page_title: Guelaguetza
section_title: Controversy
hierarchical_section_title: Guelaguetza / Controversy
caption_attribution_description: English: The new Auditorio Guelaguetza in Oaxaca, OAX, Mexico.
context_page_description: The Guelaguetza, or Los lunes del cerro, is an annual indigenous cultural event in Mexico that takes place in the city of Oaxaca, capital of the state of Oaxaca, and nearby villages. The celebration features traditional costumed dancing by gender-separated groups. It includes parades of indigenous walking bands, native food, and statewide artisanal crafts, such as Pre-Hispanic-style textiles. Each costume, or traje, and dance usually has a local indigenous historical and cultural meaning. While the celebration has attracted an increasing number of tourists, it is primarily one of deep cultural importance for the indigenous peoples of the state and is important for the survival of these cultures.
context_section_description: As the festival became a bigger tourist attraction, some indigenous leaders objected to the ancient traditions being used for commercial purposes. Some people in Oaxaca have supported a Populist Guelaguetza, or a return to the celebrations as they believe they were practiced, for the peoples themselves, before colonialism and the current system. 
  In 2005 the regional government planned to conduct two performances a day of dance groups for each of the two Mondays. Many traditionalists believed this was disrespectful to indigenous culture, and an attempt to appropriate it by powerful economic forces and political interests, in order to accommodate more monied, ticket-purchasing, national and international tourists. Grassroots opposition formed, and the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) (in Spanish, the Asamblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca) organized out of groups that were protesting.  
  The Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI) - led state government and its leader tried to suppress the protests with armed confrontation, which resulted in deaths of three reporters. 
  In 2006, the government-sponsored Guelaguetza was not held at the Fortín hill as planned. Instead, the APPO organized a free, shared, "Popular Guelaguetza", trying to return it to the people. 
  The following year, the 2007 official Guelguetza celebration was boycotted by the APPO. But their  attempts to hold a Popular Guelaguetza were thwarted by government police repression and state-sponsored military violence throughout the city . Due to some changes made in the makeup of the state government and the PRI's longstanding one-party monopoly on power in the state, subsequent Guelaguetza festivals have had a lesser degree of civil unrest, although numerous controversial issues still remain.
caption: The new Guelaguetza auditorium, completed in 2010.
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