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.
