episode is, recommended by Ruth Hertzman-Miller who reports: 

 

I'm Ruth Hertzman-Miller, class of 1992. The featured non-profit of this episode of The 92 report is North Cambridge Family Opera. NCFO performs original, entirely sung theater works for audiences of all ages with large casts from ages seven to adult ranging from people with no performance experience to classically trained vocalists. I'm proud to have performed with and written music for North Cambridge Family Opera. I've also been a board member for the past two years. You can learn more about their work at familyopera.org, and now here is Will Bachman with this week's episode.

To learn more about their work visit: http://www.familyopera.org/drupal/