Editorial Note on the Database, Archive, and Community Safeguarding
Ulises Moreno-Tabarez
This publication forms part of a primary qualitative, community-based, and audiovisual database developed in Azoyú, Guerrero, within the Coastal Commons project. The video and text shared here constitute a public-facing output from a broader archive produced through participant observation, oral memory, community dialogue, territorial accompaniment, and collaborative audiovisual documentation. In this sense, the material contributes to the documentation of local histories of peoples and communities, the strengthening of Afro-Indigenous memories and cultures, and the situated production of knowledge with territorial relevance.
Access to the full set of materials remains safeguarded. Its consultation, use, and possible circulation are accompanied by Ulises Moreno-Tabarez, as the project’s academic lead, in dialogue with local authorities, mayordomías, local committees, and community members who help determine what may be shared, how it should be contextualized, and what should remain under local care. This form of safeguarding recognizes that the database is not only an academic archive, but also a sensitive community corpus, sustained by criteria of consent, ethical responsibility, territorial return, and respect for collective decisions regarding memory, image, and voice.
by Keila martínez Martínez y Miguel ángel liborio macedo, edited and published by the coastal commons editorial team.
Across generations, communities carry historical wounds and social fractures that change shape but do not simply disappear. The legacies of colonialism and slavery, alongside other forms of dispossession and enforced hierarchy, leave marks that continue to structure everyday life, from social relations to local politics and economic opportunity. These inheritances do not remain in the past, they travel forward, settling into contemporary dynamics, and sometimes resurfacing as tensions within families, neighbourhoods, and institutions.
In that longer terrain, practices of reconciliation matter, not as symbolic gestures detached from reality, but as lived civic methods. In Azoyú, Guerrero, healing begins from within the community through La Llorada, a tradition that brings people together each year on 6 October. The ceremony includes solemn processions accompanied by brass bands, long embraces, the exchange of flower garlands, and words that name what is being sought, forgiveness and forgetting, spoken as “perdón” and “olvido” in response to harms and offences.
In a world where grievances accumulate and apologies can remain unspoken, La Llorada insists on another rhythm. It is not a superficial performance. It is a collective act of vulnerability, a ritual where tears become a language of remorse and flowers become an offer of peace. It reminds us that the strength of a community does not come from the absence of conflict, but from the capacity to face conflict, to speak it, and to forgive in order to continue living together.
The celebration is organised through a system of mayordomías and through committees that uphold traditions and customs in both the western and the eastern neighbourhoods. In some parts of the festivities these groups work together, in others they work separately, but always with the same purpose, to preserve the tradition and ensure its transmission across generations. What makes this organisation compelling is not only its continuity, but the way it mobilises collective labour and responsibility as a form of social cohesion.
During the Coastal Commons project we collaborated with the community and presented the results of the video produced about La Llorada, which takes place each October. We met on various occasions with members of the casa ejidal to talk through the project and agree the date for presenting the material. Invitations were delivered, and a small convivio was organised as a gesture of gratitude for the hospitality and collaboration we received.
During the screening, those present shared feedback for a revised edit and expressed interest in a future presentation. Alongside this, an agreement was made to translate the material into Me’phaa, also known as Tlapaneco, for its next circulation. We will collaborate in this process with the Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero, particularly colleagues in Sociology, to strengthen the educational dimension of the project and to foreground the community processes that give life to this tradition.
In this way, La Llorada can be understood not only as a reconciliation ritual, but as a space of collective learning, historical memory, and community making. Sharing the film now, as it currently stands, is part of that commitment, to return the material to the community, to make it available to wider publics, and to keep working carefully and collaboratively on what this story can become.
Project and Support
Coastal Commons, funded by the Urban Studies Foundation, support reference USF SSA 230311, in collaboration with the Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero.
Credits
To the community participants, mayordomías, and local committees of traditions and customs: thank you for your hospitality, guidance, and authorization to share this work.
Filming and editing: Miguel Liborio Macedo and Ulises Moreno-Tabarez
Camera and sound: Cecilia Ruz, Heidy Maciel, Ulises Moreno-Tabarez, Marilú Herrera, Fatima Cardenares, Keila Martínez, Concepción López, and Eduardo Hernández.
Translation and subtitles: Miguel Liborio Macedo
Location
Azoyú, Costa Chica, Guerrero, Mexico
