The Yaquis

The pictures in this book were taken in Pascua Village or Barrio Pascua, now known as Old Pascua, a Yaqui Indian village in Tucson, Arizona, on one of the rare occasions when the people there allowed outsiders to take pictures of their religious ceremonies. This was their San Ignacio's Day fiesta, the annual fulfillment of the village's obligation to its patron saint, St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Catholic order that in 1617 brought Christianity to the Yaquis in what is now the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora and which profoundly altered Yaqui life. The San Ignacio's Day fiesta is one of Old Pascua's four most important ceremonies of the year. The saint's day of St. Ignatius falls on July 31, and, in order to avoid taking time from their jobs, the people in Pascua celebrate it on a weekend near that date. The fiesta begins on Saturday afternoon, continuing through the night into Sunday morning. The actual fiesta is the culmination of weeks of preparation, including calling on various people and groups in the village for help, collecting food, gathering firewood, putting up the fiesta decorations and making ready the place where the dancers will perform. From the setting of the date all the way through the conclusion of the fiesta on Sunday morning, the whole sequence of events follows a pattern which is typical of Yaqui fiestas and which has been laid down by long tradition.