Brian’s Microblog

Wednesday

After our classes we walked around a little and then we had reservations with another student at a fancy restaurant called Levadura de Olla. The service was amazing and their concept is to present traditional foods in creative ways. The food was very good, but it is expensive.

Later we walked around town again. The plaza at the Basilica of Nuestra Señora de Soledad had a Guelaguetza event, maybe a practice, presented by schoolchildren. Guelaguetza is an annual indigenous cultural event in Oaxaca and nearby villages. The celebration, which takes place in July, features traditional costumed dancing, native food, and artisanal crafts.

We walked over to the Zocalo and it was much different than the previous Wednesday. There were food stands and other vendors all over as well as a number of camping tents. It seemed to have something to do with a teacher’s union or government employee union seeking support. Then we walked up to the Santo Domingo church to see if anything was happening there, but it was quiet.

Thursday

At noon a man and his son came to visit us at the language school with a lot of textile products. The father received some awards for his traditional weaving craftwork, and together they showed and explained how ancestral weavers in the area were able to produce dyes of different colors for their wool textiles. Various plants are used for several colors and tiny snails that live on cacti produce a purple color.

After our afternoon class we went in search of quesillo, a traditional Oaxacan cheese that has a sort of stringy form which is rolled into a ball. We found a good shop and bought some to bring home, then stopped at a rooftop terrace restaurant with a great view of the city.

After bringing the cheese back to our room and resting for a bit we went out again to look at some of the old local churches. Unfortunately we did not go in to the Basilica of Nuestra Señora de Soledad because a sign said no shorts were allowed and we were both wearing shorts.

We went in to the Catedral de Oaxaca. This is an elaborate cathedral with many chapels along either side of the main area, and the main area is sort of divided by an area for a choir or maybe for monks with a walkway down the middle to a speaking platform with statuary.

Afterwards we looked for a light dinner and had been recommended La Popular. It was good but not great. The highlight of the dinner was when a procession that might have been a wedding procession passed by with a big cloth sphere on a stick, large dancing mannequins of a man and a woman, a couple of Tiliche dancers, several traditional dancers, and a big band. The Tiliche is a figure we have seen in various forms around town but I was not able to get a good picture of it.

From this Substack entry:

A tiliche is a man wearing a huge suit of tattered clothing covered in multi-colored strips of cloth. The tiliche’s mask is made up of animal skins, and their huge, exaggerated sombrero is made of woven palm fibers. Tiliches are associated specifically with the town of Putla Villa de Guerrero and are famously connected to the town’s huge and raucous Carnaval Putleco, which occurs just before the start of the Catholic ritual of Lent, which lasts for 40 days.

You can see some in action here.

And there is a tiliche statue in the Zocalo.

We did some homework back in our room and then caught up with some email and internet stuff, and I started working on this blog. The power went out three or four times for several minutes each time, and then at almost ten there was a pretty big fireworks display from the nearby Basilica of Nuestra Señora.

Monday

We went to the Tacos de Carmen Alto food cart for lunch and ran into one of the couples we met on the Mezcal tour the day before. They were trying to get a quick lunch before they had to head to the airport, but the cart had a bunch of people waiting. They did get their food and headed out while we were still waiting. A young man from Germany asked for some help translating. We ended up talking with him for a while. It turns out he wanted to try several things from the cart but did not realize how much food he had ordered.

After our afternoon class we walked back over toward the Santo Domingo church and went into the Quinta Real. This building had been a convent in the early 1800’s but some political changes in the 1860’s meant that it ended up being used by the government for various purposes through to the early 1900’s when it languished. For a while the chapel was used as a cinema while the rest of the building deteriorated. Finally in the 1970’s there was a sort of public-private partnership to restore the building and it ended up becoming an upscale hotel. When I talked to one of my teachers the next day about it, it sounded like maybe the hotel got a way better deal from the government than it should have, but in any case it is now really beautiful.

We went across the street to La Rueca, a restaurant which has a rooftop patio over a gallery that is built around an old printing press. We had a light dinner while some weather blew in and things began blowing around the patio with some rain showers. Fortunately we finished our dinner and made it back to our hotel before it began raining in earnest, which is apparently very unusual this time of year.

Tuesday

After class we went to the Museum of Oaxacan Culture that is in the old monastery attached to the Santo Domingo church. There are some great displays there covering a lot (actually too many to absorb in one visit) with the feature display being the relics found in a tomb at Monte Alban. Signs say cameras are not allowed, but many people seemed to ignore that in halls other than the room with the tomb relics.

The museum overlooks the Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca which unfortunately has been closed every time we tried to go.