SANTA MARIA TLAHUITOLTEPEC, MAY 19, 2012. Tlahuitotepec's first female mayor Sofia Robles, takes the opening shot at the basketball tournament.
SAN CRISTÓBAL LACHIRIOAG, NOVEMBER 21, 2009. Bands play "Las Mañanitas," a Mexican birthday song, to the saint on the sunrise of his birthday in the village of San Cristobal Lachirioag.
SANTA MARIA TLAHUITOLTEPEC, MAY 19, 2012.-Villagers from Tlahuitoltepec sweep the main basketball court to prepare it for the inauguration of the basketball tournament. In a community assembly they create commissions to organize the event. The commissioners are coordinated by the sporting authorities.
SAN CRISTÓBAL LACHIRIOAG, NOVEMBER 21, 2009. Villagers bless the first place basketball trophy in an early morning ceremony in San Cristobal Lachiroag. The trophy was valued at around $3,000.
SAN PEDRO Y SAN PABLO AYUTLA, JANUARY 27, 2014.- Fans watch the pro basketball tournament held in Ayutla in 2014. The prize for first place was MX$50,000, around US$3500 at the time.
SAN JUAN METALTEPEC, DECEMBER 8, 2012.- People observe Mexican rodeo in this town located in the Mixe region. The main events of the festivities of the Sierra Norte communities are: the basketball tournament and the Mexican rodeo.
CAPULALPAM DE MENDEZ, SEPTEMBER 20, 2009. Papel picado hanging over the basketball court.
TOTONTEPEC VILLA DE MORELOS, JANUARY 20, 2012. Men set off fireworks before sunrise in the village of Totontepec Mixe as a celebration of the saint's birthday. The men headed a procession of villagers who would carry the saint's image around the village in a ritual parade.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ,FEBRUARY 16, 2012. Basketball court of the local elementary school in Guelatao de Juárez. Although the community only has 571 inhabitants, the town has 6 basketball courts and a gymnasium with the capacity to hold 2,500 people. This infrastructure is used in its entirety once a year during the Copa Benito Juárez, a tournament that receives more than two thousand players from the Sierra Norte communities who come solely for the honor of competing, since only trophies are awarded to the winners; there are no cash prizes.
SAN CRISTÓBAL LACHIRIOAG, NOVEMBER 19, 2011. The firework castle explodes on the basketball court.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 21, 2016. Fans from Totontepec during one of the final games of the Copa Benito Juárez between Totontepec and Santiago Zacatepec. The tournament is so big that a full day of final games is necessary.
LAS PEÑAS TAMAZULAPAM, APRIL18, 2017. An improvised hoop in the courtyard of a house.
SAN JUAN METALTEPEC,DECEMBER 9, 2012.- Players from the "Las Abejitas" team walk to the community's court.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 21, 2016. Basketball courts in Guelatao, Oaxaca.
SAN CRISTÓBAL LACHIRIOAG, NOVEMBER 20, 2011.- A basketball player in San Cristobal Lachiroag shows his gold basketball necklace.
TALEA DE CASTRO, JANUARY 15, 2012. Acrobats from Otatitlan de Morelos participate in the celebration of town's saint, Dulce Nombre de Jesús.
TOTONTEPEC VILLA DE MORELOS, JANUARY 19, 2012.-
Villagers in Totontepec Mixe march in a "vela," a ceremony of thanksgiving for the safe return of a migrant. Villagers offer flowers and candles to the saint in gratitude for protecting the migrant during his time in the United States.
SAN CRISTÓBAL LACHIRIOAG, NOVEMBER 21, 2009. Young people from Lachirioag dance the sones y jarabes (folk dances) of the community during the inauguration of the tournament Copa Sierra Norte.
SAN PEDRO CAJONOS, FEBRUARY 10, 2012. A bull donated by a migrant living in L.A. is seen tied behind the church of San Pedro Cajonos. The bull is taken to the church to be blessed before being sacrified to feed the players and visitors at the annual tournament.
TOTONTEPEC VILLA DE MORELOS, JANUARY 21, 2014. A kid plays at rodeo.
TOTONTEPEC VILLA DE MORELOS, JANUARY 20, 2014. In the basketball tournament the athletes show their skill in the game, but there are communities in the Sierra Norte where the main attraction of the village fiesta is the jaripeo ranchero (Mexican rodeo) where riders from nearby towns seek to tame wild bulls.
LAS PEÑAS TAMAZULAPAM, APRIL 18, 2017. Panorama of Las Peñas Tamazulapam in the Mixe region.
TALEA DE CASTRO, JANUARY 15, 2012. View of the basketball tournament in honor of the town's saint Dulce Nombre de Jesús.
SAN CRISTÓBAL LACHIRIOAG, NOVEMBER 21, 2009. Indigenous Zapotec girls in traditional dress watch a basketball game in San Cristobal Lachiroag.
TOTONTEPEC VILLA DE MORELOS, JANUARY 20, 2014. Players warming up before the tournament.
SAN PEDRO CAJONOS, FEBRUARY 10, 2012. A boy and a girl in traditional Zapotec dress await a ribbon-cutting ceremony in San Pedro Cajonos to celebrate the construction of a new roof over the primary school’s basketball court. The roof was built through Oaxaca’s 3 for 1 program, in which the state goverment matches every migrant dollar sent back for infrastructure projects with three dollars of state funding. Migrants from San Pedro Cajonos formed a hometown organization in Los Angeles and organized fundraising to build the school’s roof.
LAS PEÑAS TAMAZULAPAM, APRIL 18, 2017. View of the town's main basketball court.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 10, 2012. Construction of the basketball stadium in Guelatao de Juárez, inaugurated in 2013. The stadium has a capacity for 2,500 seated people, and is used mainly as the headquarters of the Benito Juárez tournament.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 21, 2013. The final game between the teams of Ixtlan and Santiago Zacatepec. In this tournament, the teams compete for the Copa Benito Juárez, a silver trophy valued at around $80,000 pesos. The tournament champion team has the right to display the trophy in its showcases for one year. The following year they will have to return the cup to Guelatao to be put in dispute again. When a team wins the tournament three times, they have the right to permanently keep the trophy.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 21, 2013. Victoria, a player from the village of Yavesia, weeps with joy after winning the final game in her category.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 21, 2016. Final game between Tlahuitoltepec and Macuiltianguis teams.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 10, 2012. Young players from Tamazulapam and Tepantlali during the opening ceremony of the Copa Benito Juárez.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 10, 2012. Players from Analco warm up before their first game during the Copa Benito Juárez.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 10, 2012. Sandra Nayeli Pérez runs with the torch at the opening ceremony of the Copa Benito Juárez 2012.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 21, 2016. Players from Macuiltianguis pose with the Benito Juárez Cup of the girl's category after winning the final match.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 21, 2013. Guelatao players pose with the trophies that correspond to each of the 13 categories of the tournament.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 21, 2012. Marco Pacheco, from Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, wins the most valuable player award (Vicente Montes trophy) during the Copa Benito Juarez 2012.
SAN CRISTÓBAL LACHIRIOAG, NOVIEMBER 19, 2011. Players waiting for the tournament to start.
OAXACA DE JUÁREZ, APRIL 19, 2017. The “Los Curiches” team; Ray, Moy, Julio y Juan Pitalua.
TALEA DE CASTRO, JANUARY 16, 2012. Players from Talea during the local tournament.
TOTONTEPEC VILLA DE MORELOS, JANUARY 21, 2014. Michael Anderson, Michael, Atilano y Mijahil Guzmán (left to right) pose for a photograph in Totontepec, Oaxaca. Atilano Guzmán AKA “El magic de la montaña,” is a local legend in the basketball tournaments of the Sierra Norte.
TOTONTEPEC VILLA DE MORELOS, ENERO 21 DE 2014. “El magic de la montaña” during the professional tournament in Totontepec 2014.
TOTONTEPEC VILLA DE MORELOS, JANUARY 21, 2014. “El magic de la montaña” training.
GUELATAO DE JUÁREZ, MARCH 21, 2016. A player concentrates on the free-throw line during one of the final games of La Copa Benito Juarez.
SAN CRISTÓBAL LACHIRIOAG, NOVEMBER 19, 2011. Left, Saul Estrada Pablo, age 4; right, Martin Estrada Pablo, age 6. Both boys are sons of Napoleon Estrada, a migrant living in Escondido, California. The boys are American citizens, but their father is in the U.S. undocumented. Afraid of not being able to recross the border if he returned to Mexico, Napoleon Estrada sent his sons- who had never been to Mexico- to award the $30,000 peso prize he was donating for first place in the basketball tournament.
SAN PEDRO Y SAN PABLO AYUTLA, JANUARY 27, 2014. American players during the professional tournament.
SAN PEDRO Y SAN PABLO AYUTLA, JANUARY 27, 2014. American players during the Slam Dunk Contest in Ayutla.
Identity At Play
Jorge Santiago
Photographer
based in Pittsburgh, PA
Basketball culture in indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Unlike in wider mestizo Mexico, where soccer reigns supreme, in the Sierra basketball is king. The sport was introduced in the 1930s by president Lazaro Cardenas as a way to bring Oaxaca's disparate and historically rebellious indigenous groups into the national fold. Cardenas' dream of a unified national identity didn't take root in the Sierra, historically isolated and impoverished, but basketball soon became tied to the region's most significant traditions, and to indigenous identity itself.
Like many of my fellow villagers, I grew up idolizing the star players from my village and others, saving up money for basketball shoes, and spending most of my spare time on the basketball court which, as one of the few flat spaces in hilly and terraced Serrano villages, served not only as a site of play but also as a public gathering space.
My documentary photography project explores the way in which basketball reinforces indigenous identity. Basketball tournaments in Oaxaca Sierra Norte are the central fixture of the annual village fiesta, the single most important event in a Serrano village.
In the past, migrants would return from the United States for tournaments in their villages; but with the tightening of the U.S. border policies and the increasingly dangerous journey, most of them stopped coming back. They have, however, sustained the culture of basketball from afar. Serrano migrants in the U.S. have formed migrant organizations that send money for trophies, uniforms, prizes, entertainment, and food for the tournaments.
In 2011, when I visited the village of Lachirioag, I met two boys, ages 6 and 4, whose father – an undocumented migrant in L.A. – had sent them to Oaxaca to present the first prize check for the tournament. They had never been to Mexico. They held a giant check between the two of them and were paraded around town and celebrated in a ceremony.
At the time, I didn't realize that was the beginning of a new chapter in Serrano basketball, in which second generation Mexican Americans would start traveling back to their parents' towns to integrate basketball teams. In March of 2024, 3000 players participated in the Copa Benito Juárez – at least 200 came from different parts of the US, mainly LA.
A few days before the beginning of the tournament, I traveled to Santa María Xochixtepec with a team of six Mexican Americans from LA coached by Sarai Trinidad -the first female coach to lead a men's team in the Copa Benito Juarez. The team was warmly welcomed by nearly all of the 80 town residents with an emotional blessing ceremony in the local church, intended to wish them good luck in the town's first ever participation in the Copa Benito Juarez.
Private Story
Identity At Play
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