Prayers for the Community: Parallelism and Performance in San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino

This essay examines parallelism and other essential features of ritual discourse in San Juan Quiahije, Eastern Chatino. The Chatino languages are spoken in the highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico. The essay focuses on the poetic and discursive features found in two impromptu prayers within a corpus of civic/religious ritual petitions that the members of the community refer to as La42 qin4 kchin4,1 or “Prayers for the Community.”2 The “Prayers for the Community” are part of a ritual carried out regularly by elders and traditional San Juan Quiahije (SJQ) authorities in their official capacity as community representatives. These dignitaries come together at dawn on the first day of each month and on high holidays—the most important feast day is that of the patron saint of SJQ, Saint John the Baptist, June 24th—to petition for the well-being of the entire community, and especially for the younger generations. Both of the petitions analyzed in this essay were made at the same ceremonial event on June 24, 2009 at 5:00 a.m. in the Catholic church. The prayers were said by Simón Zurita and Wenceslao Cortés, two elders from the SJQ community. On the evening prior to the prayers, a group of municipal envoys visited select elders of the community, including Simón Zurita, and formally invited them to join the municipal officials and participate in the worship. Wenceslao Cortés, serving his final elected position in the SJQ municipality, had instructed the envoys to invite the elders to the ceremony. The elders who agreed to accompany the authorities to the ceremony were instructed to come to City Hall at around 4:15 a.m. to begin the ritual. A total of six elders participated in the petition and began to arrive at City Hall by 4:00 a.m. At 5:00 a.m. the group walked together from City Hall to the church. Upon arriving at the doorsteps of the church, they all knelt and crossed themselves. Then all proceeded to walk on their knees for three to four minutes toward Oral Tradition, 31/2 (2017): 509-534