I KNOCKED ON THE HEART OF OAXACA

Antonio Zarate of Oaxaca

2009-12-14T20:40:00.022-05:00

Antonio Zarate of Oaxaca sent me the following slide presentation about the beauty and magic of Oaxaca. I want to share it with readers. As I wrote in the introduction to this blog, “…my deepest appreciation goes to Antonio Zarate. Antonio never tired of driving me around the State of Oaxaca and never complained whenever I wanted to stop at an interesting location. He diligently discovered new places to visit and enlivened them with well-researched information. His superb driving skills, his humor and his absolute trustworthiness made traveling with him safe, delightful and memorable. To meet him, visit his website at www.oaxacaguideservice.com or e-mail him at: zarate_antonio@hotmail.com).”

The Paper Workshop

2008-01-19T14:40:00.010-05:00

The spring rains arrived early in May 2000. Slanting rain, drenching rain, driving rain, torrents of rain. Thunder rolled and crashed, reverberating in the mountains. Lightening ripped the black sky. The rains canceled a trip to a village nestled in the mountains. Would they postpone a trip to the Wednesday market at Etla and to the Taller de Arte Papel Oaxaca in San Agustin Etla?

I had returned to Oaxaca, because I was intrigued that one of Oaxaca’s famous artists, Francisco Toledo, had converted a former hydroelectric power plant into a workshop to produce high quality paper from native plants. When I learned that the Taller or workshop provided jobs for the community, there was no hesitation in planning a visit. I was eager to see how the strands of Toledo’s project had been knitted together into a cohesive whole: the building, the native plants, the workers and the end product of fine quality paper.

We drove north from the City on a cloudless, hot, sunny day with no hint of rain. Our first stop was the market at Etla. Only one parking spot remained. Octavio spotted it and squeezed into the tight place. We remarked on our good fortune.

Stone steps led up to the market. Not content to be crammed into one building, stalls with white awnings flowed down the stone steps to form a pool of vendors at the bottom. Sounds, smells and colors swirled and eddied. It was like entering the Mexican version of Harrods’ Food Halls in London.

There were herbs, potions, amulets, embroidery, farm implements, seeds, beans, bunches of small slender ocote (resinous pine used for igniting wood fires or lighting gas stoves), green pottery from Atzompa, local red pottery and tall, deep cylindrical baskets woven from carrizo (a native reed). Red tomatoes sprawled next to green chilies; mounds of ripe pineapples shouldered them. Branches of nopal cactus (prickly pear) and its fruit (tuna) rested side by side. Nopal branches are cooked in a variety of dishes and are good for controlling diabetes; the edible fruit makes an especially refreshing sorbet or nieva.

During our stroll through the market, I learned about the seven regions of Oaxaca, the seven moles of Oaxaca and the six colors of bougainvillea. I needed a break. My head was whirling from the sun, the sights and so many facts. “Please, no more talking until I rest.”

We stopped at a stall where a woman was selling atole, a pre-Hispanic drink reminiscent of gruel. The recipe calls for boiling roasted corn in water. Then grinding, straining and thickening the mixture. The result is a comforting and filling drink especially for breakfast.

The atole was rapidly boiling in a metal tub on long legs, and the pottery serving bowls were sparkling clean, both signs of safety in choosing a vendor from whom to buy atole in the markets. I ordered a bowl, knowing it was just what I needed to clear my head.

I settled myself on a plank bench next to a portly man dressed in a dazzling white suit and white sombrero. He held a bowl of champurrado (atole mixed with chocolate). “Buenos dias,” he said. “I am single.”

I asked him what he had purchased in the market. He unwrapped his parcel to show me leafy greens, bread and a bunch of small white onions. He gently handled each item as if it were priceless porcelain.

Without warning he turned to me. “Slow down,” he admonished. “There’s plenty of time.” He had observed the speed with which I was drinking my atole. I was unaware that I was rushing to empty the bowl as if there were somewhere more interesting to be or something more important to do than to be in the present moment.

Etla is famous for white cheese made from cows’ milk. At the cheese stalls one of the women vendors explained the different consistencies of the cheese and let me sample the contrasting textures. There was a soft cheese, which looked and tasted like ricotta, a medium firm cheese and a third type, wrapped in a green leaf and packed in a circular wooden mold. The vendor selected one of the latter, unmolded it on a plate and handed it to me. It was too rich to eat all at once; I stored half for a snack.

We entered the adjacent church. Construction was finished in 1636. Baby Jesus was on the left wall. He was dressed in infant’s clothes and wore a white knitted baby’s cap. Another Nino Santo, this one in regal robes and crown, looked out from a case on the right wall. Scattered on the case’s floor were toy cars and trucks and dolls left by the distraught parents and relatives of sick or dying children.

The deserted cloister was tranquil and silent, its arches outlined in brick red. The exterior walls were ringed by trees, their branches weighted down with ripe fruit. Octavio went from tree to tree naming them for me: nisperos (zapote or sapodilla), guayabas (guaya), toronjas (grapefruit), and papayas.

Time seemed to stand still. Not remembering precisely how we got there, we found ourselves back in the atrium in front of the church. It was Octavio who discovered the bamboo towers. They were placed on their side atop a stone platform connected to the church. Spent fireworks were tied in the corners of the carefully crafted staging, remnants of a recent celebration. Fireworks are an integral feature of any fiesta, and we marveled that more spectators were not injured by them.

We crossed the atrium. The iron gate to the street was ajar. Slipping through, we closed it behind us. On the gate was a sign; the atrium should not be used for romance.

We drove through cultivated, fertile land to the chapel of las Penitas. Restored in 1983, the chapel sat on a hill amidst a haunting landscape. The pocked surface of the rock with its smoothly worn, water-filled depressions appeared like a lunar surface, weird and wonderful to the eye. Small stones or penitas peppered the ground in front of the chapel. They were difficult to walk on. Octavio believed they symbolized the stones that paved the route that Jesus took on his way to His Crucifixion.

Miniature grills dotted the foreground. Flat rocks had been topped with bricks arranged so as to leave a small square aperture in the center of each grill. Ashes remained at the bottom of the grills, indicating that they had been used recently. Because it was the wet season, the rains would have washed out or diluted the ash.

“What do you suppose goes on here?” we asked. “What could one possibly roast on such small grills?” Our questions were lost in the air for no one was present, not even a caretaker for the chapel. If it were a place to picnic or to celebrate special occasions involving food, very little could be cooked at one time, a decided drawback when one considers the size of Mexican families. “Perhaps,” we mused, “these little stoves are for offerings.”

The chapel was next. Inside we met Our Lady of Guadalupe. She stood in the left transept benevolently gazing down upon a model of a green two-story house, which a hopeful petitioner had placed on a table. In the right transept beneath another Virgin, a table displayed a model of a pharmacy. Beside it was a white one-story house with a basket of fake flowers on its flat roof. “The donors must be a newly married couple.” Octavio speculated.

Milagro means miracle. It also denotes a votive offering, a tangible representation of a prayer or plea for a miracle, which a petitioner makes to a saint or a member of the Holy Family. At las Penitas, milagros were fastened to the robes of the two Virgins, wrapping them in prayers and petitions. In other churches, milagros are pinned to the interior walls of saints’ niches or secured on lengths of ribbon or elegant fabric hanging beside a statue.

Milagros commonly are made of tin and have a narrow, colored ribbon attached at the top. There is a milagro for almost every aspect of daily life. Spiritual or emotional problems? Choose a miniature person who is standing or kneeling in prayer. Parts of one’s anatomy that may be affected? Buy an eye, a hand, a leg, a heart, breasts or ears. Troubles concerning the crops or the home? Select a tiny dog, cat, mule or donkey, perhaps an ear of corn, a house or a car.

Driving away from the chapel, Octavio braked beside a stand of trees. “Higerillas. They have seeds that give oil for shampoo. Don’t use the oil for cooking, though,” he warned. Traveling with Octavio was an adventure in discovering herbs, trees, fruits and flowers. He had a vast storehouse of knowledge about the customs and the natural history of the State. He always was pointing out something new or giving me a novel interpretation of something that I might have taken for granted.

We were ready for Toledo’s workshop; however, Octavio had neglected to bring directions. No one he asked knew its exact location, not even the police stationed at barracks beside the main road. “Mexicans frequently give bad directions,” Octavio counseled, “so I choose the route the democratic way. I ask many people and choose the direction given by the majority.” The consensus of opinion was to make a right turn off the main road.

The dirt road passed through an area noted for plentiful springs, which fed the many balnearios (pools of thermal waters) that lined both sides of the road. The balneario named “Acapulco” appealed to us. We joked that we could boast to our friends in the City that we had been to Acapulco and back in a day. Later, we would learn that these abundant springs provided a reliable source of water to the Taller, even during the dry season when water was at a premium.

We knew we were lost when we arrived at a dead end. The only person in sight was a man in work clothes. He was leaving a driveway to our right and walking towards the door of an adjacent building. Octavio acted quickly. He clenched his right fist and held fist and forearm horizontally in front of him. In response, the man pointed his left index finger at his chest, raised his eyebrows and froze. When Octavio told him that we were looking for the Taller, he sprang to life. Using no words, only elaborate and animated hand signals, he directed us to turn sharp right, drive down a steep gradient of enormous paving stones and turn sharp left. At the end of the road was the former hydroelectric power station, now the Taller de Arte Papel Oaxaca.

We faced a plot of emerald green grass with a fountain in its center. Behind it was the Taller, white-washed and decorated with red brick columns. Red brick lintels ornamented the tops of the doors and the open, iron-barred windows. Narrow channels of rushing water bordered the lawn. The sound of coursing water mingling with the sound of water splashing from the fountain was soothing and refreshing.

As we approached the Taller’s entrance, a man appeared in the open doorway. He cordially invited us in and appointed himself our guide. The one-room interior was spacious. Sunlight, streaming through the windows, highlighted the workers, who quietly went about their business paying no attention to our sudden and unexpected arrival. Only our low voices, the creak of machinery and the muffled footsteps of the men broke the silence.

We asked many questions, and our guide patiently answered them. He enumerated the native plants from which the paper is made; Maguey, brown cotton, carrizo and banana were the only names we recognized. He explained that chichicastle, an important ingredient in the paper, was a fiber used for weaving in pre-Hispanic times.

Plants arrived at the workshop from communities throughout the State. Each community was responsible for the cultivation, harvesting and conservation of the plants shipped to the Taller. There should be no threat of over-harvesting or of dwindling resources.

Our guide, worker 1, led us to the machinery that stood on a low stage. Baskets filled with leaves and other plant parts rested at the edge of the platform. The baskets’ contents were waiting to be crushed by being circulated in a trough of boiling water for one and one-half hours. They would replace the batch of mashed fibers that had completed its allotted time in the boiling water and was ready to be removed to an adjacent vat. Our guide suggested that I reach in and sample the wet pulp. I grabbed a handful of the mushy contents and squeezed it between my fingers.

After worker 2 transferred the pulp to a vat, he added glue extracted from the prickly pear and stirred it into the pulp. He showed us a rectangular wood frame, which encased two screens nested inside each other. He plunged the frame into the bath and withdrew it in order to demonstrate how a thick layer of the mixture rested on top of the screens. Holding the frame over the bath, he waited until the liquid drained through the screens and left a rectangular residue of pulp on the top screen.

He carried the frame to a thin, flexible metal sheet, which rested on a larger gray felt-like mat. Working slowly and methodically, he pressed the frame from one side of the metal sheet to the other. What remained on the sheet was a rectangle of pressed pulp. He repeated screening and pressing the pulp until there were enough layers of mat-metal-pulp for worker 2 to carry to the pressing machine.

Worker 3 placed the layers between two massive plates on the pressing machine. He cranked the handle of a wheel on one side of the press. As the upper plate slowly descended, it compressed the layers and extracted the residual liquid, which splattered on the floor. Several more twists of the handle satisfied him that the press had removed all of the liquid and had flattened the paper.

Worker 4 took the stack from the press and placed it on a flat surface. A thin sheet of paper now adhered to each metal sheet. Layer by layer he discarded the mat and inserted a hook at one end of the metal sheet, leaving the paper attached. He suspended each metal sheet on a crosspiece, which hung between two horizontal bars of an empty rack. When the rack was full, he rolled it out the back door to join other racks of paper drying in the sun. He estimated that it took eight hours for the paper to dry during the rainy season, less time during the dry season.

Racks of dried paper worked on in black or in color by the creative hand of Toledo lined one wall inside the workshop. We asked permission to examine them. “Toledo was here yesterday,” our guide said pointing to his studio in a corner. We had missed him by a day, but we could sense his lingering presence amidst the paints and brushes scattering his work space. None of the men knew when he would return; none of them knew where he lived. His unannounced schedule protected his privacy.

Our guide accompanied us outside and pointed us down a path. At the end was an open-sided structure. Its roof provided shade for artisans working at sturdy tables and benches.

A woman was assembling a book from sheets of paper, and three women were making paper jewelry. One was cutting triangles of different sizes from the paper. Another slowly dipped an edge of a triangle in a shallow pan filled with natural dye of a neutral color. She rotated the triangle so that each edge absorbed a narrow band of dye before she set the triangle aside to dry. A third rolled triangles into beads. She tightly wound each triangle around a cylindrical rod, glued its apex to the roll and put the bead in a box. We watched her struggle with a bead; the roll was too loose. She unrolled it and began again, the tips of her fingers acting like delicate sensors throughout the process. She acknowledged our exclamations of approval with a smile and a slight nod. After all, that was her job.

We admired the handiwork of the women who were stringing necklaces of beads or of rounds of white fish bone and small paper circles. My favorite necklace was constructed of small pieces of accordion-pleated paper. I fastened it around my neck, and the folds fanned out like an elegant ruffle. That was the one I wanted. But the jewelry was not for sale. A chorus of voices informed us that the articles were sold only in the City at the shop at Santo Domingo Church.

We returned to the main building in order to thank the workmen for their warm hospitality. I thought about Toledo, his vision and how he had translated it into a project that benefited an ever-widening spiral of people. The spiral began at the Taller with jobs for the unemployed. It widened to encompass the plant harvesters, the apprentices working in the Taller, the researchers who investigated new sources of plant fibers and new paper-making techniques, the artists who created the finished products and the patrons who purchased the works of art. I was deeply touched by this first-hand experience of how one man’s dream had become a triumph with far-reaching influence.

We exited the Taller to find an evergreen bush with elongated leaves and delicate white flowers, their centers washed with pale yellow. It looked like a giant rhododendron with apple blossoms. “What is this?” we inquired. One of the men replied, “Beautiful, no? We use the pretty flowers to make crosses for the churches.”

“What a fitting tree to be growing outside the workshop!” I exclaimed. “Inside plants are being turned into paper while outside these flowers will be made into decorations.”

On the way back to the main road we stopped at a church. Shrines lined both walls of the nave. Each shrine was a small stage. The actor was the saint who posed in the shrine before a backdrop of painted trompe l’oeil drapes. Stacked in a corner beside one of the shrines were intricately woven palm fans with woven palm grips. Beside them, woven palm circles, overlaid with palm crosses, sprouted from the ends of long handles. “For the processions,” Octavio explained.

A beguiling Virgin in a gown of airy white fabric stood at the front of the chancel smiling at someone’s labor of love. That someone had strewn a thick bed of recently plucked flower petals of the most subtle colors on the floor of the transept. The fragile petals had been lovingly arranged in the shape of an oval rug, a perfect spot upon which to kneel in prayer. The scent from the petals perfumed the air. No wonder Our Lady looked so happy.

Two steps led up from the petals to where the Virgin rested. A three-legged copal burner containing the remains of an offering of copal incense stood on the first step. The smell of the incense blended with the fragrance of the petals. On the second step, the flickering flame of a candle created an air of mystery and intimacy. A tiny broom, waiting to sweep up the petals after they lost their freshness, leaned against the altar rail. No doubt about it, a special holiness enveloped the space. An invisible barrier sealed it off from the rest of the church. It remains an unforgettable picture, indelibly etched in my mind’s eye by the twin senses of sight and smell.

We headed back to the City. Arriving at the gate of my bed and breakfast, Octavio shook my hand and summed up the day. “Thank you,” he said. “When I learned I was going to a paper factory I couldn’t believe it. I wondered what kind of a day it would be. Now I know. It was a day to remember.

Apoala and the Fleece Part II

2008-01-10T20:08:00.000-05:00

Without warning, Apoala appeared, deep in its valley and green as a watering hole. In the dry season, the fertile valley looked like an oasis.

A line of trees curved across the floor of the valley. To the left was a quilt of tidy brown, green and sand-colored squares. We spotted a narrow dirt line slicing the valley. Having visited Apoala last year, we recognized the important landmarks: the yu’u, main street, Tony’s Store and the church. Deep scratches like pencil marks cross-hatched the slopes of the mountains. Far to the right, a U-shaped fold in the mountains promised entrance to untamed regions.

It was exactly 11:30 when we pulled up in front of the yu’u, registered and paid 50 pesos for our guide. A quick glance high to the right. The Devil's Cave still monitored the village.

Our guide was curled up asleep. He preferred to continue his nap. Abraham, a pleasant, self-contained young man who was finishing secondary school, agreed to be his substitute. He would work four months as a guide before being replaced by another student.

Our throats were as parched as the land we had just driven through. Just as the land asked for water, we asked for beers. We gave one to Abraham. He described our route while we slowly sipped the lukewarm liquid.

Our first stop was a cave. I waited outside and immersed myself in the sound of two gurgling springs. One spring flowed from a crevice near the cave; the other emerged far below the cave’s entrance. The water rushed away to feed the river, which also flowed through the village and irrigated the village crops.

Octavio and Abraham emerged from the cave, and Abraham concealed his battery-powered lantern behind a ledge. He would pick it up on the way back. We settled down to enjoy a spectacular hike through ravines, towering cliffs and high canyon walls.

Abraham narrated a story about a double-headed eagle. It had preyed on cattle in the village and then hid in a cave in the face of a cliff. Whenever the eagle ravaged the cattle, the villagers ran to the priest who was unable to help. One day a villager took matters into his own hands and shot and killed the eagle. From that day forth, there was peace (1).

We followed the shallow river as it ran between high walls. The water held the tint of reddish soil. Boulders interrupted its progress. Scrub and trees with twisty branches lined its banks. A few trees clung to the sides of the gorges. Everything looked bleached and petrified in the intense heat.

Back at the yu’u we collapsed in our rooms. Abraham disappeared to do whatever young men do in Apoala. We slept soundly, awoke and explored the village. Tony’s Store was closed. It had been newly white-washed. It looked solid and prosperous. A tree cross was planted in the ground in front of it.

“What are the tree crosses for?” I asked a villager. He shrugged. His companion stepped forward.

“They are for El Dia de la Cruz (The Day of the Cross) on May 3rd. May 3rd is a feast in the Mixteca. We plant new crosses and decorate them with colored paper and crepe paper flowers or redecorate crosses that we planted the previous year. It also is the day to honor architects and engineers, and we erect a tree cross on a building when it is finished.”

Before we could enter the church grounds, we had to pass beneath a backboard with a basketball hoop. The board was white with a double-headed eagle painted brick red in its center. We didn’t remember seeing it last year.

We stepped into the church, delighted that on this trip we had the leisure to enjoy its interior. We halted in astonishment. Another double-headed eagle! Where was it last year? It couldn’t have been there!

This double-headed eagle was painted on a panel of wood, which was mounted on a side wall at the rear of the church. The eagles were brick red with their crests, heads, bodies and wings detailed in a lighter red. The background was robin’s egg blue. In the space between the back of the eagles’ head was a white flower with a dark red center.

I stepped back in amazement. There was the Fleece, the Fleece I had sworn so long ago to discover with Jason. It hung from the base of a white fleece cross, placed within an oval formed in the conjoined backs of the eagles.

At one time the panel had sustained a vertical crack, but the two sections had been pieced together so that the edges formed an almost perfect match. The eagle on the left had sustained minor damage.

The bottom of the panel bore an inscription in white capital letters:
“Apoala. Noch. Oax. Enero 30 de 1981
Recuerdo a futuras generaciones.
Rest. Edeardo Zavaleta.” (2)

Still reeling from the excitement of discovering the Fleece, I approached the sanctuary. A chill ran down my back. There, on the floor beside the altar was a wheel with small bells attached to its spokes. A foot pedal protruded from one side. Whoever pumped the pedal would turn the wheel causing the bells to ring and send out vibrations into the surrounding atmosphere. Just like a Tibetan prayer wheel being spun round and round to send out the vibrations of the mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum, inscribed on paper within the wheel.

My thoughts were whirling as I tried to comprehend the fact that two symbols connected to my childhood were here in this church. Impossible! I sat in a pew and tried to sort out the meaning, but I felt as if I had been hit over the head. I was shivering. I felt as if I had been knocked off balance. And then a voice spoke in my heart, “This is what you’ve been searching for.”

After I regained my composure, we stepped out into the fresh air. We crossed a bridge over the gurgling river. Cows lingered even though their owners urged them home. Trees with ripening fruit lined the river bank. At the end of the road a man accosted us. He had come from his field in order to demand four pesos. “You’re making money from me by taking pictures of my crops. That’s unfair.” He and Octavio exchanged forceful words, but in the end we paid.

“Hide your camera,” Octavio warned. “Don’t take any more photographs.”

We detoured down a side path. “Be careful,” Octavio cautioned. “The man may be watching.” His words echoed back from the mountains. No matter how softly we spoke, our words echoed back to us. It was eerie to realize the villagers could hear whatever we said. “Let’s return to the yu’u. If the villagers can hear us, so can the farmer.”

After dinner, we slept and awoke about 10 p.m. for groggy conversation, hot milk with powdered coffee and bread before turning in for the night. “There is no TV,” the attendant said. “One of the attendants destroyed it. She didn’t want to take care of it.”

The next morning I was out early. It was 7 a.m.; Octavio was asleep. Two women wearing rebozos and several men softly called, “Buenos dias.”

A janitor was sweeping the school yard. He leaned on his broom and shook my hand, “Buenos dias. Where are you from? I am so happy to meet you.”

Another man repeated the same courtesies but added, “Where is your husband? Is he at the yu’u?”

“No, he is back in the States.”

“I hope the next time you visit Apoala you will bring him with you. We would like to meet him and show him our beautiful village.”

At the end of the village where the river rushed to the right towards the canyons, I met a tiny wizened man who, at the end of his formalities, asked me for a peso. “Just a little peso,” he said, “not a big one.” To prove his sincerity, he made a circle with his thumb and index finger and held it up for me to see.

Octavio was still asleep when I returned to the yu’u. Soon, however, he joined me for powdered coffee stirred into hot milk and beef and tamales. We had just sat down to breakfast when Abraham hailed us through an open window. Swinging a leg over the sill, he leapt into the room with a thermos of home made mezcal. Octavio sampled it, but I declined. I had become violently ill. I went to my room, swallowed pills and slept while Abraham and Octavio hiked to the waterfall.

They woke me after an hour. Octavio’s blue and white striped shirt was soaked with perspiration. “Parts of the hike were difficult. But the falls are beautiful. They cascade over red cliffs to plummet into a pool. It would be good for swimming. The water is cold, clear and ice blue. I am happy. I got wonderful shots of the waterfall. Three good ones. Wait until you see them. You will like them.”

Abraham offered to take Octavio to the mouth of the Devil’s Cave, but Octavio declined. He was too tired to attempt the precipitous climb. Relieved, I went back to bed. I left Octavio tinkering with his car and adding oil from the container he had purchased in Nochixtlan.

I got up for the last time. The two women at the medical clinic next door consulted me about seeing the doctor who was in residence that day. “He will be happy to treat you,” they said.

“Muy amable (very kind),” I said weakly. “No gracias.”

They nodded gravely. “You will be better soon.”

The attendants at the yu’u brewed a pot of manzanilla (chamomile) tea. One cup of steaming tea perked me up, two cups revived me, and three restored me enough so that I stepped out to admire the clinic’s garden bursting with red amaryllis and white hollyhocks.

One of the women was going off duty. She walked two hours roundtrip every day from her home in the mountains to her volunteer job at the clinic. She explained that she had a year’s contract with the government. When it expired, the authorities would replace her with another volunteer and another contract. In her spare time, she wove palm frond hats.

We reached a mutual exchange. If we drove her home, she would sell us a straw hat. We both coveted a hat with its brim upturned to the crown and a circlet of loose palm fronds cascading from the edge of the brim.

“I sell a hat for 5 pesos,” she said, “but middlemen buy 12 hats for 18 pesos. They resell them in the City at a profit.”

We loaded our belongings into the car. High above the town, she signaled us to park. She raced down a hill. When she reappeared, she carried three hats with unfinished straw brims and a hat she had made for one of her daughters. We each bought a hat for 5 pesos. I didn’t have the heart to buy the one she had made for her little girl. I felt sure the little girl would be disappointed even if she understood the sale would benefit her family. Octavio gave her 20 extra pesos.

“No, no, you are too kind. I can’t accept.”

“For your children,” he said, with his most winning smile.

She relented. “Thank you. You are very kind. Here, though, you must take the third hat.”

We said good-by and strode away. Octavio wore two hats, one on top of the other, and I one. “Just like a king and queen,” he said.

The jouncing of the car upset my stomach. “You are white,” Octavio announced as he braked and helped me out. I felt as if I were going to die. The bumps seemed to have worsened since yesterday, and the heat was suffocating.

I was thankful when we arrived in Nochixtlan and found a restaurant. Octavio ordered soup with grated carrots and cabbage and a dish of meat and potatoes. He spoke with the owner. “Por favor, make the American my bad stomach remedy. She is not well.”

“How?”

“Combine the juice of two lemons, a bottle of mineral water and two alka seltzer tablets.”

The owner set the glass before me. He averted his eyes, but his smile conveyed sympathy.

Octavio instructed, “Drink this. I always take it before going to bed and again in the morning when I have a sick stomach.” I followed his advice, drank another bottle of mineral water and ate a few spoonfuls of cherry Jell-o. I felt better.

That night I meditated in my room. My thoughts embraced embrace the stories that the residents of Apoala might tell future generations. Perhaps with embellishments. The element of mystery was strong. A stranger appeared in the village and then departed never to be heard from. His house by the river was the only physical reminder that he had lived there. Perhaps with the advent of tourists the need for the stranger would disappear.

On our first trip we had learned about the Devil's Cave and the cave where a live double-headed eagle was discovered.

On the second trip, the Devil's Cave was a name without a story. The story about the disappearance of the children and the Devil had been transformed into a story about a live double-headed eagle carrying off cattle. The hero who had put an end to the Devil's machinations had been replaced by the hero who killed the eagle. The essence of the story remained; evil was done, and evil was overcome.

On our second trip, there was a double-headed eagle painted on a basketball backboard and a restored wooden panel inside the church with a double-headed eagle with the Fleece.

The double-headed eagle as a decorative motif inside of a church is not unique to Apoala. Charles Moritzky noted that a small ruined church in San Francisco Ixtacamaxtitlan had reddish designs of the double-headed eagle on its walls (3). Did the same artist execute them?

The double-headed eagle and the Order of the Golden Fleece were associated with the Hapsburgs and were carried to Mexico by Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico. Had Maximilian, disguised as one of the people, visited Apoala, thereby inspiring the emblem of the double-headed eagle and the insignia of the Fleece? Or were the eagle and the Fleece Apoala’s attempt to add character and color to the village?

I was grateful to have been present at the birth and evolution of a village’s stories. They hint at a village’s origins. In them are the sacred wellsprings of history, which are always carefully guarded. Sacred sites, symbols and stories are carefully groomed for public presentation. In some respects, I felt I had not only visited the birthplace of the Mixtecas but the birthplace of developing legends.

Stories would be told. Perhaps even we had entered a story. I wondered what elements of our story would be included. Part of the charm is not knowing. I was not born in Apoala. Nor did I spend any length of time there. On our first visit, we dropped out of the mists, unannounced and unexpected. The village offered us its best hospitality in food and stories. Our more formal arrival six months later with rooms reserved in a new tourist lodge led to as much hospitality but less colorful stories.

To drop out of the mists is to catch a village and its people unguarded and unrehearsed. It is to place oneself in a position so that the question is asked, “How shall we entertain such a visitor, a visitor from outside of our area and outside of our country?” Clearly, everyone did his best.

Part of the story the people of Apoala would never know. How my mental landscape and my dream landscape had coalesced in their village. And how a symbol that represented each landscape had presented itself to me within Apoala’s church. The Fleece belonged to my mental landscape: the ocean and Jason, my childhood hero. The wheel with bells attached to its spokes that evoked images of Tibetan prayer wheels represented my dream landscape.

I had yearned for Tibet. The Himalayas were the longed-for lofty mountains with peaks that would endow me with spiritual insights. The trip I wanted to take would have me flying over haughty, snow-covered summits and landing in Lhasa, short of breath, gasping for air from the altitude and overwhelmed by the grandeur of the Potala.

High mountains that simultaneously contemplated deep valleys and immense skies, blue lakes, clear air and the deep spiritual devotion of a people became the benchmarks for what I met in Oaxaca. Tibet always lurked beneath the surface.

How do the mountains compare to those in Tibet? Is the silence of the high places similar; is the silence more profound in Tibet?

Look! The festive triangles of colored paper and plastic triangles strung between trees, across the facades of churches and over roads with the mountains as a backdrop. How like Tibetan prayer flags flapping in the breeze!

The women using their rebozos as baby slings or carry-alls reminded me of Tibetans storing babies, cups, bowls and whatever else they needed to travel with in the recesses of their belted robes.

I visualized the two symbols that had made such an impact on me when I stood in the church in Apoala. As I cradled both images deep inside me, the voice again spoke. “This is what you’ve been searching for.”

(1) Whipperman, Bruce. Oaxacan Handbook. Moon Travel Handbooks. Avalon Travel Publishing. Emeryville, CA. 2000, pp.254-255. Note: Our visit to Apoala in 1999 was before the Cave of the Serpent and the Rock Where the Eagle with Two Heads Died became the official names of these two sites.

(2) “Apoala. Nochixtlan, Oaxaca. January 30 of 1981
I remember future generations
Restorer Edwardo Zavaleta”

(3) Perspectives from San Francisco Ixtacamaxtitlan, Mexico by Charles Moritsky. www.mexconnect.com/mex_/trave

Apoala and the Fleece

2008-01-10T17:59:00.000-05:00

In the latter part of November 1998, we arrived at the outskirts of Nochixtlan, and Octavio assumed a thoughtful expression. “Did you know,” he asked, “that ‘lan’ is a suffix that means ‘the place of?’”

“No,” I replied. “What is Nochixtlan the place of?”

“Nochixtlan means the place of the cochineal. Cochineal are insects that feed on a species of cactus. The insects make a red dye, which they store in their body. The Spanish dyed textiles with cochineal and shipped them to Europe where the imported fabric became as valuable as gold.

“Now, Nochixtlan is noted for round loaves of wheat bread. Families bake the bread in kilns and sell the loaves in the local Sunday market.”

A sign at the boundary of Santiago Amatlan announced that its population was 550. A red-domed church looked down on us from a hill. Yellow flowers and diminutive white-washed houses covered the hillside. A road led up to the church. Half-way up, boulders and ledges prevented the car from going farther. We locked the doors and the trunk and stumbled the remaining distance over the rocks. Below, a loudspeaker summoned workers to the fields.

Inside the church, a man trailed us at a discrete distance. He followed us until we stopped in front of an unfamiliar statue in the left transept. “Who is he?” Octavio asked the man.

“Senor de la Reflexion."

Octavio asked more questions. “It's how we see Jesus in our mind,” he explained to me. “This image represents our personal view of Christ.”

The statue wore a dreamy expression. Bearded, but of youthful demeanor, Christ wore a long white robe and had a silver cruciform halo. He held a pole in his right hand with a square white flag attached near the top.

A woman loitered close by. She confronted Octavio outside the church. “Who invited you into our church?”

“We are Catholics, and no one has to invite us. We don’t need an invitation. God and His church are for everyone.” Octavio turned to me. “The people in this part of Oaxaca take two if you give them one and look for an advantage.”

“Por favor, give me an example.”

“Several years ago, my father and I were cutting Spanish moss to decorate the family crèche and Christmas tree. We had just finished when a man approached. He identified himself as the owner of the land and demanded payment for the moss.” Octavio shook his head in disbelief.

Tiny settlements were scattered along the road. I was fascinated by the different styles of architecture. Close to Nochixtlan, split log outbuildings with conical thatched roofs leaned and sagged against one another. They looked like elderly villagers gossiping and holding onto each other for support. After Amatlan, outhouses were the predominant feature. They had been built beside the main house in full view of the road. Each outhouse had a door made from colorful plastic or fabric, which had been pushed aside to reveal a shining white ceramic toilet. Farther down the road were one-story split log houses. They reminded me of Alpine huts, even to the bench on each side of the entrance and the tin cans of flowers and pots of plants on one of the benches.

It had rained during the night, and the slippery red clay mountain road was treacherous. We slowed for solitary burros and an occasional flock of sheep. We pulled up behind a truck loaded with soft drinks and followed it until the driver turned off to the right and vanished into dense fog.

Suddenly thick mists enveloped us. “No wonder they call this ‘The Place of the Clouds,’” Octavio said. Woods shrouded in fog stretched beside and ahead of us. Drooping tree branches dripped with silvery streamers of Spanish moss. The trees appeared to be an army of hoary spirits condemned to be shackled to the ground until some potent spell unlocked them. We stopped, and, marveling at such a magical place, I slipped through the mists and gathered moss.

At the end of the woods, leafy branches of trees on either side of the road had interlaced their arms to create an oval opening. The opening took us from one world to another, from a world of mystery to a world of clarity.

At last, far below, Santiago Apoala appeared nestled in a valley, a tiny green miracle amidst arid mountains. We cautiously descended into the village and pulled up beside a new tourist yu'u (lodging). After we registered at the front desk, and the clerk deposited our 30 pesos in a drawer, he pulled out a cache of photographs of the significant sights of Apoala.

The first photograph showed the Devil’s Cave. At one time children routinely disappeared from the village. The Devil stole them from their parents, carried them to his lair and ate them. An intrepid villager solved the puzzle of the missing children. He banished the Devil, and the children of Apoala were safe from then on. The mouth of the cave loomed high above the village, visible to all, witness to the story.

The other photographs depicted pre-Hispanic agricultural terraces used by the Ancients and a beautiful waterfall. “And here is the most important bit of news,” the receptionist proudly announced. “We have a cave where a live double-headed eagle was discovered!”

Nothing, not even a live double-headed eagle, could divert Octavio’s attention away from the fact that the fog had increased. It had crept down the mountains and obscured the mouth to the Devil's Cave. We only had enough gas to make it back to the City. He was nervous.

“Let's hurry to the church,” Octavio said. Rushing through the gate, we entered a grassy plaza surrounded by a stone wall.

A small white-washed open-sided chapel topped with a red dome stood at each corner of the plaza. The church was white-washed and had red domes and steeples.

We pushed open the entrance door and entered. Octavio bowed his head in a long prayer. I dipped my index finger in the holy water, crossed my third eye and prayed. We petitioned the fog to lift. We both sought encouragement, but Octavio needed it more than I.

On our way back to the yu’u we stopped at Tony’s Store. Two women lounged in the door. Their fingers were almost invisible as they wove palm fronds into a basket. The hands of the shorter woman were like machines. They moved with rapid-fire precision while she talked. Her eyes never strayed from our faces. She would finish her basket within the hour.

A tall, well-dressed man stopped us as we neared the yu’u. Octavio shared our predicament of not having spare gas. “There is no gas in Apoala to buy,” the man said. “If you get stuck on the steep ascent into the mountains, I will send help from the village.”

I persuaded Octavio to eat. We needed good food and hot coffee in case we met an emergency. While the attendants prepared tamales, the village host caught up with us in the yu’u.

He regaled us with a story about an American man from Georgia. “He lived in Apoala a long time ago. He arrived one day to learn our language. He left as silently as he had appeared, without a word. No one saw him go. There were no good-byes. He never contacted us. I would how you his house if you had time. It’s still down by the river.

“Be sure and alert the Tourist Office in the City that the people of Apoala are ready and waiting for tourists.”

He opened the screen door. It closed behind him with a click.

His departure gave us time to inspect the yu’u. A solarium, which served as a living-dining room, ran the length of one side of the building. Along the opposite side were a matrimonial room with double bed, an open kitchen area with a refrigerator and stove and two single rooms with private baths, comfortable lodgings for overnight. Guests could cook food that they brought or pay the women on duty to prepare food stocked by the yu’u.

The two attendants put our plates in front of us and sat down to gossip. “The girls here in Apoala leave, because there are not enough men. They go to the City, get a job, meet a man and return home with babies.” They sounded envious as if they also wanted to escape life in Apoala and have a baby or two.

We finished eating. I led Octavio outside. “Look up. Look at the Devil’s Cave. The fog has lifted. We can see the cave’s entrance.” Octavio relaxed.

Red poinsettias and giant hibiscus bushes, the color of their flowers intensified by the overcast sky, crowded gardens and towered to the roofs of the simple homes. Like a stage curtain, the receding fog rolled upwards to reveal tangles of yellow flowers covering the flanks of the mountains.

Chicken wire divided the yu’u from a small medical clinic. The ends of a white sheet were tied to the wire. A list printed in red, blue and green letters notified the community of the need to be vigilant in preventing disease and to save the children from dying from pneumonia or diarrhea. The instructions combined good sense and good hygiene and included a command to stop smoking around children.

Taking a last look around, we got in the car and began our journey out of Apoala. It was not the time to talk. The road ascended in precipitous curves, and the red clay was still wet and slippery. That meant possible skids, plunges over the cliff edge and rock slides. The fog had cleared, allowing us to see across the valley. Deep folds creased the lower parts of the mountains; agricultural terraces mounted the sides.

We couldn’t resist the pretty white church in Fortin Alto. It had red steeples and pale blue trim around its windows and a pale blue string course and door. It looked more like an edible confection than a religious structure. In fact, it was the perfect scene to place inside a sugared Easter egg.

A tree was placed in the ground a short distance from the church. The slender trunk with its two outstretched branches had been stripped of bark and leaves. “A cross!” Octavio exclaimed. We examined the strips of faded crepe paper that were tied around its branches and the two red paper flowers tied in its forks. Adjacent to the tree cross was a boulder covered with moss and lichens. An equal-arm cross was crudely carved into its side.

We stopped again. My shoes and jeans were encrusted with thick red mud. Not Octavio’s, though. He was always immaculate. Wherever we went, he automatically repelled dust, dirt and mud. As for the car, it would have to be cleaned when we reached Octavio’s home on the outskirts of the City.

I gathered a few twigs and loosened the clay on my jeans and sneakers. Discovering plants with large leaves that would make perfect washcloths for wiping off the mud, I asked their permission to break off a few leaves. I found low bushes with deep green leaves. “Pinch my leaves,” a voice told me. I did, but only after I obtained their consent. I crushed the leaves between my fingers. The leaves gave off a fragrant, sweet-smelling aroma. I brushed the leaves over me. “Thank you,” I said, addressing the bushes, “for cleaning and perfuming my clothes and shoes.”

Arriving at Octavio’s home, I met his family. They ushered me into the living room and showed me their shrine and Christmas tree. Octavio introduced me to the family portraits that illustrated important stages in the growth and development of the nuclear and extended family. Someone had casually flung a yellow evening gown on a couch. One of the daughters would turn 15 in a few months. She would wear the dress for her quinceanera or coming of age party.

After the family washed the car, the owners never would suspect the hardships it had endured nor the mud it had accumulated. Swinging a book bag over his shoulder, the eldest son climbed in the back seat. Octavio’s wife waggled a finger at me; Octavio slid into the driver’s seat. We were off to the center of the City. Octavio would deliver his son to an English class, me to my posada and the car to its owner. Octavio and his son would return home by bus.

Before I left Oaxaca, we planned another trip to Apoala. It would be during the dry season in May of 1999. The route would be safer to drive.

Six months later I was back in the City in time for our second trip to Apoala. Octavio had booked a guide and rooms at the yu’u in Apoala. Our arrival time scheduled for 11:30 a.m. dictated an early morning start.

We drove the federal highway, paid the toll and turned off at the exit for Nochixtlan. We bought oil at a Pemex gas station before going into the center of town to buy fruit and bottled water at the market. Before we shopped, we visited a church at the edge of the market. The interior was cool and dark. “It is the custom,” Octavio whispered, “to visit the local church in order to pray for a safe journey.”

Octavio selected a restaurant. Customers sat at the back in the open air at trestle tables and long benches. At the front, the chef presided over a brazier on the sidewalk. There was no better advertisement to attract customers than the smell of sizzling meat and poultry.

We ordered goat consommé. It was filled with goat meat, goat bones and vegetables. Succulent fare. Hot and tasty. The consommé came with bowls of chopped scallions, chopped cilantro and salsa. We took what we wanted and stirred it into the consommé. Dark red cubes floated in the broth. “These are cubes of congealed and hardened goat blood,” Octavio confided. “Very nourishing," he added.

An elderly couple with weather-beaten faces sat across from us. The man had plantain leaves piled with white corn mush and topped with cubes of goat blood. He scooped up the mush with a rectangle cut from a plantain leaf.

Our hunger satisfied, we departed Nochixtlan, passing the bread kilns, the thatched roof houses, the outhouses, through Amatlan, by the Swiss style houses and through Fortin Alto.

The terrain was eroded. Slabs and boulders were strewn about as if tossed by an angry giant. Patches of dried grass interrupted barren red-brown soil. Agaves dotted the background. In the distance were clusters of trees with crowns of green foliage and bent and angled trunks.

The car crested a mountain. All we could see was a blue sky awash with white clouds. As the car nosed downwards, shafts of brilliant sunlight pierced the deep shadows on the lower flanks of the mountains. Potholes jerked the car to abrupt halts.

“Look, another tree cross!” we exclaimed. It stood in a field to our right. Its wood was deep red. The two thick branches that extended outwards made the cross look like a stick man with his arms extended. White crepe paper hung from its top. Someone had carved a large dove from white stone and placed it atop a cylindrical rock in front of the cross. A dirt road led from the cross to a small house hidden behind a screen of trees.

Farther on the left, the ground had been freshly turned to form a circle of bright red soil. Boulders and rocks enclosed the circle. Two lance-shaped boulders, similar to menhirs, stood in the center. Who had built the circle; what was its purpose?

The clouds had moved on, leaving the sky an intense blue. It stared down on eroded top soil, mats of dry grass and lightly forested mountains with bare summits. The land pleaded for nourishment.

We paused at a fork. Last year we had gone right. The road to the left was new, dug from the deep red earth of the surrounding countryside turned to the color of rich, vibrant blood by the night’s rain. The left fork was the most direct and also the most difficult; it ascended almost vertically. Our reward for choosing the left fork was another tree cross.

We drove through more dust and more arid land. Plots had been cleared for planting. They too bled red. It seemed as if we were constantly being reminded of blood: first, goat’s blood, later the red blood-soaked soil of Mother Earth. Perhaps we were meant to give thanks that Mother Earth gave her blood to us to nourish us, not only through rich soil that produced crops but through the animals that grazed upon her.

To be continued...

Magic

2008-01-09T11:46:00.000-05:00

I met a native of Mexico City. He told me he had given up everything to live in Oaxaca. “I can’t leave,” he said. “It’s a magical place.

On a flight from the City, I looked out the window while the plane banked over Monte Alban. It was early morning. The sun’s rays illuminated the ruins atop the mountain. Tears streamed down my face. My seatmate was a man in his late 20’s from Acapulco who installed telephone lines throughout Oaxaca. Taking pity on me, he leaned over and patted my hand. “If you never return, Oaxaca will always remain in your heart. It is in my heart. I meditate at Yagul and Monte Alban. I feel the antiquity and the sacredness. My heart is here.

A young Australian woman employed at a Mexican resort stopped me in the City. “I can’t stay away!” she exclaimed. “Every cent I earn, I spend. Not on clothes, not on anything tangible. I spend it on trips to Oaxaca. Oaxaca is the air I breathe.”

At the hotel where I was staying, a woman from Virginia joined me for coffee. She was in Oaxaca, because a friend had recommended it. Her friend had told her that wishes came true in Oaxaca.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Greece, but I can’t afford the trip,” the woman complained as she sat down beside me for conversation and a last cup of breakfast coffee. Later that evening, she rushed to my dinner table. “Guess what happened today?” she cried flinging herself in a chair. I listened.

She was shopping and met an American couple. The wife suddenly said, “If you would like to go to Greece, we have a house on one of the islands. It is yours to enjoy. Here is my address; let me know when you would like to go.”

The husband turned to his wife. “You’ve never offered our home in Greece to anyone. Why now?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Something came over me.”

A man hailed me one day in late fall when the sun was setting, and the streets were redolent with the scent of gardenias from the corsages the gardenia sellers carried on the wide brims of their hats. “What a perfume! Are you an American?” he inquired. Delighted to meet a fellow countryman, he proceeded to extol the charms of the City.

“What am I doing here?” he asked rhetorically. “I don’t know. I only know that it is imperative that I return again and again. There is something in the air. My wife was sick. I kept praying that she would be well. When I arrived home after my last trip, I found her in perfect health.

“Tell me,” he urged, “what goes on here?”

I know what they mean. I, too, feel the magic. Perhaps it is the altitude, perhaps the echoes of the Ancient Ones. All I know is that within 24 hours after I deplane, my mind quiets. It becomes empty and peaceful. I enter a meditative state. I have learned to be careful of what I wish for when I am in Oaxaca, because sooner or later my wish comes true.

Jose, a worker from Argentina spoke, “I am lost without Oaxaca. I have been here four times. Each time something special happens to lure me back. I am in love.”

“In love with the City or with an individual?” I inquired.

“In love with the City. I come to paint. I paint the same thing at different times of the day and at different times of the year. I can’t stop. It is an obsession.”

“Do you exhibit?”

“Yes,” he said, “but the only paintings that sell are the ones I paint in Oaxaca.”

An expatriate sat down beside me while I was lingering over a coffee in the zocalo. We exchanged where we were from. “I usually don’t talk to Americans,” he confided. “but there is something about you. Something that tells me that you are in love with Oaxaca as much as I am. Are you?”

“Yes, I can’t seem to stop coming here. What is it that attracts us?”

“Don’t’ ask me,” he answered. “I’ve lived in the City for five years. I have yet to discover why. There are so many places in the world, but I needed to live here. I missed Oaxaca so much that I sold my possessions and came.”

“How do you spend your days?”

“I visit the markets. I take buses to local towns. I have made friends. I am happy. I am content.”

I approached a sales clerk in a dress shop. She was leaning against a counter and staring into space. She was from Texas. She revealed that she also had been bitten by the Oaxaca bug. She and her boyfriend sold everything. Left parents and friends and moved down. They brought nothing. They rented an apartment.

“What do you do?” I asked.

“I sit in the zocalo. I work at this job. We meet friends and go to the country.”

“Are you happy?”

“I have never been happier,” she answered. “I don’t want to go back. This is our home now. Even if Ivan left me, I would stay. It is bliss.

“Yes,” I agree, “Oaxaca is bliss.”

A Cleaning Part II

2008-01-08T18:59:00.000-05:00

The next day we set forth in the early afternoon to visit a curandera, a friend of Octavio’s. “She lives in the mountains to the south. She healed me when I was very sick. She gave me herbs. No one else could cure me. I was so sick I couldn't walk or work. It was a curse.”

We departed three hours later than planned, because whenever Octavio telephoned the bed and breakfast, the staff told him I was out. The delay benefited us. If we had set forth in the morning, the ending of the day would have been different.

We were not the only ones planning on visiting a curandero. On the outskirts of the City, there was a van in front of us packed with people. It turned left; we continued south. “They are going to a curandero,” Octavio said. “Someone is taking a group for treatment.”

We arrived at the town closest to where the curandera lived. I wanted to buy candles for her, and we both wanted sodas. We stopped at a store. “No time to loiter,” Octavio warned.

The main street was empty of traffic except for an occasional man on a bicycle or a driver slumped on the seat of a horse-drawn cart. The reins were slack, the horses’ heads bent. It was too hot for them to step smartly. Rows of limp purple triangles dangled over the street.

At the edge of town, the paving ended, and the car jolted onto a dusty dirt road. Trees lined either side. Beyond the trees were fields under cultivation. A quick turn to the left, and the road ended.

“Las huertas,” Octavio announced. “The orchards. From here, we go on foot.” The heat was intense. We faced a long walk through the orchards and up a neighboring mountain. The prospect was daunting.

A family lived at the beginning of the orchards. We parked beside their house. Children, laughing and playing, raced back and forth among the fruit trees. The woman of the house asked us to join her in the yard where we sat on sagging chairs. Conversation was leisurely. We relaxed. It was refreshing to rest and have a woman with a beautiful smile and an easy manner talk with us. She knew where we wanted to go and whom we wanted to see.

A man emerged from the house. Sleep clung to his face and eyes. He rifled through a batch of papers and filed them in a satchel. “The assistant to the curandera is working in town. You know her? I will take you to her. I will show you the house.”

Octavio muttered, “She must be doing housework.”

The man mounted a motor scooter. We thanked our hostess and drove off behind him. We followed our escort, not so far behind that we would lose sight of him, but not so close as to choke him with dust. In Oaxaca, one extends good manners not only to those who offer hospitality but to travelers on the road.

Before entering town, our escort checked to make sure we were behind him. He turned down several side streets and turned right onto a street lined with brightly colored houses like toy blocks. Without warning, he braked in front of #36, a turquoise blue cube. He waved his right hand towards the house, accelerated the scooter and sped out of sight.

Octavio parked in front of the house and disappeared through its open door. He raced back. “Hide your camera. Come quickly. They are beginning.” I knew in a flash that the woman we sought was not doing housework. I checked my watch. It was 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. Would we ever find this place again? Do they heal at the same time every week?

Shading my eyes from the glare, I stepped through the door into a cool, windowless room furnished with a double bed, several chairs and a television on a table. Ahead of me, Octavio was stepping through a door in the opposite wall. Following him, I too went through the door and out into the blinding sun of the rear courtyard.

Octavio whispered, “Espiritualistas. Espiritualistas contact the dead. They go into a trance and bring the dead to visit you. They’ve just started healing. My friend is helping. Let me do the talking.”

The courtyard was hidden from the street. High walls concealed it from the prying eyes of neighbors. In the lower left corner was the treatment room; in the upper right corner, the pharmacy. Rustic wooden benches were placed along the walls.

A young man who carried himself with unmistakable authority greeted us at the entrance. He wore a spotless white jacket over street clothes. Admission was impossible without his approval. There was no mistaking his, “You are not eligible.” Tourists were not welcome.

“We are believers.” was Octavio’s simple, but effective response. His words were the magic formula.

The receptionist ushered us to an empty bench directly across from the door to the treatment room. Clusters of women stood or sat together on benches. They talked while their children darted in and out of the house or peeked around a corner to see if they could tempt us to play hide-and-seek.

In the lower half of the treatment room, a man with a black moustache sat side to us. His straight-backed chair was placed on a low platform. He wore a loose white cotton shirt and white cotton pants. His head tilted down, his hands were clasped in his lap, and his voice rose and fell in murmuring cadences. He was in a trance.

Above him on the wall was a picture of a hand severed at the wrist. A flaming candle sprouted from the tip of each finger. The healing hand.

A young woman, wearing a white lab coat, stood in front of him. She held a spiral ring notebook open in her left hand and a ball point pen in her right hand. She was recording his channeled messages,

Strange noises emanated from the room. Animal-like hissing sounds. We couldn't see who was making them, but the persistent, piercing sounds prepared our minds for the cleaning. Suddenly the receptionist conducted us to a bench beside the entrance to the treatment room. We were promoted to emergency cases thanks to Octavio’s vivid account of our hike.

A nod from the receptionist, and Octavio rose and entered. His muffled voice retold the details of our ordeal: the witches, the smoke coming out of the ground and my difficulties. “You both experienced negative energy.” I heard. “You were affected more than the American, because you were in a cave.”

While I waited for Octavio’s cleaning to finish, I concentrated on memorizing the Spanish phrases that were posted beside the door to the treatment room. Each patient repeated them before the limpia began. Even though Octavio would be with me and had promised to prompt me if I forgot them, I wanted to hear the words resound in my head and feel my lips form the syllables.

“Tu salud es
En nombre del padre espiritualizale
En hijo y espiritu santo.”(1)

Someone called my name. It was my turn. My heart beat faster. The receptionist and a short, slender woman in an ankle-length cotton dress with her long hair tied back waited in the open door. I stepped into the room. Nothing made sense until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. A woman stood in front of me, and another at my left. Both looked and dressed like the woman who had welcomed me at the door. For a moment, I wondered if they were triplets.

I heard myself speaking the Spanish phrases in a clear, firm voice. The cleaning began. The woman facing me reached up and signed crosses over my body, favoring my left side. Her fingers curled into claws. She dragged them downward through the air in front of the right and left sides of my body. Down they went from my shoulders to my feet. Down went my heavy energy.

Constantly hissing, she threw the heavy energy away from me into the air behind her. So loud, so penetrating and so realistic was the noise that it was difficult to believe it came from a human. The sounds filled the dusky room. The hissing, interspersed with Spanish invocations to the Trinity, Spanish prayers and indistinct chanting, reverberated throughout my body. Her fingers again signed me with the Cross, especially in front of the heart.

Gentle hands slowly turned me clockwise so that the curandera could clean my back. I faced a shrine banked with statues of saints and flickering candles. Tender hands turned me back.

An assistant handed me a small glass of water. “Take three sips.” Then, “Drink the rest. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” More invocations, more crossings and another cleaning of the area over the front of my body followed. One final time the Trinity was invoked; one final time the sign of the Cross was traced over me.

The curandera's right hand shot upwards to the space in front of my heart. She plucked something out and violently flung it behind her. Her hands swiftly moved in the air, raking the air up and down over my left and right sides. As her hands moved, a fountain of energy rushed up and cascaded down inside me. The cleaning was done. It was a success.

Octavio joined me as I drew near the altar. We bowed our heads and offered prayers of gratitude. As we exited through the rear door, we almost stepped on a woman who was resting on a mat on the floor. She was recuperating after an especially rigorous treatment. Her blanket-wrapped body was a formless shape; only her black eyes glittered with light.

We sat on benches in the rear of the courtyard across from the dispensary. A black cloth doll hung in its only window. After our prescriptions were delivered to the short, plump pharmacist, he busied himself preparing the medicines. He brought them to us, keeping them tightly clasped in his hand until he explained how to take them. He wanted us to be very clear about our regimens.

He handed both of us bottles of slightly salted water. We were to drink three small glasses of the water morning, noon and night for seven days. He gave me a second bottle. It was filled with thick, brown aromatic balsam.

I was to prepare a mixture of one red rose, two fingers of sugar, a squirt of the balsam mixture and a squirt of alcohol. He instructed me to take a cup-shaped gourd and pour nine cups of the preparation over me on Sunday at noon (2).

For each cup that I poured over me, I would recite in sequence the following nine phrases: “I love God the Father; I love God the Son; I love the Holy Spirit. I believe in God the Father; I believe in God the Son; I believe in the Holy Spirit. I await God the Father; I await God the Son; I await the Holy Spirit.”(2) At noon on Sunday, I would be in the airport in Mexico City.

Octavio listened intently while the pharmacist cautioned him to complete all of his treatment. Octavio had a more complicated routine, because he had been exposed to so much heavy energy. He needed to place three chrysanthemum flowers in the water tank on the roof of his house. In addition, he would have to purify the corners of the rooms in his house, especially his bedroom. A candle must burn in front of the entrance to his house for seven days and seven nights.

The local women showed no signs of impatience at our prescriptions being prepared first. When it was their turn, they focused their attention on the words of the pharmacist before reaching out to receive their bottles wrapped in newspapers and brown bags. Their work-worn hands gently rested the cures in commodious straw baskets.

Everyone left at the same time: women, children, Octavio and I. We observed the women's etiquette as we filed out of the courtyard. We imitated them as they bowed their heads in a short prayer when they passed the treatment room. Our cleanings had cost nine dollars each. Copying the women, we dropped a few extra coins into the donation box before we stepped into the house and out to the street.

It was a relief to feel in balance. Although the morning had held unexpected and unexplained obstacles, we had arrived at the right time, in the right place and on the right day to participate in a healing.

“It is often the way with things of the Spirit,” said Octavio.

“And don’t forget, we both are wearing white,” I reminded him.

Confident that our spiritual bodies had been taken care of, we attended to our physical bodies with soup and tacos from a local restaurant. We lingered over our meal, talking about family life, the rapid pace in America, the lyrics of rap songs and the skyscrapers in New York City. Learning that workers eat breakfast and drink coffee during their morning commute to work, Octavio shook his head. He called my attention to a man and a little boy sitting side-by-side on the curb at the edge of the park across the street. “It is too bad to be in such a rush,” he said. “Everyone needs time to listen to the wind and watch the birds.”

(1) Your health is in the name of the Father; he spiritualizes you in the Son and the Holy Spirit.

(2) ”Que sus oraciones no falter en su hogar
En crudo bano domingo e las 12 de medio dia
9 jicaradas
1 rosa roja
2 dedos de azucar
Un chorro balsamo preparado
Un chorro de alcohol
9 palabras
1. amo a dios padre
2. amo a dios hijo
3. amo a dios espiritu santo
4. creo en dios padre
5. creo en dios hijo
6. creo en dios espiritu santo
7. espero de dios padre
8. espero de dios hijo
9. espero de dios espiritu santo”

A Cleaning

2008-01-08T18:46:00.000-05:00

The scent of adventure and the thrill of exploring new territory added spice to our 7 a.m. departure one May Sunday in 1999. It was hot and dry and just before the rainy season. Our spirits were high. We had been anticipating this overnight hiking trip into the mountains of northern Oaxaca for the past six months.

I attuned my nose to the smell of the freshly made tortillas that a father and son were selling at a stand on the sidewalk just below the steps where I waited for Octavio. The aroma was tempting on an empty stomach. I had left the bed and breakfast too early for breakfast.

Behind me the bells of Nuestra Senora de Soledad announced mass, and a line of women trudged past me up the steps leading to the church. The elderly and infirm brought up the rear, steadying themselves against the wall beside the stairs.

Octavio arrived, and I climbed into his van. Within a few minutes, we had reached the outskirts of the City where we stopped at a Pemex gas station. Octavio filled two red plastic containers with gas. “Ten gallons for safety,” he announced. “This will be the last gas station. There will be no gas where we are going unless it's sold privately. I don't trust private supplies. They might be diluted.”

We headed north, all the while maintaining a harmonious silence; we and Oaxaca were waking up together. We stopped at the sanitorios beside the turnpike, the last chance to use a real bathroom before we arrived at our destination. Any future roadside bathroom would be located behind a large boulder, a tall thick cactus or a sheltering tree.

We continued north and turned northeast. We stocked up at an outdoor market: toilet paper, a sun hat, bottled water, beer, bread, cheese, a bag of bananas, a bag of mangoes and a can of motor oil. Then we were on our way into the unknown.

In no time, we were high in the mountains following a winding dirt road that kept to the edge of steep cliffs. To one of the vultures slowly soaring overhead in the updrafts, the road would appear as an undulating dragon snaking over and around the mountains. No white roadside crosses marked the scene of fatal accidents in that remote area. Traffic was non-existent. We never did meet another vehicle.

It was noon by the hands of our synchronized watches when we pulled into the village. Israel, the local guide, was waiting. He would accompany us on our hikes through the communally owned land. He waved and gave us thumbs up. We were on time.

We selected three beers from our provisions and presented one to Israel. We ate fruit, bread and cheese while we discussed the details of the hike. I sprinkled the last few drops of my beer on the ground. Turning to face the tallest of the encroaching mountains, I silently petitioned that its spirit would grant us safe passage.

Octavio was amazed. “What are you doing?"

“Appeasing the gods.”

“The Mixes to the south do that; they don't here.”

"Never mind. The ritual is important to me.”

Off we went, well-fed and well-hydrated, following a river until we detoured to the left to labor up a steep foot path. We were headed for a barely visible overhang. Below us, the water sparkled with diamonds as it flowed over and among stones bleached white by the burning sun.

Under the overhang, an opening led to a small cave. Not enjoying close, dark quarters, I sent Octavio and Israel into the cave and settled myself in the lap of a ledge carved by the elements into an armchair. I leaned back against the warm rock and closed my eyes. The sound of the speeding water seemed far away. How high we had climbed in such a short time!

Octavio reappeared, abruptly interrupting my reverie. His face was drained of color. It took him a few minutes to regain his composure. After several deep breaths, he reported, “It was dark, and there were bats. I saw smoke rising from the floor. I got scared and ran out." Israel hadn't seen the smoke, but he believed Octavio’s story. We decided it was energy being released from the earth.

We left the cave's entrance and picked our way back down the trail, slipping and sliding the last few yards. We followed the river into a canyon and then through a succession of canyons fortified by towering cliffs. Vertical walls soared to the sky. Gray-green mosses and lichens created frescoes of impressionistic pictures of deer, dogs and celestial bodies. The landscape was magnificent.

Octavio and I never could identify just when our mood changed. Talking about it was a relief, because we were feeling increasingly angry and depressed for no reason whatsoever. There seemed to be no logical explanation for our irritation and impatience.

Walking was difficult. My feet refused to obey me. I was unable to lift them more than an inch above the ground. They felt as if heavy weights were attached to their soles. Or as if they had grown massive roots, which were anchored deep within the earth. In order to begin a step, I had to uproot one foot and counteract whatever force seemed to be pulling it back down.

We moved through a seemingly endless series of canyons. Hidden springs birthed tumbling brooks that fed the river cutting the canyons’ floor. Small caverns beckoned to be explored. In the distance, a goatherd and his goats stood immobile, as if bewitched.

A constant breeze had been at our backs since we began the hike. The canyons narrowed. Their diminishing width compressed the breeze into a funnel of strong wind. Its hot, incessant breath fueled our edginess. Our mood soured. I clutched my hat. The wind blew it off. I snatched it back. The wind won, and the hat sailed up to an inaccessible ledge.

There were no vultures in the sky, no insects buzzing, no birds singing, no butterflies. The only sign of wild life was a gray squirrel. Israel saw it first. He dove towards it with outstretched hands. He caught it, and for a second, man and squirrel were splayed against the face of the rock. Hunter and hunted froze into a long, continuous line until the squirrel shot up and out of Israel’s grasp and disappeared over the top of a cliff.

A circle of stones, each the size and shape of a cantaloupe, was in front of us. “Look, Octavio. Here is a sacred circle. You and Israel go on. I will wait inside the circle. I will be safe here." The men disappeared. I stepped into the circle and sat on the flat ground. I closed my eyes. Vivid scarlet swirls swam behind them, then erupted into the colors of the rainbow, a kaleidoscope of color and form.

After we regrouped and began the trek back, my feet developed an unanticipated independence. They refused to go in the direction I intended. When I tried to go straight ahead, they veered 45 degrees to the right. After several yards, they effortlessly carried me 45 degrees to the left. Meanwhile, the distance among the men and me lengthened. They stopped and waited for me to catch up. The only thing to do was to surrender to the experience.

It wasn't until we entered the village that our emotions turned positive. It was as if two parallel worlds existed side by side, and we had stepped from one world to its opposite. The world we had left fostered negativity and darkness; the village, with its fertile land and abundant life, fostered tranquility and light. To be an integral part of Nature’s polarity was, for us, a living reality. Our task would be to unify its two aspects.

That evening we wandered through the village, scuffing our shoes in the dirt. The sun had set behind the mountains, and the village was quiet except for the sound of the river, which ran through the lush valley.

Later, I stared up into a night sky spangled with bright stars. They looked as close as the fluorescent stars and planets that once had glowed on my nursery ceiling. Just as when I was a child, they blanketed me with comfort and reassurance. The peacefulness of the night lulled me to sleep and put to rest the day’s tumultuous events.

If Octavio had not dreamt that three witches tried to steal his soul and carry him out the window, we might not have gone for a cleaning. His dream, however, clinched it. Frantic knocks on my door early in the morning attested to the impact the dream had on him. His face was pale. He had awakened with his limbs contorted and his face twisted to one side. I was stunned when he demonstrated the position of his body.

“I protected myself. I made crosses on my back and front. They didn't get me. I fought them off. Are there witches living nearby?”

“No, no witches live nearby,” a villager informed us. “Only a curandera in a distant village. She does limpias (cleanings).”

Israel had scheduled us for a morning hike along a trail rated difficult. I stayed in the village and joined the early risers on their way to the fields. After waving good-by to Israel and Octavio, I wandered along the footpath that bordered the bank of the river. I stepped aside into the tall grass to let a father and son drive a herd of cows to pasture. The path was well worn. Men, as well as animals, had traveled that route many times.

I discovered a low stone wall where I sat and bathed in the early morning light. Mountains enclosed the valley. The sun, inching above their crests, spread long shadows over the swaths of grass that lapped at the base of their slopes. Clouds, shaped like white hats, topped the mountain peaks; wisps of clouds trailed down like white beards. That morning the mountains appeared to be venerable spirits, blessing and protecting the valley and its occupants. Behind me was the extraordinary landscape of yesterday. I kept turning to look in its direction as if I might be able to decipher its riddle.

I heard the men calling my name and went to join them. We ate, and Octavio packed the car for the trip back to the City. During the drive, our mood was thoughtful. We were struggling to assimilate the extremes we had experienced. We agreed that the balance of our bodies, minds, emotions and spirits needed to be restored. Our decision was mutual. Tomorrow we would go for a limpia (cleaning). There was no discussion.

To be continued...

La Marcha de Lapices (1)

2008-01-07T18:25:00.000-05:00

May 22, 1999. I had read about La Marcha de Lapices while I was in Boston. The media reported that teachers throughout the State had gone on strike for higher wages. The teachers had taken over the center of the City. Traffic was at a stand still, and tourists were having second thoughts about visiting. I telephoned friends. “Come,” they said. “There is no need to cancel your plans. Every year they stage a peaceful strike.”

I called on the teachers during my first morning in the City. The area was quiet. This was not the kind of protest I was familiar with. The teachers were camped in the streets surrounding the Alameda Plaza and in the Alameda itself. A maze of strings linked and anchored blue, yellow, red and black plastic sheets to trees, stakes and the corners of adjacent buildings. The plastic provided shade during the day and a roof to sleep under at night. Being tall, I had to bend over in order to make my way around the shelters.

May 26, 1999. I kept to the side streets where the webs of strings were less dense and strung higher. Even so, it was not easy to walk upright. I proceeded with great care.I did not want to damage the temporary homes.

I saw only one toilet stall. Where were their bathrooms? A man laughed. “We use the toilets in the market,” he informed me, reading my mind.

A few women, their skirts tucked under them, sat on the ground under the plastic awnings and embroidered. Many shelters had braziers outside their entrance, some attached to a tank of gas. Fruits, vegetables and crates of white eggs were stacked to the side.

The community was divided into subgroups according to the town or region that the teachers represented. I marveled at their determined endurance. They didn’t indulge in rhetoric or inflammatory speeches. Their physical presence conveyed their protest.

May 27, 1999. I skirted the concentration of shelters near the cathedral. Women were knitting and embroidering. Everyone spoke in a low voice or sat withdrawn into themselves. Men, eyes shut tight, curled in the fetal position on the ground or sidewalk beneath the plastic. The morning was hot. It had to be stifling under the plastic coverings. I could feel the heat emanating from them.

As if in response to a silent command, the marchers rose, formed a column and began to parade quietly through the streets. I kept abreast of them from the sidewalk, then skittered through their ranks and went about my day. The sounds of softly shuffling feet and of the muted chanting of slogans gradually receded in the distance.

May 28, 1999. The number of protesters had dwindled. Those who remained had settled in. White deck chairs and wooden benches had appeared outside the shelters. The teachers exchanged news and strategy with colleagues or sat and talked with friends and relatives who had come to visit or to lend support to the teachers’ cause.

Bottles of water hung from the strings that anchored the plastic awnings. There was a faint smell of urine. A water truck labeled “para uso de humano” (for human use) drove off.

May 29, 1999. Today there were less people but more chairs and benches. The smell of urine was stronger. Many of the women were making crafts. They shared their skills. One group was demonstrating how to make large bows from yellow ribbon. The ribbon flowed through their fingers like sunlight. Teachers, even on strike, felt the need to instruct and to educate.

It was my last day in Oaxaca. I will miss my mornings with the teachers. I have developed a feeling of solidarity with them and their cause and with their understated protest. The power of silence and the power of presence never have seemed so potent a statement.

(1) The March of the Pencils.

Cliff Paintings

2008-01-07T17:47:00.000-05:00

On the spur of the moment, we set out one November morning in 1998 when the temperature was cool and a jacket would have kept me warm. We were off to find the codex in San Miguel Tequixtepec (1,2).

Taking the turnpike, we sped north, passed Nochixtlan and exited in order to make our way to San Juan Bautista Coixtlahuaca. We parked by a modest restaurant across the street from the Templo y Exconvento de San Juan Bautista, a Dominican church and its former monastery, which we had visited the previous year.

Rose bushes with lavish pink and yellow flowers were planted in tin cans along the right side of the restaurant’s al fresco dining area. “We always use egg shells as a fertilizer,” declared the owner. “We put them around the base of the stems. That’s why our roses are so beautiful.” The conversation spun me back to the Old House in Maine where bountiful old-fashioned rose bushes and climbing roses also were fertilized with crushed eggshells.

It was rude, but I couldn’t help staring at the head of the proprietor’s wife. Her flattened profile and aquiline nose commanded attention. I felt as if I were in a time warp. This was the 20th century, but she appeared to have just stepped out from a pre-Hispanic bas-relief.

She was scooping crusty pozole into three bowls from a large enamel pot at the bottom of an underground kiln (3). The bowls were destined for three women who arrived in single file and went to sit at the communal table. Their refined table manners matched their dress, carriage and comportment. They were well aware of their status as matrons of the town.

I asked the owner’s permission to photograph the kiln. “We are honored,” he replied, bestowing generous smiles on me. First, though, his wife tidied the platform around the kiln. She artistically rearranged some circular blue and green enamel pot lids and then stepped out of the range of the camera.

“Please bring us a print if you return,” they implored.

We finished our juices and strolled to the park. What a coincidence to meet former friends! I immediately recognized the heads of the Disney-like animals covering the trash barrels. I had seen them in a park in the City over a decade ago. There was my favorite, the one I always tossed my trash in: the head of a blue elephant, its trunk upturned, its open mouth waiting to receive discards and leftovers. Octavio also remembered them. “They were teaching tools. Children learned to put their rubbish into the animals’ mouths instead of throwing it on the ground or on a park bench. Who would have thought that we would discover them so far from their original home?”

We drove out of town via the dirt road to San Miguel Tequixtepec. The village, like others in the area, had established a community museum in order to showcase its local sights and crafts. The goal was to attract tourists, create jobs and increase revenue.

The museum was open. Inside, our first stop was at the codex. What a disappointment! It was a reproduction; the original was safe in a museum in Germany.

The museum walls displayed photographs of the daily life of the village, as well as of villagers weaving palm fronds into articles for personal and community use. In the middle of the room was a cart holding a life-like corpse. A burial shroud, woven from palm fronds, covered the corpse. Against one wall was a diorama of a family weaving inside a cave. The placard beside the diorama explained that the interior of a cave is a natural humidifier. It keeps the palm fronds supple enough to bend without braking.

A great curving tusk from a mastodon rested on a workbench in the back room. Near the workbench, a painter from Guatemala, wearing a beret, stood poised before an easel. He was adding the finishing touches to a map of the area. His long-handled brush daubed paint on an outline of a tiny mastodon.

The museum exhibited colored photographs of cliff paintings. We turned to a model of the local topography on a table in the center of the room. The museum attendant inched closer and watched our index fingers trace the well-marked route to the paintings. He approached. “The way is simple. Drive to a spot where you leave your car and walk 15 minutes to the first set of paintings. It is two hours to the second set.” He brushed aside our concern that the hike might be arduous. “It is easy,” he insisted.

“Can we make it?” we asked each other. “Yes,” we chorused, even though it was early afternoon, and we hadn’t counted on this attraction.

The next step was to engage a guide. A local escort was necessary, because we would be passing through communal land belonging to the village. The attendant took charge. “David will be your guide. He will join you shortly. You have time to visit the church.”

Bunches of blue and white balloons, tied at the base with blue fake flowers, decorated the church’s altar. Colored lights formed a halo around the head of St. Michael, the village’s patron saint.

A funeral procession approached along a narrow, dusty side street, which led to the church. A group of men carried the casket on their shoulders. Family and friends, holding baskets and sprays of white gladioli, the popular flower for funerals, walked beside the casket bearers. The solemn priest paced down the center aisle of the nave to greet the mourners. He ushered them into the church. After they crossed the threshold, we slipped out.

I made a new acquaintance while Octavio was checking on David’s whereabouts. He was elderly. Although deep furrows lined his face, his eyes were clear and sparkling. “Just look”, he said. “Look around you. Where can we farm or grow crops? The soil is tired. The men go away to work. This is our land. We were born here. Our parents and grandparents too. We are proud of our village. There are wonderful things to see here. Ancient things. Things of the earth. People will come to see these things. We will welcome them just as we welcome you.”

David was ready. He directed us down a dirt road. The car forded a shallow river floored with smooth stones. “Call ahead next time,” he advised. “Sometimes the water is too deep to cross.” We turned sharp left onto barely visible tracks and parked.

The 15-minute walk turned out to be a rugged hike of an hour and a half. We followed a path on a sloping descent. The path ended, and we began crossing open country under a vast blue sky. White cumulus clouds moved shadows over the distant mountains. Tall dried flower stalks of agave silently guarded the flanks of the mountains.

We felt them watching over us as we hiked beside a river, its water level high enough so that we had to hop from rock to rock in order to cross to the opposite side.

The terrain changed. We climbed until we came to a deep dry gulch. We stood on the bank and looked across at a steep rise. There were no discernible handholds or footholds. David jumped and scrambled to the top. He squatted and held out his powerful arms. I grabbed them, and he pulled me towards him while Octavio pushed me from behind. I leapt and dashed up the hill. Octavio needed no help. Over and up he went.

Three large birds were circling above the top of a cliff. Their wing spread was immense. They appeared to be all black except for one that had a white patch on its neck. “Aguila,” called out David.

“Eagles,” I shouted.

Were they eagles? I was unable to identify them even after I had access to Peterson’s Guide to the Birds of Mexico.4 We watched the powerful birds until one uttered a high-pitched “wee-wee-wee”. The cry was a signal. They soared and flew away.

Dense thickets hid the cliff walls to our right. David led the way swinging his machete, slashing and removing any branches or tree limbs that obstructed our advance. I was in the middle, Octavio at the rear.

“Look at the knobs on this tree.” I reached out to touch them, and David uttered a paroxysm of “no’s”. I had been cautioned again and again during excursions into the countryside that innocent looking vegetation might be deadly or dangerous. His quick and spirited reaction reinforced those warnings.

We had been reckless. We had come unprepared. We had no water. Our mouths were parched. We hadn’t counted on cliff paintings when we left the City. Taking pity on us, David picked small, purplish berries. They were wet and slightly tart when we bit into them, a perfect thirst quencher. He hunted until he found some plump, fleshy berries. My hunger lessened as I slowly chewed them.

Colorful birds darted in front of us, armies of dwarf palms with thick trunks stood to one side, and swallowtail butterflies floated around us. The air was redolent with the smell of grasses and plants. Their aroma intensified when our feet flattened them. And there was the sun, always the sun.

“We are close,” David announced. “Notice the caves near the top of that cliff.” Sighting them sharpened our anticipation of what was to come. Minutes later, David held up his hand and dramatically parted the shrubbery to reveal the paintings. We gasped. “I have known about these paintings since I was a boy.” he confided. “I used to come here often. I didn’t know about the paintings farther on, though. Authorities from Mexico City discovered them.”

The drawings had been executed in red or black. David pointed to what appeared to be a circular calendar. It was a circle within a circle. The outer circle was more or less evenly divided by vertical lines; the spaces between the lines were empty or filled with a cross or a horizontal line.

A crescent and a hemisphere, both standing on end, faced out back-to-back. There were other symbols: a circle, a line crossed by three short lines and perhaps a sun, its interior divided into four quadrants with rays extending from its rim.

Ah! There was what we were searching for. The figure of the man on the poster sold by the Museum. His upraised right arm held a long staff that looked like a cactus with spines near its top. His left arm angled down and grasped what appeared to be a shield from which protruded menacing lines. Was he wearing an animal skin or was he wrapped with feathers? David didn’t know.

We absorbed all that we could of these ancient paintings before resting in the shade of bushes. We agreed that it would be unwise to proceed to the next site. It was late afternoon, and twilight would fall fast. Shadows were darkening the mountains. It would be foolhardy to be out without food, water or a powerful flashlight. Equally important, only David was appropriately dressed for the more difficult route to the second set of paintings. We turned back. We consoled ourselves. We would return next year, wearing, hiking shoes and armed with flashlights and plenty of food and water.

We arrived back at the gulch. Having steeled myself for another leap, I realized that the opposite bank was lower so it would be easier to cross. The men readied themselves to assist me. David took my hand; Octavio stationed himself at the rear. Both were prepared to boost me over the drop. I fooled them. I lifted my skirt above my knees, focused on the spot where I wanted to land and sailed over, leaving a hushed silence in my wake.

My right arm was bright red from sunburn. I had rolled down the long sleeves of my shirt, but the silk chafed the burn. It was painful. Octavio removed a roll of toilet paper from my back pack. While he explained that the lime in tortillas protects Mexicans against sunburn, he fashioned me a bandage, wrapping it like a doctor and professionally tucking in the ends. “My diet will change,” I silently swore. “From now on I will eat more tortillas.”

David noticed my flagging spirits. He entertained me by breaking off palm fronds and deftly weaving them into a mouse and an ear of corn. He fashioned a trick holder. It tightened when I slipped it on my finger. The sides had to be pressed together in order to loosen and remove it.

What a sight we presented! Octavio had taken the lead. He was dressed all in brown: brown tie, brown shoes, brown pants and a brown shirt. An oozing blister on his toe caused him to limp. I still occupied the middle with my T-shirt, denim skirt, sandals and toilet paper bandage. David came last in his sensible outdoor clothes and shoes.

Before we reached the car, we met a party of three Spanish-speaking men accompanied by the attendant from the museum. The attendant’s instructions were to deliver the men to David who would take them to the paintings. They wore short pants and short-sleeve shirts and appeared to be in poor physical condition. It was so late in the afternoon that it would be dark soon. We lowered our voices. “Surely, David will find a way to cut short the expedition. They’ll never see the paintings.”

The men darted sideways glances at my makeshift bandage, which was beginning to unwind and lose its shape. “How far away are the paintings?” they anxiously inquired.

Octavio was vague. He motioned with his hand. “They’re that way.” he mumbled.

We tipped David and thanked him for his special attentions. David was a man of the open spaces, and we were grateful to have been with him because of his knowledge of and love for the land he lived on. Nothing seemed too difficult for him. His good-humored acceptance of our urban attire had won my heart. I took a few steps, then turned to watch him stride into the distance ahead of his three charges. I waved the trinkets he had made for me, but David always looked forward, never backward.

Before we dropped the attendant at the museum, I treated us to warm beers at a small store endorsed by David. As for food, we would have to return to San Juan Bautista Coixtlahuaca. We used the museum’s bathrooms, said, “Muchas gracias y hasta luego,” to the staff and concentrated on the possibility of pozole and the warm welcome of the restaurant owners in Coixtlahuaca.

Cries of delight from the owners greeted our reappearance. We each ordered a beer and sipped it as a prelude to our meal. Consommé was our first course. In this part of the world, it was chick peas and bits of chicken swimming in chicken broth, served with a plate of diced onion and chopped cilantro. Next came warm tortillas and pozole. The pozole was heavenly. Red mole, stirred into the thick mixture of hominy, colored it a deep red. Made with tomatoes, several kinds of chilies, onions, garlic and a variety of herbs; the mole added depth and flavor to the pozole.

We made a game out of counting whose bowl had the most pieces of succulent pork. There were ribs at the bottom. When Octavio uncovered his, he threw them to two dogs circling his chair. The dogs clamored for more until he had to shoo them away.

It was time to say good-by, a phrase that signified more than politeness with me. I felt so enveloped with warmth and love that even a “hasta luego” was difficult. Octavio, however, broke the spell. “Leave a generous tip to ensure good service on our next trip,” he counseled.

(1) A codex is an accordion-pleated paper made from bark on which artists or scribes painted or wrote.

(20 Oaxaca. Pueblos y paisajes de la Mixteca. Centro de Proteccion al Turista (CEPROTUR) Editorial Evergraficas, S.L., Leon, Spain. 1997. Pp. 30-31.

(3) Pozole is dried hominy. Port, chili and garlic are cooked along with the hominy. In this case, mole was added just before serving.

(4) Peterson, Roger Tory and Chalif, Edward L. A Field Guide to Mexican Birds. Houghton Mifflin Co, N.Y.

Diagnosed by a Bell

2008-01-05T22:55:00.000-05:00

One morning in April 1998 we left the City and drove through the Oaxaca Valley, alert for topes (speed bumps) on the outskirts of towns and across main streets. Haze from forest fires drifted into the valley. Curls of smoke rose from the mountains. “Farmers are using our traditional slash-and-burn method to clear their land for cultivation,” explained Octavio.

We arrived in Ocotlan and parked near the Templo y Exconvento de Santo Domingo de Guzman. We crossed the church's courtyard. It was deserted except for a swallowtail butterfly floating clockwise around and around the perimeter of the courtyard as if mesmerized. The same custodian as last year was on hand at the bottom of the stairs to the sacristy to greet us.

We climbed to the second floor and crossed the room to the opposite wall with its list of parish churches. I carried a brochure advertising la Hacienda, a health retreat. I had found it in the lobby of an upscale hotel in the City. A map on the brochure’s back placed the retreat in the center of the area we planned to explore. We wrote down the names of the churches that ringed the retreat.

Our first stop was in Dionisio at the church of San Dionisio built in the mid-1770's. The gates to the church were locked. We needed directions to la Hacienda, and the men improving the street in front of the church knew how to get there. One of them agreed to ride with us until we reached the first fork in the road. “Turn left and continue on,” he said before the stark countryside swallowed him up.

The dirt road cut through corn fields and acres of tomatoes and black beans. We crossed a dry river bed. The car stirred up a continual veil of dust. Cigarras (cicadas) whined in the background. The heat, the aridity, and the spectral noise of the cigarras worked on our imagination. We felt as if we were on an endless pilgrimage through a strange, uninhabited land.

Just when I was about to ask where the people were, I caught fleeting glimpses of men with blue eyes and fair skin. They added yet another unworldly note to our journey. “Am I seeing things?” I asked.

“Yes,” Octavio laughed, “you are seeing things, the descendants of French immigrants, former settlers of this area.

We braked in the middle of the desolate landscape to read a road sign, “Praxedis de Gru 7 km.” It was difficult to believe that a village existed in such emptiness.

We drove on until we arrived at la Hacienda. It was a former 18th century hacienda that opened in 1995 with the aim of providing food and medical services to the poor. Native Mexican health modalities were a cornerstone of its treatments. The founders envisioned receiving international funding to finance the building of a hospital, one large enough to accommodate everyone who would seek medical help.

We left the car in what appeared to be a parking lot. Luxuriant flowering bushes screened it from the rest of the property. We found a gate. Pushing it open, we followed a path that took us to a rambling house with outbuildings. Birds darted among fruit trees. Their song filled the air. Two German shepherds watched us from a knoll at one side of the house.

A tall, young man greeted us in fluent English. He would prove to be a powerful advocate of la Hacienda. He had left his home in Mexico City in order to spearhead the property’s transformation into a treatment center for the poor and for tourists.

Our tour began at a well situated below the main house. Nearby, a man with blue eyes and fair skin was turning soil for a large garden. A row of saplings, their roots protected by burlap, formed a barricade between him and us. Our host indicated the trees without acknowledging the presence of the gardener. “The trees are for the poor. We do a lot for the poor. We will distribute them on April 30th, Children's Day.

“We bought the hacienda in 1995 from that man’s father,” he said pointing to the fair-skinned, blue-eyed gardener. “Since then we have been renovating and rebuilding.

“Not long ago a group of massage therapists arrived from Japan to evaluate our massage techniques. They were impressed. The United Nations wants to send emissaries from Europe. The UN wants to establish similar health centers around the world. Eventually, we will attract tourists from spas on the Pacific coast.”

He continued, his eyes burning with fervor, “I want you to know that we have treated 70,000 people since la Hacienda opened in 1995. Many doctors from the City who refer patients to us also work here as volunteers. We still have skeptics to convert, though. Not everyone believes the miracles we perform."

We arrived at an empty swimming pool. It appeared to have been recently installed. Its blue tile lining was spotless, and the ground surrounding the pool had been freshly dug up and replaced. There was the number 70,000 again. Seventy-thousand patients had been treated with hydrotherapy in the pool.

We entered a long, narrow treatment room at one side of the main house. It contained an individual dry sauna, a temazcal, a toilet, a ceiling spray for a shower and a small whirlpool. The room could only hold a few people, but our host boasted that on a busy day it was thronged with patients.

Our host settled us on the veranda of the main house just as a couple appeared. They climbed the steps to the veranda and knocked on the front door. A woman in a white jacket opened the door, the couple entered and the door closed behind them.

“Poor patients from the area,” our host informed us as he offered us cool drinks. “They rely on us to keep them healthy.” He leaned forward in his chair. “Soon you will be able to visit the massage room,” he added. The wait was short. Five minutes later we put our unfinished drinks on a low table, and our host ushered us into the room.

Against one wall was a towering altar adorned with statues of saints and the Holy Family. “These are all offerings from the poor whom we’ve treated and cured at la Hacienda,” he announced. “The piles of toys on the floor are gifts to be presented on Children's Day.”

Two massage tables were in the middle of the room. One of the “poor patients”, the man was on one. There was no sign of his companion. The white-jacketed woman who had greeted the couple at the door was kneading the man’s back with her elbow and hand. Ripples flowed down his back as she released tension. She finished the massage, and the man left the room.

Our host had mentioned that la Hacienda’s treatment plan included sound therapy. “The massage therapist is the one to ask,” he had said. Now she was waiting to answer our questions.

“What do you offer for sound healing?” I inquired. In reply, she went to an adjacent room and came back with a small bell. “Is it from Tibet?” I asked.

“No, it was made right here a long time ago in Mexico.” she replied. “It looks as if it’s from Tibet."

She related its history. “Several years ago an ailing physician summoned me to his home. He asked me to heal him. I discovered an underground cistern beneath his bedroom. His bed was placed above the cistern. After I moved the bed to a room where there was no subterranean water, his symptoms vanished.

“My payment was this bell, a valuable diagnostic tool. It detects weak areas in the body. A patient's symptoms affect the purity of the bell's sound and the speed at which the clapper rings. The bell tells me which patients are sick and where they hurt.”

She smoothed a clean sheet on the massage table and invited me to lie down. “Let me show you how the bell works,” she said. She held the bell at the top of my head and rotated it so that the clapper circled around its inner rim. The clapper moved sluggishly, and the bell’s tone was dull. Its tone became clear, and the clapper moved briskly when she moved the bell slowly over my face, neck and chest.The bell reached my stomach. Again, it gave off a dull tone, and the clapper slowed. My secret was a severe headache and an upset stomach (1,2).

I sat up. “Please step down,” she commanded. “I want to demonstrate something that will surprise you.”

She moved the bell over the area where my body had been. The bell replicated the identical pattern of sound that it had produced when she had rung it over me. “You hear? Your sound imprint will linger for 4-5 minutes. Then it will fade away. The bell tells me,” she said, “that you have something wrong with your stomach and that you either suffer from mental illness or strong emotions about something or someone.” I let her guess.

She supplemented the tales of medical miracles that our host already had regaled us with. “La Hacienda is fast becoming famous for fabulous cures. Consider the girl born with one leg shorter than the other. After a few months of treatment, both legs are equal! Medical authorities have no explanation.”

She invited us to return for a healing. She quoted weekly rates and guaranteed that our stay would be as comfortable as if we were at a luxurious spa on the Pacific Coast. “We will think about it,” I assured her as we climbed into the car's broiling interior.

We had not gone far, when we looked out the back window and saw a cloud of dust. We rolled up the windows and pulled to the side to watch a car speed by spraying small stones and dirt. Inside were the massage therapist, the two “poor patients”, the blue-eyed, fair-skinned gardener and the man from Mexico City. We waited until their car vanished.

We looked at each other in astonishment. “Where are they rushing?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Octavio responded. “Why do you suppose they are traveling all together?”

We crossed more churches off our list as we circled the area around la Hacienda: the church of San Pedro Martir in Santa Lucia with faces of smiling angels tucked under the lintel of its entrance; the elaborate bamboo towers stored in a darkened shed awaiting the addition of rockets and firecrackers for Santa Lucia’s annual fiesta; San Felipe Apostol with Santa Cecelia and her harp; San Jacinto’s Gothic interior and Gothic altar; and Santa Ana with a tipsy right tower and aerial artists who were perched on scaffolding high in the nave, painting elegant decorations on the church’s white plaster walls and ceilings.

(1) Mosier, Helen. Hark! These Herald Angels Ring. The Bell Tower Supplement. Nov-Dec 1997 p. 16.

(2) Michaud, Debbie. The Healing Traditions and Spiritual Practices of Wicca. Keats Publishing, Los Angeles. 2000. pp. 48-49.

Scarlet

2008-01-04T22:20:00.000-05:00

Octavio arrived at 9:30 a.m. He always pretended that he could meet me on the hour; however, it was difficult given the fact that he drove five children to different schools and a wife to work. Out of respect for his responsibilities as a husband and a father, I always asked him to arrive on the half hour. He never disappointed me.

Our goal was the church in Santa Catarina Ixtepeji, a small town tucked into a valley. We had noticed it on our trips to Ixtlan. From the main road to Ixtlan, the church appeared large and commanding. It was a starred item on our list of sights to investigate.

We passed through three familiar towns. El Estudiante, la Cumbre and el Punto were placed like beads along the road. Each bead signified something special to us, and we welcomed each one with fond memories.

El Estudiante appealed to us as a place to retire. We often spoke about stopping and selecting two plots of land. They would have to be situated well away from the houses that were under construction, and they would have to have an unobstructed view of the mountains.

We didn't need a signpost to tell us when we reached the highest point of the route, la Cumbre (the summit). All we had to do was to feel the coolness. Octavio would slow the car, and we would take deep breaths of the fresh air through the open window.

The third bead was el Punto. Just before el Punto was a restaurant, el Monte, one of our favorites. That bead occasioned reminiscences of delicious food accompanied by a breathtaking view.

We reached the turnoff to Santa Catarina Ixtepeji. It was marked by thick clumps of tall gladioli, their scarlet blooms radiant and luminous in the sun. Scarlet would be the keynote of the day.

A group of men and women waited at the turnoff. “Ixtepeji?” asked one of the men. “Are you going there?” Our rule of the road was no rides to strangers. That day was no exception.

Even though we felt sorry for the group standing in the harsh sun, Octavio called out, “Not yet,” and drove away to a second turnoff.

The dirt road was rough and bumpy. A sea of tall corn spread out on either side as far as we could see. In the distance, a solitary white egret had been cut from a Japanese scroll and glued against the horizon. The sun highlighted its yellow bill. Occasionally its head would dart forward and disappear; food was its agenda.

As the car jounced ever closer to town, the sandy-colored church loomed to our right. We heard rockets burst and saw flashes of light followed by plumes of gray-white smoke. A bend in the road and a garden of meticulously clipped topiary figures greeted us. A green waterfall of vines cascaded down the front of a neighboring house. The face of an adjacent cottage was hidden by a thick tangle of blue morning glories. A favorable first impression.

We entered town. The date was November 25, 1998. Santa Catarina Ixtepeji was beginning its celebration of the fiesta of St. Catherine of Alexandria. We were unexpected guests on the first of three days of festivities in her honor.

The car bounced up a steep stone-paved hill to the back of the church. Men and women were erecting booths for games, food and trinkets. In the church's shadow, women, selling a variety of fruits, sat on the ground leaning against one of the walls. Men and boys lounged around the church's entrance. On the side that faced away from town, mothers nursed babies while toddlers played at their feet.

We circled the 16th century church, el Templo de Santa Catarina, admiring its impressive construction. High up, square windows were recessed deep into the sides. The embrasures were whitewashed, and the openings around the embrasures were outlined with whitewash. Twin squat towers and a massive cupola, arising from an equally massive lantern placed above the center of the transept, added to the church's weighty appearance.

Across from the entrance was a stepped pyramid with a flat top. Several men already were seated on the steps, and we joined them. The platform was perfect for launching the fireworks that were being offered to St. Catherine. On one of the steps was a long bamboo pole, rockets and St. Catherine wheels. Without any detectable timetable, one of the men would get up, attach a rocket to the pole, climb to the platform and hurl the rocket into the air. It exploded with a terrific bang. Everyone, including us, enjoyed the noise.

The steps also were an ideal place from which to view the magnificent façade of the church. Masterful carving had gone into embellishing this imposing, house of worship. Every detail was a witness to the skill of the sculptors who had worked the stone.

Four elegant Solomonic columns ranged across the lower front of the façade, two on each side of the main door. Four more were paired on either side of an upper window. A series of niches progressed up the façade between the lower and upper sets of columns. Once, each niche had held a carved statue. Now, only a few remained. A triangle of graceful scrolls filled in the space on either side of the entrance’s arch between the arch's curve and the molding outlining the door. Above ran a frieze of medallion-like scrolls, their ends curving inwards to create fruit or foliage.

Colorful strands of pierced, multi-colored triangular banners emerged from the open window above the door, their ends fastened to stakes at a distance from the church. A strand of alternating red and white pierced banners stretched horizontally in front of the church.

A rope of twisted evergreens and a rope of red and white linked chains with red and white bows were draped from the sides of a large crown of flowers hanging from the door's arch. The crown was made of red and white carnations; its ribs were gold flowers. A white vase filled with scarlet and white carnations and green feathery leaves swung from the opening at the bottom of the crown.

We left our seats, descended the steps and entered the church. A mass dedicated to St. Catherine was in progress. A brass band was playing. The band members were positioned just inside the entrance, their instruments gleaming in the dim light.

Our eyes adjusted to the dark, vast interior. We bypassed the people who stood or knelt on the floor at the back of the nave. The front pews were crammed with women, their heads covered with black mantillas. Behind them, benches were packed with men, women and children. A group of women made room for me, and I squeezed onto the end of the bench trying not to disturb the children playing on the floor. Octavio stood at my left.

And then it hit me. The scarlet. Scarlet is the color of martyrs. Scarlet is the color of St. Catherine. Man and Nature had joined together to provide a profusion of scarlet in order to commemorate this 4th century martyr. Wherever I looked there was scarlet. It blazed in the darkness.

The scarlet chasuble of the priest, the ankle-length scarlet dress of the statue of St. Catherine that stood at the front of the chancel, the scarlet banner trimmed with gold suspended to the right of the altar, the two fan-shaped arrangements of scarlet flowers atop long poles behind the altar on either side of the retablo. Fans of scarlet gladioli set the altar and transepts alight.

Baskets of scarlet and white carnations were suspended from the ceiling throughout the church. Decorative chains of evergreens and white streamers festooned the upper reaches of the nave and the chancel. We were in a celestial greenhouse. “St. Catherine must not care that she is no longer officially recognized,” I whispered to Octavio. “Surely it must not matter to her when such love is lavished on her.”

It was abundantly clear that St. Catherine was a survivor. She had been sentenced to be broken on a wheel and when the attempt was unsuccessful, to be beheaded (1). She was very much alive, though, in Ixtepiji in spite of the fact that her feast day had been removed from the Church calendar in 19691. In Ixtepeji, she was the adored center of attention in both the spiritual and earthly realms. The Church was offering up a mass and music. Nature was contributing scarlet flowers, and the people were donating joyful praise, special foods, fireworks and entertainment. Everyone had been waiting for her fiesta since last November.

The Hallelujah began. As the music from the choir and the brass band resonated throughout the church, we tiptoed out.

Families were continuing to make their way to the service. Their steps were solemn and measured; everyone wore an air of expectation. Later it would turn to rejoicing. Even the youngsters had abdicated their games in order to respect the seriousness of the occasion.

We stopped to inspect the backyard of a small house where a woman was preparing food in bright blue, green and yellow buckets and plastic bowls. Cooking odors drifted to us from pans atop braziers filled with hot coals. The smells made us hungry; it was well past noon. “Chicken mole,” the woman cried as she beckoned to us. Deciding that we wanted goat mole, we regretfully waved our thanks.

Pigs, lucky to be spared from being roasted for the feast, roamed in front yards without a care in the world. Not so, one trussed pig. He dangled by his feet from a tree while he waited to be cooked into delicious morsels to feed the hungry who later would crowd the food stalls.

We arrived at the plaza in front of the municipal offices. From there, we had a clear view of the surrounding mountains, which were densely carpeted with masses of orange flowers and fields of corn.

I was spellbound by the setting. Beautifully crafted adobe houses with steeply slanting tile roofs were terraced up the sides of the mountains. Sparkling white laundry flapped on clotheslines. Masses of tall scarlet poinsettias bloomed beside the houses. Lines of colorful triangular banners fluttered over the town.

A man, sitting on the ground beside his donkeys, showed us a dirt road that headed in the direction of San Miguel del Rio. The road appeared safe. The sky was overcast with dark clouds. Orange flowers swept up the forested flanks of the mountains. Towering cacti were stationed like fierce sentinels on the slopes. Scarlet flowers with curving petals accented the sides of the road.

We expected an uneventful drive. Soon, however, we revised our opinion. We discovered that the road curved high above a gorge. Far below on the right was a river, a silver strand embedded deep within the landscape. We fervently prayed that no cars would travel that narrow, treacherous road, because its width and its placement between cliffs to the left and the yawning gorge to the right left no room to pull over if another vehicle approached. St. Catherine must have heard our prayers; we had the road to ourselves, both going and returning.

The church in San Miguel del Rio was old, but much smaller and less powerful than the one in Ixtepeji. It was white with a pink dome atop each of its twin towers. It had a plain and simple front with a deep-set round window over its entrance door. The ends of multiple strings of yellow, pink, white and pale blue banners were secured in the window.

As in many churches outside of the City, one or two small rugs were scattered just inside the door. Most are worn and tattered, but that does not deter worshipers from conscientiously using them to scrape and clean their bare feet or shoes.

Two tall statues were against the right wall in the nave. They reminded me of two sleepwalkers. One had on a long-sleeved white gown; the other, a pale blue gown open at the neck with white ruffles around the edges of her long sleeves and the sides of the neck opening. Real hair streamed down their back. Their eyes stared at a distant point in space. Their arms and hands were outstretched as if they were straining to touch whatever they saw in the distance.

A nacimiento (Nativity) had been set up near an antique wooden Virgin whose earrings ended in dangling gold balls. White cotton fabric had been shaped to form a cave. Miniature red and white Christmas decorations and a band of silver tinsel were stretched across the cave's mouth. Mary and Joseph rested at the back, awaiting the Christ Child who would arrive at midnight on Christmas Eve.

Mary was decked out with jewelry. A tiny white heart surrounded by a larger red heart was pinned to the front of her gown. She wore two necklaces, one of white balls and one of red balls. Joseph’s head was covered with a sombrero, and he carried a hollow gourd for water, a natural thermos called a boule. A green, white and red ribbon, the colors of Mexico, diagonally crossed his chest.

Adjacent to the church were a municipal storage building, formerly a chapel, and a basketball court. A lively game was in progress. One of the spectators tore himself away and came toward us.

It is always worthwhile to talk with the people whenever one visits a town or a village. They like to know the purpose of a stranger’s visit, especially when there are no major tourist attractions. Not only does introducing oneself satisfy their curiosity, but it provides them with an opportunity to exchange news and gossip. In return for being open and honest, one gains their confidence and frequently learns important local information.

In this case, our self-appointed guide told us that there was a stand of tule trees about a fifteen minute walk from where we were, a walk, he assured us, that would be cool and pleasant, well out of the sun that had reappeared and was beating down on us. There was a small park under the tules. It was a popular picnic spot for families from San Miguel and from surrounding municipalities.

“We must see the tule trees,” we said to the man as he circled us around the basketball court and led us down a road away from the village. He was warm-hearted and amiable like most of the people we meet who are ever ready to drop whatever they are doing in order to talk with us or to show us around. “It is a pleasure,” they assure us.

As we leisurely strolled down the road with our man from San Miguel, a line of turkeys suddenly materialized at the top of a bank. In unison, the males began their ritual courtship, a slow, stately and repetitive dance in which they postured and spread their tail feathers into fans to entice the watching females. Suddenly the males refolded their tails and noiselessly disappeared over the bank, followed by the females.

The seven tule trees lived up to their reputation. They were the same species as the giant tule (also called Mexican cypress or huehuete) that is the attraction at Santa Maria del Tule, some eight miles beyond the City. That famous tule tree is reputed to be over 2,000 years old (2). The mammoth tules in San Miguel seemed almost as old as Santa Maria’s. They had thick soaring trunks with colossal branches crowned with enormous heads of green leaves. They grew in a semicircle.

Flights of steps, broken by landings, descended to the park's concrete floor. We lounged on freshly painted white wrought iron benches and enjoyed the gentle breezes. The only sound was the snap of the colorful banners strung overhead when an especially strong breeze danced through them.

Back in the village center, we thanked our guide. Leaving San Miguel, we returned to Ixtepeji and eventually rejoined the paved main road. From there, we looked across the valley in the direction of San Miguel to see if we could spot the tule trees. We found them, but how small they were! We never would have suspected they were tules.

We pulled into the restaurant, el Rio. It was built with one side and an end open to the air. We washed our hands at the outside faucet, dried them on a rough towel and sank into chairs to decide what to order.

But first a mezcal. Mine was served in the smallest of glasses deemed suitable for a woman. A consultation followed with the proprietress as to the menu of the day. By the time we finished the mezcal, chicken consommé filled with pieces of chicken, stew size cuts of carrots and potatoes, and white rice was in front of us on the table. We dipped into bowls of chopped cilantro and minced onion and stirred heaping spoonfuls of the condiments into the soup.

We ordered a second mezcal while we waited for the entrees. When the food arrived, it was everything we had hoped for. The ribs with rice was for Octavio; the chicken mole with rice for me. The meal ended with café de olla made by simmering cinnamon, sugar and coffee in an earthenware pot and then straining it into brown pottery bowls.

The proprietress convinced us to buy a cigarette to smoke with our coffee. She stepped to the counter that separated the kitchen from the eating area and selected two cigarettes from the pack that she reserved for customers. It was the only occasion during my travels in Oaxaca when I was offered a cigarette.

The car begged to have its dust washed off. Octavio, armed with a pail and cloths donated by the proprietress, attended to that chore. Afterwards, we explored the dirt road by the restaurant. The proprietress had recommended it, promising us an unparalleled view at the end.

The road made several sharp turns before it abruptly ended in a hamlet perched on a plateau. Several houses with outbuildings occupied land at each side of the plateau. They were tightly shut against the encroaching night. Hearing our voices, a child opened a door and peered out. I apologized for intruding, and she closed the door, leaving us alone with the sky and the mountains.

Not only was the proprietress a superb cook, but she had a profound sense of beauty. The plateau, jutting out over a valley, formed a stage ready-made for us to walk on center and play the role of speechless observers. It was almost dark; stars were becoming visible in the sky; flecks of light dotted the mountains. It was a private and intimate spot, so peaceful and quiet that we thought we could hear the earth turn.

We needed that interlude to clear our heads after the mezcal. And just to make sure that we were fit for the drive back to the City, we stopped again at el Rio to sip a final bowl of hot, strong aromatic coffee.

(1) http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintc01.htm.

(2) Tule tree: Whipperman, Bruce. Oaxacan Handbook. Moon Travel Handbooks. Avalon Travel Publishing. Emeryville, CA. 2000. pp. 154-155.

Ixtlan de Juarez Part II

2008-01-04T19:45:00.000-05:00

A billboard on the outskirts of the village advertised that Calpulalpan was home to a center that distributed indigenous plants from the Sierra Juarez. A man waiting by the sign directed us to the Centro de Desarrollo de Medicina Indigena Tradicional.

We entered the waiting room to find two diminutive curanderas (curanderas are women healers; curanderos are either men healers or men and women healers) seated in small chairs, talking to a tall woman who introduced herself as the clinic's President. We requested a consultation and a limpia (a cleaning) by a curandera. The President escorted us into a sparsely furnished room. A trestle table and small chair were at the back of the room. A tin container filled with fresh green herbs was on the table. To the left was a window. Two small chairs were near the door.

One of the curanderas who had been in the waiting room when we arrived, entered and took a seat at the table facing us. Octavio offered to be first. He drew close to her and described his symptoms. She instructed him to place one of the chairs at a right angle to me and to the table. She left the room and reappeared with a long sheaf of fresh herbs in one hand and an unbroken egg in the other. She spread the sheaf of herbs and placed the egg in its center, enclosed the egg with the herbs and sprinkled them with a clear liquid.

She stepped up to Octavio with the herbs in her right hand. Lowering them to within several inches of his body, she began to brush him. She proceeded to brush his front and back, all the while praying in a low monotone. She made the sign of the cross with them over the front of his body and turned toward the table.

She extracted the egg from the herbs and broke it into a glass that she had filled with clear liquid from a bottle. She held the glass with the unbroken egg yolk in it up to the window. Speaking inaudible mantras and prayers, she slowly rotated the glass in the sunlight. We watched as the egg white clumped around the yolk. She carried the glass to Octavio and explained what the pattern of the egg white revealed about his condition. She prescribed an ointment, nose drops and the application of green leaves to his neck for two consecutive nights.

She left the room and came back holding a clear bottle of liquid in one hand and an amber glass bottle of liquid in the other. Octavio whispered, “Is it my imagination or do I detect the faint smell of mezcal?” She mixed the two liquids in one of the bottles and took a mouthful from the bottle.

Standing far back, she waited in silence. Without warning, a mist of fine spray erupted from her mouth and hit him in the face. She went to stand in front of him and began spraying mouthfuls of the liquid onto the back and front of his head, chest, palms and knees, all the while brushing him with the herbs. Abruptly she stopped and threw the herbs in a corner on the floor.

It was my turn. She went to get a fresh bunch of herbs and another egg. My cleaning duplicated Octavio’s. The pungent smell of herbs filled the room. I felt peaceful and calm. Having watched the procedure, I knew what to expect. Her low voice, murmuring prayers and chants, relaxed me.

Only a tiny white spot formed on the side of my egg yolk. When she brought the glass to me, she softly asked, “Triste? Do you feel triste?” Of course, I felt sad. I always felt sad at leaving Oaxaca. It had become a nostalgia lodged deep within me. It was good news, though, that except for sadness, I was in good health. A sigh of relief swept through me.

I thought I was prepared for the next step. I watched her take a mouthful of liquid, watched her stand at a distance, and I waited, and I waited. I was confident that when she sprayed me I would be in total control. The sudden force of the liquid hit my face, and at that moment my entire system went into shock. That was it for poise and control. My rational, logical side went into hiding.

Close to me, she repeatedly took sips of the liquid and sprayed it outside and inside the neck of my T-shirt. She sprayed the left and right sides of my shirt. After each spraying, she patted the fabric to my skin. She proceeded to spray my back, both sides of my hands and the back and front of both knees.

A woman appeared in the open door and began making notes. “I'm in training,” she announced as she requested our names, ages and origins and recorded them in a large ledger. “Would you like to tour the Center?” she asked. We nodded, and the President joined us.

We learned that the Center had been in operation for some six to eight years and offered general consultations and services for pregnant women, childbirth and newborns. The staff included curanderos, chiropractors and herbalists from surrounding villages.

The sun-drenched courtyard had clotheslines sagging with freshly washed laundry and bedding. Arranged around the courtyard were sparsely furnished bedrooms with one or two mattresses on the floor, bathrooms with shining white porcelain toilets, which didn’t flush, the temazcal and a recuperation room.

The temazcal was too small for my height. I would have had to curl into a ball to fit inside its domed shape. The President explained that special herbs are placed on stones outside the temazcal. A curandera pours boiling water over the herbs and stones in order to create steam that flows through an opening into the interior chamber. The amount of boiling water regulates the quantity of steam and the temperature inside the chamber. This ancient purification and healing system for cleansing the body and the soul dates from pre-Hispanic days. It is especially beneficial after childbirth, because it tightens a woman's stomach and abdomen. Patients usually spend several hours in the temazcal, followed by an hour in the recuperation room.

The President ushered us into the pharmacy where tiers of shelves held packages and boxes of remedies and immaculately clean jars and containers of herbal pharmaceuticals. The herbs were collected in the early morning from nearby mountains. They were then made into ointments, soaps, teas and salves in Capulalpan before being brought to the Center.

Back in Ixtlan, we deliberated about where to eat, finally selecting a restaurant near the market. First was a glass of mezcal. I was an eager pupil as Octavio taught me to sprinkle salt on the back of my hand and lick the salt after each sip. “There is a saying,” he said, “that mezcal makes one's food muy sabroso (more tasty).”

We lunched on cream of squash soup and meat in yellow mole accompanied by string beans, potato wedges and rice. The ever-present basket of hot tortillas sat on the table between us. “Look,” I exclaimed after uncovering them. “The top one has a face on it. I’m saving that one for you.”

Octavio sighed. “You are becoming Mexican. You are seeing shapes in the tortillas, the clouds and the trees just as we do.”

It was too early to return to the City. Octavio inquired about adjacent towns. We decided to go beyond Ixtlan and visit Santa Maria Jaltianguis. Its church was locked. We peeked through cracks in the carved panels of its arched wooden door. Darkness and dust were all we saw.

Jaltianguis had to be the hottest place on earth. The sun beat down relentlessly. There was no shade. I found a wall overhung with jacaranda blooms and slouched against it, contracting my body into the smallest possible area while Octavio went to search for whoever might have the key to the church. He came back empty-handed. “The people are suspicious. It’s best to leave.” Even I could feel the suspicion. It clouded the air. The village was blanketed in a wary silence.

Before we departed, we took one last look at the ancient stone face attached to the church's left front wall. Centuries ago, an unknown artist had carved rudimentary round eyes, a nose and full lips in the stone. Now the face stared back at us.

We drove as far as el Estudiante in order to eat before we attempted the last leg of the route to the City. While we ate, Octavio spoke about local customs. “In many small villages and rural hamlets the people serve at mass, because priests are scarce, and a resident priest is costly. Parishioners will invite a priest to officiate at a special ceremony, such as a marriage or a baptism. Marriage costs money : the clothes, the music the priest, the sacrificing of a goat. That is why when we tell a friend about a problem, we add, ‘That’s why I’m not married’”

A full stomach helped Octavio cope with the remainder of the drive. Having ascended a steep grade and rounded a curve, we came face to face with burros in the middle of the road. There was nothing to do but stop and wait until they moved. They took their time. Descending, we met an oncoming truck. Octavio signaled the driver to be on the lookout for trouble. Burros in the road on a blind curve would be an unwelcome hazard.

That was my initiation into signals that warn motorists of impending danger. Drivers of trailer trucks blink the lights on the outside of their trucks' cabin; other motorists use headlights. Hands are signals too. A sign language. Hands convey swift and clearly visible warnings with an economy and fluidity of movement that may mean the difference between life and a cross planted at the side of a road.

We encountered two slow-moving trucks hauling enormous logs on low bed trailers. Passing was a problem. Their length and the ever-present curves made it impossible to see in front of them. The drivers helped. They motioned to us when the road ahead was clear, reduced their speed to a crawl and pulled over to the right as far as possible. In response, Octavio, alert for the sudden appearance of an oncoming vehicle, cautiously inched up beside them, then spurted ahead. The drivers flashed their lights; we waved and disappeared around the next curve.

(1) Zapotec: one of the 16 indigenous groups in the State of Oaxaca, each with its own language. The Zapotecs are the largest group.

(2) Oropendola: Peterson, Roger Tory and Chalif, Edward L. A Field Guide to Mexican Birds. Houghton Mifflin Co., NY. Plate 39.

(3) There are red, yellow, black and green moles. The sauces are made from a variety of chilies, spices and herbs and are used with pork or chicken. During special festivities, mole is used with turkey. Oaxaca is called Land of the Seven Moles, and Susana Trilling in her book, Seasons of My Heart (Ballentine Books, N.Y., 1999) describes the seven moles in Chapter 10.

Ixtlan de Juarez

2008-01-04T19:34:00.001-05:00

We made three trips to Ixtlan de Juarez and surrounding towns. The first was during the rainy season, the second and third during the dry season. Each trip showered us with special gifts. At the end, I felt as if the area were my second home, a home with pine and oak forests and ever-changing clouds, which continually played light and shadow over the landscape.

September 3, 1996 introduced me to the route to Ixtlan. It was a steady climb in altitude through lush vegetation. Ahead, a metal bridge spanned a rushing river. We turned off and parked on a dirt road that followed the river's course. The water was in full force, speeding over the stones in the riverbed and winking in the sun. Patches of foam, scattered across the top of the water, mirrored puffs of white clouds clumped in the blue sky.

Hibiscus trees, rampant morning glories and tiny black-eyed Susans shielded blocks of slate along the river’s edge. Swallowtail butterflies sailed by, and yellow, orange and spotted butterflies flitted over the clay bank. A few lazily fanned their wings while they rested on the ground. They did not fly away when we bent over them. Either they had just emerged from cocoons and were drying their wings or sensed that we meant them no harm.

We arrived in San Pedro Guelatao, the birthplace of Benito Juarez and parked near the impressive arcaded plaza built in his memory. He was born nearby in 1906 to Zapotec parents who died when he was three, leaving him to live with an uncle(1). The plaza overlooked the small town. Downhill were silos with conical roofs for storing corn. Clustered nearby were small houses. Bean vines curling around tall poles, plots of corn, laundry hanging on clotheslines and turkeys roaming in back yards presented a scene of quiet domesticity.

One length of the plaza was devoted to a museum of Juarez’s life. It was closed on Mondays, but a placard on the wall detailed in Spanish his achievements. The opposite length afforded unobstructed views of the Sierra Juarez. Distant peaks were slate blue; those in the middle distance dark green; those closest to us bright green. Anyone who complained of monotony would be richly rewarded by spending time in the company of these mountains.

We found a spring-fed pond bordered by scarlet flowering trees. Dragonflies skimmed over the water’s surface. “Caballitos del Diablo,” Octavio said, “little horses of the Devil, that’s the children’s name for them. And look at that one.” A small red damselfly zipped by.

A bronze statue of Juarez stood beside the water. The sculptor had cast him as a young boy accompanied by the sheep that he had herded for his uncle. Later, at the age of 12, he would walk from Guelatao to the City to join his sister, a route that eventually enabled him to be Governor of Oaxaca and to be elected three times the President of Mexico.

We went part way around the pond and then followed a trail that branched off the path. “Ah, here is a school. Let me find out if we can tour the grounds.” Octavio disappeared inside one of the buildings. He emerged, pleased. He had interrupted a teacher in a classroom, and the teacher had given us permission to be on the property.

We looked in the windows of a dormitory. Rows of beds with natural wooden frames were covered with off-white spreads woven with wide red and blue stripes. Students, who came from too far away to return home at the end of the day, slept there. Their commuting time was measured in hours or days of walking.

Close by was a small hut. Inside, two women were making tortillas for the students’ lunch. As we ducked our heads to enter, we met a blast of unmerciful heat from the fires and the lack of ventilation. The women’s faces were flushed and shiny with perspiration. They beamed a welcome.

Each woman had her own equipment, and each had produced a tall stack of tortillas. “Watch,” one of the women said. “We put the masa on this flat piece.” She placed the dough on an iron griddle. “Now I put some of this on top,” and she placed a piece of plastic on top of the masa. “Now look,” she said as she pulled down the top of the griddle and pressed it on the masa. “I've made a tortilla." She transferred the tortilla to a charcoal brazier and left it for the right amount of time. No clocks or timers for these cooks. Instinct and years of experience guided them.

It was the other woman’s turn to take the spotlight. She removed two tortillas from the top of her stack and handed one to each of us. “Please take salt.” she invited. “It brings out the flavor of the tortillas.” We pinched salt crystals between our fingers and sprinkled them over the tortillas. We rolled them and took a bite. Our smiles conveyed how good they tasted. The women smiled in response.

“This is the way mountain people eat tortillas,” Octavio said. The woman nodded in agreement.

Black beans, onions and garlic simmered in a deep iron pot atop a brazier outside the kitchen. The aroma was tantalizing. I was positive the cooks wouldn't offer us any. The only utensil in sight was a ladle in the stew. Furthermore, there only was enough to feed the students. It would be easier to replace two tortillas than to explain why there were not enough beans. Thanks to these two women the students ate well and heartily. “Yes,” one of them volunteered, “my work is hard. I like it. I like it, but it is very hot here.”

“We make good food for the children,” added the other.

We asked directions to Ixtlan de Juarez, located about two miles north of Guelatao. Juarez had been baptized in Ixtlan's parish church, the Templo de Santo Tomas Apostol. Its construction had begun around 1640, and its date of completion 1721 was inscribed on an arch inside the main door. “A canyon arch,” Octavio explained, “like an upside down canyon.”

The main and side facades were different. The main facade was in the Churrigueresque style, a style of the late Baroque characterized by florid carving, estipite columns and Salomonic pillars (named after the columns on the Temple of Solomon). There were three double tiers of Salomonic pillars on either side of the main entrance. This type of column appears twisted.

The direction of the coils on each of the pairs happened to be the mirror image of its companion column. In more extravagant examples, the pillars may spiral with intricate foliate designs.

The side façade was a gem. Grapes, shells and plant-life were the predominant motifs. Over the door was a bas-relief of the Virgin standing on scalloped clouds. Raised outlines of a square cross enclosed the carving. Two Salomonic columns framed each side of the entablature. Above, God ruled from the apex of the high curve at the top of the façade.

The current church had been built on a pronounced rise. An overgrowth of trees and shrubs covered stonework and rocks. Octavio hypothesized that the site might conceal a former temple. “It was part of the Dominicans’ plan,” he said, “to choose land sacred to the Zapotecs, destroy their temples and replace them with Catholic churches.”

The interior was intimate. Immediately upon entering, our attention was captured by the retablo behind the altar. Lavish, gilded carving covered its soaring main panel and the two side panels that angled out from it. The gleam of the gold and the riot of intricate designs luxuriating over its surface appeared to assume a life of their own. God presided over all that sumptuousness at the top of the main screen.

As we stood before the main altar, Octavio introduced me to estipite columns, another characteristic of the Churrigueresque style. The retablo columns were estipite, inverted pyramids with their tip cut off and placed on a block. Sometimes the pattern of an inverted pyramid is clearly repeated up the column. Other times the elements of the column are so richly carved that the shape of the pyramid recedes into the background.

Opulent gilded retablos from the eighteenth century, decorated with Salomonic pillars and oil paintings of saints and religious scenes, flanked the nave. Angels with dark hair and nontraditional faces suggested the influence of local workmanship.

A Trinity was attached to a wall in the nave. El Padre Eterno wore His triple crown and was seated on His throne. His hands held a crucified Jesus, but the Holy Spirit, represented by a dove on top of the crucifix, had broken off.

I was intrigued by a painting of three men with triangular haloes who surrounded a woman. Octavio identified the subject, the Trinity crowning the Virgin. I commented on how rare triangular halos were. “Oh, no," Octavio responded. “In Oaxaca they are very common. You will have to look for them. They are everywhere.”

Octavio selected del Monte for our late afternoon meal. The restaurant, situated between la Cumbre and el Punto, was on several levels. Inside, a flight of stairs descended to the dining room where a wall of windows gave diners a panoramic view of the landscape. Silvery lichens dusted a weathered split rail fence at the bottom of a slope across from the windows. Scarlet gladioli and white calla lilies grew in front of the fence. A bleached animal skull rested against a post. It was pure Georgia O'Keefe. It was a scene, I felt sure, that she would have loved to paint.

The arrival of the entrees interrupted our contemplation of the scenery: a large tortilla topped with avocado, lettuce, tomato and cheese and a slice of meat accompanied by cucumber and tomato slices. No need to discuss dessert. We both knew fried plantains were our favorite. The waiter set the dessert plates in front of us. Five slices of fried plantain, arranged like flower petals, enclosed a center of strawberry preserves topped with a dollop of whipped cream.

A thunderstorm moved across the mountaintops. Lightening crackled through the sky. We tracked the storm. It intensified as it approached so that sheets of rain sealed us off from the outside world. We waited. Driving would have been reckless. The sky began to clear. On cue, the waiter brought steaming coffee. It was his way of apologizing for our delayed departure.

April 21, 1997 marked our second trip to Ixtlan. After we were in the mountains, we noticed a large black bird, possibly a raven. We watched it through the windshield flying in a straight, sure line. The flapping of its large wings conveyed purpose. Suddenly a smaller bird flew in at an angle and overtook it. It buzzed it like a toy airplane before pacing its flight to the larger bird’s.

I guessed what we would see before it happened: something I had read about but never witnessed. I waited without speaking or moving, afraid that I might disturb the plan that was being worked out. The two birds concluded their negotiations, and the smaller bird glided onto the back of the larger one. They continued out of sight, the larger bird neither deviating from its path nor slowing its speed.

I nudged Octavio. “Did you see that?”

“Yes,” he replied. “I’ve been watching.”

“I’ve read about birds giving rides to birds.”

“I have too.”

“What if we hadn’t been here at this very moment? Do you realize that we would have missed this?”

“Yes”, he agreed, “we have seen a great thing.”

Thick bushes of floripondia covered with long white trumpet flowers lined the road from Guelatao to Ixtlan. “Coquitos,” Octavio announced as he motioned to leafless trees that sported red flowers bursting from the ends of bare branches. Blossoming hibiscus and jacaranda trees and bougainvillea vines added vibrant color. Green and yellow-streaked gourds dried in the sun on the flat roofs of wood sheds.

We arrived in Ixtlan greeting it as an old friend but hoping to discover new qualities and dimensions in that friend. Octavio went to ask the police if he had chosen an approved parking spot. He returned relieved that we could leave the car in the space he had selected at the side of the dirt street next to the market.

A church, dated August 1721, called for closer inspection. Years ago an earthquake had demolished its walls and interior. Only an arch, incised with a simple, repetitive design, remained upright. A burrow, tethered to one of the stone blocks that littered the ground, waited for its owner.

The market abutted the ruins. It was a Monday, the weekly market day for Ixtlan. Arriving near noon, we missed the early morning shoppers; however, enough fruit and vegetables remained to give us an idea of what was in season.

I needed a bathroom. Where was the woman who supervised the public toilets? There she was, right in the corner near the entrance. Her rate of exchange was three pesos for the key to the damas and a few sheets of toilet paper. There was more to come. “Un momento.” She advised me to enter the door marked caballeros. “Hombres go in the door without a sign.”

The heavy padlock on the caballeros was rusted. I wondered how long it had remained unopened. Octavio struggled with the padlock until his determination and his strong arm prevailed. I entered with trepidation, unsure of the standard of cleanliness I would find. My fears, however, were groundless. I confronted two spotlessly clean toilets. Neither flushed, but each had a red plastic pail on its tank. Later, the toilet guardian would fill one of the pails at a faucet in the market and use it to flush the toilet.

I emerged from the caballeros to find a man waiting to enter. Octavio was trying to explain that it was not the caballeros but the damas. It took all of Octavio’s patience to make the man understand that the key he held in his hand opened the padlock on the door without a sign, the door to the caballeros.

A shrine and flower stalls were at the opposite end of the market. We liked the waxy yellow orchids that looked like dwarf tulips. The orchids could be cultivated as long as they were watered regularly. Octavio bought twenty plants for his garden and five for me. When the flower vendor learned we were from the City, she covered the plants with sheets of newspaper to protect them from the sun. We rushed to the car where we placed them on the back floor. During the remainder of the day, their perfume scented the car. And during my stay in the City, they added a delicate fragrance to my room.

We paid a repeat visit to the church where Juarez had been baptized. A different attendant was on duty. He had an eagle eye. When he spotted me positioning my camera, he halted the action. He refused to let me take a picture. Octavio asked him to read the sign on the church door: photographs were permitted within the church as long as no flash was used. A quiet but intense discussion ensued between the two men. Octavio asked him to explain the discrepancy between what the sign said and what he was telling us. The attendant was adamant. I thought he wanted a bribe, but Octavio disagreed. “He just has a different understanding of the rule."

We walked toward the mountains along a dirt road. We passed a prison. It was white-washed and windowless, and on its flat roof was an open-sided tower with a blue base and a conical top to shade the guard on duty. Octavio knew nothing about prisons, but I was curious. “Who were the prisoners, how many were there, what crimes had they committed, what did they eat?” Questions raced through my mind as I continued to look back at the building with its lone sentry.

We stopped near the end of the road. The strong sun forced us to shield our eyes. Octavio let out a muted cry. “There at the top of the mountain. What is it? It’s tiny, and it isn’t moving, so it can’t be a man. It must be a statue.”

“It must be a statue of someone important,” I hypothesized. “As a rule, ordinary citizens don't get monuments on mountains.”

“Yes,” people said in response to our query, “there is a statue and a mirador. Go to the end of the road at the other end of town and take the rough road. Your car can make it. Go slowly.”

We drove up through stands of deciduous and fir trees. The car groaned and pitched in potholes until we arrived at the top where a covering of palm fronds provided shelter for a car. At the edge of the clearing, two mammoth figures looked out over the valley. They represented the two Zapotec warriors who had been responsible for defeating the invading Aztecs.

We headed into the woods. Two men carrying machetes silently glided through the forest. Notices tacked to trees advised that cutting wood was prohibited. I asked Octavio if they planned to cut wood illegally, but he reminded me that the woods were communal land and that the men would operate within strict forestry guidelines.

Long empty bags, fashioned from tightly woven plant fibers, hung from tree branches. Which birds had constructed them? The owner of del Monte, where we later ate, supplied the answer; they were nests of the oropendola(2).

From Ixtlan, we continued to Capulalpan in order to visit its parish church. We paid the obligatory visit to the town hall to ask if someone could open the church door. The clerk at the desk explained that a man rang the church bells at 3 p.m. when he was not working in the outlying fields. We waited, but the bell ringer didn’t appear. Disappointed, we retraced our route through Ixtlan and Guelatao until we could stop at del Monte for a much needed meal.

Octavio had two beers, cream of corn soup and ribs. I had a guava drink, cream of corn soup and chicken mole served with pureed black beans(3). We shared a basket of corn crisps with our soup and a basket of hot tortillas wrapped in a cloth. Our favorite dessert, fried plantains, followed. Coffee with cinnamon, made in a clay pot called an olla, completed the dinner.

Our third trip was on April 17, 1998. High overhead, vultures drifted and soared in updrafts. Octavio stopped the car to show me a fruit tree called zapote. There are white, yellow and black zapotes. The white zapote acts as a soporific; eating three puts one to sleep. In addition, a tincture of the white zapote aids in lowering high blood pressure.

Trees were posted with warnings not to light fires. The lack of a rainy season had resulted in combustible woods. Many fires still burned. Octavio’s garden had suffered too. The drought had claimed three fruit trees and the orchids he had bought last year in Ixtlan. In contrast to the dry woods and patched fields, Capulalpan appeared to be an oasis. Tall bushes were festooned with masses of pale pink trumpet flowers, their edges ruffled in a deeper pink.

Just as last year, our first stop was at the municipal office. Perhaps this year we would learn who had a key to the church. I waited outside. I wanted to read the notice about dengue fever. Local authorities take great care to educate their citizens not only about diseases such as tuberculosis, measles and dengue fever but also about health precautions. The walls of a town’s municipal building or its medical clinic, or a sheet tied to a fence on the outskirts of a village serve as medical bulletin boards.

Workmen were restoring the exterior of the church. They might have a key. In fact, they were the key to our success, because they directed us to Senor S. who lived down the street, a short walk from the church. He was at home. At his doorstep I received a lesson in Oaxacan diplomacy. Senor S., rightfully concerned about who we were and why we sought access to the church, engaged Octavio in a prolonged series of questions and answers without revealing that he had the coveted key. Senor S., finally convinced that we meant no harm, produced the key and led us to the church.

Although it may seem curious that we should have difficulty gaining entrance to a church in a village, there was an important reason why we had to undergo such relentless scrutiny. A valuable statue had been stolen from a church in a neighboring town. And there had been attempted break-ins in nearby churches; consequently, anyone entrusted with a church key was reluctant to acknowledge that he possessed it. Prudence was the order of the day. Local repercussions might ensue if a custodian carelessly unlocked a parish church to strangers who might steal from or damage that church. Having a church key is a responsibility that no one treats lightly.

The church was completed and dedicated to Saint Matthew in 1718; however, the year 1731 appeared on an arch inside the door. The arch and the ceiling above it had been restored to their original condition of brightly painted designs of vines, tendrils and flowers.

The transept ceiling had been renovated in 1954. Carpenters had replaced the rotting wood of the ceiling with wood treated against insects. The ceiling looked like the inside of a boat’s skeleton. Row after row of small squares of wood were set end to end across its width. Each row alternated with a narrow raised rib of wood.

A tall angel carved from wood with glass eyes guarded each side of the steps leading up to the sanctuary. A large silver lamp hung over the steps. Two crystal chandeliers were suspended in the sanctuary in front of the altar. Behind the altar, a five-sided, gilded retablo soared to the ceiling in gleaming splendor.

Several of the gilded retablos along the nave walls were of finely carved wood and embellished with exquisitely carved angels and estipite columns. In the right transept was a retablo with a statue of St. Joseph. He wore a straw hat with an adjustable chin strap and held a miniature hollow gourd, called a bule or calabaza, which travelers carry water in.

We tipped Senor S. and went next door to a store. Its ceiling was a replica of the church’s. The woman behind the counter was proud that such an unusual and elegant feature graced her humble space. She made sure that we knew that her husband had helped with the restoration of the church’s interior and had copied its ceiling.

While we sipped beers and talked with the owner, I looked over her merchandise for something to buy. A pile of escobetas was on the counter. Short pieces of straw of equal length are bound together in the center with a wire to make a brush. Octavio reminisced how his mother cleaned the tops of tables and chests with her escobeta. Local shops and markets still sell them, although modern brushes and brooms are more popular in the City and large towns. I paid two pesos for a souvenir of another way of life. The shopkeeper was happy, because two pesos make a difference in the sum of a day's transactions. In addition, my purchase and our presence would provide ingredients for a good story to tell the family at the end of the day.

To be continued

Hierve el Agua

2007-12-25T10:02:00.000-05:00

I first visited Hierve el Agua in May 1996(1). Octavio had been there once before, a few years earlier. He had been the driver for an Italian photographer who was on assignment to capture Hierve el Agua on film. They arrived at Hierve, the photographer leapt from the car, raced to a view of the waterfalls, took photographs and, without a word of praise for what he had seen, got back in the car and ordered Octavio to be off.

I fell in love with Hierve. At the edge of the cliff below the parking lot, the world as we knew it dropped away, and only the surrounding mountains held us and Hierve el Agua in the palms of their hands. Nothing else existed. We wondered if we were in Eden, so alone were we in that encompassing landscape; we were man and woman embraced by a primeval wonderland, the first and only people on earth. We spent hours in deep silence, contemplating the incredible power of Nature and communing with its living, pulsing presence.

We went to Hierve before it was a name on tourists' lips. There were no tours. There were no postcards. Only a poster sold at the entrance. After we left the food stalls and the occasional villager, we had the run of the place. Nothing and no one disturbed its tranquility.

Weekends and holidays were another matter. Villagers took advantage of the local attraction, and groups of school children from surrounding communities brought bathing suits and picnics and spent the day swimming and eating.

With time, Hierve lost its exclusiveness. It became known. It also became commercialized. Postcards appeared in shops and markets in the City. First, one agency advertised a tour; later, others competed for business. Initially, there had been only a yu’u (Zapotec for guest lodge), rustic bathrooms and changing rooms. Cabins were built and a swimming pool installed. More and more visitors disturbed its pristine isolation. On our last visit, the swimming pool, its surface covered with thick green algae, was off limits.

The attendant at the parking lot told us that Hierve had been an important, sacred Zapotec site. Looking at the canyon walls from the cliff above, we saw what resembled an ancient irrigation system. A network of narrow, shallow channels described the contour of the mountainside. The sides of the channels appeared to have been built up from minerals deposited by the spring waters in the area.

A robust copal tree grew at the head of a rocky path. We introduced ourselves to the tree. Eating three of its small, round, green berries a day is the home prescription for curing acne. Artisans carve its wood into fantasy animals, which, when brightly painted, are popular items in the markets. The resin of the tree is the incense of choice among indigenous peoples. Considered sacred, it is burned during ceremonies.

We carefully picked our way down the path’s crude rock steps and ledges to a plateau. Mineral deposits had covered the plateau with a white crust. Over the years, water from the adjacent springs had seeped across its surface, carving out several basins filled with water that varied in color from lime to blue-green depending on the minerals in the water and the weather. The largest basin was at the very edge of the plateau. It had been reinforced for swimming.

Far to the right was the main attraction, a petrified waterfall. The falls appeared to plummet down the face of a steep rock. Over centuries, spring water has continuously trickled down the mountain side and evaporated, leaving innumerable layers of minerals that have created this illusion. A second waterfall, roughly half its height, had its beginning at the edge of the plateau on which we stood. The play of sun and shadows over the calcium carbonate deposits transformed what looked like white foam into dark turbulent water. It was difficult to believe that the falls were not real.

We climbed to the top of the cliff near the food stalls and chose a palapa, an umbrella-like roof made from fronds of a local species of dwarf palm. Each palapa sheltered a picnic table and benches. We gazed across the canyon to the mountains while above us the palapa’s fronds rustled in the constant breeze. Appetizing aromas from the eateries drifted to us. Hunger tugged at our stomachs.

We decided to save the food stalls for another trip and to eat at La Sorpresa in Mitla. Hidden from the street, the restaurant was surrounded by a profusion of flowering shrubs, which overhung the tables and screened the guests from the sun. What I liked were La Sorpresa’s freedoms: the freedom to roam the kitchen and negotiate with the owner what he could cook for dinner, the freedom to open the refrigerator door and select drinks, the freedom to sit on the wide porch railing and stretch out my legs along its sturdy length. It was like home, comfortable, unpretentious and welcoming.

We dined on limonada, beer and chicken barbecue served with tortillas, squash, corn and black beans, and it was at La Sorpresa that I learned that tortillas, in addition to be being tasty and nutritious, are useful utensils. “Tear them into quarters and make tiny scoops.” Octavio instructed. “They're perfect for small pieces of food and sauces. It's the Zapotec spoon.”

In September of 1996, we went back to Hierve. Aiming straight for our car were donkeys, their backs stacked with hearts from maguey plants. The hearts also are called pinas because of their resemblance to pineapples. Such a plentiful harvest indicated that someone might be producing mezcal(2). A mule hitched to a large mill stone caught Octavio’s attention. He stopped. He had found the still.

We skirted a pile of maguey hearts at the side of the road. Two men were waiting for us at the bottom of an incline. They welcomed us and offered to show us the still. Wood charcoal, already lit, lined a deep pit. As soon as the charcoal glowed red, the hearts would be placed in the pit. After four days of cooking, the mixture would absorb the smoky taste of the wood charcoal.

The hearts would be removed and dumped into a circular area. A horse or mule would walk around the circumference of the circle dragging a mill stone over the baked hearts in order to crush them to a pulp. After fermentation, the pulp would be distilled at 90 degrees centigrade and the resultant vapor condensed. After a second vaporization and condensation, the mezcal would age in oak barrels for eight days.

Farther up the road, the uncle of the still’s owner operated a store where we could sample the final product. The nephew eagerly accepted a ride to the store. He was grateful for the opportunity to ride in a car instead of walking over a dusty road under the burning sun.

We ducked into a cool, dimly lit basement; canned goods, eggs and a few vegetables lined the shelves. Uncle and nephew poured mezcal into a bowl. Octavio, as the man and the guide, would drink first, I second. They watched us attentively, because a sale depended upon our liking what we sampled. Octavio signaled his approval, then I. Out came two large plastic containers into which uncle and nephew siphoned mezcal, plugged the tops and pocketed the pesos. The transaction was complete. Octavio had purchased enough mezcal to serve at future family celebrations.

At Hierve, we decided to follow a trail along a ridge high above the plateau. The trail ended, and we scrambled down rocks to a natural table. The main waterfall fell from the rim of the table. On either side, infant falls were slowly and silently taking shape. In another several hundred years, they would be as majestic as their neighbor.

We clambered back up the rocks and stopped at a shallow depression in a ledge. A spring bubbled from its depths. We washed out burning hands and faces in the hopes that the water would cool us. I licked a few drops from my lips and tasted the salty residue.

We retraced our steps up to the trail. Pushing aside flowers, brambles and bushes with long sharp spines, we discovered a hole lined with what appeared to be rose quartz. Pieces of quartz had been cut from the sides, They were waiting to be tucked into our pockets as souvenirs of a time and a place we vowed to remember.

At the food stalls, we bought tortillas made from blue-gray masa (dough). Octavio selected a stuffing of sausage and cheese; I chose cheese and a large squash blossom. The owner spread the tortillas with salsa, loaded them with the stuffing and grilled them on her brazier. When they were done, she removed them, folded then in half and placed then on paper napkins. Thirty pesos or about three dollars paid for six tortillas, two beers, a Coke and an apple juice(3). We carried our food to a palapa.

A motor whirred in the distance. A large silver helicopter appeared. It came closer. Like a giant creature from science fiction, its metallic skin reflecting the sun, it hovered in front of the falls. “Perhaps," Octavio said, “the Governor of Oaxaca is bringing important guests to Hierve."

By April of the following year, the nephew no longer sold mezcal in his uncle’s store. Instead, he sold it at his still. His uncle had diluted the mezcal with water to order to increase profits. The price had increased, but the mezcal was unadultered. The nephew expressed disdain at the thought that anyone, especially a family member, would water down his mezcal.

We requested a tasting in order to compare the pure mezcal with the former thinned version. The nephew poured mezcal into two tiny glasses and handed them to us. We sipped and savored the rich, smoky aftertaste. Last year's was a poor comparison. “Congratulations,” said Octavio and shook the man’s hand. “Your mezcal is worthy of an award.”

Arriving at Hierve, I ordered a large blue tortilla filled with sausage, cheese and salsa. The cook laughed. “You chose the dark tortilla, because you are light; he chose the light tortilla, because he is dark.”

The owner’s little girl carried our food to a table under a palapa. She hid behind me and watched while I opened a bottle of apple juice. A wasp dive-bombed into it and died. How she giggled at our unsuccessful attempts to extract the wasp! She raced to her mother to fetch another drink. Her little dog ran back with her. He circled the table and snuggled up against Octavio’s leg. His eyes followed our food from plate to mouth. We couldn’t resist him. We fed him tasty morsels, and, when he wanted more, he lifted a paw and patted our legs.

We wandered down to the pools. Not suspecting anything but the usual peaceful atmosphere, I shrugged when a woman shrieked and ran towards Octavio. “El Nombre!” (the Name) she cried with upraised hands while her head and eyes rolled from Octavio to me. She wanted her photograph taken. Octavio led her to a pool and posed her in front of it.

Just as he was ready to take the photograph, two women, wearing high heels, fancy tops and full skirts, swept down the path. They almost fell in their hurry to reach their companion. They too wanted their picture taken. Their friend broke her pose to join them, and they surrounded Octavio, a circle of frenetic women rushing from side to side. The witches of Macbeth had come to Hierve and were dancing, their bangles and beads jangling and glinting in the sunlight.

This was a scene I had to share. I leaned towards a local woman and her daughter who were selling photographs of Hierve. They were watching the frenzied antics of the women who were pushing and pulling Octavio this way and that. Whenever he arranged them in a group, they tore away and sped to a different spot. “Mujeres rapidas!” (rapid women) the woman and her daughter repeated doubling over with silent laughter. The woman’s husband joined us, and he also participated in the fun. We clapped our hands.

Laughing,I exclaimed, “Mi guia!”(my guide).
At last, Octavio snapped the much-desired photograph, and the three women pranced up the path in the direction of the parking lot. Octavio scaled the ledges to sit beside us. “The women were on a bus tour. I ‘m sorry I devoted so much attention to them. I was afraid the bus would take off without them.” We waited, but they did not return.

The previous night I had dreamt that the pools were the eyes of Mother Earth. I had gazed into one and felt Her all-enveloping compassion and love. Now I intended to make the dream a reality. I looked into the depths of one of the pools. It reflected the blue sky and my blue eyes. It steadfastly returned my gaze. Our eyes merged, and we gazed into each other’s soul.

We were sitting facing the mountains across the valley, two figures projected out into the elements, when the energy of the air changed. Thunder boomed; lightening knifed down to find its mark in the landscape. The storm filled me. I became wired. Every molecule in my body was charged. Great surges of electricity swept through me. I felt that blue volts would leave my fingers and strike anything within range. I sat on a ledge behind a green-blue eye and molded balls of energy with my hands. There they went, tossed into the air. The storm ended as suddenly as it had begun, and a breath-taking rainbow appeared over the valley. We thanked the spirit of the rainbow for its beautiful gift before we packed up to leave.

We made one last trip to Hierve. On that occasion I was showing my tourist card to Octavio when a gust of wind lifted it from my hand and blew it away. It flew above the cliff and dropped to the floor of the valley. Octavio ran down the face of the cliff. My last view of him for a long time was a figure waving and calling, “Don’t follow me!” Did he have an accident? Where was he? He was that human speck far below, waving a tiny white slip of paper. “Look!” his voice piped, “The paper says, ‘Don’t lose this.’”

I frequently teased Octavio and called him a mountain goat because of his nimbleness in scaling rock faces and his sure-footed negotiation of difficult trails. He had missed his calling. He should have been a professional mountain guide or climber. I held my breath while he inched up the sheer rock wall. His ascent was as impressive as his plunge down. Gasping for breath, he reached the pools and collapsed.

We waited until color returned to his cheeks and his breath slowed before we walked to the food stalls. A local man sat down. He gestured. “There are caves down that path. About a 20 minute walk. And that road in the valley. It leads to a mine. It's no longer open. Politics closed it. Only a faint track remains.” We mentally added the abandoned mines to our list of sites to explore.

More locals gathered at the tables in front of the food stalls. We had attracted quite a party. A nurse arrived. She had been giving polio and diphtheria shots to children in the village. She had finished early. Her choices were to walk two hours in the hot sun along the main dirt road in order to catch a bus back to the City or to wait until late afternoon when the bus left from Hierve’s parking lot. We presented her with a third option, one she readily agreed to. We would drive her back to the City.

(1) Herver is the infinitive for “to boil”. Hierve el Agua translates as the water boils. The boiling water refers to the bubbling of the springs.
(2) Mezcal is a strong liquor distilled from the maguey plant, a member of the agave genus.
(3) The value of the peso during the years of my trips ranged from 8 pesos to ten pesos to the dollar.

The Wishing Rock

2007-12-24T21:47:00.000-05:00

Octavio buys books about the indigenous cultures of Mexico. His knowledge about the ancient art of Central and South American and Egypt is extensive. To listen to him discuss the sculptures at the archeological sites of Monte Alban, Mitla, Lambityeco, Dainzu and Yagul is to learn how these sculptures relate to ancient art throughout the world.

Octavio is always on the lookout for new and interesting places, which will appeal to tourists with special interests. It was in one of his books that he read about a big rock that could be tipped only with a finger. He casually mentioned it several times and promised that he would try to learn more about it.

He did not speak about it again until my third visit in 1996 when we were returning from Ayutla. He turned to me. “Let's try to find the big rock today.” Shortly thereafter, he turned right onto a road that ended in a small village.

The village was arranged like an exclamation point. The upper part of the punctuation mark was the long dirt road lined by small houses fronted by grass plots. The dot was the church at the end of the road.

It was just after mid-day. It was the hour for siestas. The village was silent and empty of people except for a man who stood at the door of his house. We stopped to ask about the rock. The man doffed his hat and thought. “I have heard about it,” he said. “You need to drive to the church. The rock is just behind the church. You can't miss it.”

We followed his instructions and parked beside the church, confident that the rock would be easy to find; there would be something to identify it, a fence or a sign. But a community doesn't reveal its secrets so readily.

Octavio approached a house near the church. Two women emerged in response to his greetings. One cradled a baby and clutched the hand of a little boy; the other led a little girl. They exchanged pleasantries with us and listened with an impassive expression as to why we wanted to see the special rock. They knew its location. Our intentions evidently were sincere enough to win their approval, and they agreed to show it to us.

The women and children climbed in the back of the car. Octavio let the older children choose a succulent pear from the fruit we had purchased in Ayutla. The children didn’t waste time; they immediately bit into the flesh. Juice trickled down their tiny chins and onto their hands. Meanwhile, the women directed us down a rutted dirt road, which headed into the countryside. We were to park the car at a water tank and proceed on foot.

The hike began at two stiles separated by approximately four yards. Three horizontal logs fitted into an upright log on either side. Wooden pegs on the ends of the horizontal logs slid into corresponding holes on the sides of the uprights. The stiles brought back memories of Maine pastures and the Swiss Alps; however, Oaxacan stiles didn't have moss or lichens, tangles of bushes, puddles of water, paddies of cow dung, or buzzing flies attracted by the cow dung.

Once through the stiles, we descended a slope to a valley cultivated with rows of black beans. Narrow irrigation channels of hardened clay followed the slope's contour to the bottom.

From the floor of the valley, the climb was ever upwards. The terrain was rough. We frequently stopped to catch our breath. Not so the women. Even though they carried the children, they easily navigated the difficult ascent. The view, though, made our breaks a pleasure. A blue sky dotted with white clouds, a ring of soaring mountains and in the center, the miniature village, flowing like a sand-colored river through land made verdant by the rains.

We hiked up and up. Although the women didn’t disclose the rock’s location until we were a couple of inches in front of it, we could sense their mounting excitement. “There it is! Right there!” Without them, we would have missed it. No one would be able to find it without the help of a knowledgeable guide. A long time ago, the boulder must have broken off from an adjacent outcrop. It lay like a beached whale, as tall as the women. Other boulders kept it company.

The women showed us the indentation where we should put our finger. “Use the thumb,” they advised. The groove at one end of the boulder had been worn smooth by countless petitioning thumbs. Our thumbs tested it. Success! But our hands, elbows or feet failed to move it. The huge boulder remained motionless until we used a thumb. We examined it from all angles, even squatting to look at its underside. None of us knew the answer to the puzzle. To the women and to us it was a miracle.

We learned more. “You have to make a wish before you put in your thumb.” Each of us observed a few moments of silence while we made a wish before we inserted a thumb to rock the boulder. “Your wish has a better chance of coming true if you remove a pebble from the boulder." That was impossible. The pebbles were bound tightly into the rock’s matrix.

They revealed that on New Year's Eve, the villagers form a procession. Everyone carries a lighted candle. After they arrive at the boulder, they make a wish and rock it. Some fashion votive offerings from small stones. The skeleton of a diminutive stone house still rested at the boulder's base. It stood untouched, a silent testimony to someone’s deepest desire, the wish for a new home.

I imagined the scene during New Year's Eve: the dark night, the bright stars and the moon, high in the sky, gazing down upon the adults and children with flickering candles as they moved in a slow, majestic parade down the slope, across the valley and up the steep ledges. It had to be an impressive sight, one to silence inconsequential talk or thoughts.

On the afternoon of New Year’s Day, the community travels to the boulder a second time. Both processions are an old custom; how old, the women couldn't say. Their parents and grandparents participated, so to them that was old. “Before our grandparents went there,” they said, “who knows?”

We were leaving the area, our backs turned to the boulder, when Octavio called out, “Turn around! Look! It's a man!” We turned, and there, in profile, was the giant head of a man. The back of his head rested on the ground. He stared up at the sky and drifting clouds though a deep eye socket. His nose was long and sharp; his chin, protruding and well-formed; his ear, a white stone. We had been tipping a man's head by placing a thumb in his crown!

It reminded us of the giant statues carved on Easter Island. “What can arise in one part of the world can arise in another,” Octavio whispered. It was the women’s turn to be surprised. They had never realized that the rock resembled a man’s head. This was important information. After we left the village, they would lose no time in sharing it.

But wait! The women asked if we would like to inspect the shrine to the water. Of course we would! And so in the sweltering sun, we backtracked to the car, drove farther down the dirt road and parked at a different location.

We passed through another stile. This time the women spoke in hushed voices as if the stile marked the entrance to a sacred space. Their muted voices and tempered gestures served to modulate our elation at being invited to this unexpected place of power.

Another long walk brought us to the spring and shrine. The spring fed into a square concrete well. A concrete slab covered its opening. The women raised it and motioned to us to look in. Visible, deep below, was the trembling surface of the dark water. Filled by the precious life-giving spring, the well enabled the village to provide water to its crops and livestock. It was no wonder that the people believed that the spring’s discovery warranted a shrine.

The white-washed chapel was on our right. It commanded a view of the well head from high atop a rock and concrete foundation. Outside and inside, the walls were painted to simulate the Mexican flag with green and red bands separated by the white wall. Steps on either side of the foundation allowed access to the chapel's interior. Built by the villagers, the shrine was the result of their collective thanksgiving to Our Lady of Guadalupe for revealing the spring that had changed their lives for the better.

We mounted the stairs and entered the shrine to face a statue of Guadalupe. A large tin can and a tall glass, which previously had contained a votive candle to Guadalupe, were on the floor below her feet. Both containers held sprays of feathery foliage and white daisy-like flowers. Green and red paper garlands decorated the wall above Guadalupe’s head, and green, red and white garlands draped her shoulders.

A memory hung in the air over the well and the shrine, a memory older than the village and, therefore, not articulated by the women. Since time immemorial, wells have been revered places, entrances into the deep, thresholds into the Underworld or into the Interior. To affirm their belief in the power of wells, people have erected shrines, made pilgrimages and left votive offerings(1,2). Did building the shrine symbolize this more ancient meaning, a meaning that was buried deep in the villagers' unconscious, just as the source of the spring was buried deep within the earth?

Back at the church, we reluctantly said good-by to these brave women who had dared display the village’s hallowed sites to two strangers. Perhaps never before had the sacred boulder or the shrine to the spring been seen by anyone who was not originally from that community.

Was it a reflection of our happiness at meeting the sacred, or did the village radiate joy? Everything and everyone seemed to emit light and cheer. It was late afternoon, the time when animals were returning from pasture. Even they appeared to leap and dance down the road home.

And that night, as if in answer to my question about a more ancient meaning of the well, I had a dream. In the dream, I approached the well and lifted its cover. As I looked into the well, I found myself slipping down the dark tunnel into the water and through the water to land on a vast sandy beach. The beach glowed, because each grain of sand emitted a golden light.

I explored the beach alone, absorbed in picking up precious stones of emeralds, diamonds and rubies. “These are my treasures,” I thought before I ascended the tunnel and closed the cover. When I awoke, the fingers of my right hand were tightly closed as if they still clasped the gems.

(1) Knab, Timothy J. A War of Witches. Harper Collins. 1995, pp. 63;121.

(2) O’Donohue, John. Anam Cara. A Book of Celtic Wisdom. Cliff Street Books. 1997.

Saint Cecilia. Part II

2007-12-13T19:11:00.000-05:00

It is April of 1998, and we are gazing at the high altar of San Pablo de Ayutla. A translucent curtain obscures the arch behind the altar. The sun is positioned so that it creates an immense glowing orb that appears as if it were embedded in the curtain. The effect is dramatic.

“‘Yo soy buen pastor,’ dice el senor,” proclaims a sign to the right of the apse(3).

I go in search of my favorite statue of Guadalupe. She has a black ribbon tied around her waist. All Guadelupes have a black ribbon around their waist, but some ribbons are more defined than others. The meaning of the black ribbon is controversial. Perhaps, some suggest, Guadalupe is a hang-over from a distant past, a former Aztec goddess of fertility who still wears a black ribbon to signify that she is pregnant(4).

“Perhaps not,” Octavio says when I ask his opinion. “I prefer to respect her as Our Lady, not to philosophize about whether she represents a fertility goddess.”

This Guadalupe has no hands. She lost them many years ago, but she is very dark, and golden rays surround her. They shimmer and pulsate with power.

And there is our mysterious friend whom Octavio is about to introduce to me. “Here is St. Cecelia,” he says without fanfare, as if he always had known her name but wanted to wait until the right time to tell me(5). “Yes,” he adds, “that’s her.”

We have a St. Cecilia Society in Boston,” I respond, trying to match his nonchalance. But, of course! She is St. Cecilia, the Patroness of Music.

“And here is anima sola.”(6) His arms and hands are uplifted to beseech Heaven for mercy; his expression mirrors his gesture. He knits his eyebrows as the red flames of Purgatory envelop his hips. Fake red roses are at one side of his glass prison, white calla lilies at the other. Octavio and I pray before him, as we pray before all anima solas. It is Octavio’s devotion. And I have made it mine.

And then we were on the road to Tamazulapan. The absence of traffic allowed us to admire the pairs of stately women walking at the side of the road. They wore white blouses with three-quarter length sleeves. A narrow red woven band edged the sleeve openings, and an identical band went from the hem of the blouse up and over each shoulder. Their ankle-length, navy blue skirts had a wide band of darker blue around the bottom. Their waists were encircled several times by a narrow red woven belt.

In Tamazulapan a loud speaker vied with the babble of children playing in the plaza. The voice over the loud speaker repeatedly called someone’s name; a villager was being summoned to the communal telephone. We visited Santa Maria de la Natividad in order to admire its gilded seven-paneled retablo, and then we drove on over the road that men and machines had widened and black-topped last year(7). At last we turned left onto a bumpy dirt road, wide enough for one car.

The road went straight up the mountain to a town, perched like an aerie above the houses that spilled down the mountain side. More houses rose above the town. We passed the Mayor’s Office, a few comedors, and suddenly the road thrust us into Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec.

The plaza was filled with activity. A girl was singing a song. Other children were competing in races. The starter pursed his lips and blew on his whistle to launch them on their way. A man announced the contests and contestants in Mixe over a megaphone, his eager, amplified voice adding to the chatter and cries of the excited children.

A short path led to the church. A line of saints in the nave and a row of Madonnas in a side chapel watched us as we entered through the open door and walked down the central aisle. The statues were blessed with offerings: bright flowers, ears of corn, handfuls of corn kernels and black beans, treasures of the Highland Mixe(8).

From the church, we went to the municipal offices. On the second level of the arcade, rows of children were absorbed in playing board games. Little boys, watched over by a teacher, were arranging dominoes so that a finger could flick one and set in motion the collapse of the others.

We climbed to the third level. Facing us at the top of the stairs was a mural depicting the Mixe creation myth. A woman, with her head bent backwards, stared upwards. Each arm stretched out to the side, and each hand grasped an ear of corn, a scepter from Mother Earth. The braids of her long black hair fell forward onto her breast where they looped through two white calla lilies. The lilies' undulating leaves and stems followed the horizontal line of her arms.

Above her rose three tiers of jagged mountains topped by blue sky. Above the sky were three narrow bands of mountain peaks. An egg was suspended in the sky between the top of the woman’s head and the uppermost tier of mountains. Inside the egg was the Condoy, the legendary King of the Mixe; he who lives atop the sacred mountain Zempoaltepetl; he, the protector of the health and welfare of the Mixe and their lands. A snake with a turquoise blue eye wound itself around the Condoy. Outside the shell, two turkeys with their tails fanned, formed an oval on either side of the shell’s base.

The Condoy, wrapped in a cloak, thrust his right fist directly at the viewer in a gesture of power. His right fist grasped a long, thick rod with a yellow and red ribbon, his badge of authority; his left hand clasped a shorter rod with ribbons of the same color; he cradled four dark brown rods in the crook of his left arm.

Nearby, a team of men was remodeling a smaller arcaded building. They had donated and pooled their labor for the good of the community. We glimpsed murals along the upper arcade but were unable to get close to them. They would have to wait for another trip.

Zempoaltepetl, the sacred mountain of the Mixe, the mountain of 20 peaks and the highest mountain in Oaxaca at 11,037 feet, loomed across from the town.8 “It takes six hours to climb to the top,” a Spanish-speaking teacher informed us. He didn’t tell us that the people make yearly pilgrimages to the top to ritually offer poultry, corn, beans and eggs. Neither did he tell us that each family has its own special place on the mountain. That information was confided by a woman who slipped out the door of an adjacent building and answered my questions in hesitant Spanish as if afraid to share Mixe customs with outsiders.

As we moved from one end of town to the other, laughing children darted up and dashed away or hid behind the skirts of older girls. Women and girls wore white embroidered blouses and white skirts embroidered with a simple vine-flower pattern. An artisans’ shop sold narrow, red woven belts, bolsas (woven bags on a long cord) embroidered in red or in white foliate patterns and pottery made from local red clay. Across the street, a clothing store stocked the typical skirts and blouses worn by the girls and women, as well as rebozos with white embroidery in a vine-flower design.

I handed the shopkeeper a rebozo and pantomimed that I would like her to show me how to style it. She held my hands and guided my fingers while we folded the material into a narrow length, formed the length into a circle and then wove the long ends in and out on opposite sides. She placed it on top of my head. “There, you are wearing an elegant crown,” Octavio said.

She demonstrated how to wrap a more casual style. We put the rebozo over my head with the ends in front and tied them tightly at the top of my forehead. The next step was to spread the fabric over the crown of my head and to allow the ends to fall down my back. Perfect for avoiding sunstroke.

We didn't want to depart Santa Maria without visiting its famous music school. One of the teachers pointed us in the general direction, but we let the faint sounds of music guide us. The school was near the cemetery.

We parked beside a water tank. A sign hung on the front of the tank. It translated water into Spanish and English, as well as Mixe, Zapateco, Mixteco and Chinaneco, the indigenous languages spoken at the school.

We went down a slope to the school and stepped into a pavilion where a group of boys, their backs turned to Zempoaltepetl, were playing instruments. The school supported two bands. While one was traveling and giving concerts, the second remained in residence, practicing and preparing to go on the road.

A woman was seated on a nearby bench. She was talking to several boys who were gathered around her. At our approach, she introduced herself to us as the manager, dismissed the boys and invited us to join her.

She was curious as to how we had learned about the school. A television program had been Octavio’s source of information. She turned to me. “Rarely are tourists interested in traveling so far to the school.”

We plied her with questions, which she patiently answered.

“The school only accepts indigenous students regardless of the language they speak. Government subsidies provide free lessons from grade school through high school; however, more aid is needed.

“Enrollment is at its height at the beginning of the year and decreases as the year progresses. Many students drop out in order to return home to help their families. None are made to feel ashamed. The school always welcomes them back; no questions are asked. The school knows that what they have learned will be put to good use in their communities, because no town or village is without a band to play at fiestas or funerals.”

We asked about the sign on the water tank. She called our attention to a sign outside a bathroom with translations of bathroom into the same languages as on the water tank. “Music is the common language among the students,” she said, “but we also teach linguistics. We emphasize cleanliness and good hygiene by selecting the words water and bathroom. The Spanish and English equivalents allow the students to recognize essential vocabulary when they are away from the school. It gives them confidence in unfamiliar surroundings.”

It was getting late. The manager stood up. She told us that we were free to walk around the grounds but not to enter the buildings. Our presence might disturb the students

The official who manned the Mayor's Office at the edge of town was vigilant when we exited. He hurried to the window when we drove by. The symbol of local authority, a rod with a thong threaded through it, was painted beside the window.

A delivery truck blocked the road. We waited while the driver unloaded crates of soda and carried them into a rustic shop and loaded crates of empties. After, it was straight down to the bottom until the road curved to the left. At the bend of the road was a white-washed chapel dedicated to St. Cecilia. If the car’s brakes had failed, we would have driven through its door.

“Virgen de Santa Cecelia,” announced black letters over the Gothic arch of the chapel’s entrance. Inside, St. Cecilia had the limelight. She sat in profile on a piano bench with her hands poised on the piano keys. Two angels leaned out of the clouds above her head. The blue-toned print was framed in wood. Garlands of gold tinsel and ropes of blue tissue laced with blue, red, white and silver flowers and bows were draped over the corners of the frame and strung across the back wall. A blue G clef was attached to the wall.

“You see how popular St. Cecelia is,” said Octavio. “The people here are devoted to her. There are many musicians in this area, and they love music. It is their daily life.”

We picnicked on box lunches at an open-sided chapel on a turnoff from the road beyond Ayutla. Octavio slouched in the car and listened to Mexican music on the radio. I dragged one of the roughhewn benches to where I had an unobstructed view of the mountains. Before we left, we made sure that the area was clean of food and sandwich wrappings.

As we neared the City, thick smoke from forest fires billowed down the mountains and crept into the valley. A solitary figure, swathed in blue spirals, tended smoldering garbage and trash. The scene had the appearance of a wasteland besieged by forces beyond man's control.

I made a third trip to Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec four years later in 2002. We left the sleeping City behind. Dawn began to break as we drove through the valley. By the time we were in the mountains, the fiery sun shot up like a red hot cannon ball between two peaks. As its blazing rays pierced my heart, I felt myself dissolving and uniting with its powerful presence. I grounded myself and knew deep within why man has worshiped the sun since ancient times.

Arriving at the base of the road to Santa Maria, we looked up to see a steady stream of children and adults pouring from the top of the mountain, through the town and down to the valley to the new primary and secondary schools that the government had built. Children were playing basketball on the court between the schools.

There were significant changes in Santa Maria. The women and girls had adopted a new style of clothing. They had replaced their traditional dress with long white skirts trimmed around the bottom with rickrack in primary colors. The trim rose in sharp peaks and descended in steep troughs like the surrounding mountains or to symbolize Zempoaltepetl.

Adults and children now spoke Spanish. Children had lost their shyness in the presence of strangers. There were shops selling automobile parts and more comedors. An ambulance was parked at the edge of the plaza, and a small clinic was tucked between buildings. We only found clay pots and huraches in the artisans’ shop, but a new store sold modern jewelry, skirts for the women and girls and selected pieces of traditionally embroidered clothing and linens.

The music school was deserted; students were enrolled only on weekends, not during the week. The school’s sign on the water tank and bathroom had deteriorated. The Mayor's Office was gone. There were no offerings for the saints in the church. St. Cecilia's chapel was unkempt and needed a coat of white-wash.

But three things remained the same. Like most municipalities outside the City, Santa Maria refused to set its clocks ahead to daylight saving time. The murals still existed, and families continued to ascend Zempoaltepetl to perform their rituals in order to invoke the Condoy’s protection.

On that trip, we were able to examine the murals that had been hidden from view four years before. Along the upper arcade, the daily life of the Mixe unfolded before me.

A mother cradled a child in her rebozo, a man played instruments, the Condoy glared at me like a monster from a comic book,
and a petitioner on the sacred mountain held aloft a rooster prior to its sacrifice.

Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec wasn’t the only place that had changed. Ayutla had a medical clinic, automobile shops, gas for sale and a shop that repaired musical instruments. All had opened since our previous trip. There was even a convenience store. On the outskirts of Ayutla, a rough wooden structure had “Open 24 hours” painted in Spanish in tall white letters on the wall facing the road.

En route to Santa Maria that day, the early morning light had concealed the erosion of the mountains. On our return, we were able to see the scarred land. The indiscriminate cutting of trees had denuded the soil and exposed it to the rains, the sun and the wind. The trees had been felled to make way for new houses or to sell for timber. The land was damaged. I mourned the loss of the trees as the stripped terrain spread out around me. It was a painful end to the day.

I asked myself endless questions. “What is progress, who initiates it, who defines it and how do people adapt it to their needs and aspirations?” Back in the City, I entered the posada, climbed the steps to my room and closed the door without answers.

(1) The 16 indigenous groups in Oaxaca are: Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Mazatecos, Chinantecos, Mixes, Chatinos, Amuzgos, Chontales, Triques, Cuicatecos, Huaves, Tacuates, Zoques, Chochos, Ixcatecos and Populucas. www.oaxaca-travel.com (see Indigeneous Villages).

(2) I later learned that a malanga is a starchy tuber used in South American and African cooking. The tubers can be sliced, diced or mashed. The one I sampled tasted like a nut-flavored potato.

(3) I am the good Shepherd…” from John 10:11. The Bible. King James Version.

(4) http://www.daily-word-of-life.com/ol-guadalupe.htm (see Our Lady of Guadalupe’s womb).

(5) Cecelia is the Spanish spelling.

(6) Anima sola or the lonely soul traditionally is a red-haired woman bound with chains in the midst of the flames of Purgatory. For a photograph of the two traditional anima solas see Flickr: Photos from Sandunga, page 6 at http://flickr.com/photos/lunamorena.

(7) Retablo: a gilded and/or painted altar screen, usually carved and embellished with paintings and statues of saints and members of the Holy Family.

(8) Trilling, Susanna.Seasons of My Heart. Ballentine Publishing Co., NY. 1999, pp. 136-137.

Saint Cecilia. Part I

2007-12-13T18:40:00.000-05:00

We first met St. Cecilia in 1996. We didn't know her name, but we fell in love with her and promised ourselves that we would find out who she was.

We were headed to Ayutla. We had started early when the City was still and shadowed. It would be a long day. At last we were well on our way, driving over a dirt road, passing through hamlets. The road began to climb in hairpin turns. Spectacular views of pine-forested mountains surrounded us.

It was the end of September and the end of the rainy season. The predominant color of the landscape was green, a sharp contrast to the browns of the arid dry season. Cornfields crowded the deep valleys; plots the size of postage stamps were glued against the steep mountains. Birds called. Butterflies hovered in the fresh air. Fields of tall grass spiked with pink spread into pale pink rippling oceans, which swelled and rolled in the wind. An atmosphere of well-being enveloped the land.

We rounded a sharp curve, and I motioned to Octavio. “Stop. Look at the waterfall!” It plummeted over the edge of a cliff and down the mountain into a small basin. From the basin, the water disappeared under the road and emerged on the opposite side to fall straight into a valley.

Blue butterflies swirled over the surface of the basin’s crystal clear water. They repeatedly lighted on our arms and shoulders, rested and then flew off. We thrust our hands into the roiling water in the center of the basin. “Don't put your hands in stagnant water. Find water that is stirred up or running,” warned Octavio. A stone marked like a tortoise shell lay on the bottom. It was just out of reach. I left it. Ayutla beckoned.

“To Ayutla,” was our slogan. “Ayutla!” we exclaimed whenever we saw a sign pointing in that direction. “Ayutla!” Our excitement lasted throughout the day and throughout the week.

“Is that Ayutla?” we asked a little boy who was trudging along the dirt road. “Are those buildings and church, Ayutla?” we asked again, pointing to the side of a distant mountain. He was the only person we had seen for many miles. “And how far is it to Zacatepec?” He had never been to Zacatepec, but he had heard it was a day's walk from Ayutla. We left him staring at us, kicking a stone with a bare foot.
My goal was Zacatepec. I wanted to see Zempoaltepetl, the sacred mountain of the Mixe who are one of the 16 indigenous tribes in Oaxaca with its own language(1). Octavio was less enthusiastic. In an attempt to dissuade me, he told exaggerated tales about the snakes that lived in Zacatepec; according to him, its medical clinic specialized in treating snake bites.

We entered Ayutla and parked near the plaza. Clusters of men and women stood talking. The soft, musical syllables of the Mixe language floated through the air, rising and dispersing with the breezes like the butterflies at the pool.

We passed shops displaying toys, fabrics and paper goods. A row of women, their heads covered with a rebozo (a woven rectangle of varying lengths) sat on the ground, selling fruits and vegetables neatly stacked in front of them. We bought bananas and mameys. Our mameys had salmon pink pulp and a dark brown, almost black, pit.

We stepped onto a mirador (a look out). Directly below was the lower level of the town, beyond it a valley and on the far side of the valley, mountains wrapped by the thread of the road we had traveled. We addressed a man who was waiting for transportation to the City. He understood and spoke enough Spanish to tell us that Zacatepec was a six-hour walk from the very spot he stood on. He jabbed his finger at the floor of the mirador and held up six fingers while he marched in place to compensate for his lack of fluency.

Leaving the mirador, we descended steps to the lower town. Facing us was a basketball court. To the right, a school. To our immediate right, the market that occupied the basement of the white-washed municipal building. Monday was not the town’s official market day so only a few women offered a meager supply of vegetables and dried fish. Vibrant pink and yellow table clothes added color to an otherwise dark interior. It was a gloomy place; only a few rays of sunlight penetrated through the open doors.

We strolled left by more shops and climbed a flight of stairs to the town's upper level. By then it was bathroom time, and Octavio located the public toilets. As I entered the damas, a man came out. Octavio noticed my bewilderment. “Toilets are toilets,” he chuckled.

Octavio was interested in the cut of the men’s hair, short over the ears, and by their sandals called huraches. Styles were different than in the City. He laughed, “We will return, only on the next trip I will disguise myself as a Mixe. I will cut my hair and wear huraches.

Uncertain what to do, we selected a table covered with plaid oil cloth at one of the small eating places called comedors and ordered beers. This was a momentous occasion. We had talked so long about visiting the Mixe that we were stunned to be living our dream. We sat in companionable silence nursing the beers and soaking up the atmosphere.

Perhaps the woman who ran the comedor knew how long it would take to drive to Zacatepec. We asked when we paid the bill. “Ah, Zacatepec. I have never been there. I hear it’s another three to four hours' drive. Take the dirt road out of town. The rains have stopped. You should be able to get through.”

We crossed to the church. Scaffolding covered the exterior; sheets of plastic draped the interior. Tall statues with plain faces occupied a side chapel. The Holy Family was a loving nuclear family. The parents gazed with adoration at their beloved Child, the delicate modeling and coloring of their faces giving them an ineffably sweet expression.

Mary was dressed in a white gown trimmed with gold around the hem. A necklace of gold beads circled her neck. A cloak of the palest blue, bound in silver, wrapped her shoulders. A wide-brimmed straw hat, edged with pink, was tied under her chin with a ribbon the color of her cloak. She held two straw baskets.

The Baby's dress was all white: white fabric, white embroidery and white lace. An airy silver crown, studded with blue and white balls, topped a white straw hat with an upturned brim. His hands were full, not with the problems of the world, but with a straw bell with a gold clapper, an orange ball on a string and a white Christmas ball decorated with a band of gold. Play time for the Holy Child!

Joseph wore white. A gold rope belt ending in gold tassels surrounded his waist. His cloak was of umber velvet. Tiny black pompoms bordered the rim of his straw hat. He carried a painted gourd in one hand and in the other, two clay pots.

And there she was behind glass. A print of a lady who had a porcelain complexion and black hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck. She looked like a Victorian china doll. Her formal gown was designed with a mauve top and a reddish purple skirt. She sat in profile on a piano bench, her hands on the piano keys, ready to begin a concert. Candles burned before her, the reflection of their flickering flames dancing in the glass.

A woman appeared beside us. Her rebozo was turquoise blue with red stripes. One long end trailed down her back. “Who is she?” we inquired. She leaned forward and peered at the picture. Then she laughed and answered in Mixe.

We stepped out into the blinding sunlight of the small plaza in front of the church. It was empty except for two vendors. One enterprising woman sold fresh fruits attractively presented on a wooden table under a white cloth rectangle. It had been staked at each end and in the center so that it formed a modified tent to shelter her from the sun. Her scarlet rebozo was a brilliant contrast to the white awning. The other woman had stationed herself nearby. She also was selling produce, but hers was a more modest presentation arranged on a crate. Her protection from the sun was a white rebozo patterned with narrow bands of orange, red, blue, green and purple. Its entire length was folded on top of her head.

“If only we spoke Mixe!” I lamented. “We could find out what that complex is that looks like a motel. Look at the plateau it sits on! Let's check it out!” We found the road but chose the wrong turn. We winced as sharp ledges scraped and clanked against the bottom of the car. Turkeys fled into the shrubbery. And two little boys thought that it was hilarious that we met them everywhere we went.

Octavio backed up the steep incline and took the other fork. Deep potholes tested our stomachs until the car came to rest with a loud groan on the plateau. Inch-by-inch, Octavio examined the car. Even the engine received a methodical inspection before he closed the hood and stood with folded arms and a satisfied smile. Only after he was certain that the car was undamaged and would deliver us safely to the City did he feel free to admire the magnificent vistas.

“Holas,” roused the caretakers, a young couple who emerged from a room on the second floor rubbing their eyes and yawning. “This is a Catholic retreat center,” they told us. It had been built in a perfect location, isolated and in the midst of dramatic scenery, an ideal place for anyone seeking a temporary refuge from the concerns of daily life. The L-shaped, white building had blood-red trim around its doors and windows. Along the front walls were chunky clay pots of red geraniums alternating with globular clay planters of red Christmas cacti.

Massive thunderheads were gathering. It was best to leave the mountains before the storm broke. We made a quick stop to eat our fruit and wash our sticky faces and hands in the fast-moving water of a stream. Like children, we twirled our fingers in the cool, dancing water while dragonflies flew around us.

We returned to Ayutla in the spring of 1997. Things had changed in six months. The waterfall of last year was a trickle. Locusts whined like a futuristic machine from outer space. Octavio stopped the car, and we got out. High in the mountains, we stood in the clear air, bathed by their otherworldly sound.

Another change. On the outskirts of Ayutla, a billboard advertised Superior, a brand of Mexican beer. Only one word, “Superior”, big, bold and succinct. No missing it.

As before, we parked near the plaza. A man approached and followed us. He plucked at our sleeves and muttered, “Malanga.” From his smattering of Spanish, we learned that a malanga looked like a potato and should be eaten with brown sugar(2). He insisted that we had to go with him if we wanted to buy it.

“No gracias.” We politely declined his offer.

The scaffolding had been removed from the church to reveal the lantern dome. It had been painted red with sky blue ribs. The townspeople must have known what a striking color scheme that would be against a cloudless, blue Ayutla sky.

Buenas dias, Señora.” There she was, our nameless lady. Banks of candles burned before her portrait. A woman tiptoed into the side chapel after us and spoke to me in Mixe. She trilled like a bird. She watched me photograph the statues. I said a few Spanish words to her, but she did not understand.

At the edge of town, giant fuschias bloomed beside houses. A dog slept in the middle of the road. Octavio, always ready to do a good deed, unsuccessfully tried to rouse it. He bent over and pulled it to the side. Awake, the dog gazed up at him with affection. Octavio has a winning way with dogs. His mother believed it was important to be kind to them, because a dog ferries the dead across a river to the mountains of the Underworld.

We drove from Ayutla to Tamazulapan, another step on the way to Zacatepec. Beyond Tamazulapan, road crews were widening and improving the red dirt road through to Zacatepec. “Zacatepec is about two hours away, and the roads are good, thanks to us,” one of the foremen bragged. Giant earth-moving equipment crawled back and forth across the slopes of the mountains. From the road, they looked like tiny ants or caterpillars. Their earth, rock and clay tones camouflaged them so that they seamlessly blended into the landscape.

Emboldened by the foreman's announcement, we decided to try to reach Zacatepec. Impossible. A landslide blocked the road. It had just happened, because only a few trucks were on either side of the debris. It would take hours to clear the road, even with the men and equipment working several miles behind us. We faced reality, backed up and headed home.

The truck drivers who used that road were aggressive. It was who could muscle in first who got the right of way. The size of the truck had a lot to do with the outcome, but a bull dog approach helped even a small vehicle.

We watched two trucks, one smaller than the other, face off. The driver of the smaller truck backed up until he could pull off the road to make room for the larger truck to pass. The driver of the larger truck placidly watched and waited in his truck's cabin. Without warning, his manners kicked in, and he began to back up until he could pull off the road. With a diplomatic wave of his hand, he beckoned the smaller truck to pass.

To be continued...

A Sampler of Oaxacan Life

2007-12-11T10:41:00.000-05:00

Flying into the airport outside of the City, I expected to see Guadalupe nestled in the cumulus clouds that towered in the pink sky. Below, the gathering dusk shaded the mountains blue-gray. By the time we landed, the sun had set behind the mountains. A red glare emanated from a peak as if it were about to explode in a volcanic eruption.

At 7 a.m. the posada (bed and breakfast) began to awaken with squeaks, whispers and quiet footsteps. Birds sang in the patios. Palm fronds shaped like rakes fanned the guests while they waited for breakfast. By mid-morning, clouds were lifting from the mountains encircling the City. A hummingbird jabbed hibiscus blossoms on the rooftop.

Each town or village has a special day of the week for its main market. The City is no exception. Its weekly market is on Saturday; however, two markets, the Juarez Market and the 20 de Noviembre Market, are open seven days a week.

Leaving the posada early one Saturday morning, I found myself in the midst of men, women and children. Everyone carried empty shopping bags, plastic bags or burlap sacks. Buses, overflowing with riders from outlying villages, lumbered through congested streets to the second class bus station opposite the market. Colectivos, shared taxis or minivans that charge a set fee, crawled to their stands near the bus station.

It was easy to get lost within the Saturday market. The multiple buildings, maze of corridors and indoor and outdoor stalls sprawled across a wide area. The variety of goods was endless. Watermelons, cilantro, pineapples, papayas, mangoes, sacks of dried beans, handmade furniture, leather goods. Fruits of enormous size and vivid color, chilies arranged on giant green leaves, baskets of freshly shelled peas and pieces of sugar cane. Cuts of meat ready to be cooked on hot braziers, chickens roasting on spits, live turkeys, flowers, baskets, candy, farm implements, sling shots, yoke for oxen, handicrafts, pinatas, ceramics, clothes and tools. Baskets of lime for soaking the corn used for making tortillas, green tomatillas, herbs, banana leaves for Oaxacan tamales and baskets of fried chapulines (grasshoppers).

The glass front of one of the market’s shrines mirrored the activity behind me. It was perfect for unobtrusively photographing the shoppers. I heard a low “psst”. Looking up, I saw the reflection of a man dressed in a white suit and white hat. He clutched a bag of small white objects. He pointed to his chest. I turned and rapidly calculated the exposure and distance. The shutter clicked. He turned away and melted into the crowd. I met him as I moved through the market, but he never acknowledged that he had posed for me.

Curanderos (healers) presided over deep bins brimming with roots, leaves and barks. They sold amulets to protect against the envious eye and charms for attracting love, luck or wealth. Backed by centuries of wisdom and with the authority of their respected role in the community, they dispensed advice and natural medicines.

Along the streets leading from the Saturday market to the Juarez market were undertakers, repair shops and shops selling CD’s and tapes. Music blared from the Oaxacan equivalent of a dollar store. Dentists displayed samples of dentures in showcases. Juice bars offered fruits and vegetables mixed into healthy, refreshing drinks. A flash of orange and a sidewalk cook held up a squash blossom before enfolding it with a tortilla. The smell of chocolate lingered in the air. People thronged the streets eyeing rolls of plastic and household items. They sampled cakes, layers of colored jell-o in plastic cups, cut-up fruit and roasted corn on the cob.

Close by, a street drama was taking place. An elderly man in tattered clothes had slung innumerable sacks over his shoulder. He balanced himself with a precise placement of sticks and pieces of lumber. He teetered. The supports collapsed. He tumbled to the ground and sprawled on the sidewalk. The policemen who watched him fall retreated down the street.

A tall, pale man with gray hair rushed up and interrupted the scene. The American addressed me in halting, but distinctly articulated Spanish, “Senora donde esta la plaza?”

“Go in that direction,” I answered.

He departed muttering, “She’s from the States.”

The sky was turning orange; overhead were grisaille clouds, in the distance, thunderheads. The wind was blowing. Toy helicopters whirled and flew into the cathedral. Little boys dashed in after them.

The first figures I met when I entered the cathedral for mass were the saints etched into the glass panels of the main doors. The church was packed with worshippers. Many stood. Children clutched the strings of balloons. Outside in the plaza, Alameda de Leon, balloons in the shape of squid, fish, hot dogs, giant baby bottles and dinosaurs swayed and rocked. Their reflections danced in the glass that protected the religious pictures along the walls of the cathedral’s nave. A bird, hidden high up in the cathedral’s interior, joined its voice to the music. The sacred and profane united and soared upwards in praise, adoration and thanksgiving.

Heading back to the posada, I stopped to look in the windows of several bookstores. Parents and children, waiting to buy schoolbooks, queued on the sidewalk. I was curious as to what Oaxacans read: paperbacks by Deepak Chopra and Carlos Castaneda; books about natural diets, papaya diets and vegetarian diets; books about natural healing; novels; books about the care of dogs, especially German shepherds, which were popular as guard dogs. Posted on rooftops or in front yards, they prowled, growling and barking as they assessed every passerby.

Back at the posada, I sat in the outer patio. I wrote and read amidst the potted geraniums and the sound of splashing water from a fountain. The house was quiet, empty of the chatter of maids. The clear air, the right altitude (5,110 feet) to move about in made ideas and inner guidance come and go as if in a dream or a deep meditation. Thoughts flowed into actions. Harmony existed between my inner and outer worlds.

I left the posada to walk through the Alameda and watch the children, the twirling merry-go-round and the carnival rides ablaze with lights and music. Little trucks and Disney characters tirelessly spun around. I ate a plate of tamales Oaxacan style and drank a limonada at one of the restaurants in the arcades in the zocalo (Plaza de Armas). A group of little boys, multicolored stripes painted on their faces, performed a tumbling act. Children begged for money or sodas. Street vendors urged diners to buy jewelry, carvings, weavings, embroidered blouses and bark paintings. A quiet “no gracias” was all that was needed. They rarely asked twice.

It was a beautiful, warm night with crisp stars, the moon wreathed by a bright halo and church bells ringing on the half hour. A perfect night for a hotel to host a birthday celebration for a vivacious woman who wore an elegant blue suit and matching accessories. People brought presents. A band played. The guests enthusiastically applauded each piece. At the end of the evening, everyone shouted, “Heep, heep, hooray!”

Early the next morning, several hours after midnight, I was startled out of a deep sleep by the sound of running water, unidentified scrapings, crashes and bangs, and the beam of what appeared to be an enormous flashlight waving in the air. It was the night desk clerk watering the plants on the balconies and patios.

Every day a hypnotic thread of music repeated itself over and over in the hotel. It became a background to my thoughts. It joined with the music of the City from the stores, the streets, the churches and the concerts. It wove itself into the fabric of daily life: the tap, tap, tap of a chisel as a stone mason patiently chipped blocks of stone under a canopy in the deserted atrium of a church; the swishes of the branches of the street sweepers’ brooms, which swung like pendulums across pavements; the buzzing of scissors being honed on a scissors grinder’s wheel attached to the front of his bicycle; the melodious bird song produced by a boy who whistled with his fingers in his mouth as he directed a water truck to back up a driveway. Doorbells rang, door knockers rapped, and latches creaked.

Wherever I went, sparkling black eyes and responsive smiles greeted me. Simple courtesies abounded. An elderly man, arms loaded with goods to sell at the market, stepped aside to let me by. “Pasa, pasa,” he repeated. I thanked him, and he awkwardly bowed.

My heart melted at a little girl with dark liquid eyes who lifted a red plastic bowl and begged, “pesos”. Her tired mother sat on the sidewalk on a square of cardboard with two smaller children. The two little ones laughed while they ate an apple. The mother opened her hand and whispered, “alms”.

And there was a grandmother who had sat on a stool just inside the door of the market selling tortillas. It was late afternoon, and she slowly shuffled out of the market. Instead of a cane or a walker, she leaned on two poles. A young woman escorted her to a taxi parked at the curb. The young woman lovingly helped her into the back seat before settling in beside her.

Cars, their hoods and trunks decorated with satin roses and peach satin rosettes or vases of flowers, waited outside churches for newlyweds. Women with a basket of carnations, roses or gladiolas on their head paced through the plaza in front of Santo Domingo Church. Black crepe paper draped over doorways reminded the living that death had visited.

A murmur of women’s voices rose and fell from deep within the interior of Santo Domingo Church. It was the hour of the Rosary. Suddenly a clear soprano voice exploded into song, rose and trailed off into silence.

The following day I revisited Santo Domingo and took a seat in the second row from the front. A woman entered and knelt on the opposite side. Her high, pure voice gushed upwards like a fountain. She arose and entered the Chapel of the Rosary where she knelt and lifted her ethereal voice to worship Our Lady.

I wanted to ask the sales clerk in the church’s gift shop if she knew the woman with the angelic voice. I began, “The woman who sings...” and stopped, because the clerk wore a black mantilla draped over her head and around her shoulders, and her eyes were filled with light. She was the woman! We shook hands, and I told her that her voice had moved me to tears.

Some months before my visit in 1996, a student or professor had been martyred at Benito Juarez University. People were commemorating his death with a symbolic funeral. A procession accompanied by brass bands wound its way through the streets. Muscular men carried 35 large easels upon which rested oval floral tributes of white flowers surrounded by greens.

The procession stopped in front of the University. An audience gathered. There were impassioned speeches. The marchers left for downtown where another protest was taking place. Hundreds peacefully marched with signs asking for “solutions of problems”. The two lines passed each other, moving in opposite directions along parallel streets.

In the zocalo, the police band performed while a police detail ceremoniously lowered the flag, folded it and marched in formation with it to the Governor’s Palace. The locals watched the tourists who angled for the best views to record on camcorder or camera.

Martial arts students demonstrated karate in Benito Juarez Park. A parade with horses, bands and costumed people from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec circled the zocalo. The women tossed avocados and paper flags into outstretched hands. From the zocalo, I went to the church of San Juan de los Dios and landed in the midst of a baptism of babies. An open-air concert by the Oaxaca Orchestra in the Alameda capped the afternoon.

At 4 p.m. on August 31, 1996 the blessing of the animals should have taken place at La Merced. It did, but I missed it. I missed it, because someone had scratched out the 3 from the 31 on the notice board. A parishioner said the ceremony had been canceled. Another assured me that it had been rescheduled for September 1. I arrived on September 1st at 4 p.m. in time for a funeral. “You are late,” one of the mourners said. “The blessing was yesterday.”

Several weeks before Independence Day on September 16, 1996, the sidewalks and open spaces looked like gardens planted with red, green and white flowers. The flowers were the Mexican flag; thousands of flags in all sizes fluttered and nodded in the breezes. At night the flags were uprooted to be replanted the following morning.

When I wanted to rest, I headed to the plaza adjacent to the atrium of the Basilica of Our Lady of Solitude where I would buy a tuna nieva (ice) from my favorite vendor. I would take it to a wrought iron table and chair and slowly let tiny spoonfuls of this salmon pink nieva made from the fruit of the prickly pear melt in my mouth.

It was April 1997. I went to the Hotel Rivera del Angel to take the public bus to Monte Alban. The bus was packed with tourists and locals. Occasionally the bus ground to a halt, and women and children climbed on board with necklaces to sell at Monte Alban. The bus driver left the door open, the bus hit a pothole, and a little boy who was standing beside the driver almost tumbled out.

We passed through pocket-size communities clinging to the mountainside. The houses were in various stages of construction on tiny terraced plots. The most ingenious methods and materials were used to defy gravity and provide the most house for the smallest area.

People were leaving church, catching up on local news under the lavender blossoms of jacaranda trees or climbing to their houses via steps tamped into the earth. The smells of grilling pollo (chicken) and conejo (rabbit) stirred hunger pains. My stomach growled.

Arriving at Monte Alban, I followed a trail that wound down the mountain. Birds and butterflies flew beside me. Cigarras, cicadas that supposedly predict rain, surrounded me with a continuous, supernatural, stereophonic concert.

Retracing my steps, I crossed the road and mounted the stairs to the entrance to the ruins. I climbed down to the plaza. Its spaciousness was overwhelming, and the views from that sacred mountain top that had been so painstakingly leveled and rebuilt with grand buildings, were inspiring. A rainbow arched over the City.

Everything was closed on the Aniversario Gran Revolucionario on November 20, 1998. Local school children, led by drum majorettes and followed by bands, paraded through the streets. They halted and circled in intricate formations. I had a front row seat; they passed by the entrance to the posada.

The sun, a giant ball of fire, sank in the west at the end of Hidalgo Street. Pedestrians stopped. Cameras appeared. Throaty notes drifted from the bandstand in the zocalo as the State band prepared for a concert. Streetlights, former gas lamps, cast a soft glow on the sidewalks and buildings. Shadows floated along the walls.

Beginnings

2007-12-10T11:57:00.001-05:00

I grew up in an eleven-room house built in the mid-1800’s, a house surrounded by fields, a pond, a brook, acres of woods and a stand of ancient soaring pines. The property sustained wild and cultivated flowers, birds, butterflies and moths and animals such as deer, raccoon and fox. The ecosystem contained a cranberry bog, blueberry bushes, grape vines, wild strawberries and fruit trees.

Heady fragrances, home-remedies and ingredients for recipes emerged from the brick-paved herb garden. Stonewalls, an antique sundial and old-fashioned roses climbing over white trellises were part of everyday life. No one could find me? Check my secret hiding places: lichen-covered logs, carpets of green velvet moss and tiny pools patrolled by damselflies and dragonflies.

The seasons circled. Winter came and went, marked by ice skating, toasted marshmallows, snow angels, ice igloos, snow shoeing, cross-country skiing and cold toes. Jewels sparkled when the sun’s rays danced on ice-coated tree branches.

Spring arrived with the flowering of pear, peach and apple trees. Opposite my bedroom window, sprays of crabapple blossoms foamed high above the second story. The intoxicating scent of Persian and common lilacs permeated the house and gardens.

Spring was the season when we paced the perimeter of the property, duplicating the ancient ritual of “beating the bounds”. Armed with sticks like our English predecessors, we noted which boundary markers needed straightening and which stonewalls required repair. It was a way to honor the land and to celebrate our good fortune in being its owners.

During summer afternoons, I practiced the piano. Neighbors walking by would stop to listen to the music of Bach and Mozart issuing from the open window of the music room. Birds accompanied my playing with their songs while they perched on boughs of the cedar tree that reached three stories high beside the window.

Summer meant picnics in the countryside, hikes to pick blueberries and huckleberries and excursions to a dam along the local river. I launched leaf boats into our brook and followed their course downstream. When I wanted to rest, I stretched out on an Indian blanket spread over Mother Earth, inhaled the smell of freshly mowed grass and watched cloud formations sail over me.

During steamy August days, neighbors took refuge under the lawn’s mighty trees. I was too busy giving tea parties for my dolls to pay the adults much attention. “There was a pink and blue tea cart with tea pot, creamer and sugar bowl. You silently poured cold tea into tiny pink teacups and saucers. Before serving each cup, you nodded and touched your heart.”

The dolls sat in a circle around me on the grass: Cassandra and Hector, the twins, and Andromeda, Artemis, Europa, Hepzibah, Penelope; Hebe, Rosebud and Jason. I loved them all, but Cassandra and Hector were my favorites. Cassandra was one of my family nicknames; it was said that I could foretell the future. And I longed for a brother. “Call him Hector,” I begged my parents.

Jason held a special place in the circle. I always served him first. There was no doubt in my mind that when I grew up I would sail with the Argonauts and be by Jason’s side when he discovered the Golden Fleece.

Autumn was the time to scuff through dried leaves before we raked them into piles at the edge of the road. The acrid smell of burning leaves was a signal that colder, crisper weather was approaching. The wispy tendrils of smoke that rose and circled above the cones made the mounds look like miniature, active volcanoes.

Every room in the old house had a distinct atmosphere. My favorites were the dining room and the library. Both were hushed and serene cocoons in which sounds from inside and outside the house were muffled and muted. They were spaces for meditating and dreaming.

Another beloved spot was the hayloft. The view to the back was of the woods, lawns, gardens and pond.

To the front, I could follow the course of the lively brook, watch the ancient elms along the road or monitor the forsythia bush, which was large enough to conceal a small child. I reclined against scratchy bales of hay, wrote in my diary and composed tunes for family birthdays. I wrote plays for the neighborhood children that I later staged on a granite ledge behind the pond. The scenery was the forest, and in late spring the audience sat on cushions of lilies-of-the-valley.

My mother was dark and mysterious. She was Mother and Friend, but it wasn’t until much later that I realized she was my first Teacher. She was a magnet for the neighborhood children and young people who needed someone to help them with their lessons, someone to have fun with and someone to whom they could confide their deepest fears. She moved about the house assuredly and calmly or wove herself into the community, collecting for charities and visiting the sick and elderly. Guided by her example, I shone in my own circle, teaching reading and mathematics to slow learners in the lower grades, providing leadership to youth organizations and harmonizing with the network of relationships that bound the community together.

I inherited my mother’s laugh and my father’s looks; however, laughing did not come easily. I found the family’s situational humor puzzling and stared with solemn blue eyes at that noise they called “laughter”. How I wished someone would explain what it meant! Even Santa Claus kept forgetting to bring me the ability to see the funny side of life. And then one memorable day, the unexpected happened; I was baptized with a sense of humor.

My parents told me that when it was warm, and the moon was full, I would slip out the back door in my long, white, lace-trimmed nightdress and head for the lawn beneath the crabapple tree. Believing that no one could see me, I would dance to the moon. “It was a goddess dance,” they said, “bending, bowing and stretching your arms up in supplication to the moon.” Still thinking myself invisible, I would tiptoe back into the house and resume my place in the kitchen until bedtime.

My mental landscape was of the ocean, boats, fog and the aurora borealis. The sounds of the foghorn and creaking masts. But my dream landscape was of the high mountains and plateaus of the Himalayas, lamas in saffron robes, prayer wheels and the piercing bass notes of eight-foot long trumpets, images gleaned from my mother’s collection of books about Tibet. How I longed to penetrate that distant land! To experience it first-hand, not from an author’s description.

There were portents of things to come. Sign posts to point the way on a road that I never realized I was traveling. In a department store in Lisbon, Portugal, I saw a deep blue bowl, the perfect size for a family salad. I accidentally hit the rim, and a beautiful ringing tone filled the store. I listened, entranced. I bought it and sounded it until I discovered Tibetan singing bowls.

And there were the Alps! My heart leapt at the snow-covered heights, the solitary trails, mountain hamlets and the all-encompassing silence broken only by a distant cowbell or a thundering avalanche. The juxtaposition of blue sky and white snow and ice thrilled me. I was content to spend hours watching and listening to the mountains.

And then I knocked on the heart of Oaxaca.

My first encounter with Oaxaca resulted from reading about its markets, supposedly the most varied and colorful in all Mexico. I had to see them. Markets were a favorite of mine. So was folk art. And I loved Mexico.

Soon after I arrived in the City, I bought a package of chocolate bread. Back in my room, I greedily tore open the cellophane covering and took a bite of the bread. As I swallowed it, I knew I would be sick. I translated the first ingredient, “uncooked egg yolk.” Within minutes, I was in bed. I had just enough strength to pop pills into my mouth, place the medicine bottle on the nightstand to my left and a photograph of Our Lady of Solitude, the Patroness of Oaxaca, on the table to my right.

I closed my eyes and succumbed to a violent headache, stomach pains and intense pounding in my ears and eyes; distress coursed through my body. My stomach refused food, but my senses fed on the contents of the City’s markets: produce, bread, chocolate, meats and fish. Recovery was slow. By the third day, I sat in an armchair by the window, basking in the sun and sampling the blandest food that the hotel’s chef could cook.

Later in the week, I booked a tour to the ruins of Monte Alban, which crown a mountain outside the City. Up, up went the van. The higher it went, the more light-headed I felt. Arriving at the ruins, I was dizzy and had to sit on a stone block at one end of the vast plaza. I looked around in a daze. The guide said that the altitude was affecting me because I had been sick. So, no sudden movements. Only snail-like ones. No gazing up into the sun, no climbing the pyramids nor descending the stone steps into the ball court. Just resting or taking a few steps while I waited for the tour to end.

Before returning to Boston, I entered the richly gilded and painted interior of Santo Domingo Church as the streaming rays of the setting sun poured through the west door. Molten gold exploded from the main altar and burst into a yellow radiance, which filled the nave. Stunned by the magnificence of the light that enveloped me, I vowed to return to Oaxaca. My heartfelt intention melted into the extraordinary blaze that transfigured all that it touched. It took years to fulfill that vow. But I did return. I returned again and again, drawn as if by a spell, enchanted by the web Oaxaca wove around me.

Introduction

2007-12-09T10:46:00.000-05:00

These postings describe a series of trips through the State of Oaxaca, Mexico from 1996-2002. Visits to curanderos, a sacred well, and a boulder that only could be tipped with one's thumb are some of the highlights.

I thank the members of my family who set aside their personal concerns in order to encourage me to become a citizen of the world so that I might learn that we are all one in spirit.

I am blessed with many friends and acquaintances who endlessly listened to my experiences in Oaxaca and who supported the writing of this book. Many of them read and critiqued paragraphs and chapters.

My appreciation goes to the Turismo el Convento de Oaxaca in the City of Oaxaca for facilitating opportunities to gather some of the material included in these chapters.

I extend my thanks to my guides and drivers without whom this book never could have been written. I have called all of them Octavio; however, my deepest appreciation goes to Antonio Zarate. Antonio never tired of driving me around the State of Oaxaca and never complained whenever I wanted to stop at an interesting location. He diligently discovered new places to visit and enlivened them with well-researched information. His superb driving skills, his humor and his absolute trustworthiness made traveling with him safe, delightful and memorable. To meet him, visit his website at www.oaxacaguideservice.com (e-mail: zarate_antonio@hotmail.com).

I salute the people in the State of Oaxaca. They welcomed me with a feeling of community and embraced me with an abundance of spirit, thereby revealing to me the way of the heart. I have changed some of their names in order to protect their privacy and to preserve their dignity, just as I have disguised the names of several of the towns and villages I write about.

Oaxaca de Juarez is the capital of the State of Oaxaca. In order to distinguish between the two Oaxacas, I refer to the State of Oaxaca as Oaxaca and its capital as the City.

Santo Domingo Church deserves the highest praise. For me, it is a living presence. It is where I first conceived the idea of writing about my experiences and where I offer prayers for guidance and listen for direction whenever I am in the City of Oaxaca.