Category: Mexico 2022

So, pandemic be damned, we‘re off to Oaxaca tomorrow, joining our trusty sidekicks Patti and David B. and their sister-in-law Mary Lou B. We‘re very much hoping that United doesn‘t perform as usual: we have one hour to make the flight to Oaxaca from Houston!

Our plane took off an hour late; United had built in a 67 minute changeover in Houston. So we did the math and started with the usual United anxieties. As it turned out, the pilot made up 30 minutes of the delay and the flight to Oaxaca was…delayed.

On the flight to Oaxaca I sat next to an interesting guy, probably representative of the big block of voters we see as „independent.“ He had a doctorate in geology and had worked for forty years as a consultant in the mining industry in Central America, living for long stretches in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. On the one hand, he was pretty virulently anti-mask (though he kept his on for me) and critical of the excesses associated with „wokeness.“ On the other hand, he was pro-choice and generally what we would call liberal on issues of economic justice. He really knew the indigenous communities around Oaxaca from the inside and was full of fascinating stories of the structure of these societies.

The driver from our hotel, the Parador San Miguel, was at the airport to meet us and we were soon in central Oaxaca. Ricardo is a cheerful guy. He grew up in the state of Chiapas, studied marketing at university there, met his wife, moved with her to one of the pueblas (villages) in the region (Astompa, the village associated with green pottery), opened a photography studio in El Tule (of which more later), and now, after the pandemic destroyed his business, earns his living as a driver and guide. His wife is a teacher and they still live with their little boy in Astompa because they can‘t afford the rising prices in Oaxaca.

The hotel is lovely, with the deep, magical colors of Oaxaca throughout a newly renovated old colonial mansion; there is a lounge in the center that is open to all three stories. Our friends Patti and David had had a very early morning, but stayed awake long enough to hand us a bag of tamales so that we had something for dinner!

We repeated our stroll from years before, down to and around the Zocalo, but were soon ready for the sack after a long day in the air.

We started the day with a very nice breakfast at the hotel: fresh fruit, good coffee, and a tamale with mole for me. We saw the fifth member of the merry band, Mary Lou B., for the first time in about a year.

A brisk walk brought us to where we joined three young people from San José for our mezcal tour. I think we lucked out: the regular guide, Antonio, seemed great, but our guide, Jordany, was a true mezcal fanatic. Trained as an automotive engineer at the university in Puebla, he worked for Volkswagen for a few years before following his heart—and his palate—to Oaxaca and life on a mezcal palenque. He cadged an invitation to work at a small family distillery in the village of Santiago Matatlan and began to learn how to make mezcal. He has since worked at three other palenques, including one in Durango state and one in Chihuahua state, serving as technical consultant and a Mescalero in his own right.

He was currently working in another family palenque, Real Matlatl, and we all piled into a van for the ride up into this high, lovely valley. At the palenque we had an extensive introduction to the main varieties of agave that grow in the Tlacolula valley and to the preparation of the agave hearts. This is the pit in which the hearts are roasted.

The hearts are then chopped into smaller pieces and ground into a fibrous mess by a massive stone millwheel.

The fibrous mess is then dumped into a pine fermentation tank and allowed to ferment through. This is what the cap looks like. There is no temperature control: they just watch it bubble, and punch down the cap one time during fermentation. You begin to see why every batch tastes different!

Real Matlatl makes both artisanal and ancestral mezcal. Artisanal mezcal undergoes a double distillation in copper stills. You are looking at just the covers for the stills, each of which holds 300 liters.

At Real Matlatl, ancestral distillation uses a first distillation in copper stills and then a second one in clay jugs holding 80 liters. At a palenque like Real Minero, both distillations take place in clay.

They also add some unusual elements to their distillates (I‘m bringing versions of this mezcal to selected friends and family):

Top that, Vladimir!

We started off by tasting some mezcals aged in French oak barrels: a joven, a reposado, and an anejo. Pleasant, but with decreasing amounts of agave flavor. Here is Mary Lou showing us how to do it.

We then went upstairs to the bar and worked our way through nine more varieties. Here‘s the list for the geeks among you (the numbers are alcohol percentages):

Espadin 40
Espadin Olli de Barro (ancestral) 45
Espadin Pechuga de guajolote 48 *
Tepextate 48
MadreCuiche (Karwinski) 48 *
Tobala 48
Jabali 48 *
Cerrudo 48
Ensemblem 48

The first three are all espadin, the most common variety of agave. The third bottle, the Pechuga, had been distilled by Jordany himself. He had included a wide variety of fruits…and an entire turkey (minus feathers and skin). It was extraordinary…and we‘re bringing home a bottle.

The next five are all wild varieties of agave. We all loved the Madrecuiche and the Jabali.

Here is Jordany getting things set up.

And here he is with his pride and joy, his turkey pechuga.

Because the crushing floor at Real Matlatl with its enormous millstone was driven by a gas powered machine, we visited a second nearby palenque, El Rey Zapoteca, where a horse turned the stone. This one is for you, Viv, Iggles, and Nathaniel!

We tried a few of their products, too…but only for the purpose of scientific comparison. Jordany told me that they made his favorite espadin in all of Oaxaca, and it was really great.

We then headed back to Tlalocula for a late lunch at a wonderful little restaurant, Casa Tierra, run as a kind of collaborative project by a bunch of young people: terrific moles, chorizo, and several variations of tlayudas and quesadillas new to us.

We finished the meal with, what else, some new distillations. Antonio brought over his own creation, an Espadin infused with cannabis. It was actually pretty interesting, with a lingering and very pleasant vegetal taste.

Then Jordany shared two more of his own distillations, which he had made while working in the mountains in Chihuahua. Sotol is distilled from a completely different plant, one of the 16 varieties of the Dasylirion. The first sotol was straight: a bit sweeter than mescal, a bit more rustic, but delicious. The second one was a pechuga sotol, this time with a haunch of venison…also intriguing and really tasty.

It had already been a long day, but Jordany wanted to introduce us to a weaving family with whom he was friends. We saw the demonstration of the carding and spinning of the wool, and the production of native dyes that we had seen on the last trip, but this time without any hype or salespitch, just love of what Donna Elvira was doing.

Mary Lou bought a gorgeous hanging with a bird motif (Sue was tempted), and we took photos of a rug that we think Sarah would love.

We didn‘t get back to Oaxaca until after seven, tired but exuberant. After a siesta, David, Sue and I went to the Zocalo, sat in a restaurant on a balcony overlooking the square and watched the dancing, happy crowds. You can‘t ask for a more splendid day.

We had a light breakfast in acknowledgment of the eating ahead, and met our guide and driver outside the hotel at 9. The guide was Riccardo, the same young man who had picked us up from the airport; the driver Raoul…both were delightful.

The road to Monte Alban rises steeply from the valley floor; Oaxaca sits at 5100 feet, Monte Alban just over 6000. The van dropped us off below the archaeological zone, and we hoofed it up. On our last visit, we had gone right to the plaza, arriving at its southwest corner near the ball court; it turns out that we had missed a good deal! The tier of the mountainside just below the plaza was the site of a number of large residences and tombs belonging to the Zapotec elite, and many of these have been excavated.

David led us up a steep set of steps, and we found ourself at the back end of the enormous north platform. The platform, which sits high above the main plaza, is an enormously complex site, with several building complexes and temples behind the main feature, a huge sunken patio that was originally fronted by an enormous portico supported by twelve massive columns.

Looking down over the plaza and the edifices that frame it, the achievement here is stunning. Starting in 500 BC, a civilization leveled a granite mountaintop and built these enormous structures without the wheel and without any tools not made of stone. Just as remarkably, we know almost nothing about a civilization that stretched well beyond today’s Oaxaca State. This is a view of the main plaza looking down from the north platform.

There were five ball courts, but only one has been excavated.

The main plaza is littered with steles bearing complex pictographs. This is one of the largest, sitting beside one of the large building complexes comprising an edifice in front with a large patio behind it and a tall platform behind that which would have held a temple. None of the temples themselves have survived.

One of the most intriguing structures is called the Temple of the Dancers (Danzantes). The original building had its facade decorated with many incised stones. The figures depicted on these stones were originally thought to represent dancers, given their mobile arm gestures. There is now consensus that they represent captured enemy warriors who have been tortured—often genitally mutilated—and sacrificed.

We sat for quite a while on top of the south platform enjoying the splendid view.

We then climbed down to look at the arrow-shaped Building J. That’s it directly behind Sue. It was long thought to have been some sort of astronomical observatory, but of what kind wasn‘t known. The recent discovery of a building with an identical orientation in a second mesoamerican civilization suggested that the building points to one of the brightest stars in the low night sky.

On our way out we learned about several trees: the copal that furnishes the carvers, the jacaranda that came from Japan, and the Cazahuate whose white flowers gave the mountain its name.

Riccardo and his family live in Aztompa, the town at the foot of Monte Alban; he offered to take us to his neighborhood restaurant, which proved to be a gem. Como en el Pueblo (like in the village) was lovely, and they fired up the woodburning comal for us. Most of us had an order of three huaraches, longish thick tortillas in the shape of a sandal, one with chorizo, one with „taco beef,“ and one with mushrooms.

Next stop was San Antonio Arrazola, one of the two famous woodcarver‘s villages. First stop was the workshop of Manuel Jimenez Ramirez, the master credited with the translation of the fantastical animals—alebrijes—created in paper mache by Pedro Linares in Mexico City into wood. Don Manuel died in 2006, but his family carries on his work.

His son Isaias gave us a tour of the carving area, a small museum dedicated to Don Manuel‘s work, and finally the gallery. Isaias walked us through a number of testimonials to his father‘s importance. He was very concerned to make two points. The wooden alebrijes originated with his father, making his father the most important Oaxacan carver. And they originated in Arrazola and not in San Martin Telcajete, which is now the much better known carving village.

Origin myths aside, we were enormously taken with the family’s work. the style here is somewhat simpler, more direct, more colorful than that developed by the Angeles family and other carvers in San Martin Telcajete…probably much like the earliest alebrijes.

Mary Lou bought a spectacular bird; David bought a highly ornamented bull, and I bought a companion for my raccoon: a fabulous snake. We also bought various gifts to be revealed in person. It was a wonderful visit to a special place.

In the course of our visit, Riccardo had given us a comprehensive introduction to the Nahual, or spirit animal, so important to Zapotec culture. Each person has one Nahual who protects him or her during life, and a second to protect them after death. This is perhaps the central aspect of Zapotec religion: Nahuals are shape shifters, and there is a frequent transmigration from human to animal form and back. Don Manuel’s Nahual was a dog.

Back in town, we had time for a brief siesta before our return to Criollo, which we remembered as one of our favorite restaurants anywhere. Like much of Oaxaca, the restaurant has become enormously successful, and had opened a vast garden space behind the main restaurant. We we’re initially seated in this garden, but we pleaded successfully for one of the lovely tables on a terrace beside a verdant cactus garden.

The meal was splendid: palate teasers of crispy cauliflower in a peanut mole and a ceviche of dorado, watermelon and chiles; an appetizer of paper-thin pineapple slices covering slices of quince accompanied by an unusual and delicious apple butter; a tamale with quessio, the wonderful Oaxacan string cheese and a mole Colorado; a tostada with a piece of fish nestled into a pile of chorizo on top of a bed of lentils (a surprising combination that worked extremely well); a tostada with a ribeye Tatar, nopal (cactus) buttons, tomatoes, and chiles; and a complex dessert that included a glass of coconut / almond milk; yoghurt ice cream with berries in a tuile, and a piece of tres leches cake.

We made a fundamental mistake that took a bit of the luster off the meal. We opted for the menu option that included drinks. In our boomer naivite we thought that meant wine courses and perhaps a margarita. We should have looked around at the other diners: all millennials downing “cocteles.” And that is largely what we got. Yuck.

Riccardo and a new driver, Omar, picked us up at 9 and we headed into the southern arm of the valley toward the lovely town of Ocotlan de Moreles. The town is named for a Mexican revolutionary hero; José María Morelos, who organized the struggle for independence from Spain.

We had planned our visit on Ocotlan’s market day, and the town was joyously alive. The market sprawls out from the town square and down the side streets. And all of this is only a supplement to the enormous covered market that is open every day.

We started our visit to the workshop of the internationally famous folk artist Josefina Aguilar.

There are four Aguilar sisters and each of them has developed a variant of their mother’s work in painted clay figurines. Josefina’s renown comes from the charm of her scenes of Mexican village life. Her figures have a certain rustic realism which is central to their character. If you look closely at the image below, you’ll see a woman giving birth in the lower right corner.

Careful readers of these pages know that I brought home two figures in 2019: a market woman with a basket of fruit on her head and a woman making tortillas, complete with a separate comal and grinding stone. Well they’re going to have company: I purchased a nine piece band and three men playing a giant marimba! Here are eight of the little guys waiting to be packed.

We stuck our noses into sister Guillermina’s workshop; also lovely things, often wittier and more refined, but somehow less moving.

Next stop were the murals in the town hall by native son Rodolfo Morales, considered during his lifetime to be one of Mexico’s greatest living artists.

On our last visit, we had toured his home, which had served as the headquarters for his foundation. This time, we headed straight for the town’s major church, Santo Domingo, which had been restored with funds from th Morales Foundation.

Cultural urges satisfied, we plunged into the market.

I needed a big sombrero, since I was getting burned despite the cap I was wearing. Sue scored some of the large woven baskets that she loves, and found a lovely tablecloth for a lucky recipient. At moments like these, one feels a bit of guilt: considering the hours it took to weave this handmade piece, the price was ridiculously low. The others made similar purchases, and we headed into the covered section to see the food stalls and stands. For those of you looking for the perfect gift for that Frankfurt School fan in your life, you can purchase your very own Adorno in Ocotlan!

Our friend the Frida Kahlo imitator was still going strong!

We were eager to repeat our meal at the Azcucena Zapoteca restaurant outside San Martin Tilcajete. We had intended to eat lightly, but the food was just too good. Some of the freshest, most delicious guacamole ever, followed by a tasting of four moles (negro, coloradito, Amarillo, and estofodo). Most of us followed this up with the sublime quesadillas with Oaxacan cheese and squash blossom flowers.

We paid a relatively quick visit to the workshop of Jacobo and Maria Angeles, where I had purchased my raccoon. Riccardo had suggested that Jacobo and Maria weren’t carving or painting much anymore, and they indeed had only a few pieces on display. All lovely, but the prices had doubled in three years. Most of what was on offer was student work—very nice but not close to the masters in quality.

Riccardo wanted to show us the work of a friend, Ovidio Fuentes and his wife Alicia. We had a long talk with them. They had both come up through the ranks with the Angeles. Alicia became a master painter, Olivia a master carver. A few years before they had broken off on their own. Their work was exquisite, but the best things approached the prices at the Angeles workshop.

One of the highlights here was the revelation of the nahuals for each member of the group. Sue’s lifetime Nahual is the hummingbird; mine the frog. And we each share one of the most powerful protectors in the afterlife: the snake.

It was getting late, but we made one last stop at the artisan’s collective in San Bartolo Coyotepec, the home of black clay (barro negro) pottery. The technique of forming vessels from this clay was known for centuries to the Zapotecs and Mixtecs; the result was a sturdy grayish product. In the 1950’s a local woman, Dona Rosa Real, discovered that the pottery emerged with a deep black shine if the pieces were polished before a second firing. Sue added to our homeward load with some gifts that will be revealed all in good time.

We got back to the hotel rather late, and had to scramble for two cabs to get to our restaurant for the night, Alfonsina. It came highly recommended: the chef had made all the moles for Pujol in Mexico City, and had the worked at Cosme in New York. I just hadn’t realized how far out of town it was: after battling the traffic in downtown Oaxaca, we drove south toward the airport…and past the airport…and through a couple of dark villages…and onto a street barricaded…right in front of the restaurant. This was certainly our most unusual meal. I won’t try to describe the courses, because they were all built around local ingredients whose names we couldn’t really catch. We chatted with the chef at the end, a really nice young man…and we wished him well. We had a wild ride home in two claptrap taxis: ours had lost its seatbelts and interior door handles somewhere along the way.

We had been in Oaxaca for four days and had barely set foot in the city! So we set out with the general idea of getting to the Museum of Oaxacan Culture in the church of Santo Domingo. We had a nice (light) breakfast in a little cafe, and then strolled up the main pedestrian street, Calle Alcala. Our eye was caught by a store displaying gorgeous rugs. It turned out that this was a collective from Teotitlan del Valle, offering very fair prices. Let’s just say that our group contributed to the economy of the village.

Here are a few views of the town’s colonial center.

Patti made the good suggestion to save the museum for the hot early afternoon hours, so we spent the next couple of hours exploring the streets west of Santo Domingo.

We encountered some interesting political art…

And some quiet corners…

We returned to the hotel for a quick bite and something cool.

Refreshed, we headed for the museum…only to find that it, like all the museums at the archeological sites, had been closed by Covid.

We decided to lick our wounds at one of the loveliest hotels in town, the Quinta Real, a converted convent. This was the nun’s wash house.

We then did a loop to have a look at the most famous church, La Nuestra Senora de la Soledad.

Ever since the coffee at the Quinta Real, I’d been feeling a bit woozy…I thought it was the heat. By now I was really dragging, and retreated to the hotel with Sue. The others saw something special: the carnival parade put on by a number of the surrounding pueblas.

As it turned out, I had some kind of food poisoning of unknown origin: water? Food? Who knew? I was a bit sick until late evening, but was so exhausted that I more or less slept through…thus missing what our culinary shock troops described as one of the best meals of the trip at the restaurant Origen!

We got an earlier start in view of our early dinner reservation. The trusty Ricardo was there to pick us up at 8 AM. We headed east again, retracing our steps toward Mitla.

First stop was one of the most famous trees in Latin America: El Tule, an enormous Montezuma Cypress in the lovey town of Santa Maria del Tule. It’s quite a sight!

As you can see, they think the tree is more than 2000 years old. Now on to Mitla!

Mitla emerged as the most important Zapotec city just as Monte Alban was abandoned. Although it has been inhabited before, it achieved its greatest size between 500 and 1500 AD; by 1000 AD Mixtec peoples had become dominant in the region and Mitla was populated by both groups. It is one of the sites that express the Mesoamerican belief that death was the most consequential part of life after birth. It was built as a gateway between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Nobles buried at Mitla were believed to be destined to become “cloud people,” who would intercede on behalf of the population below.

We had a bit of a wait to get in, since they are restricting entrance during the pandemic. Mitla was a very large city, and five separate archaeological zones have been excavated, though only two are open to the public. The first zone, known as the North or Church group, includes the remains of the main temple, called the yohopàe in Zapotec (house of the vital force); the temple had a large roofed area for the priests and a large patio oriented toward a large platform.

This platform and the structures on it, were thought to be the place of the lord and lady of the underworld.

In 1553 the archbishop of Oaxaca ordered the destruction of the platform and the adjoining temple; the stones were used to construct a colonial church atop the entrance to the underworld!

Once the temple was unearthed, the temple walls revealed the beautiful stone fretwork that has become the symbol of Mitla. The geometric patterns are made from thousands of cut, polished stones that are fitted together without mortar. None of the fretwork designs is repeated exactly anywhere in the complex.

The second zone, known as the zone of the columns or palace, is made up of two huge patios, each of which has an enormously impressive structure at its south end. The northernmost patio is dominated by one of the most impressive mesoamerican edifices known as the palace of the columns: an enormous structure with huge lintels above the entranceways; in the interior courtyard are the massive columns that give the building its name. Here is the palace from the rear and then from the patio.

The buildings on either side of the patio were destroyed; only fragments remain. In the second patio are a number of tombs, all of which we could enter on the last trip but are now closed due to Covid.The residences themselves have the typical structures of the Zapotecs: Rather small covered rooms for sleeping arranged around large patios oriented to maximize the amount of sunlight.

I still didn’t feel right, and the trusty Ricardo found a doctor who could see me right away. His office was attached to a pharmacy that was part of a national chain. After examining me, he prescribed an antibiotic and a couple of other things. I recount all this for the purpose of health care comparison: the doctor’s visit was three dollars (but only because it was Sunday; it was two dollars during the week) and the raft of medicines a further six. Nine bucks won’t even buy you admission to the office of a quack north of the border!

From Mitla we went to yet another wonderful casual restaurant, Don Agave; we had our own covered cabana for lunch.

We spent the afternoon at a magnificent ruin that we hadn’t seen before: Yagull. Although the site, on a bluff high above the valley, had been inhabited for centuries, the first religious and civic structures date from the dissolution of Monte Alban, i.e. around 500 AD. The visible structures date from a still later time, from 1250 AD to the conquest, when Yagul was an independent city-state within the Zapotec civilization.

Yagul has one of the largest ball courts in Mesoamerica, longer and somewhat steeper than most others.

Next to the ball court rises a structure known as the council chamber, sitting atop a large patio with magnificent views across the valley. What is most striking about the site, though, is a vast, complex edifice named the Palace of the Six Patios.  It is formed of three elite complexes, each with two patios surrounded by rooms. In each pair of patios, the northern was probably a residence and the southern was possibly the administrative area. A tomb entrance is found in each patio.

Smaller than the other sites, we all agreed that it was perhaps the most moving.

We returned to town and had a wonderful dinner at Casa Oaxaca, the originator of modern Oaxacan cuisine. The salsa alone would have made the meal memorable; made table side, we got to chose how many grasshoppers to include with the chiles. Sue and David had a terrific goat leg, Patti had rabbit ragout on tagliatelle, and I had duck breast with mole coloradito. We capped it off by sharing a wonderful coconut flan. And we had a fabulous table at the edge of the balcony overlooking the back of Santo Domingo.

After a troubled night of sleep before an early departure—this happens to us with increasing frequency—we rolled out of bed at 5 AM for a 7:45 AM flight. The otherwise seemingly Riccardo was nowhere to be seen at the agreed upon time of 5:30. But the cab called by the hotel instead was a good substitute, and we were soon flying through the airport…if you can call it flying when you have to account for seven items. These two one-bag travelers checked three bags….and all our loot made it home in one piece!

We didn’t learn what we’d missed until we had landed at Newark: there had been an earthquake near the Pacific coast in Oaxaca state, with strong tremors felt throughout the region. Our fellow travelers were evacuated from the airport while, as David put it, there was a whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on! When their plane finally took off, they had missed their flight, and all three of them spent the night in lovely Dallas. Sorry we missed the party!