I landed in Oaxaca at 7 am and was glad that the driver of the colectivo from airport had to deal with significant morning traffic. Oaxaca is an old city, surrounded by mountains, so its old infrastructure is based on very narrow roads. At a million and a half inhabitants the combination becomes deadly. I was going to rent a car at the airport, but a couple of days ago cancelled it figuring that it would be easier to mode in colectivos; let’s hope I made the right decision.
Anyway, by 9 am I had checked into my downtown hotel, had delicious tacos de cazuela for breakfast, and was starting on my introductory walk through the zócalo when I spotted a young man advertising a tour to the archaeologic site of Monte Albán. Right then and there I signed up for the tour and by 9:30 am we were off.
The mountains of Oaxaca were occupied by the Zapotec culture, which during the Pre-Classic (say 250 BC to 250 AD) developed its cultural traits pretty much without influence from anyone else. They must have been at war with other groups, because instead of building their capital along the shores of the Atoyac River, in the place now occupied by Oaxaca, they moved it up on top of the mountain (and away from the handy water of the river), which they graded to create a couple of large flat areas. They also used the natural hills to form the basement of their pyramids and ceremonial structures. Later, during the Classic (250 to 850 AD), they became part of the Teotihuacan trading empire and the site acquired its monumental building style. The Teotihuacan empire collapsed suddenly in 850 AD, thus marking the end of the Classic, and Monte Albán was occupied by the Mixtec cultural group, whose main Post-Classic site, Mitla, I will describe in the coming days. It was lovely walking through the site, which is a lot larger and monumental than I remembered. Pity that the onsite museum has been closed ever since the start of the pandemic.
Monte Albán has the distinction of being one of the few archaeologic sites that was occupied from the Pre-Classic to the Post-Classic, albeit the last phase of occupation was by a different cultural group. I bet the new comers had the same sense of awe as the Mexicas had when they looked at the ghost giant town of Teotihuacan. Perhaps, with its monumental architecture, Monet Albán was the second of the ghost towns of Mesoamerica. This is also the site where modern, scientific archaeology was born in Mexico, thanks to the efforts of Alfonso Caso, an archaeologist, anthropologist, humanist, and scholar politician, who was leading the first excavations in the 1930’s, when he discovered Tomb 7, which yielded a treasure trove of bones, artifacts, and exquisite gold pieces. Caso not only prevented the looting of the tomb that was the hallmark of foreign archaeologist, but his precise excavation techniques allowed him to place the original construction of the tomb in the Early Classic by the Zapotecs, whereas the burial with all the treasures had taken place in the Early Post-Classic by the Mixtecs. Alfonso Caso went to establish the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, which he directed for many years, and together with President Lázaro Cárdenas was instrumental in creating the legal structure for the protection of the national cultural patrimony. As bitter coda, I understand that the Mexican congress is trying to defund the INAH and privatize the management of the archaeologic sites ☹
Our next stop was in a small town of Arrazola, whose artisans have developed a reputation for their beautiful alebrijes. Here in Oaxaca these colorful fantastic figures are carved from the green soft wood of the copal tree, are allowed to dry slowly to minimize cracking, are soaked in gasoline for a couple of days to seal all the pores, and afterward are passed on to the painters, who use bright acrylic paints and a lot of imagination to create the supernatural beings that the movie Coco has now made famous across the world. The funny thing is that alebrijes are newcomers in the world of Mexican crafts, the idea of which was forged by a single artist, Pedro Linares in the mid 1930’s working with papier maché. From there single artisans, families, and even cooperatives took the concept to new and exciting levels … I have a porcupine alebrije somewhere in my house … I should find it and put it on display.
After lunch we went to San Bartolo Coyotepec, to see a demonstration on the manufacture of pots of barro negro, which is iconic in Oaxaca (every Mexican family seems to own a small gourd of barro negro filled with mezcal). The “mud” is mined as a brown shale and put to hydrate in big concrete vats, where it spends a couple of weeks. From time to time it is stirred with a wooden plank to separate the clay from the sand, and eventually is decanted unto an adjacent vat, where it is slowly drained. Out comes a perfect potters clay. Just to show that there is more than one way to skin a cat, the local artisans avoided the potter’s wheel, and instead use two very flat bowls, with one face down secured by small gobs of the same mud, and the other face up so it rests with a single point of contact on the bottom one. This second bowl performs the function of the wheel, and by spinning it on its single point of contact the artisan achieves perfect sphericity of the pot, shaping it skillfully into pots, water vessels, pitchers, cups, and so on.
The pot then goes to dry inside a plastic bag. The idea is
to let the moisture out little by little so it won’t crack. Once it has dried
for a couple of weeks, the artisan takes a large quartz crystal and using one
of the flat faces brushes the surface to seal all pores (a process called bruňido
in Spanish). The surface of the pot is shiny when the process is done, and upon
firing it will turn into a shiny surface almost akin to a thin layer of glass.
For some process I didn’t understand, the firing at a comparatively low
temperature turns the dark brown mud into a jet black color. If you saw the
incredible variety of this black pottery you would want to decorate your house
with it!
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