Notes from Mexico

People from the sky

Indigenous woman in Oaxacan village

I was third time lucky in being able to visit Mexico. Even though a recent change in immigration rules allowed all Indians with a valid US visa an automatic entry into Mexico, I stood with a strained smile at the immigration counter explaining to the lady behind that my US visa was valid even though it looked quite old dog-eared and was in the fifth of my stapled stack of passports. With a short overnight stop in Mexico City I was off the next morning to Oaxaca in southern Mexico. The short flight over the mountainous country, with dawn breaking over the eastern sky was a spectacular sight and soon I was in Oaxaca – a historical and cultural hot-spot of Mexico, but unfortunately also a state which ranked among the bottom three states (along with the Chiapas) on all development parameters. Nearly 50% of the population in this mountainous state comprised of indigenous peoples and many modern amenities had yet to reach the people who lived in small and relatively remote mountain villages. The indigenous community included the Zapotecs and Mixtecs, the principal among 16 ethnolinguistic groups in the state. Even though each group had splendid historical and cultural traditions they were still at the margins of modern Mexican society.  Evidence of these traditions was everywhere as handicraft, as beautifully embroidered and woven clothes which were being sold by women in street markets and in high end stores in Oaxaca city. We also saw spectacular dances from different valleys in Oaxaca state in an enactment of the Guelageutza festival – a traditional festival held in July every year.

Handicraft items in a high street shop

But the rest of the story that we learnt about these indigenous peoples, was not so elevating. Since my visit was related to a meeting on maternal health, we were taken on a field visit to a local municipality nearby. We learnt that the maternal mortality in the state of Oaxaca was much higher than the rest of the country. The government did not have adequate number of health centres in the remote areas, and even if they did they did not encourage delivery/childbirth to take place in health centres – pushing women to go far off to hospitals. Like in India these hospitals were not only crowded but did not treat the indigenous women with respect. On the other hand we also met Donna Laura an indigenous traditional midwife who with deep sorrow told us that the ‘my government considers me an enemy’ even though she had been helping women in her community for decades. We also learnt that there was an effort to work with the government on the issue of women friendly and respectful childbirth in health centres through deliberations of safe motherhood committees which included representatives from NGOs as well as midwives. 

Street market

Oaxaca is a very beautiful city, particularly the city centre, has an old world charm and is at the same time busy and peaceful. Most houses are either two stories or less having brightly painted walls with contrasting window frames. The entire area is neatly divided into blocks with narrow intersecting streets lined with colourful shops and shop windows. Traffic is strictly one-way and the street from the Santo Domingo Church to the Cathedral (the two principal churches in the city) is exclusively for pedestrians. Open air markets where indigenous people sell their products – clothes, handicraft, paintings, and other odds and ends added to the overall colour. Besides these organized markets there were a large number of street vendors. The streets of Oaxaca city was a veritable foodies paradise, but I was not adventurous and limited my street food experience to  a kind of fruit ice cream, which we were told is a local delicacy. I was introduced to a local fruit guanabana which was simply delicious. However something which was disturbing to see were young women with small children selling miscellaneous things, in some cases these children too were hawking stuff. If you added the few beggars and others who were also trying to make a living off the streets, the picture that emerged was one of precarious economic existence for a large number of the indigenous people.

Ruins at Mount Alban

Mount Alban is just 10 kilometers or so from the city centre, but it transports one to the great Zapotec civilization of over fifteen hundred years ago. Like many such places in India it was discovered in the early 20^th Century by a Hispanic-Mexican archeologist from under a tangle of bushes and a forest where white flowers bloomed ( hence the name). The ruins of Mount Alban are spread over a very large area, and only a small area has been excavated and is open to the public. But what we saw was awe-inspiring, with ruins of temples, graves, pyramids, observatories and even a stadium. It was a glimpse into a very sophisticated civilization, where life was regulated by an elaborate cosmology and class system. The heavens and the sky had a very important significance for these people, who believed that there were three worlds, that of the sky, the earth and the underworld. People, especially those from the higher classes were supposed to have come down from the skies, and after death were supposed to go back to the clouds. This great civilization declined around 800 AD, a full seven hundred years before the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Their descendants still live in the many villages in the area living in the margins of society as indigenous people. 

Mexican food

Mexico is well known as a foodies paradise. Today Mexican food is available in the different metros in India but when I was young we read of tortillas and enchiladas in books. Later I was introduced to fajitas and nachos and quesadillas and of course to Margarita in the US, but this was my first introduction to the real stuff. Here I learnt that some of the food that passes of as Mexican in the US is not really Mexican and my Mexican friends turned their noses down at such ‘gringo’ food like burritos and nachos. These they told me was Tex-Mex or a Texan variation or adaptation. The burrito they told me was like a jumbo ‘taco’ – super sized like all things American, and then neatly folded and tucked in to make it convenient. I also learnt that these burritos were often deep fried or when the ingredients were put into deep fried basked shaped tortillas and sold as Chimichangas in the US and these too had nothing to do with Mexico. Nachos too were not Mexican. Mexican ate tostadas, or small toasted tortillas. The triangular shaped nachos were deep fried and distinctly American.

Local Ice cream stand

I learnt that tortilla’s or flat ‘chapatis’ or ‘rotis’ made of corn flour was the common ingredient for the enchilada, taco and quesadilla. In the case of the enchilada the meat, vegetable and cheese were put inside the tortilla and after the tortilla was folded it was baked with a sauce was poured over the dish. The green sauce was made from small cherry sized green tomatos which were very tart and used only for making this sauce. Tacos on the other hand were the simplest - basically a tortilla with the ingredients – cheese, meats, vegetables slapped over it. You could eat it open or you could fold the tortilla over - it was your choice.  A quesadilla on the other hand was originally a tortilla filled with cheese ( queso meant cheese in Mexican and hence the name), folded in half and then cooked ( baked or fried) so that the cheese melted. Later the cheese, was not longer obligatory and even meat filled tortillas which were baked or fried were called quesadillas.

Central Bowl - Chapuline; Extreme Right - Fried Cactus

Different regions of Mexico had their distinctive food and Oaxaca too had its specialties. I have already mentioned that we had a special fruit ice cream. These ice creams are more like fruit pulped into finely ground ice – with the distinctly gritty taste of ice crystals. We didn’t know what to order because the list of flavours which included leche, tuna, guanabana among others was not very familiar. We asked for recommendations from a couple who were already ordering and learning that Guanabana was not bananas but a local fruit ordered it and found the taste very satisfying. Another Oaxaca speciality is the mole ( pronounced moley as in guacamole), a deep brown or chocolate sauce made of chocolate and a variety of other spices which include pepper. I had chicken with mole negro ( black mole), where the chicken was served with a blackish red bitter sweet sauce over it. The taste was distinctive and not entirely disagreeable. The truly unique gastronomic experience from Oaxaca was ‘chapuline’, or dried grasshoppers. We were served this delicacy at the home of a local midwife. We were told that we should make a taco with sliced avocado and chapuline and the taste was unique with the crunchy chapuline contrasting with the creamy avocado. We were also served ‘mezcal’ a potent drink made from a kind of cactus call the mezcal agave. It had to be drunk straight and had a smoky but fruity flavor, but since was midday and we had half a day’s work ahead I declined a second shot.    


For more pictures please view https://picasaweb.google.com/113469930026886477771/OaxacaMexico?authuser=0&feat=directlink