Rescatados por la tradición. La construcción del pasado en los procesos de lucha social de tres comunidades michoacanas

Tradition is not a mixture of customs, o more or less faithful and mechanic repetition of a remote past, or the face of culture free from ideology. Onthe contrary, it is an incandescent vase, a spark resulting from the friction between a constructed past tense an uncertain future, a gap or crack from where the wishes of the collective peep through and that, in its hidden instability, intervenes as fertile support to symbolize the present and sometimes to crystallize processes of socila struggle. To develop this approach we rely on three communities in Michoacan (Mexico): Zirahuen, Cheran and La Mintzita. Although they represent different ways of owning tradition, in al threee cases it serves as a symbolic platform which holds identities that appeal to the indigenous significant, and acts as a spring of possibilities for resistance and community orgamization.