Abstract

SANTIAGO, Norma Bautista. The “day after tomorrow”: thinking about ethnic futures among the Ñuu Savi population in the south of Mexico. Etnográfica [online]. 2024, vol.28, n.1, pp.209-224.  Epub Apr 18, 2024. ISSN 0873-6561.  https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.15450.

In the Mixtec language or Tu'un Savi the word future does not exist, however, among the people who assume themselves to be part of the People of the Rain or Ñuu Savi; population of indigenous origin in southern Mexico, there is the notion of what will happen after tomorrow / Nchaa ntu Inee or later / Tyi nuu ga. There are also different horizons about the time to come for their indigenous culture, which are configured from the diversity of this ethnic group and the mechanisms of action they devise to give continuity to their customs and traditions. This text reflects on the elements to be taken into account in order to carry out the ethnography of the future of an ethnic identity that is present in the 21stcentury. Based on two cases that arise in communities of the Mixtec region of the state of Oaxaca and with the support of the theoretical notions of the anthropology of the future, the elements that come into play to sustain the validity of the Ñuu Savi culture are presented. Warning that this is not a finished reflection, but rather, it intends to open ways to discuss, from anthropology, the approach of a temporality previously overlooked in the theoretical and methodological device of our discipline.

Keywords : indigenous population; Ñuu Savi; future; temporal orientations; relacional word.

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