Oaxacan Culture

We arranged an outing today to visit a few places along the valley east of the city. Our driver, Luis Luis Ruiz (apparently named in part after a Mexican film star his mother liked) informed us that one of our destinations, the Zapotec ruins near Mitla, were closed today, but instead we were able to visit the caves at Mitla dating back to an older civilization, perhaps the Olmecs. A local group bought 5000 ha that include the cave area about 5 years ago and it opened for tourism about 3 years ago. You have to have an official tour guide to visit and the loop along rocky paths takes about an hour. Some of the plants have signs in Zapotec and Spanish (but no Latin names). The guide was quite knowledgeable about local uses of plants. We visited 5 caves that apparently had different uses. Two had pictographs of a red ochre color, probably made with animal blood, iron oxide, and plant dyes. One also had pictographs made with a black coloration and one with white. The pictographs date back to 10,000 years or so. I was excited to learn that one in one of the caves were found some of the oldest bean and corn seeds ever discovered. Other caves had stone tools including metates for grinding and mixing. A few bats flew by in one cave and some caves had interesting mineral coatings on the rocks, our guide wasn’t sure what the minerals were. One cave had apparently been used for spiritual rituals and the guide pointed out a cave on the other side of the road that is still frequently used by the local people for offerings, purifications, and other rites.

Locally known as the mad woman plant because of its spinyness

A type of Plumeria

Coyote agave

Copal tree, the fragrant resin is used as incense and the wood is used to make alebrijes (wood carvings)

Accompanied by a local dog

Our guide pointing out a metate

Maybe a sun or a calendar?

Our second stop was in Teotitlan del Valle, a village known for its weavings. We stopped at the home and weaving studio of Nelson Perez and he gave us a wonderful demonstration of the whole process from cleaning and spinning wool to dying, to weaving. 

Nelson at his huge loom!

Items used to make dyes

 Finally we stopped in El Tule. We got a quick lunch at a local stand. I had a quesadilla with squash blossoms and the local quesilla (cheese like string cheese). Jake got a tlayuda, a large tortilla covered with refried black beans, meat and usually cheese (Jake omitted the cheese). The agua frescas of the day were hibiscus or guanabana (custard apple), and we went with the guanabana. After lunch we walked through a little park to see the giant tule tree, Taxodium mucronatum, apparently the tree with the biggest circumference in the world. It has survived over 2000 years. To be in its presence, our shoes and lower legs were sprayed with disinfectant despite that fact that there is a paved path around the entire tree. Masks were also required although I doubt they were worried about covid infecting the tree!

 Some possible corrections to yesterday’s post: the red flags may have been from a community about three hours away whose residents like to protest, and the students protesting are public university, not high school students. We’ll see what I learn tomorrow as to whether these stories hold up!