Mexicowoods—An Expatriate Life

Turtle Island Quartet

Turtle Island Quartet

07/30/07 07:57 PM Filed in: Mexico

Bigger, richer venues draw top performers for cultural events in the more fashionable fall and winter seasons. We, in the backwater that is San Miguel de Allende, must schedule our Chamber Music Festival for midsummer. But this works perfectly for us, because our summer is in May and the month of August is either our spring or fall, it's hard to tell which. But it's cooler and rainy and a great time to take in a concert or two.

Peter Levinthal's festival poster art manages to introduce an erotic element to the idea of chamber music, which maybe was the original idea back in the 18th Century, before high society and dry academics got ahold of it and sucked all the passion out. Peter managed for once to keep his female subjects' shirts on—barely. Still, his clump of musicians looks like an orgy revving up. I for one approve.

The concert series is always held in the Angela Peralta Theater, so named for Mexico's Nightingale and great soprano. Sra. Peralta opened the theater in 1873, starring in Verdi's Rigoletto. Those were the days.

It's a small theater, only 200 seats, and we like it that way. It offers an intimacy and a connection between performers and audience not often found in San Francisco or New York. Moreover, it's easy to get tickets and they are inexpensive by big city standards.

For the second year, the Turtle Island Quartet was the headline act. For the opening night, they played an entire concert based on the music of John Coltrane from their new album, A Love Supreme. If that doesn't redefine chamber music, I don't know what does.

The couple sharing our season tickets went to the opening concert; we attended the second. The program consisted of a cross section of Turtle Island's music as we have come to know it over the years.

Classically trained musicians—a classical string quartet no less—playing what? Jazz? Not really, although much of their music was drawn from jazz composers and artists: Chick Corea, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis.

The hit of the night, for me at least, was a composition by quartet leader David Balakrishnan—I think he called it Snakes and Ladders—that contained classical, jazz, folk and Indian influences. In one section the quartet sounded like sitar and tabla, evoking memories of KPFA's feature, the Morning Raga—a great way to get your heat pumping. They used their violins as drums: Turtle Island knows no boundaries.

Two intrusions did little to interfere with the experience. At one point we had a precipitation event: a violent downpour drumming on the roof drowning out the quartet. And then, there was the usual scattering of egotists in the audience who felt it necessary to shout "Bravo!" at the conclusion of each number.

If I had to use a single word in connection with this group, it would be rhythm. You tap your toes, move your pelvis as you listen. Yet the music is as demanding as Shostakovich, and it is performed by masters.

All four players took turns chatting with the audience, creating a playful intimacy. They allowed one encore, a blues number that was the one piece that didn't work for me. Their blues sounded as convincing as Aaron Copeland's Hoe-Down—stilted, like folk music interpreted by classical musicians.

Overall, it was a thrilling evening. As one reviewer said of the group, "The Turtle Island Quartet have the chops, the guts , the soul, the spirit and the taste..."

Going Home

Going Home

07/29/07 06:45 AM Filed in: Mexico

I've posted a lot about our trip to Oaxaca: 24 posts in 18 days. Yet the trip only took eight. I followed in Clint's wake at a pace I hadn't kept since Silicon Valley days. His energy, contacts and experience made possible a tour that I hardly could have done on my own.

Exhausted (well, at least I was), we started for home, Clint driving but feeling poorly. He thought he might be coming down with a cold. Turned out to be food poisoning. All the usual nasty symptoms plus fever, chills and sweating. We were worried for awhile, but we stopped for the night in Puebla. Clint showed up in the morning a little weak but ready to go.

Our main objective at this point was simply to get home. No more tourist stops.

Near the Oaxaca-Puebla border, we passed through some spectacular country. The sun was beginning to drop in the western sky and thunderheads were forming. I looked out the shotgun seat window as the scenery rolled by, wishing I had a day or two to explore.

Then Clint said, "John, we gotta stop and take pictures. It's just too much." He pulled over onto the inadequate shoulder of the carretera and I jumped out to capture a few frames.

Traffic whizzed by. I was nervous because the truck was half sticking out into the slow lane. No time to find good vantage points. No time to compose, set exposure, wait for the sun. It was just "f8 and be there." Point, shoot and jump back in the truck.

We stopped twice. We could have stopped a dozen times and not run out of worthy subjects.

Unusual yuccas and barrel cacti jumped out at me.

A forest of cacti shaped like telephone poles spread up a hillside. I love the patterns they make.

This is a region empty of settlements but full of beauty. It's about a day's drive from San Miguel de Allende. I'll come back some day.

—§—

The periférico, the ring road around Mexico City, isn't actually a ring. It's more of a C. If you want to stay on carreteras all the way around the city, you have to detour to the northeast, extending your trip to Puebla by an hour and a half.

Or, you can do what we did: Take the ring road and close the loop by driving for a couple of miles on one of Mexico City's surface streets. But we knew we would be gambling when we did that, exposing ourselves to Mexico City's hopelessly corrupt traffic cops.

On our outbound leg, we hit the notorious surface streets at the same time as a powerful downpour. Water ran in the streets as high as our door sills. The upside was the rain drove the cops off the street, and we continued on to Puebla without being stopped.

On our return, the weather wasn't as cooperative. Getting off the periférico, we came to a single block in which were parked three police cruisers with maybe 20 cops standing alongside. They were looking for one thing only: out-of-state or foreign license plates.

See, travelers passing through are not going to want to stick around Mexico City for an extra day to clear a traffic ticket, legitimate or not. So they're good prospects for extortion.

Two of the cops waved us over to the side. We had a nice pickup truck, a gringo driver, and Texas license plates, so we were a fat juicy mark. One of the cops swaggered over to the passenger door: Mirrored wraparound sunglasses, bushy mustache, no ID tag on his chest. He asked for Clint's license.

On Clint's advice I kept the window open just enough to talk through, not enough to reach through. I held Clint's Texas Driver's license against the glass so the cop could read it.

That was all it took. The cop realized we were not afraid of him, that we were going to resist extortion. He had too many easier fish to catch, so he walked off without another word. We took his exit as permission to leave.

The extortion is so blatant, surely Mayor Marcelo Ebrard knows about it. Why doesn't he do anything? A simple drive down the street in an unmarked car, and he couldn't miss it. He might even suffer a shakedown attempt of his own before the cops realized who they had.

I wonder if he cares. I wonder if he benefits from what's going on.

If any of you are stopped by a cop for no good reason, know this: You don't have to get out of your car. You can refuse to hand over your license. Let him read your papers through the window. You can refuse to discuss anything. You can demand to see his ID. You can demand your infracción (ticket). You can ask to be taken to the nearest judge. If he's angling for a bribe, he'll give up. Just stick to your guns.

The single biggest single cause of Mexico's poverty is corruption (See note). If you pay a bribe, you're contributing to it. Please don't.

—§—

Finally, I thought you'd like to see how Chiapas travels.

He rides on his perch for miles. Then he climbs on one of our shoulders to gnaw our ears or crawls into the back seat and chews bag straps (until Marne or I catch him). Outside of that, he's the best traveler I've ever met.

—§—

Note about corruption:

The World bank ranks Mexico as the world's 14th largest economy. It ranks ahead of nations like Australia, the Netherlands, or Sweden. But these are rich countries; Mexico is poor. Income per person ranks only 79th. among nations. Given its population and resources, Mexico should be something like the world's #3 economy: maybe between Japan's and Germany's.

Investment in Mexico is the only way it'll get there. But investors, even Mexican investors, are wary because there's so much corruption that they are afraid their returns, or even their principal will be stolen by crooked government officials. So they divert their investments to safer countries, which is why Mexico's economy remains anemic and the people remain poor.

El Viejecito

El Viejecito

07/28/07 07:11 AM Filed in: Mexico

Tribal women from the south of Mexico dress so colorfully that it's easy to overlook the men. I'm always a little disappointed when on return from exploring, I realize that once again my collection of images lacks those wonderful masculine faces I observed but failed to capture.

This little old man, though, is one I didn't miss.

How old is that face? Could be 70. Could be 50. His face is marked by a hard life, so it's difficult to tell. His hair is gray, not white, so it's possible that he's younger than I think.

He's wearing two sombreros, one over the other. His Sunday best hat is covered by a sweat-stained felt one, to protect it from soiling and the intermittent rains. He's wearing a Goodwill tee shirt under a heavy, long-sleeved shirt. The temperature today is pushing 90, but he doesn't want to get chilled. I'm often surprised at how warmly Mexicans dress.

He probably does not live with a woman, on account of he's grimy. Indigenous women are scrupulously clean, even if they're living on dirt floors. How they do it is a wonder.

One thing for certain: There's no way they would tolerate their man looking like that. It's a matter of pride, a reflection on their homemaking.

His sandals are beat up, yes. So are his feet. Which part is leather, which part skin?

Four thousand years ago, we all had feet that looked like his.

Meat and Vegetables

Meat and Vegetables

07/28/07 07:19 AM Filed in: Mexico

Regular readers may think I'm obsessed with food. Not really. It's just that what people eat tells me so much about how their cultures differ from mine.

Mexicans enjoy, if that is the right word, a GDP per head about one-tenth that of the U. S. Even so, there is a saying in Mexico, to the effect that no one ever goes hungry here. Something is always cooking somewhere: in street stalls, restaurants, homes, around campfires and in the mercados. People don't go hungry because they view a much wider range of meats and vegetables as good eating. If they can't buy or catch meat, they eat vegetables. If they can't afford corn and beans that day, they eat plants they find in nature such as huizontle or tunas.

In the meat department, we have chicharron—fried pig skin.

Chicharrones are rarely eaten out of hand like the cello-paks of pork rinds (what a euphemism) we used to buy in the States. Here, you buy walk-away servings with chopped vegetables and chili sauce dumped on top. Cooked in broth, chicharrones make good fillings for tacos. I've eaten them in stews and soups.

If chicharrones aren't exotic enough for you, there's chapulines—fried grasshoppers.

An Oaxacan staple eaten for thousands of years, chapulines are seasoned with garlic, chiles and lime, giving them a salty-sour flavor. I find them quite savory, either eaten out of hand, or as a filling for taquitos.

A long, roofed section of this mercado, festooned with papeles picados, houses carnicerias (butchers) along the sides, while asadores (grills) conveniently line the center. Pick out the meat you like and someone will cook it for you.

In the [hoto we see those wonderful fat little Oaxacan chorizos (sausages) on the grills, as well as carne asado (beef).

Pollo asado (grilled chicken) is one of my favorite Mexican foods, whether it's the succulent kind expertly prepared in a mercado stall, or the dry, chewy but flavorful meal you get at Pollo Felíz—Mexico's answer to McDonalds.

(I've mentioned before that Mexican people don't throw things out. They repair or recycle or make do. No product has so long a life cycle as one in Mexican hands. In the photo above, the cook's knife is stuck into the pile of chickens. It's been repaired with soft iron wire. Let that be a lesson to us all.)

Mexican meat is cut thin. Takes some getting used to. I was struck by the light shining through this carniceria's wares.

It isn't simply a matter of taste: there's a practical reason why Mexican meat is cut so thin. Mexican animals are not finished in feedlots. They come right off the range where they've been eating dried cornstalks if they're lucky and chaparral if they're not. These beasts are tough and stringy. A Mexican Rib-eye or New York steak is difficult to cut and chew, to say the least. Believe me, I've tried. Besides, from a Mexican standpoint, they're way too much meat for any one person.

Most chorizo and other mexican sausages are made by specialists using commercial casings and machines to form them. But in rural areas, you can still find ground meat and seasonings stuffed into intestines, the way God intended.

But they don't look as appealing, at least to my eyes, as the uniform, manufactured kind.

You can buy prepackeage unshelled peanuts at convenience stores for snacking whle driving down the carretera. More commonly, though, peanuts are boiled and served soft. In the southern U. S., we call them goobers.

Served this way, they're more of a staple than a snack. This somewhat distracted little girl is selling cacahuates (peanuts) intended for boiling.

Mexicans eat many other seeds These pods are called guaje.

They're pods of the mimosa tree (Leucaena leucocephala?). They're shelled, and the bland, high protein seeds cooked and eaten.

A reader commented that I had not been in a U. S. supermarket for awhile and wasn't familiar with today's prices. Guilty as charged. But even compared with Safeway's prices five years ago, the values in mercado stalls are astonishing.

At ten pesos to the dollar, the cantaloupes are priced five for $1.50-$2.00; the potatoes, $1 for 4½ pounds.

(The slogan at the top of the potato price sign says, "In war, everything is lost," a reference to the ongoing conflict in the City of Oaxaca.)

I find it interesting that cornmeal for making tortillas isn't sold much in the mercado, nor is unground corn. Apparently you grow your own or you buy it direct from a neighbor. In either case, you grind it yourself or you take it down to the molino (mill). My friend Berta relates how one of her chores as a little girl was to take a bucket of corn to the molino for grinding.

Dried beans are more in evidence, but there's still not a lot of them offered. Beans and corn, the foundations of life in Mexico, can be found in any restaurant or supermarket. But in the country, in the mountain villages, everyone produces their own. They have to, in an economy where cash is scarce, where much commerce is still done by barter.

Restuarante Donají

Restuarante Donají

07/27/07 08:00 AM Filed in: Mexico

We stopped for a meal during our tour of maguey-growing, mescal-making country at the excellent Restaurante Donají. They present themselves as purveyors of comida tradicional oaxaqueña. Targeting Norteamericano, Europeo and urban Mexicano visitors, this place has managed to avoid the cheesy tourist-processing feel typical of restaurants dependent on travelers.

Walking from the parking area, the first sight greeting us was this woman making tortillas.

We knew right away we were in for a treat. She's patting the masa (tortilla dough) out by hand. Nobody does that anymore.

Handmade tortillas, rare in their own right, are usually made with the aid of a tortilla press.

Photos: gourmetsleuth.com

But for my money, tortillas made with a press aren't as good as the ones patted out by hand. They lack the imperfections and tenderness of the truly handmade. They have a sharp rim that detracts from the mouth feel of the ones shaped in the cook's palms.

Restaurante Donají makes tortillas the hard way, the traditional way, the centuries-old way. Dried corn is soaked and boiled in lime water, the softened kernels ground in a mill (their one concession to modern times), patted to shape one at a time and cooked on a sheet of iron over a charcoal fire. I can't emphasize enough, how different, how much better these are from any factory-made tortillas. We're talking mom's buttermilk biscuits vs. Wonder Bread.

The restaurant is famous for its moles; that's MOE-lays, not the little critters that burrow under your lawn. Brown, red, yellow, green mole; the variety is endless. Most moles contain chiles and chocolate, the latter unsweetened of course. No respectable mole has fewer than eight other ingredients.

English-language recipes for mole offered online are disappointing, listing commercial chile powder and unsweetened Baker's chocolate as ingredients. I wouldn't eat that stuff. Restaurante Donají, befitting it's traditional approach, begins with fresh chiles and cacao beans, roasting them in a wood-fired oven.

They make the best mole I've ever eaten. (Excepting, of course, that made by our cook, Rosario. It takes her two days to make her sauce, using her grandmother's recipe.)

A big, open kitchen is where it all comes together. It looks a little questionable, but everything in there is spotless.

Chicken is grilled, sauced and served from there. A boy runs outside to the tortilla lady to get fresh ones just before serving your order. As you eat in blissful satisfaction, you gaze at a bucolic mural of a mercado as it looked in the last century.

Today, a hundred years after the period depicted—the mountains, the mercado, the sellers, the produce, the stilt walkers, the costumes—look exactly the same as today. Maravilloso ¿no?

Like all good Mexican businesses, Restaurante Donají is more than a restaurant. For example, they raise ostriches...

... although they don't serve them.

They weave traditional Oaxacan rugs when business is slow.

As if that's not enough, a family member makes furniture in a shop out back.

That's an electric bandsaw on the left; pretty sophisticated for woodworking in these parts. Note also that the shop serves as a dormitory. A couple of hammocks provide perfectly satisfactory sleeping arrangements in this warm country.

Restaurante Donají has been a fixture for decades. Oaxaqueños who have cars and can afford to eat in restaurants (a minority) make the one-hour drive out of the city for a special afternoon.

If you English speakers want to enjoy a meal here, you're gonna have to brush up on your Spanish. But the friendly owners are used to Norteamericanos. They may address you in Spanish, but they speak slowly and articulate clearly. Talking with them was one of those rare experiences for me, where I understood everything they said.

An Embroiderer

An Embroiderer

07/27/07 08:05 AM Filed in: Mexico

There are so many ways to enjoy Mexico. My friend Clint has found a particularly intriguing one. He drives his pickup truck all over the country, visiting small towns, meeting artisans, buying their work which he then exports to Texas.

He isn't gonna become another Wal-Mart this way, and he doesn't want to. For Clint, the destination is the journey, something he sees as clearly as any Zen master. In his journey, he's seeing a Mexico few of us ever will experience.

One category of exports is hand embroidered garments. He overpays for them here, benefiting hundreds of women who do the work, and wholesales them at a good markup in the north. Part of our mission on this trip to Oaxaca is to visit with one of his suppliers.

Working with this kind of operation isn't like placing a wholesale order with a Wamsutta account executive. There are no downtown sales offices, no sleek glass headquarters in some industrial park in Hackensack, NJ. This business is more modest. Way more modest.

This place might look poverty-stricken to you. Well, for rural Oaxaca State, it actually ain't bad. The proprietor is fairly wealthy by local standards. She's an employer, after all. A member of the power elite.

Clint went right in and began discussing business matters with her. I wandered around her place, camera in hand and Chiapas the parrot on my shoulder. Right away, we met two other parrots, a couple of parakeets, a dove and two chicks of undetermined species.

Foolishly, I carried Chiapas over to meet one of the parrots. He took one look at the overhanging tree branch and gleefully climbed onto it. Free at last! When I grabbed for him, he squawked and bit the hell out of my finger. Clint and Marne ran over, and between the three of us, we managed to get him down out of the tree. Note to self: Don't walk under low tree branches while carrying bird.

This place was unlike any manufactory I'd ever seen. An enameled pot of beans bubbled away on a charcoal brazier.

Two grandchildren emerged from somewhere and greeted me. They insisted on posing for pictures, asking to see each frame as soon as I shot it.

A junkyard dog, chained to a tree, barked threateningly and incessantly, until the owner broke off her discussion with Clint long enough to beat it with a broomstick. (I have a hard time accepting the way animals are treated in this country.)

Clint negotiated with the embroidery lady for a couple of hours. This photo was taken late in the discussions. Does she look happy?

She does not.

Her rigid position was that she wanted Clint to buy the pieces on the table in front of her. Clint wanted her to embroider the box of jeans jackets he had brought with him from the States, as she had promised to do at their last meeting.

For years I was involved negotiations like this with suppliers and customers in the semiconductor industry. Not fun then; not fun now. The only difference today was the size of the deal: ten thousand pesos instead of ten million dollars. But it still boiled down to two hardheaded people trying to get what they wanted. Some things never change.

I snapped my photo and retreated to the yard to talk with the grandkids some more.

Shopping for Groceries

Shopping for Groceries

07/26/07 07:26 AM Filed in: Mexico

The largest market in Mexico said to be the Abastos in Oaxaca. There you can buy almost anything that you might need for living in this country, and buy it cheaper than anyplace else. Thousands of people visit hundreds of stalls every day. It's a must see for tourists visiting the city.

We didn't go there.

Instead we visited three or four mercados in nearby towns; places where mostly indigenous people were buyers and sellers. Here mother and daughter check out some apples. You can bet they have sharp eyes for quality and value.

Women in particular wear traditional dress. Our local friend Eric says he can tell which village they come from by their costumes.

Of course, not all women dress in the old style. The older woman on the left makes a nod to tradition with her head band, but her apron is exactly like those worn by anyone doing housework anywhere in Mexico.

The woman in the flowered dress clearly dresses in modern style, while to her right, another woman creates a scandal by wearing pants. Young people. What can you do?

Many rural Oaxaqueños wear braids interwoven with ribbons.

Ends of her braids tied together, this woman reminds me of the girls in Diego Rivera's painting, Flower Festival: Feast of Santa Anita. The look hasn't changed in 70 years, and probably many more.

These vendors from a remote village, don't like to have their pictures taken. Had I realized this before I shot, I would have respected their wishes. As it turned out, I got a photo of women holding cloths over their faces.

Disabilities abound in the mercados. The crawling woman is paraplegic. She is a vendor, selling items woven from palm fronds.

Her life must be incredibly hard. But I later saw her sitting up with a group of women, gossiping and smiling. Her debilities haven't broken her spirit.

Men tend to look like cowboys. Most work in fields or the jungle.

You rarely see people with prominent birthmarks in the States; they're removed, usually at an early age. This man almost certainly had no choice in the matter. Cosmetic surgery isn't available for people like him. I would have liked to ask him if his markings bothered him, but how could I have done such a thing?

This young cholo looks much like one of his peers in East L. A., except he doesn't quite manage to carry it off. The ragged pants and the Goodwill golf shirt spoil the effect. Still, he's doing what he can with what he has.

Staffing a stall can be stultifying, especially when you're merchandising a low volume commodity like lime, used for boiling dried corn to remove the kernel coverings.

That's the wooden handle of a hammer sticking up in front of her. She uses it to break the lime into consumer-sized pieces. Notice the white dust on her hands.

Some vendors just can't stay awake.

It's not all old women in the stalls. Here. a young mother sells cantaloupes.

Another young woman sells garlic. She and several other ajo sellers have no stalls; they just wander around and push bunches of bulbs in shoppers' faces.

If you want to meet real Mexicans, the place to do it is in the mercados. Here, Clint is engaged in conversation with a woman preparing tostadas.

Toward the end of our trip, Clint came down with a case of food poisoning. He thinks he got it from a mercado restaurant selling grilled chicken, and I have to defer to him, on account of it's his system that took the hit. But I can't get rid of the feeling that it might have been food from an operation like this one.

This is not to say that Clint or I avoid this kind of food stall, as all the wussy tourist guides advise. Every day millions of Mexicans eat food prepared this way, and so can we. Being overly cautious, we'd be cutting ourselves out of one of the great pleasures of visiting or living in Mexico—sampling the incredible variety of street food.

We didn't visit the greatest of markets, Abastos. But we didn't miss anything. The places we visited offered more than we could absorb. Nor did we miss the tourists who troop along in docile groups through Abastos. Nor the pickpockets who prey on them..

Turkey Ladies

Turkey Ladies

07/24/07 07:22 AM Filed in: Mexico

Benjamin Franklin proposed that the turkey be the American National Bird.

We're all thankful he was ignored. Nevertheless, nothing is more American than the family gathering around the table laden with a large roasted turkey at Thanksgiving. Norman Rockwell americana, no?

No.

The turkey was domesticated in Mexico. The pilgrims shot and ate wild turkeys, but these were poor, stringy substitutes for the plump, succulent birds the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica had been eating for centuries. Today, Mole de guajolote (turkey in mole sauce) is thought of as the national dish of Mexico.

I saw plenty of guajolotes being raised in dooryards. They're handsome birds compared to those white-feathered, insipid turkeys that are all breast meat, the kind sold in American supermarkets, and in Mexican ones too, where they're called pavo. But in the rural south of the country, most people buy their turkeys in the mercados.

Like this.

Oh yeah, it's a live one. They sell dead ones, too. But they sure sell a lot of them that are still kicking.

Wandering around rural Mexico—never in the cities—I'd see signs advertising pollo en pie—chicken on foot. We might say "chicken on the hoof." I correctly surmised this means live chickens, feathers and all. But why? Are they better that way? Maybe some Mexican cooks are sticklers for freshness?

None of those reasons seem very Mexican to me, not in a country where good enough is good enough.

(Look closely. The woman above is carrying two turkeys. Must be expecting company.)

The answer, of course, is lack of refrigeration. People who live in the campo often cannot afford refrigerators. Many do not even have electricity. So whatever's for dinner has to keep itself fresh until the family is ready to eat it.

The women in the markets haul their live purchases around so nonchalantly. It's no big deal. It's just the weekly turkey. Gotta buy some tomatoes, too. So they shove the birds under their arms and pick over the produce. Nobody gives it a second thought, except the slack-jawed gringo tourist who can't believe what he's seeing.

During their back-to-the-land days, my parents had a chicken coop. On rare Sundays, my father would catch one and lop its head off with a machete. My mom would dip the still-twitching carcass in boiling water and pull its feathers. She'd gut it (which grossed all us kids out) and give us the feet to play with. (We would tug on the exposed tendons to make the claws wiggle.) Mom went to a lot of work for chicken and dumplings—which I never liked anyway.

These women do it every week. Except they dispatch their birds by wringing their necks. They cook them in mole sauce and serve them with tortillas made from corn they ground themselves. Mom had it easy.

(Incidentally, one word in Mexico for slaughter, as applied to animals for food, is sacrificar, to sacrifice.)

It's not just turkeys that are sold on the hoof. This young man is leading his goat around the mercado. I don't know if he's buying or selling it.

Jean grew up in midwestern farm country. She's never seen a live animal taken for food. Her parents, like mine, bought cello-wrapped ground beef in the supermarket, or ready made burgers at the Rensselaer Dairy Queen. We've come so very far from our roots.

El Centro de las Artes San Augustín

El Centro de las Artes San Augustín

07/24/07 09:27 AM Filed in: Mexico

Old industrial buildings adapt surprisingly well to modern purposes. The 19th-century woolen mills along Route 128 in Massachusetts became high-tech offices and laboratories. Brick warehouses south of Market Street in San Francisco have been converted into trendy condominiums.

In the little town of San Augustín, near Oaxaca, an abandoned yarn and thread factory has been beautifully refurbished and is now used as an art center.

They don't make 'em like this anymore, do they? Looks like a county courthouse. The factory as monument.

In the early decades of the last century, hundreds of workers trooped up those steps to work for less than a dollar a day. Today it provides paid employment for maybe a dozen residents of San Augustín: custodians, maintenance workers, guards, administrators, who provide all the services needed to make the place function as a museum, a gallery and a place for art-related events.

This summer, the first floor is being used for an exhibition of contemporary ceramics—cerámica utilitaria—pottery. But what pottery!

The work on display is not folk art, not pedestrian crafting by amateurs. These are serious works worthy of deliberate appreciation.

Half the second floor houses a temporary showing of drawings, which don't particularly appeal to me. But the room they are in does. The unused half of this floor is empty, permitting an unobstructed view of this incredible space.

The high roof is new, the rest is original. The wonderful rank of arched windows, the scarred oak floors, heavy enough to support massive iron machinery, the absence of posts, create a vast, open space capable of displaying works of any size without crowding them.

In the center of the second floor, some of the huge old bobbins, still wound with yarn, and a couple of looms have been left to mark the building's original use.

They are installation art in their own right.

Other examples of incorporating the old industrial facilities into a compelling design include retaining the old incinerator, now surrounded by a reflecting pool.

Another part of the pool contains a drift of submerged ceramics: more architecture as art.

A whimsical staircase leads to the thorny trunk of a ceiba tree.

Empty, this place would be worth visiting on its own merits. Containing as it did, an exhibition of extraordinary ceramics, I found my attention hopelessly, but happily divided.

Shopping the Mercados

Shopping the Mercados

07/23/07 09:57 AM Filed in: Mexico

We visited three or four mercados (markets) in or near Oaxaca, places where tourists can come into close contact with indigenous people. These collections of market stalls offer a much more intense experience than any set of ruins or museum. Sadly, we saw almost no Northern Europeans or Norteamericanos during our visits. Such people will leave southern Mexico with little idea of how the descendants of the Zapotecs and Mixtecs live.

Mercados offer food more than anything else: prepared walk-away food, sit-down stalls where you can get enchiladas or chicken mole, or produce and staples for stocking your larder. But they're also the place to buy tee shirts, cold chisels, watches and blender parts. In this post, we'll look at some of the non-food items offered in marketplaces.

Like copal.

In my post about Monte Albán, I related how our guide,

Rolando, pointed out various plants, naming them and explaining their medicinal uses. One of them was copal, a bush with red berries useful as a vermifuge and to make a salve for acne. At the time he told us all this, I had a vague sense that copal was something entirely different, but I couldn't remember just what. Did Rolando really know what he was talking about? A little investigation revealed that there is indeed a bush that grows in southern Mexico, Bursera copallifera, commonly called copal.

OK then. I must have misremembered. Later, I ran across a powdery substance for sale at a stall in a mercado. I asked what it was. The seller said, "copal."

Hmmm. More than one thing in this world is called copal. The powdery and chunky kind is sold here for use in ceremonies and in church. People burn it to make sacred smoke; a sort of incense, that is said to be trance-inducing. It is made from sap collected from trees related to the one that produces the medicinal berry, or more commonly, from the pitch pine. Sellers offer two grades: premium and economy. Looking at the pictures, can you guess which is which? The unattractive blackish substance costs more. The lovely amber colored pieces are the cheap stuff. I don't know why.

Hammocks are widely sold in the mercados. They're not frivolous decorator items. They're what people sleep in, who live in rude houses in the tropics where insects would infest mattresses.

Expensive ones are made of soft, fine yarns and are very nice. But I think the ones you can buy in Yucatan are better.

Less practical are metates and manos. The decorated ones shown below are given as traditional wedding gifts; no bride's home is complete without a set.

While some grandmothers living in thatched huts still grind corn with them, most people anymore take their corn to someone who has an electric mill. The pace of life is picking up even in the jungles of Oaxaca, and only the poor still do the backbreaking labor to grind corn that way.

Incidentally, the copal vendor also sells lime for use in soaking dried corn to make hominy. Hominy is used to make pozole, or can be ground on a metate while wet to make masa nixtamalera, which used to make tortillas or other foods. Dried, masa nixtamalera becomes the familiar corn flour called masa harina, found in U. S. supermarkets.

(Here I am, talking about food again. Hard to stay on topic when there's so much good stuff to eat in Mexico.)

Ribbons find lots of uses: braided into hair, appliqued onto blouses and dresses, but rarely used to wrap presents. It's too expensive for that.

Many vendors sell yarn and embroidery thread. Every woman's, every little girl's Sunday best includes an embroidered blouse, a beribboned skirt and pigtails braided with ribbons.

As for yarn, Mexicans rarely knit. They crochet. You can just make out a bunch of crochet hooks in the upper right corner of the photo.

Clint saw these sharpening stones and was immediately captivated, as was I. Neither of us had ever seen anything like these huge things.

The seller demonstrated their utility by sharpening Clint's pocket knife. He worked hard at it, ultimately producing a respectable edge, but I thought the stones to be too coarse to make knives razor sharp. Clint was satisfied though, and bought one of them. The biggest stones are for sharpening those ubiquitous Mexican outdoorsman's tools, machetes. For that, they're ideal.

People who work outdoors often own draft animals. They're an important source of power and transportation in the Oaxacan campo, and so there's a need for tack.

Leather is too expensive, so tack is made from cotton, hemp, sisal or plastic rope. The ropes displayed on the pavement are hand-spun.

Even furniture is on sale. I didn't see any trendy equipal chairs, but these horrid upholstered pieces apparently were manufactured in great quantity, because I saw them everywhere.

They're so awful, I was tempted to buy one as a conversation piece. Sort of like seeing Plan Nine from Outer Space, their vileness makes them almost good. Too bad I didn't manage to get a photo of the burnt orange ones. Truly ugly.

Most of rural Mexico shops in mercados, as do many city dwellers. Fierce competition keeps prices low. The selection is incredible. But sooner or later, Wal-Mart is gonna come. And ultimately it'll displace the mercados. But not for awhile yet. Even when they come, most mercado shoppers can't afford the big box stores' First-World prices. So you all have a few years left to get out and experience these markets for yourselves.