Learning from Oaxaca

This project investigates how people in Oaxaca negotiate language, identity, and authority in everyday interaction under conditions of global tourism, migration, and media circulation.

Rather than treating "local culture" as a static asset to be documented, the research examines interactional dynamics: how people position themselves and others as local or non-local, how linguistic expectations shape inclusion and exclusion, and how norms are upheld, challenged, or adapted in practice.

The work establishes empirical and interactional constraints that all downstream tools and interventions within the Local Conversation Studio program are designed to respect.

Oaxaca is widely recognized for its linguistic and cultural diversity. State policy documents describe the region as comprising 16 Indigenous peoples and communities, reflecting a long-standing framework of cultural recognition and territorial plurality (Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca, 2024). According to the 2020 Population and Housing Census, 31.2% of the population aged three and older reported speaking an Indigenous language, underscoring the continued vitality of linguistic diversity within everyday life (INEGI, 2021).

At the same time, this diversity is actively positioned within global tourism, media, and cultural markets.

These conditions produce a persistent tension. Global exposure creates economic opportunity and visibility, while also introducing external languages, expectations, and commercial logics. Research in sociolinguistics shows that tourism economies frequently commodify language and reshape everyday communicative practices (Heller, Pujolar & Duchêne, 2014; Blommaert, 2010).

The research is motivated by a concern not with exposure itself, but with local control: who defines what is promoted, how traditions are represented, and whose authority is recognized in interaction. Addressing these questions required sustained, place-based presence, as the interactional norms at issue cannot be inferred remotely or abstracted from lived context.

The project employed a mixed-methods approach combining ethnographic fieldwork with structured qualitative analysis.

Fieldwork & Sampling

Fieldwork was conducted in Oaxaca de Juárez and surrounding municipalities, including the Mixteca Alta and Sierra Juárez regions. The primary dataset consists of 26 semi-structured audio interviews, each 30–90 minutes in length.

Participants were selected to represent diverse relationships to place, rather than a single demographic category:

Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. All interviews were planned, moderated, and analyzed by the researcher.

Evidence Pipeline

Interview data was processed through a three-stage pipeline designed to preserve traceability from analysis back to original voices and contexts.

Several patterns recurred across interviews and observations. These findings directly informed downstream projects in the program.

Locality is relational, not binary

"Local" operates as a shifting, contextual category rather than a fixed identity.

In practice:

• A city resident may be local to tourists but an outsider in rural villages.
• A Mexican visitor may be treated as local by foreigners but not by Oaxacans.
• A long-term foreign resident may be considered more local than a short-term domestic tourist in certain contexts.

Local authority is interactionally produced and context-bound: claims to knowledge carry different weight depending on who is speaking, to whom, and about what, and cannot be flattened into a single category of expertise.

The partnership paradox

Norms and governance structures that protect local autonomy, such as usos y costumbres, can also restrict external collaboration.

Observed patterns include:

• Suspicion of outside offers unless mediated by trusted local institutions
• Rejection of well-intentioned interventions on the basis of origin
• Concerns shaped by historical distrust, pride in self-sufficiency, and fear of corruption

In one interview, a participant from Oaxaca's Costa region described arriving in the city and offering to donate trees for reforestation on a nearby hillside. The offer was refused:

"Queremos donarlos para ir a sembrar ahi al cerro. Pero no, dijeron que no. Y yo dije, no entiendo por que no. Si es algo donar, no quitar, donar. Pero esa parte te decia, celosos con su... con este cerro."

("We wanted to donate them to plant on the hill. But they said no. And I said, I don't understand why not. It's donating, not taking. But that part I was telling you about -- protective of their hill.")

The participant, themselves Oaxacan, was treated as an outsider in this context. Locality was not a matter of state identity but of specific territorial attachment. Claims to contribute were read through the lens of origin rather than intention.

Design constraint: Direct intervention approaches are ineffective. Sustainable engagement depends on bridging behaviors that work within existing authority structures rather than bypassing them.

Paper-first communication in live interaction

Despite widespread use of WhatsApp and Facebook for coordination, paper remains central to public communication.

Observed patterns:

• Posters, flyers, newspapers, and printed notices are prominent
• High mobile data costs and low-performance devices limit digital access
• Phone use during conversation is often perceived as disengagement or disrespect

One regional migrant described their preference directly:

"A mi me encanta estar viendo en una puerta donde estan pegados los carteles. Eso me encanta." ("I love looking at a door where the posters are pasted. I love that.")

The same participant explicitly rejected all digital platforms:

Soy mas visual. En grupos, mucho si me pierdo. Pero en cambio camino y observo y veo. Me gustan mas los carteles. Facebook? No. TikTok no. Instagram? Tampoco. (I'm more visual. In groups, I get lost a lot. But when I walk, I observe and see. I like posters more. Facebook? No. TikTok? No. Instagram? Neither.

Separately, an international tourist described deliberately avoiding their phone during interactions:

"I never pull it out when I'm here. I don't pull it out. I just want to, like, even if I don't understand, I can kind of understand."

These are not access constraints. Both participants had smartphones. The preference reflects a social logic: phone use during interaction signals withdrawal, while physical presence, like walking, observing, reading posted notices, signals embodied engagement.

Paper supports shared attention in public space: information is encountered collectively, without diverting participants into private screens.

Diversity as identity (the "Guelaguetza effect")

Guelaguetza, a major festival in Oaxaca since the 1920s, illustrates how geographic diversity can be celebrated by a relatively global authority.

Tourism research describes the festival as a premier tourist attraction that creates socioeconomic opportunity while simultaneously posing risks of commodification and loss of Indigenous authenticity when commercial needs dominate community celebration.

A regional migrant from the Mixteca region of Oaxaca described both the richness and the limits of this model:

Cuando es la guelaguetza es asi como tan rico en la cuestion de que ves sus bailes, de que escuchas su musica. Pero no es exactamente lo mismo. No es como ir a los pueblos y vivirlo.

("When it's the Guelaguetza, it's so rich -- you see their dances, you hear their music. But it's not exactly the same. It's not like going to the pueblos and living it.)

Yet the same participant described a second dynamic: Guelaguetza's commodification has priced out the Oaxacans it was meant to celebrate:

"La guelaguetza ahora ya es fiesta de los oaxaquenos, pero ya no para los oaxaquenos. Se han encarecido mucho los boletos."

("The Guelaguetza is now a festival of the Oaxacans, but no longer for the Oaxacans. The tickets have become very expensive.")

A geographer at UNAM, a leading Mexican university confirmed this as structural: recognition of regional identities through the Guelaguetza has strengthened those identities, while simultaneously creating a tourism economy that excludes local participation.

In this model, distinct local traditions are brought into one stage, gaining visibility without fully collapsing into sameness. Difference remains legible, yet centralization reshapes who participates and who benefits.

But it also reveals a paradox: recognition can strengthen regional identity while filtering it through tourism, pricing, and spectacle. The transferable lesson is therefore conditional - centralized visibility can amplify diversity, but it also introduces new boundaries around access and experience.

Language learning as mutual adaptation

Language emerged as the most persistent theme across interviews. Non-Spanish speakers reported direct functional exclusion given the lack of English spoken in Oaxaca:

I don't speak Spanish, so you can't get authentic cuisine because you're like, oh, tacos, three. (International tourist)

Another member of same tourist group described how the group :

Our experience here is 10 times better because I can communicate. Without that, you miss a huge part of it.

Language exchange meetups are popular in Oaxaca de Juarez and stood out as rare sites of reciprocal benefit, where practice and authentic conversation converged:

"In a way, we're practicing having conversations, but we're also actually having conversations. If you tell me about yourself, it's not like you made that up. I'm actually getting to know you." (Language exchange participant)

Learning the local language is both desirable by visitors and appreciated by locals, and tools that support mutual teaching and learning, rather than unilateral accommodation, can produce more balanced interactional dynamics.

Findings from this project informed subsequent work in the program:

• AI-QA The 595 annotated clips formed the analytic dataset for AI-assisted qualitative coding experiments.

• Local Knowledge Cache Insights redirected the content strategy toward interaction-relevant knowledge rather than descriptive cultural information.

• Local Language Cards Paper-first communication and language-exchange findings motivated analog, in-person interventions.

1. Broaden interviews to include Indigenous-language speakers
2. Partner with Oaxacan cultural geographers to review and refine assumptions
3. Replicate the study in another city to compare interactional patterns across contexts

Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge University Press.

Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca. (2024). Plan especial: Interculturalidad, pueblos y comunidades indígenas y afromexicanas. Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca.

Heller, M., Pujolar, J., & Duchêne, A. (2014). Linguistic commodification in tourism. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 18(4), 539–566. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12082

INEGI. (2021). Censo de Poblacion y Vivienda 2020: Presentacion de resultados, Oaxaca. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia.