Oaxaca

 March 11, 2009

• 10:30 am arrive in Oaxaca
• Hostel
• Downtown Oaxaca
• Museo de Oaxaca
• Danzon
• Café
• Internet
• Hostel

 

March 12, 2009

• Breakfast
• Templo de la compania
• Museo de Rufino Tamayo
• Museo Grafico
• Artesanias Regionales y Populares de Oaxaca
• Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca
• Basilica de la Soledad
• Jardin Etnobotanico
• Dinner

 

March 13, 2009

• Bus
• Ejutla—Ocotlan
• Museo Rodolfo Morales
• Artesania Aguilar
• Casa Rodolfo Morales
• Bus
• Oaxaca
• Park
• Mass
• Sto Domingo

 

March 14, 2009

• Mass
• Breakfast
• Park
• Casa Crespo—Oscar
• Museo de Pintores Oaxaquenos
• Parque Chapulines
• Manuel & Gualalupe in Park
• Danzon estudiantil
• Son cubano
• Hostel

 

March 15, 2009

• Breakfast
• Monte Alban
• Oaxaca
• Lunch with Tom, Nancy, Lee Ann
• Tianguis
• Hostel
• Sto. Domingo
• Mass
• Tlayuda

 

Oaxaca

I thought San Cristobal de las Casas was the Mexican San Francisco, but Oaxaca is vying for that place. Or could it be that San Francisco is the US-Oaxaca. The place has so much art, artistic venues, museums and music in the plaza (yesterday there was a 40 piece orchestra playing danzon music while the audience danced. It is foodie paradise. And it is warmer and not so cold here. It is a magical place.

 

It has been wonderful to travel through Mexico and Central America. But to be honest it is getting tiring to pack up and settle into a new city every few days or so and orient myself. And while I do meet people it is not the same as friends. Or it could be the headache I have for lack of sleep on the bus last night.

 

Ocotlan

Getting there was one story. I asked the bus driver to let me know when Ocotlan stop was, which is 45 minutes south of Oaxaca. And he forgot. I had to get another bus (and pay the fare again) to get back to Ocotlan.

It is a neat little village where on Fridays the village and the localities have there open air market which surrounds the central plaza, the market and the church. The Zapotecs have been gathering here from before the arrival of the Spanish so it is a very old market. They sell everything: produce, meat, poultry, plastics, bread, textiles, shoes, woodwork, mezcal, and tejote (a drink made with cacao, cacao flowers and pisle--it is very refreshing). They also make these empanadas: they are large corn tortillas made fresh. They are filled with yellow mole, chicken, cilantro and Oaxaca cheese. They are folded over and toasted crisp. Then seasoned with fresh onions and lime juice.

But Ocotlan is also known for its artesanias, put on the map by Rodolfo Morales, who with his time and money renovated the former Dominican monastery into a small museum of the city artesanias. The most famous is from the Aguilar family who make these colorful clay figurines of daily life, funerals, marriages, Fridas, mermaids, devils, Virgen Marys and ladies of the night. I got to visit there studio. The founding mother is now deceased and the work is carried out by her daughters. I got to talk to Juan, Irene´s son about the process. Fascinating.

 

I had a cooking class today. At Casa Crespo, the owner/cook Oscar showed me how to make a guajillo mole with chicken. We also made two kinds of salsa, guacamole, a pureed bean soup, fried banana croquets filled with fresh cheese and topped with salsa, and  2 kinds of quesadillas. One quesadilla had cheese, a zucchini flower and epazote (a herb). The other had cheese and grasshoppers. The Oaxacan cheese was too strong so the grasshoppers were like little, salty crunchy things.

So later I went to the market to buy. They sold them large, medium and small. I bought M$35 pesos worth ($USD 2.35) for about a cup. They are stir-fried with salt and lemon and really don¨t taste like anything except they are lemony, salty and crunchy. I am bringing a bag home. 

 

One of the adventures of traveling are the people you meet.

While in San Cristobal de las Casas, I met Enoko, a young Basque sound engineer ,who for the last three years has donated time and energy to a Zapatista community. Through the course of the conversation, his efforts to liberate his country has linked him to other communities who have been oppressed. And while the community with which he works is far from perfect in its democracy, its efforts are to build a community where material goods are held in common and necessary needs are provided for. While I have reservations about a socialist system as I have seen it, I admire his work to build a more equitable world.

Also in San Cristobal, I met Jorge, a American-Mexican artist/entrepreneur who does some fascinating jewelry, delicate pieces of art using actual leaves which are plasticized. Some of the work is set with precious stones. He recruits young artists to help create and design pieces of art. He was an engaging and welcoming, though opinionated man. He had some interesting thoughts about Mexico and the US. He assessed Mexico as corrupt and inefficient and all those who do business here are “wringing Mexico dry and selling it on the international market. His experience is that packages leaving Mexico are scanned and when agents see that it contains jewelry, it “disappears.” He was looking to locate his business to the US where he can find talented, honest and ambitions young students to train to create art. His assessment of the US as a place to do business is not any better; the US while the US is efficient it is as corrupt. His cynical assessment of Mexico as an inefficient, corrupt nation disturbed me, mostly my sense that there is a great deal of truth to it. His assessment of the US as a corrupt while efficient country left me thinking. His assessment of his Japanese, who buy his jewelry, was skewed as he perceived them as disdaining the non-Japanese.

In Oaxaca’s main plaza, I met a Manuel and Guadalupe, a married couple, teachers, who gave me the history of the May 2006 teachers’ strike, which mobilized the city and state to demand from the government accountability and living wages. In May of 2006, the teachers’ union gave the government a list of needs and received a “slap in the face.” The teachers responded by having rallies and demonstrations articulating their position and protesting the governments’ response by striking and setting up encampments in the Zocalo, the central square. In June, the government took repressive measures against the teachers with surveillance and armed helicopter and soldiers armed with tear gas, batons, and pepper spray. The teachers had been prepared in case of such a move and mobilized their communications (TV and radio). The people supported the teachers by giving them refuge and providing them with sticks and stones to fight back. Young boys carried wheel barrows filled with stones to hurl at soldiers. The sidewalks and benches were broken to create more stones. Subcommandante Marcos told the teachers that they had “cojones” because they fought with nothing more than sticks and stones, while the Zapatistas had guns. The relato was very moving and inspiring. The strike ended in November 2006 due to the fact that that strike has gone on for more than six months (no income for the teachers) and the fact that the leader of the union had disappeared (it is assumed that he was bribed away) and the second in command was not as capable and the strike lost steam.

The teachers’ union inspired other Oaxacans that they could change the social order. And other organizations mobilized to align themselves with the teachers and showed the people that they could demand changes.

While in a Son Cubano, a bar in Oaxaca, I also met Daniel, a young man who works for the army. He was a handsome, talented jack of all trades: an architect, a mason, a leader, an English speaker and a soldier. He had been involved in the “control” of Zapatista territory in Chiapas. His assessment is that the Zapatistas in Chiapas want to separate from Mexico, and that the US is creating dissention so that it can eventually create a canal along Tehuanapec isthmus. While I agree that the US doesn’t always have the interests of the local people in mind, I did have a difficult believing him. After being in Panama and knowing that what the Panama Canal, which was in the US’s possession, cost in resources and 25,000 human lives, I doubt the US would want to build a canal through Mexico’s isthmus. The people you meet make traveling so interesting.

 

El que busca la verdad, corre el riesgo de encontrarla.

--Victor Manuel