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Oaxaca updates starting from October, 2008
A radiant Oaxacan welcome
December 19, 2008
Annual celebration for Soledad, the Virgin of Solitude. Click here to read about yesterday's celebration and see some photos.
December 16, 2008
Oaxacans love a celebration, and never more than during the Christmas season. The culmination of this festive time will be on December 23, with the Night of the Radishes, and on Christmas Eve, when beautifully decorated floats will parade around the zocalo accompanied by throngs of celebrants. We've just passed the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, when parents dress their daughters in regional costumes and their sons as the peasant Juan Diego (complete with moustache), to whom the Virgin appeared on the hill of Tepeyac, near Mexico City, between the 9th and 12th of December, 1531. People flock to the Sanctuary of Guadalupe, near Llano Park, to present their children to a statue of the Virgin.
A young Juan Diego waits his turn to be presented to the
Virgin of Guadalupe
A shy Oaxacan girl in a traditional costume
A father lifts his daughter up to touch the
statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe
December 16th marks the beginning of a week of posadas, which re-enact Mary and Joseph's search for shelter. Throngs of Oaxacans (along with many visitors), carrying candles in colorful paper or plastic holders, go from house to house singing a traditional song asking for shelter. They are turned away, in song, time and again until they arrive at the home of the posada's sponsor, where at last they are welcomed in.
Two days later, Oaxacan's celebrate the feast of Oaxaca's patron, the Virgin of Solitude. Soledad Basilica becomes the focus of devotion for thousands of people, who come to observe or participate in the masses, striking processions, and other ceremonies to honor the Virgin.
Needless to say, this is a great time to be in Oaxaca.
November 17, 2008
I'm going to put up a few photos from the past ten days, just to give you the flavor of what it's like here in Oaxaca this lovely fall.
Santo Domingo by moonlight, 11/13/08
A moment at the zocalo, Sunday 11/9/08
Los muertos--the dead-- and all that jazz, 11/12/08
What an incredibly rich environment. Come on down and see for yourself!
November 7, 2008
We've been back in Oaxaca for several weeks, enough time to have settled in, but not so much time that everything seems normal, or at least as normal as Oaxaca can be for someone from another country and culture.
The first thing that struck me when we got back was how polite most people are. During six months in the U.S. and traveling to other parts of the world, I'd had many exchanges with lots of different people. However, only here in Oaxaca was it mandatory to stop to chat at length with friends and acquaintances in order to exchange notes about other friends, family members, adventures, and misadventures. And Oaxaca is the only place where most conversations end with "Que le vaya bien,"--may it go well with you, or even (OK, mostly from older people) with "Dios le bendiga,"--God bless you!
What a contrast with our usual rushed and impersonal lives.
The next set of impressions center around Oaxaca's striking contrasts. In many ways it's truly beautiful. There are moments that take my breath away, for example catching a view at dusk down a street lined with colonial buildings made of glowing cantera stone. But turn a corner or look more closely, and you find that the taggers have had a field day, and that many of those beautiful buildings are covered with grafitti.
Oaxaca is a city full of music. We love to listen to the State Band's free Sunday noon concerts at the zocalo, or sit in one of the zocalo's sidewalk cafes and listen to the tunes tapped out on the marimbas. But it's also a place where the State Band may have to compete with a passing calenda, with its own blaring drums and trumpets, or the marimba players have to compete with an amplified band of Andean pan pipes.
In short, this isn't Minneapolis or New York or California. it's Oaxaca, with its rich mix of sights, sounds and smells, a beautiful but slightly tattered fabric woven from many contrasting colors.
Day of the Dead revisited
This year's Day of the Dead celebration was magical. The weather was great, Oaxaca is well past the political problems of 2006, and Oaxacans were able to concentrate on this traditional celebration.
Every family built its traditional altar, or ofrenda, laden with fruits, favorite foods and drinks, favorite toys, and photos of family members who have died. Hotels, restaurants and shops also put up ofrendas, all of them colorful, many, beautiful.
The Day of the Dead celebration is a mix of prehispanic modes of ancestor worship, and the Catholic traditions brought to the New Wordl by los conquistadores and the Church. Needless to say, every aspect of the altars people construct, their various levels plus the flowers, fruits, vegetables and other objects on them, has its specific symbolic meaning.
From our point of view, it's nice to know something of the symbolism, but we're happy just to get see these beautiful expressions of love and connection across time and generations.
Here are a few photos of this years Day of the Dead preparations, the cemeteries, and the altars:
A woman carries a huge bouquet of cempasuchitl, marigolds, whose color attracts dead souls.
Stacks of sugar cane that will be used to form the arches that are part of every altar
A plump pan de muertos--bread for the dead--that will also go on someone's altar
A mound of candy calaveras--skulls--also for people's altars
A partularly impressive altar. Note the path of flower petals to guide the dead to the ofrendas, offerings, that have been put out for them
Waiting, remembering--the old cemetery of Xoxocotlan
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