Culture
Keeping Village Traditions Alive In a Megacity
Religious events help maintain organizational frameworks and a sense of identity in the formerly rural and mostly indigenous areas that now form Iztapalapa—Mexico City’s largest district. There’s honor to be had for the few who get to organize such events.
Remilio Vargas, 83, is considered a patriarch in Santa Martha Acatitla, located in Iztapalapa, Mexico City’s largest district. He keeps his adobe house to remind him how this village once was, before becoming a dot in a sea of concrete.
Vargas remembers when the villagers ate fish from the lake of Texcoco, an area now occupied by Mexico’s most densely populated municipality, Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl. In his youth people spoke the language of the Aztecs, Nahuatl. Mountain lions roamed the series of small volcanoes behind the village. He took girlfriends to his fields on the slopes of the Cerro de Guadalupe to picnic under a tree.