Creating Culture, Performing Community

"In her kaleidoscopic portrait of P'urhépecha culture, Mintzi Auanda Martínez-Rivera demonstrates that Indigenous identities and cultural practices are in constant transformation as the younger generations in Angahuan adapt and change wedding rituals to negotiate Indigenous traditions. This is a work that the fields of P'urhépecha Studies, Critical Youth Studies, and Indigenous Anthropology urgently need, especially at a time when many P'urhépecha communities are redefining indigeneity and fighting for autonomy. Martínez-Rivera teaches us that the permanence and growth of P'urhépecha life and culture, as it is lived in Angahuan, defies authenticity parameters. There is power in that assertion. This is a P'urhépecha story. It is an Indigenous story, one that should be told during a time when external forces attempt to define us as stagnant and antiquated. P'urhépecha presence is affirmed through the continuity of el costumbre, woven into our collectivity in these pages. Este trabajo es puro ambakati! We are so glad this book was written."—P'urhépecha Studies Collective
"Rather than a static view of culture, Creating Culture, Performing Community shows us how P'urhépecha youth and communities are actively involved in negotiating, organizing and orchestrating their cultural productions to restrengthen the social ties and networks that allow Indigenous communities to survive and thrive. Dr. Martínez Rivera gifts us detailed accounts of the tembuchakua and unpacks the many rituals involved in P'urhépecha weddings that are representative of the distinctiveness and of the traditional alongside the new and innovative ways to be Indigenous. Creating Culture, Performing Community is a solid account of the relational nature of Indigenous knowledge and community and is a must read for anyone interested in Indigenous survivance, joy, and futurity in the midst of the ongoing violence of settler states."—Luis Urrieta, Professor, Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Austin
"In this rich and multihued ethnography, Mintzi Auanda Martínez-Rivera takes us on a journey through Angahuan's confetti covered streets to experience the beauty and cooperation that go into producing P'urhépecha weddings. Building on conversations in Critical Indigenous Studies, Martinez Rivera frames P'urhépecha life and culture within her theory of cultural transformation, the notion that indigeneity changes and fluctuates as it incorporates and adapts to globalized influences, producing new cultural forms that rely on tradition and that remain vibrantly Indigenous. This is a timely book as our field works to actively decolonize our erasure."—Gabriela Spears-Rico, Assistant Professor of Chicano Latino Studies and American Indian Studies, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities
"Overall, this book is a significant and original contribution to scholarship, offering a nuanced understanding of cultural practices, identity, and transformation within the P'urhépecha community. Martínez-Rivera's decolonial and intimate ethnographic approach serves as a valuable model for future scholars. Additionally, by incorporating broader socio-cultural factors beyond wedding rituals—such as courtship practices, youth culture, regional violence, the war on drugs, and migration patterns—she provides a more comprehensive perspective on the region, enhancing the work's relevance and impact."—Guillermo De Los Reyes, author of Herencias Secretas: Masonería, política y Sociedad en México
"This book continues the interventions in anthropology by scholars in the fields of Indigenous and Native Studies, Folklore Studies, and Latinx Studies by presenting a unique ethnographic account that is not only of an Indigenous community, but of the Indigenous community—demonstrating both in content and form—what it means to do Anthropological work rooted in Indigenous and Native Studies methodologies. We need more of this in anthropology."—Ana-Maurine Lara, author of Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignty