Mexican Indian Village Inspires Photographer by Curt Pratt News Service intern Life in a remote Indian village in Mexico is the subject of a photo exhibit by Bill Gillette, professor of journalism and mass communication. The photos are on display in the Memorial Union Pioneer Room through Oct. 15. "Las Manos de la Tierra, (The Hands of the Earth)," documents a year in the agricultural cycle of a Mexican Indian village, including the months when young residents leave to find seasonal work elsewhere. Over a two-year period, Gillette photographed the people of Yatzachi, a Zapotec Indian village in southeastern Mexico. His photos show the villagers at work during planting and harvesting times. Gillette was able to enter the village and become accepted with the help of another faculty member, Ricardo Salvador, whose father is from Yatzachi. "They eat what they produce and they produce what they eat," Gillette said. "I have been given a rare opportunity to enter in a small way into the life of Yatzachi and hope that when I return to Yatzachi with a set of these photos, people will say, 'Yes, that is the way it is.'" The village is extremely remote, Gillette said. Yatzachi is a five-hour drive north of the city of Oaxaca, at an elevation of one mile. Technology in the village is years behind the United States, Gillette said. Electricity has become available in the last five years, but only one or two houses have it. "It's like going back 200 to 300 years," Gillette said. The idea for photographing the village began when Gillette was photographing the effects of large-scale agriculture on migrant workers in San Joaquin, Calif. Gillette later traveled to Culiacan, in northwest Mexico near Baja, Calif., to photograph for the National Geographic magazine. _____ contact: Curt Pratt updated: 9-29-95