The Decorations are Coming Down

The Day of the Dead decorations are starting to come down, but I did spot this one today:


Oaxaca is also filled with beautiful churches, little museums and art galleries. If I’m reading the map correctly, there are also several art schools in town. I dropped by one little museum/gallery/school that had an amazing photography exhibit up – here’s the beautiful courtyard draped with papel picado banners:


And here are some of the pre-Hispanic (read: pre-Conquistador) sculptures collected by Oaxacan painter Rufino Tamayo at yet another little museum. These little dogs, crafted from clay to be used as jugs and storage containers, are incredibly cute.


Unfortunately, around the time these were made – in the centuries when BC was slipping into AD – these little dogs were being bred for, well, food. It gave their adorable plumpness a rather uncomfortable connotation. But I still wanted to pick one up and take him home.

In Which: I've also clearly got Baggage!

Since I got my luggage and had a nice outfit, I decided to go out last night. To a very nice restaurant, for a very intense chicken mole negro – mole sauce is made from chocolate, chiles, peanuts, and a host of other secret ingredients. It’s tasty, though perhaps not quite to my taste, and well, not very well aligned with the comfort of my digestion. It is a famous local dish, though, so I wanted to be sure and try it.

Travel is an odd thing. It forces me to stretch my boundaries, try new things, struggle with a foreign tongue, and have new – and often uncomfortable – experiences. At the same time, I find that I snap quite firmly back into my most comfortable and reliable habits, those things that make me feel most safe and normal. For example, one of the first places I found here in Oaxaca was the English-language lending library. Such institutions are frequently found in arty, temperate, ex-pat filled towns like Ubud in Bali and, apparently, Oaxaca here in Mexico. Counting the plane trip, I’ve gone through at least five novels, and turned down several polite offers to join other travelers at dinner, preferring to sit alone and read. I am an introvert at heart, and it just feels easier to sit alone and eat really good food and read than to try and make conversation and find common ground with complete strangers – even if they do speak English.

I’ve also found a really good Italian restaurant and eaten pizza – the same pizza, a small one with mushrooms, pepperoni and ham – for at least three meals. Even though eating pizza generally gives me sort of a cheese/wheat hang-over headache and makes me so tired that I sleep 12 hours. It’s still comfort food. And I seem to want to (need to?) sleep a lot, even though the bed is very tiny and you could break rocks on the pillow. It seems I need a lot of “down time” when I’m so stimulated by all the amazing sights and sounds and colors . . . and occasionally even new tastes, like crickets and mole.

It also makes me want to laugh when I do venture out into the wonderful warmth and sun, encounter other human beings, (as I did earlier today) and something like the following happens. Which it invariably does.

I meet an older American couple wearing almost identical straw hats. We are all trying to visit the Botanical Gardens, but a guard is standing just inside the open gates, wearing a gun, frowning and pointing to a sign (written in Spanish) and repeating several phrases, quickly and firmly and clearly without argument (also in Spanish). I’m starting to put the pieces together when the couple says to me, “You have to have a guide to enter, and the only English guides are on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“Oh.” I say. Cleverly.

“You have to visit the church, though,” she says. “It’s lovely.”

“I haven’t been inside the church yet,” I say, “It was closed when I tried to go. But I have heard that’s it’s wonderful. But the cultural museum next door is amazing – have you been?”

“No,” he says. “It looked closed. How do you get in?”

“Oh,” I say, “It’s closed on Mondays.”

“Well,” she says, “That explains that!”

“Will you be able to go tomorrow?” I say, thinking that that they have to say the exhibit with the almost life-size Day of the Dead-inspired drawings of skeletons in village scenes. I have been thinking of returning, just to get the book of illustrations from the exhibit.

“No, we leave for Puerto Escondido tomorrow.” She says, glancing at him, and he nods. “We only have a few days.”

“Oh, yes, the beach.” I say, “I’ve been thinking of going for a few days,” but I’m not sure if I’ll really have time to make the 10-14 hour round trip just to dip my toes in the ocean.

“Are you traveling alone, not with a group?” She asks, putting the pieces together, and looking at me in wonder.

“Yes,” I say, offering the fact that my boyfriend gets very little time off from work as a kind of explanation.

“Oh!” she exclaims, “You’re very brave!”

And I smile and laugh and wish them a good trip and secretly hope that I haven’t just given away the goods to a couple of very cleverly disguised con artists. I know how very unbrave I am, reading books alone at dinner and eating pizza.

In Which: I've got my Luggage!

I got my luggage! I got my luggage! Doin’ the luggage dance, yeah! Wearin’ my sandals and a skirt, yeah! Woot-woot!


Nothin’ like some hot coffee and a pastry to celebrate! Since I was no longer clad in grungy jeans, I also wanted to be sure and visit the church near my hotel, Santo Domingo (closed when I dropped by, but here's the outside):


So, instead, I wandered into the Cultural Museum next door, which used to be a refuge for Dominican monks. Here's the altar they have set up:


And here's an amazing view of the city and the countryside from one of the upstairs windows:



And here is the Pre-Hispanic Rat Diety:


Ok, I don't actually know if it's a Pre-Hispanic rat diety, but it was darn amusing. I actually wondered briefly if it was some sort of ancient mouse trap . . . And just so you know I'm not going completely nuts, here's a slightly more traditional Pre-Conquest sculpture:


Of course, the most amazing thing I saw, I didn't get any photos of. It was a Day of the Dead installation by a living artist (who would probably frown on the whole photo thing, especially since they're selling a folio of the drawings in the gift store.) Huge drawings. Amazing.

Trust me.

Eye Candy for A Tourist around Town

The official celebration, as near as I can pin it down, lasts from October 31 through November 2. I spent most of the day today wandering around and checking out all the wonderful public displays. (Ok, and doing a little shopping.) Stores have altars out, the main city hall had an altar contest, and – like department store windows at Christmas – everyone’s got a little decoration out.

This sweet couple sat outside a store - I wonder, are they waiting for their luggage?


And this altar sat outside another store - complete with small bin for offerings. I tossed in a few pesos as payment for getting to take a picture! What an amazing and colorful altar, and against the yellow wall of the building - wow! There were even tiny paper figures carrying a tiny paper coffin . . .


And then, like a community Christmas tree decorating contest, the city hall was filled with more altars!


This one took Fourth Place, but I think they were robbed.


Check out the black clay skulls . . . the black clay they're made from is only found in two places on earth: Oaxaca, and New Mexico. (At least according to a tour guide from yesterday). It fires black, with no glazes at all. Gorgeous.


And this one didn't win anything at all . . . I think they may have gotten docked for the use of the American-style clay jack-o-lanterns . . . Kids definitely do trick-or-treat here (ok, they wear masks, carry around plastic jack-o-lanterns, and ask tourists for coins by saying "Halloween") but the folks are very proud of their traditions (duh!) and I've seen some signs up dissing the north-of-the-border Halloween influences (one I didn't get a photo of that shows a skeleton kicking a witch - very funny). But check out the detail on this skeleton . . . he's almost life size.


I couldn't tell for sure if it was clay or carved wood, but either way, very nice. You know, for a skeleton at City Hall.

A Tourist in the Graveyard

Last night, I visited several cemeteries as part of a guided Day of the Dead tour. At the General Cemetary in the heart of Oaxaca, the whole thing had the feel of a carnival, complete with street vendors selling food, hot drinks, toys, and even games of chance. Very few families actually decorate or sit at the graves in the center of this urban cemetery. Rather, it’s more of an opportunity for community groups to build altars as a kind of outreach. I saw one honoring the victims of domestic violence, and another hailing the “death of fashion” and honoring those who had struggled with bulimia or anorexia. There was also a general ofrenda built in the center, and candles in all the niches around the walls of the cemetery.



The cemetery is very old (at least by U.S. standards), and victims of various epidemics in the 1800’s were buried here. The wall around the cemetery is full of niches where people are buried. Some niches have been cleared of their anonymous contents to make room for new folks.


The anonymous ones seem to say "perpetuidad" - and I loved the ones below - one died in 1887, the other in 1997. Yet, it almost seems like the same handwriting . . .


We also went to two cemeteries further out in a smaller, more rural town. The Xoxo cemeteries (a shortened and more pronounceable name for the town using only the first four letters, and pronounced “ho-ho”) were a bit closer to the traditions I’d read about. Though still packed with tourists (like me!) and food vendors, families had gone all out decorating the grave sites, and many families were hanging out around the graves, sipping a cerveza while the kids set off fireworks nearby. Even grave sites without families obviously in attendance were cleaned and decorated with flowers and candles.


Based on what I’ve seen and read, the more urban the area is, the more of a party and a spectacle it is, complete with guided tourists and professional tri-pod carrying photographers and Mexican teenagers wearing scanty costumes and altars as political activism and opportunities to win a few pesos by hitting balloons with a dart. The more rural the area, the more likely it is that families will come together and honor the heart of the tradition, building altars to close family members and sitting graveside. And of course, that also means it is less likely (and less appropriate) for tourists and outsiders like me to see it. And this makes sense: a tourist might be able to go to a school Christmas pageant with a guide, but would never simply walk into a stranger’s house on Christmas morning.

I’m glad to have seen some of the pageant.