Go Shopping!

I have seen the things which were brought to the King from the new golden land ... all manner of marvellous things for many uses ... in all the days of my life I have seen nothing that so rejoiced my heart as these things, for I saw among them wonderful works of art, and I marvelled at the subtle genius of men in distant lands

These words were written in 1520 by the great German artist, Albrecht Dürer. The new golden land was México: the wonders of which he wrote were given by Aztec emperor Moctezuma to Hernan Cortés and sent to the King of Spain.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo marched with Cortés and in his True History of the Discovery and Conquest of New Spain, he tried to describe the wonders of the great market near Tenochtitlan as he saw it 1519. His list of the marvels he encountered runs on for pages and pages.

México, and especially Oaxaca, still has the ability to inspire awe in its visitors through the enduring traditions of native arts and crafstmanship and the amazing creativity of its people.

In a shrinking world of globalization and the relentless assault of homogenized mass culture, the resilience of the indigenous people of Oaxaca in conserving their identity and cultural heritage is remarkable and cause for celebration.

These vibrant communities have endured, in part, by passing down through the generations the ancient techniques of their arts and crafts, along with their ceremonial practices, oral history and other traditions.

In buying their goods, you're helping to bolster a cottage industry and strengthening their efforts to resist asimilation.

There's some some neat stuff to be had out there, a wealth of treasures to discover, from local stores and vendors, or in the towns and vilages that produce it. Treasure hunting is a great reason for a road trip and there are fascinating communities nearby to explore.

Or simply let the shopping come to you: Just sit on the beach or a restaurant patio for a spell and you will be offered hammocks, jewelry, key rings, picture frames, carved animals, clothing and countless other things you never knew you wanted.

My experience is that you regret what you didn't buy, much more that what you did. Take home one of those knick knacks from among the shelves and it acquires a new dimension, it becomes a true treasure in its alien environment.

Our intent is to to open your eyes to some of these potential treasures. This overview of Oaxaca's amazing selections of arts and crafts might help you discover some souvenirs to cherished and gifts for the folks back home that will be truly valued.

Shopping Oaxaca

THE OAXACAN PEOPLE have a 2500 year history as master weavers. The links to this ancient tradition are best seen today in the clothing of Indigenous women. Most Indian communities retain a particular style of dress, with variations to distinguish different villages within a region.

Elaborately woven and embroidered clothing is worn on a daily basis, not just on ceremonial occasions. (Although with the intrusion of the wider world, there are fewer communities where the younger women adopt traditional dress.)

Best known is the huipil, a sleeveless tunic made from three pieces of cloth. Oaxacan weavers still use cotton and wool yarn dyed with animal based colorants. Cochineal, or Carmine, made from the tiny dactylopius coccus insect that feeds on the nopal cactus, was the most valuable product, after precious metals, shipped by the Spanish to Europe. And no wonder: it takes 70,000 of the insects (only the females are used) to make a pound of dry cochineal. What the Spaniards saw amazed them. The Old World had never seen a dye of such a rich redness and fullness, and so colorfast, so stable and so impervious to change. Cochineal became the most guarded secret of the Spanish Empire.

In the Mixtec villages of the Oaxacan coast, weavers also use cotton dyed with purpura patula pansa, a species of sea-snail, picked off the rocks of our coastline at low tide during the winter months. When the dyers squeeze or blow on the these mollusks, they give off a foamy secretion which is rubbed onto skeins of raw cotton. The snails are put back on the rocks afterwards, which explains why this precious resource has not been exhausted after so many centuries.

Shell-dyed purple cotton is combined with indigo-blue cotton and red silk, preferably dyed with cochineal to fashion the pozahuanco, the mauve and purple striped wraparound skirt typical of the region.

The woven cloth for blouses and huipiles is intricately embroidered, each culture and, in many cases each village, using different design motifs and symbols - - flowers, animals, geometric patterns - - to set them apart, to express their identity. Perhaps the most spectacular of all are the fiesta outfits worn by the handsome Zapotec women of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a riot of colors, textures, velvets and satins. Also look for intricately embroidered peasant blouses with elaborate beadwork (chiquira); The woolen rugs and wall hangings from Teotitlan del Valle are also highly prized by visitors and collectors. Also of note are the simple woven-cotton bedspreads, table cloths, place mats and tortilla warmers, all of which can make a splendid gift.

Shopping Expeditions

It's a colorful, bustling market town; about 60 percent of the population is indigenous. The Indian ladies from the surrounding villages come here for supplies and to sell their produce. You'll see women in traditional dress: huipiles, embroidered blouses and the pozahuanco, the mauve and purple striped wraparound skirt. The men wear calzones, white, draw-string pants and shirts of heavy cotton.

The people of Jamiltepec were called malacateros, for malacates, wood and clay spindles used for spinning cotton. The area was an important cotton-growing center and the town is best known for its textile crafts - - hand woven and embroidered clothing, table clothes, napkins - - but families in Jamiltepec also traditionally produced finely-crafted knives and machetes, some engraved with prayers or amusing sayings.

The town's central plaza, recently remodeled, boasts a pair of colonial sundials. On one side of the square is the handsome Dominican church, another is occupied by the Municipal Palace. It also houses the town prison, which allows visitors to enter to buy the crafts made by the inmates to earn a few pesos to make their ordeal a little more tolerable.

You can normally find crafts in the plaza at the side of the church. The no-name crafts store in front of the Biblioteca, the town library, has a great selection of regional weavings and crafts, including colorful ceramic ashtrays with figures of malacateras. Plus, of course, the malacetes themselves which are also used as hair ornaments.

Huazolotitlan

Huazolo, as it is often called, is just 4 km off the Coast Highway at Huazpala, or San Andres Huazpaltepec, more or less midway between Jamiltepec and Pinotepa Nacional.

Located in a lovely valley, it's picturesque and notable for the production of elaborate woven huipiles and carved and painted wooden masks and figurines, many of which are still used in the traditional dances of the region. The town is also known for its delicious sweet egg bread, much prized throughout the region and dozens of homes fire up the ovens each afternoon filling the air with rich aromas.

When you arrive, you can ask for the home of Sr. Che Luna, one of the most renowned mask carvers of the region, or one of the workshops of some of the other cooperatives of carvers and weavers in the fascinating, yet accessible town.

You'll find colorful jaguar and other animal masks, magnificent huipiles and experience an encounter that might touch your life forever. The people of Huazolo are warm and friendly to outsiders. They are proud of their culture and crafts and pleased to share this with others. Experience these societies now, because the onslaught of modernity will inevitably prevail and these treasures will be lost for ever.

Just beyond Pinotepa Nacional, whose markets are definitely worth a look, you'll find the turnoff to Pinotepa de Don Luis and San Juan Colorado, both important centers of the textile arts. P. D. L. is home to some of the few people who still produce the purple dye favored by the Mixtec women for their pozahuancos, the striped wrap-around skirts seen throughout the region. There are groups of weavers, dyers and embroiderers in these towns who have banded together to produce high quality fabrics and clothing using the traditional methods, including the back-strap loom. Some cultivate the native brown cotton and all of them are committed to preserving the tradition techiques refined by their ancestors.

But if you walk around the little market in Pinotepa de Don Luis, along with huipiles, blouses and skirts, you will find these fabrics fashioned into such items as caps, bags, wallets, even sandals.

San Pedro Amuzgos is the capital of the Amuzgos in the state of Oaxaca. The Anuzgos call themselves tsan-núa, People of the Yarn and they produce some of most beautiful huipiles you'll find. If you go: Keep in mind that you are a stranger here. Villagers will be suspicious of your motives. Let them know you are looking for traditional crafts and it helps to present yourself at the municipal building, where someone might be found to act as a guide.

Jewelry

THE MIXTECS OF OAXACA were among the most accomplished jewelers of the ancient Americas. The exquisite gold work found in the tombs of Monte Alban is now housed in the Santo Domingo Cultural center in the city of Oaxaca. Reproductions of these magnificent pieces can be found in finer jewelry stores. Oaxaca is also famed for its fine filigree jewelry, particularly popular in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Slender gold wire is formed into elaborate designs and inset with pearls, coral and stone to produce stunning bracelets, earrings, pendants and chains.

There's lots of silver to choose from, most all of it from the Guerrero town of Taxco. You'll find handsome amber, mostly from from Chiapas and a plethora of fine chiquira beadsand shell costume pieces.

But please note: You may be offered jewelry made from red or black coral, normally in the form of beads. You are urged not to buy any such merchandise, as part of a movement by environmentalists to halt the degredation of the fragile reefs off the Oaxacan coast.

The Flavors of Oaxaca

IT PROBABLY IS not practical to consider taking home tamales or sopes, more's the pity. But here are some suggestions on how to capture the taste of Oaxaca to delight your friends and family:

Moles (pronounced moe-lay ) comes from molli in the language of the Aztecs, Nahuatl, and means sauce or stew. There are seven moles that originated in Oaxaca. Most common are the delicious rich red and black mole, dry packaged they don't need refrigerationand are widely available in local stores.

Oaxaca's delicious mountain grown, organic coffees are also easily transportable. Great gifts also are the two classic flavors that originated in Mexico, for which the world is eternally grateful: Chocolate and vanilla. Oaxaca's drinking chocolate is among the most prized in all of Mexico.

I found that those chile-and-garlic loaded peanuts and the sweet peanut and sesame seed bars called palenquetas were a big hit as gifts. Mescal, Oaxaca's fiery spirit distilled from the maguey or agave, is a great ice-breaker at family gatherings back, to which I can also attest. There all kinds are available, including the liqueur-like creams, cremas, with flavors ranging from coffee and coco to kiwi and passion fruit; Goes down easily, but it packs a punch!

Ceramics

THE ART OF POTTERY goes back many thousands of years in the New World and demonstrates an astonishing range of creative skills and artistry. While in the West, clay has often been considered somehow inferior to stone or wood as a medium of artistic expression, many archeologists believe that pottery-making was the greatest of all pre-Colombian crafts.

Today, Mexico remains a land of potters. Entire villages are engaged in producing ceramic products both decorative and utilitarian. San Bartolo Coyotepec is famous for the black and brilliant sheen of its pottery, a result of overnight firing in a kiln that starves the oxygen from the clay turning the natural red iron oxide to black. Friction polishing brings out the distinctive black metallic luster.

Atzompa is another of the great traditional pottery villages of Oaxaca. Here the distinctive motif is a semi-transparent green glaze using copper oxide over a tan clay.

Ocotlan de Morelos is another important center for the production of ceramics and is home to the famed Aguilar sisters who create colorful and whimsical figurines and scenes: islands populated by mermaids; colorfully garbed market ladies; monkeys and religious icons.

In the villages of San Marcos Tlapazola and Santa María Tavehua the families produce heavy red and orange terracotta ware.

Closer to home the ladies of Santa María Magdelana Tiltepec, near Nopala, continue a thousand plus year tradition of producing low-fired, unglazed pottery: cooking pots, vases, simple decorative figurines and the comal, the clay griddles so essential to Oaxacan cooking.

Also available in local gift stores is the highly prized Talavera ceramics from Puebla, multi-colored tiles, plates, bowls and lamps.

Wood Crafts

IN THE 1960's ARTISTS in two villages in the Central Valley of Oaxaca, San Martin Tilcajete and Arrazola Xoxocotlán, began carving and painting whimsical and fantastic animals and bizarre other-worldly creatures from copal wood. Copal is a soft, aromatic wood whose sap produces a resin that has been burned in incense braziers since time immemorial. These alebrijes, as they are called, proved highly popular and today are in demand as souvenirs for visitors and represent one of the state's biggest exports to the international market.

Here on the Oaxaca coast carvers still make animal masks and figurines, especially of jaguars, a creature that has always possessed powerful metaphysical significance. Also common are devil masks and effigies of pink-faced white men. These are based on the ceremonial trappings used in traditional dances for occasions such as the Day of the Dead, Carnaval and Easter Week. You'll also find carved angels, devils (many, like some of the masks, using real teeth and horns) and the ubiquitous skeleton figures.

These skeleton images are called calaveras or skulls . And they are seen everywhere, from the political cartoons on the opinion pages of the newspapers to children's toys and games. Far from being solemn or morbid, the Day of the Dead celebrations, with which these symbols are associated, are highly festive in tone. They celebrate the continuity of life and strengthen the links to the past.

Other wooden implements you'll come across are children's toys, especially spinning tops and trucks, combs, spoons, bookmarks, letter openers, back scratchers and chocolate whisks.

Furniture

Santa Catarina Mechoacan specializes in the manufacture of wood and woven-string chairs, tables and other furniture, common in many of our local homes and restaurants. It's an attractive, well-tended town.

Don't be surprised to see women-of-a-certain-age unabashedly topless in and around their homes and the furniture workshops. Among the Mixtec of the coast, once a women is beyond child-bearing years, this is her right. She may cover herself with a shawl, should she choose. In many of these towns local priests have made it a point to end this practice, but in Mechoacan, the abuelitas still let it all hang out.

You can often see these grandmothers in the market at Jamiltepec, a hollowed gourd perched on their heads.

Candelaria Loxicha also produces a distinctive style of furniture fashioned from woody vines.