Willy Chavarría’s collaboration with Adidas wasn’t just cultural appropriation; it upheld the social caste system that was established during the Spanish colonial era.
When Adidas released Chavarría’s “Oaxaca Slip Ons,” the backlash on social media was swift. The commentaries echoed that Chavarría should have worked with Mexican artisans, that the slip-ons should at least be made in Mexico, and that he should share those profits with the state or people of Oaxaca.
Shortly after the announcement, Chavarría issued an apology stating that, “the intention was always to honor the powerful cultural and artistic spirit of Oaxaca and its creative communities—a place whose beauty and resistance have inspired me.”
However, if the designer’s intention was to honor Oaxaca, which includes the spirit of resistance, he should have shed light on the many forms of discrimination facing Oaxacans: anti-Indigeneity, color-ism, and class-ism, as well as the economic and political disenfranchisement that Native and Indigenous Oaxacans face both in Mexico and the U.S.
Not all Chicanos appropriate Mexican culture, but as some are generations removed from their Indigenous roots, or simply don’t have strong connections to Mexico, it can lead to an easy slip. One timeline shows that huaraches first entered the U.S. during the era of the Bracero Program in the 1940s, which lured Mexican laborers into the US. Decades later, Chicanos adopted the huaraches as a symbol of activism and cultural pride.
Handing over huaraches, huipiles, mezcal, or Oaxacan food to the global market as a commodity, while marketing them as cultural pride, is a murky place to be. Whether they’re aware of it or not, the ones importing these items are complicit in racial capitalism which is an economic system built to profit from racial inequities and that uses race to dictate whose labor, land, and culture can be exploited for wealth.