Ethnic Relations : Mexico’s Indians Survive as Hidden Minority in Capital : They migrate from the countryside in search of work. But they often find prejudice and hardship.

The night before the party, they brought two sheep from the countryside and hitched them to a post in the cement lot that is a communal patio for 30 Triqui Indian families.

Metro trains whirred by at regular intervals as the men hammered through concrete to dig a fire pit. They killed and skinned the sheep, wrapped the fresh meat in banana leaves and laid it among hot coals beneath downtown Mexico City.

Triqui women wore long braids down their backs, silver earrings and crimson huipiles-- their traditional woven smocks--to the celebration. The Indians had just received a $56,000 government loan to buy materials for the handcrafted goods they sell, and the mood was festive.

“We came to the city to work and to sell our crafts,” Florencia Cruz Flores said. “We are better off here.”

The estimated 150 Triquis who live in plywood shacks between the General Notary Archive and Congress of the Union Avenue are in many ways typical of the hundreds of thousands of Indians who reside in Mexico City--a city built on the ruins of the old Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan.

Poor and uneducated, the Indians who have migrated here from the countryside are barely noticeable among the heaving mass of 18 million mestizos, those of mixed blood. Many speak little or no Spanish. They live in the city but don’t really belong to it. They are second-class citizens scorned by the mainstream.

And yet, their sheer numbers mean that Mexico City is still an Indian capital, with at least as many Indians as in the days before the Spanish conquest. When Hernan Cortes made his way to Tenochtitlan in 1519, about 200,000 Aztecs inhabited the island-state in the middle of Lake Texcoco. And 400,000 Indians lived in what might be called the greater Tenochtitlan metropolitan area.

Battle and disease wiped out two-thirds of the Tenochtitlan residents. The conquerors tore down Indian temples and culture to build a Spanish-Catholic capital that has become the modern, smoggy, crowded megalopolis of today.

According to the 1990 census, about 208,000 people who speak Indian dialects live in the Mexico City area. However, Marjorie Thacker, head of the government National Indigenous Institute’s metropolitan program, says that number is low because it does not include children under 5. Also, many Indians, out of embarrassment, deny that they speak a dialect. She puts the real figure at around 500,000.

Other anthropologists and researchers believe there could be as many as 2 million Indians in the capital. They argue that language is not a sufficient gauge to determine whether someone is Indian.

“Forty percent of the people I work with don’t speak a dialect, but they understand it and they are Indians,” said Maria Bertely, who studies urban Zapotec Indians with the private Center for Graduate Studies in Anthropology.

Indians began migrating to the capital in large numbers in the 1950s with Mexican industrialization. They came to work in factories and construction. Twenty years later, a crisis in farm production prompted another wave of migration, bringing women as domestic servants and both men and women into commerce. More arrived during the “lost decade” of the 1980s, when Mexico’s economy was thrown into crisis.

And still they come in search of work and money to send home to villages that are poor and sometimes fraught with political violence.

The largest groups are the Nahuatl from the states of Puebla, Veracruz and Guerrero; Otomis from Queretaro and Hidalgo states; Zapotecs and Mixtecs from Oaxaca, and Mazahuas from Michoacan and the state of Mexico.

Like most migrants, they are brought by family members who had already made the move and find work through relatives. Thus, dozens of Amuzcos from Guerrero and Oaxaca make deliveries for Pepsi-Cola. Nahuas have found jobs as janitors for the city government, and Zapotecs work in the federal post office. Many Triquis are security guards and soldiers.

The most visible Indians are Otomi women who beg or who sell their round-faced dolls to tourists along main thoroughfares. These dolls in long braids and Indian dress were designed by Guadalupe Rivera, daughter of muralist Diego Rivera, in the 1970s under a government program to train Otomis and Mazahuas.

Many urban Mexicans are embarrassed by these peasant women, whom they have dubbed “Marias”--a derisive name that strips the Indians of their identity.

Mexican society can be extremely racist, although because there has been no civil rights movement here to spotlight inequities, most Mexicans do not consider their country to be so. Indians are stereotyped as lazy, and some buildings are effectively off-limits to them.

“Nobody says you can’t go into a Hilton Hotel or the Perisur shopping mall, but an Indian doesn’t go in there,” Thacker said. “There is no sign, but there is a space division and they know it.”

Indians may experience racism for the first time when they come to this city. “Many people say things to us because we wear this,” Florencia Cruz said, pointing to her red huipil. “When we speak our language, they make fun of us. We feel bad, but our custom is not to answer.”

Rejection and the language barrier often mean that Indians in Mexico City have only superficial contact with anyone outside their ethnic group. They may live downtown, ride the subway, buy and sell in the market. But their lives are with other Indians.

“I know some people who are not Mazahua,” said Alejandra Nepomuceno, 22, a member of the downtown Flor de Mazahua sewing collective. “But I feel more comfortable among Mazahuas. We are the same.”

Nepomuceno, an orphan, came to Mexico City with an aunt at age 12 to work as a housemaid. She spoke broken Spanish that she had learned in two years of primary school. “I had to go to work to feed and clothe myself,” she said.

Antonia Mondragon, secretary of the cooperative, also came to Mexico City with an aunt when she was 11, following a bad harvest back home. They sold fruit on the sidewalk outside the Juarez Hospital.

“When I arrived, the city looked so big, with so many lights. I was scared. There were so many cars you couldn’t walk. I wanted to go back. I’d still like to go back,” she said.

But Mondragon, 32, married a mestizo, an act of rebellion in the eyes of her Mazahua parents. “My parents wanted to kill me. They had someone picked out for me to marry. They believe people should marry in their village. I was married in the city, with only my sister to accompany me on my wedding day. In my land, you marry in Mazahua dress. I wore white,” she said.

Her husband speaks Spanish, and their three children, ages 10, 11 and 12, speak a few words of Mazahua. Mondragon takes them to her village fiestas, for which she dresses in traditional Mazahua skirts. “My little one says, ‘How ugly.’ I say, ‘This is the way I am, son. It is my natural dress.’ ”

Even Indians who lose their native language may remain Indian in the way they treat their children, solve their problems and manage their emotions. Some men continue to use herbal doctors, and women turn to Indian midwives to deliver their children.

They also sustain their native culture through contact with their villages. They go home not only for fiestas but also to care for the sick. They give money to the municipality and take their dead home to be buried.

Some ethnic groups assimilate into Mexican culture and politics more than others. Zapotec Indians may secure steady jobs, buy houses and become professional accountants, dentists or musicians. On the other hand, Nahua men of Veracruz rarely integrate. They leave their families at home and travel to Mexico City for a few months at a time to make and sell furniture. They may do this for decades, without ever making Mexico City their home.

Some groups organize unions and associations that give them more muscle to negotiate with government officials. They learn to work with the system. The Triquis who threw the party last month belong to the Emiliano Zapata Artisans Union and are affiliated with the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. The party’s farmers union gave them the downtown lot on which to build their shacks.

And yet even they may have trouble getting help from the government. Although they secured the two-year loan to make their crafts, the Triquis have been unable to get city permits to sell them in a permanent locale, a complaint of many Indians in a city that is overflowing with street vendors.

“Many boroughs close the door to us,” said Juan Mendez, leader of the Zapata union. Then, demonstrating his city smarts, he added: “If they give us permits, our culture will endure because we can sell our crafts. If we can’t sell, we can’t produce.”

The Triquis make headbands, belts, bracelets and woven wall hangings. Because they move around the city to sell, Triqui women say they cannot put their children in school, insisting that they must stay close to them.

“I go to sell, and I take my children with me,” said Juana Gutierrez Flores, 27, mother of five. “They have to be in a fixed place to go to school. But one day I’m on one street and the next day I’m on another.”

The Triqui women sit in a circle on the ground talking in their native language, their hands busy with work. They are barefoot or wear sandals. The families share one faucet with potable water, three outhouse toilets and three washboards.

They say they earn about $10 a day selling their crafts--hardly enough to support a family in modern Mexico City. And yet, they insist they are better off here than back home in Oaxaca, where they rose before dawn to make tortillas.

“There is everything to eat here, and there is work. Back home we have to sell our crafts to intermediaries, and we make less,” Gutierrez said. “I like it here.”