By Nancy Davies

On Monday July 21 two Guelaguetzas  took place simultaneously, the "Coca-cola" version at Fortin in the outdoor  auditorium, and the "Popular" Guelaguetza at the Technology Institute's "stadium" (actually a soccer field with bleachers plus chairs placed on the field around the stage) for its third successful year and thus now a "tradition".

Daniel Rosales of Section 22 announced that the popular event outdrew the government event by four to one.

The popular event was an opportunity to invoke the APPO, the dead, the injured and imprisoned, but chiefly to have fun. The fields surrounding the presentation were filled, like a fair ground, with traditional food, clothing, music of the struggle, and craft works. The stadium was protected by Section 22 security who looked at some people's bags, and as I was told by a friend from CODEP, refused entrance to the young APPO/punk crowd.The APPO staged the Sunday night calenda as their part of the activities, the teachers literally staged the Monday event, bringing in the stage, the loudspeakers, and the dancers from the seven regions. One group participated in the Guelaguetza for the first time, and was identified  as APPO supporters. I don't know how many other towns had not been participants in the previous official Guelaguetzas, whose dancers are very professional.

But for non-professional, down-home dancers, they all did great. Most of us were entertained just as much by watching the crowds and the audience -I took photos which will go onto the osag site under the album title 2008-.07-21Popular Guelaguetza -- in due time. (Every osag member can add albums and/or photos to our archives). But one boy, dressed as a woman, wearing stilts, and also a young new moustache, I wasn't able to get, he was too close to me.  Other funny moments came each time the dancers finished their performance and threw out into the audience their "guelaguetza" --the announcer came on and announced the location of the ambulance and first aid station. The dancer were throwing not little pieces of gum and candy, but their own crops such as pineapples and chayote, and other hard things one might not want to get hit on the head with. And also young fellows organized a wave of waves: starting in one stadium section people raised their arms and put them down, in sequence, the wave went around. George got to his feet just slightly out of sync ech time and stood their waving all by himself for a few seconds --which of course I found very amusing. There were many such sights.

If anyone attended the government/coca- cola version and would like to post a comment, that would be interesting as a point of comparison beyond that the popular event was free. Last year the government paid people to attend, and bussed them in.

Thisis the version printed by Quadratin, who placed first the news that there was no incident at either event and it all went peacefully - Rosales mentioned a couple of times that no police were at the popular event, while the official one felt it needed to be heavily guarded.