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Oaxaca

The Valley of Oaxaca is really three valleys, which diverge, like the thumb, index finger, and middle finger of a hand, from a single strategic point. Aztec conquerors called that spot Huaxyacac (yoo-AHSH-yah-kahk, "Point of the Calabash") Hill for a forest of gourd-bearing trees, which once carpeted its slopes. The Spanish, who founded the city at the foot of the hill, shifted that name to the more-pronounceable Oaxaca.

The people of the Valley of Oaxaca, walled by mountains from the rest of Mexico, both benefit and suffer from their long isolation. They are poor but proud inheritors of rich traditions that live on despite 300 years of Spanish occupation. Sixteen languages, in hundreds of dialects, are spoken within the state.

A large proportion of Oaxacans are pure Indian, significant numbers speaking no Spanish at all. In the country, people mostly speak the Zapotec or Mixtec languages. They harvest corn for tortillas and maguey for pulque and aguardiente (fire water). They spin wool, hoe vegetables, then go to market and sit beside their piles of blankets and mounds of onions, wondering if their luck is going to change.

HISTORY

Before Columbus

Evidence of human prehistory litters the riverbottoms and hillsides of the Valley of Oaxaca. Cave remains not far from the ancient city-state of Mitla tell of hunters who lived there as long as 8,000 years ago. Several thousand years later, their descendants, heavily influenced by the mysterious Olmecs of the Gulf coast, were carving gods and glyphs on stone monuments in the Valley of Oaxaca. Around 600 B.C., people speaking a Zapotec mother tongue, similarly influenced by the Olmecs, founded Monte Albán on a mountaintop above the present city of Oaxaca.

Monte Albán ruled the Valley of Oaxaca for more than a millennium, climaxing as a sophisticated metropolis of perhaps 40,000, controlling a large and populous area of southern Mexico and enjoying diplomatic and trade relations with distant kingdoms. For reasons unknown, Mixtec-speaking people later took over Monte Albán, using it mostly as a burial ground. Their chiefs divided up the Valley of Oaxaca and ruled from separate feudalistic city-states, such as Mitla, Yagul, Matatlán, and Zaachila, for hundreds of years.

The Mixtecs in turn gave way to the Aztecs, whose invading warriors crossed the mountains and threatened Oaxaca during the 1450s. In 1486 the Aztecs established a fort on the hill of Huaxyacac (now called El Fortín), overlooking the present city of Oaxaca, ruling their restive Zapotec and Mixtec subjects for barely a generation. On 21 November 1521, conquistador Francisco de Orozco and his soldiers replaced them on the hill of Huaxyacac scarcely four months after the Spanish tide had flooded the Aztecs' Valley of Mexico homeland.

Conquest and Colonization

Spanish settlers began arriving soon after the conquistadores. At the foot of the hill of Huaxyacac, they laid out their town, which they christened Antequera after the old Spanish Roman city. Soon, the settlers came into conflict with Cortés, whom the king had named marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca, and whose entire valley domain surrounded the town. Townspeople had to petition the queen of Spain for land on which to grow vegetables: they were granted a one-league square in 1532.

For hundreds of years, Cortés's descendants reigned, the church grew fat, the colonists prospered, and the Indians toiled--in cane and corn, in cattle pastures and silk mulberry groves.

Independence, Reform, and Revolution

In contrast to its neighbors in the state of Guerrero, conservative Antequera was a minor and grudging player in the War of Independence (1810-21). But as the insurgente tide swept the country, local nationalist fervor switched the city's name back to the original Mexican Oaxaca.

By the 1850s, times had changed. Oaxacans were leading a new national struggle. Benito Juárez, a pure Zapotec Indian, was rallying liberal forces in the civil War of the Reform against the oligarchy that had replaced colonial rule. Born in Guelatao, northeast of the valley, Juárez at age 12 was an orphan sheepherder. A Catholic priest, struck by the boy's intelligence, brought him to the city as a servant and taught him Spanish in preparation for the priesthood.

Instead, Benito became a lawyer. He hung out his shingle in Oaxaca, first as a defender of the poor, then state legislator, governor, chief justice, and finally the president of Mexico. In his honor, the city's official name was again changed--to Oaxaca de Juárez--in 1872.

In 1861, after winning the three-year civil war, Juárez's Reformista forces had their victory snatched away. France, taking advantage of the United States's preoccupation with its own civil war, invaded Mexico and installed an Austrian Hapsburg prince as Emperor Maximilian of Mexico.

It took Juárez five years to prevail against Maximilian and his conservative Mexican backers. Although Maximilian and Juárez paradoxically shared many of the same liberal ideas, Juárez had Maximilian executed after his defeat and capture in 1867. Juárez bathed Mexico in enlightenment as he promulgated his "Laws of the Reform" (which remain essentially in force). Although the country rewarded him with reelection, he died of exhaustion in 1871.

Another Oaxacan of Indian-descent, General Porfirio Díaz, vowed to carry Juárez's banner. Díaz, the hero who defeated the French in the battle of Puebla on "Cinco de Mayo" (5 May) of 1862, was elected president in 1876. "No Reeleción" was his campaign cry. He subsequently ruled Mexico for 34 years.

Under Diaz's "Order and Progress," Mexico was modernized at great human cost. As railroads, factories, and mines mushroomed, property ownership increasingly became concentrated among rich Mexicans and their foreign friends. Smashed protest marches, murdered opposition leaders, and rigged elections returned Díaz to office time and again.

But not forever. The revolt that ousted Díaz in 1910 has, in theory, never ceased. Now, the PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, presides over a uniquely imperfect Mexican form of democracy. Under three generations of PRI rule, Oaxaca Indians' lives have improved gradually. Although Indian families now go to government health centers and more of their children attend government rural schools, the price for doing so is to become less Indian and more Mexican.

CITY SIGHTS

A Walk around Town

The venerable restored downtown buildings, and the streets, some converted to traffic-free malls, make a delightful strolling ground for discovering traditional Mexico at its best. The zócalo itself sometimes seems to be a place of slow, leisurely motion, perfect for sitting at one of many sidewalk cafes and watching the world float by. Officially Jardín Juárez, the zócalo was laid out in 1529. Its portals, clockwise from the west side, are named Flores, Clavería, Juárez, and Mercaderes.

Prominent off the zócalo's north side is the cathedral that replaced the 1550 original, demolished by an earthquake in 1696. Finished in 1733, the present cathedral is distinguished by its Greek marble main altar, where a polished Italian bronze Virgin of the Ascension presides piously over the faithful.

Continue behind the cathedral north along the tranquil Andador de Macedonio Alcalá pedestrian mall, named after the composer of the Oaxacan hymn "Dios Nunca Muere" ("God Never Dies"). Paved with Oaxaca green stone in 1985 and freed of auto traffic, the mall connects the zócalo with a number of distinguished Oaxaca monuments.

Among them is the Teatro Alcalá, at 900 Independencia, tel. (951) 629-69 (from the back of the cathedral head right one block along Independencia). Christened by a 1909 opening performance of Aida, the Alcalá houses a treasury of Romantic-era art. Above the foyer, a sumptuous marble staircase rises to a bas-relief medallion allegorizing the triumph of art. There is a gallery of the paintings of Miguel Cabrera (1695-1768), a Zapotec Indian who rose to become New Spain's renowned baroque painter. Open 1000-1400 and 1600-2000.

Detour right again at Murguia one block to the Ex-Convento de Santa Catalina, the second-oldest convent in New Spain, founded in 1576. Although the quarters of the first initiates were spare, the convent grew into a sprawling chapel and cloister complex decorated by fountains and flower-strewn gardens. Juárez's reforms drove the sisters out in 1862; the building has since served as city hall, school, and movie theater. Now, it stands beautifully restored as the Hotel Camino Real. Note the native-motif original murals.

Return to the mall and continue another block to Oaxaca's pride, the Templo and Ex-Convento de Santo Domingo. Begun in 1531 by Dominican friars, the church sank to the status of a mere stable during the 1860s' anticlerical War of Reform; restoration began in the 1950s. Inside, Santo Domingo glows with a wealth of art. Above the antechamber spreads the entire genealogical tree of Saint Dominic, starting with Mother Mary and weaving through a score of noblemen and women to the saint himself over the front door. Inside, the soaring, Sistine Chapel-like nave glitters with saints, cherubs, and Bible-story paintings. The altar climaxes in a host of cherished symbols--the Last Supper, sheaves of grain, loaves and fishes, Jesus and Peter on the Sea of Galilee--in a riot of gold leaf.

Next door, the Museo Regional de Oaxaca, tel. (951) 629-91, occupies the restored ex-convent. Upstairs rooms exhibit major artifacts, including the turquoise skull and the solid gold masks recovered from Monte Albán Tomb 7. Open daily 1000-1800.

Head west one block along Carranza to 609 Garcia Vigil and the Casa de Juárez museum, showcasing the documents and personal effects of Benito Juárez in the house where he lived with his benefactor, Padre Antonio Salanueva.

Sights West and South of the Zócalo

The Museo Arte Prehispánico de Rufino Tamayo, 503 Morelos, tel. (951) 647-50, two blocks west and north of the zócalo exhibits the brilliant pre-Columbian artifact collection of celebrated artist Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991). Displays include hosts of animal motifs--Colima dogs, parrots, ducks, snakes--whimsically crafted into polychrome vases, bowls, and urns. Open Monday and Wed.-Sat. 1000-1400 and 1600-1900, Sunday 1000-1500.

Continue three blocks west, past the University of Oaxaca School of Fine Arts and the airy Plaza of Dances, to the baroque Basilica de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad. Inside, the Virgin of Solitude, the patron of Oaxaca, stands atop the altar with her five-pound solid golden crown, encrusted with 600 diamonds.

Step into the Museo Religioso, tel. (951) 675-66, at the downhill side of the church, rear end. A host of objects of adornment--shells, paintings, jewelry--crowd cabinets, shelves, and aisles of musty rooms. Large stained-glass panels tell of the images of Jesus and the Virgin that arrived miraculously in 1620, eventually becoming Oaxaca's patron symbols. Open Mon.-Sat. 0900-1400, 1600-1900, Sunday 0900-1400.

The traditional Juárez Market occupies the one-block square that begins just one block south of the zócalo. Stroll around there for fun and perhaps a bargain in the honeycomb of traditional leather, textile, and clothing stalls.

Fiestas

There seems to be a festival somewhere in the Valley of Oaxaca every week of the year. Oaxaca's wide ethnic diversity explains much of the celebrating--each group celebrates its own traditions.

All of this ethnic ferment focuses in the city during the July Lunes de Cerro festival. Known in pre-Hispanic times as the Guelaguetza (gay-lah-GAY-tzah, "Offering"), tribes reunited for rituals and dancing in honor of Centeotl, the god of corn. The ceremonies, which climaxed with the sacrifice of a virgin who had been fed hallucinogenic mushrooms, were changed to tamer mixed Christian-Indian rites by the Catholic Church. Lilies replaced marigolds, the flower of death, and saints sat in for the Indian gods.

Now, for the weeks around the two Mondays following 16 July, the Virgin of Carmen day, Oaxaca is awash with Indians in costume from all seven traditional regions of Oaxaca. The festivities, including a crafts and agricultural fair, climax with dances and ceremonies at the Guelaguetza auditorium on the Cerro del Fortín hill northwest of the city.

Note: If the first Monday after 16 July happens to fall on July 18, the anniversary of Juárez's death, the first Lunes del Cerro shifts to the following Monday, 25 July.

On the Sunday before the first Lunes del Cerro, Oaxacans celebrate their history and culture at the Plaza de Danzas adjacent to the Virgen de la Soledad church. Events include a big sound, light, and dance show and depictions in tableaux of the four periods of Oaxaca history.

Besides the usual national holidays, Oaxacans celebrate a number of other locally important fiestas. The first day of spring, 21 March, kicks off the Flower Games ("Juegos Florales"). Festivities go on for 10 days, including crowning of a festival queen at the Teatro de Alcalá, poetry contests, and performances by renowned artists and the National Symphony.

On the second Monday in October, residents of Santa María del Tule venerate their ancient tree in the Lunes del Tule festival. Locals in costume celebrate with rites, folk dances, and feats of horsemanship beneath the boughs of their beloved great cypress.

Oaxaca people venerate their patron, the Virgin of Solitude, 16-18 December. Festivities, which center on the Virgin's basilica (on Independencia six blocks west of the zócalo), include fireworks, dancing, food, and street processions of the faithful bearing the Virgin's gold-crowned image decked out in her fine silks and satins.

For the Fiesta of the Radishes ("Rábanos") on 23 December, celebrants fill the Oaxaca zócalo, admiring displays of plants, flowers, and figures crafted of large radishes. Ceremonies and prizes honor the most original designs. Foodstalls nearby serve traditional delicacies, including buñuelos (honey-soaked fried tortillas), plates of which are traditionally thrown into the air before the evening is over.

Oaxaca people culminate their Posada week on Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) with candle-lit processions from their parishes, accompanied by music, fireworks, and floats. They converge on the zócalo in time for a midnight cathedral Mass.

Shopping

Oaxaca is famous for handicrafts. Among them are huipiles, the most renowned from San Pedro de Amusgos; wool blankets, carpets, and serapes from Teotitlán del Valle; embroidered cotton "wedding dresses," originally from San Antonio, near Ocotlán; pottery--black from San Bartolo Coyotepec and green from Atzompa; carved animals from Arrazola; whimsical figurines by the Aguilar sisters of Ocotlán; mescal from Tlacolula, and masks. If you can't make it to the source villages, try the Juárez and Abastos markets or the sprinkling of tourist shops along the Alcalá street mall north of the zócalo.