Participants from Professor Katey Borland's Mayterm field school present lessons learned about ethnography, film making, and short-term cultural immersion in the port city of Bluefields on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast. Mayo Ya is a month-long festival of Afro-descended Nicaraguan culture that prominently features maypole dancing and music. Like regionally distinctive groups elsewhere in the world, Blufileños struggle to maintain their cultural identity in the face of in-migration, out-migration and the nationalization of their festival arts. Ohio State students struggle to simultaneously understand and responsibly represent a place and a culture in transition. Clips will be shown.
Photo courtesy of Dr. Katey Borland, Claudia Mira, David Mondragon, and Erin Tobin filming in the streets of Bluefields.