The Copper Fair

The annual copper fair and national competition comprise multiple performances of (re)presentation and (re)production in which the coppersmith artisans assert agency, negotiate politics, and cultivate marketplaces. These performances recalibrate self-representation, community coherence, identity, and class assertion. As an official “enchanted village” in the “Tata Vasco” tourist route, Santa Clara’s copper fair events also perform important economic and public relation roles for state and national government by distracting negative attention from narco-gang-related violence, instability, and insecurity. An entangled web of insiders and outsiders competes within the many scenarios of the fair, a village fiesta (festival) that coincides with Santa Clara’s patron saint celebrations. We meet government officials, municipal authorities, cultural bureaucrats, museum staff, visiting craft judges, tourists, investigators, Catholic priests, each asserting divergent concepts of authenticity, heritage, patrimony, tradition, nationalism, aesthetics, and social rank. These actors all mix to witness, define, interpret, and admire the coppersmiths’ physical “labor” re-represented in transformative ballets that re-enact the drama of the forge. How do these choreographies of percussive sound, rhythm, color, and tones give attention, respect, and merit to the worker’s gestures while the similar movements of the laboring ditch digger remain ignored and invisible at the side of the road?