A Visit to Teotitlan

A Vis­it to Teoti­t­lan by John Lamkin

Near­ly 40 years ago, I bumped along the pot-holed high­way south out of Oax­a­ca City, Mex­i­co to get to the Zapotec Indi­an weav­ing vil­lage of Teoti­tlán del Valle, an enclave of dirt streets and mea­ger houses–with earth floors, out­door kitchens and out­hous­es. The only school had but three grades, and there was very lit­tle electricity.
Less than half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, Teoti­tlán del Valle is a mod­ern, suc­cess­ful vil­lage that keeps its fas­ci­nat­ing Zapotec her­itage alive through its ancient tra­di­tions and cel­e­bra­tions. The art of weav­ing, for instance, has been prac­ticed for cen­turies in Teoti­tlán del Valle, dat­ing back to the pre-His­pan­ic era, a time when the vil­lage paid trib­ute to the Aztec cap­i­tal of Tenochti­t­lan through offer­ings of woven cot­ton prod­ucts at the end of the XV century.

Today, an easy dri­ve direct­ly into town from the Oax­a­ca high­way leads to many shops boast­ing vibrant dis­plays of weav­ings in many sizes, col­ors and designs—from ancient to modern—including Fri­da Kahlo. We passed large new hous­es, most of tra­di­tion­al style and incor­po­rat­ing a weav­ing store, and at least one a con­crete-and-glass mod­ern, an Inter­net café, a small hotel, and Tla­manal­li, a world-class restau­rant famous for its Zapotec cui­sine. Many streets are now paved and many of the hous­es are big­ger and have bet­ter facil­i­ties, includ­ing elec­tric­i­ty, indoor plumb­ing and tele­phones. There are more schools, a health clin­ic, sports fields, street­lights, and improved roads that won’t rat­tle your teeth loose.

New cars and pick­ups abound, although oxen and bur­ros still roam the streets. The lat­est phe­nom­e­non is the moto­taxi, some­what like a rick­shaw with a motor, which many local entre­pre­neurs dec­o­rate fes­tive­ly and use to fer­ry around “the city peo­ple,” as the Zapotecs call the tourists who descend on Teoti­tlán dur­ing the fies­tas, and as a “rapid tran­sit sys­tem” for locals.

All this pros­per­i­ty is due to the indus­tri­ous­ness of the Zapotec peo­ple and to the help of a few U.S. rug buyers.

It is the rugs that are Teotitlán’s heart and soul, its “alma y corazón.”

On my most recent trip, I trav­eled with a crew, film­ing the tra­di­tion­al weav­ing process­es hand­ed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. We inter­spersed film­ing the weavers with attend­ing cel­e­bra­tions and accept­ing many invi­ta­tions to join local fam­i­lies for hot choco­late, mescal (a dis­tilled spir­it made from the agave plant), tamales (steam-cooked corn dough often filled with chilies and meat) and count­less oth­er tra­di­tion­al Zapotec del­i­ca­cies. It was the begin­ning of the Day of the Dead fies­ta, a hol­i­day when Mex­i­cans gath­er fam­i­ly and friends to pray for and remem­ber those who have died.

We accom­pa­nied Alta Gra­cia López, a dye-mak­er, to a vil­lage in the moun­tains to buy yarn. As we stepped out of the car, a loud­speak­er sys­tem boomed, “Gente han lle­ga­do para com­prar lana–People are here to buy wool!” Soon a crowd of elder­ly women jos­tled each oth­er for our atten­tion, each clutch­ing a few balls of yarn to sell.

The wool is sheared from Chur­ro sheep, intro­duced by the Span­ish around 500 years ago. Women card the wool, then spin it using the cen­turies-old drop-spin­dle method. Wool and mescal are this village’s only industries.

One of the elder­ly women invit­ed us to her house to watch her spin. Her grand­daugh­ters, dressed in T‑shirts, jeans and run­ning shoes, came with us.

“Do you intend to fol­low in your grandmother’s foot­steps?” I asked one girl.

“We respect her and what she does, but we will be doing some­thing else,” she said, her answer typ­i­cal of the village’s younger, bet­ter-edu­cat­ed gen­er­a­tion, who leave to find work elsewhere.

Return­ing to the weav­ing vil­lage, wool in hand, we watched women spin it into skeins on a tra­di­tion­al spin­ning wheel.

Then came the dye­ing process.

Alta Gra­cia lit wood fires under large met­al caul­drons of water in an out­door shed. When the water rose to a boil, she added just the right amount of dye, a pinch at a time, to get the exact magen­ta and turquoise she wanted–an artist in action. She then added mor­dant to set the col­ors. After the wool cooked just long enough, she let it cool and then lift­ed it out on a long wood­en pole, heaved it over her shoul­ders and trun­dled down the hill to the riv­er. There she washed and rinsed it sev­er­al times, beat­ing it on the rocks in between lath­ers. Before her day was done, she would cart the heavy, wet wool back up the hill and hang it on a long wood­en rack to dry in the sun like a bright, woolen rainbow.

After dry­ing, the wool was ready for the loom. When I first vis­it­ed Teoti­tlán, women did not weave. That task was left to the men, and the designs were much sim­pler. But now, women weave rugs, wall hang­ings and pil­lows in an array of col­ors and com­plex designs.

Alta Gracia’s hus­band is a mas­ter weaver, and her three sons, in their twen­ties and thir­ties, are also skilled weavers. The fam­i­ly is very enter­pris­ing. Alta’s daugh­ter has a small flower nurs­ery on their prop­er­ty, and the fam­i­ly rais­es much of its own food, as do many fam­i­lies in the village.

This being fies­ta prepa­ra­tion time, Alta fired up sev­er­al bar­be­cue pits and sold the siz­zling goat meat to the neigh­bors. Invit­ed to attend the family’s pre-fies­ta feast, we enjoyed bar­be­cued meat served with sev­er­al of her home­made sauces, rang­ing from mild, but tasty, to rag­ing hot. It was an unfor­get­table meal, a meal that in itself would have made the trip worth­while, and it whet our appetite for the actu­al fies­ta, for which we saw prepa­ra­tions being made all around us.

The mar­ket buzzed with activ­i­ty and the sound of peo­ple speak­ing Zapotec. Every­where were flowers–especially marigolds, the favorite for Day of the Dead, sug­ar cane, spe­cial breads–some with small ceram­ic heads imbed­ded in them and some with words wel­com­ing the dead, sug­ar skulls–everything need­ed to pre­pare the altar to entice the “difun­tos,” or deceased, to return.

Next to the mar­ket is a church that the Span­ish built atop a Zapotec tem­ple. Part of the tem­ple is vis­i­ble, and many stones in the church have ancient Zapotec symbols–deities and glyphs–carved in them, the same sym­bols that appear in many of the rug designs.

For Day of the Dead, each fam­i­ly dec­o­rates its altar with can­dles, flow­ers, food and pho­tographs of depart­ed rel­a­tives in antic­i­pa­tion of their return. They also set up a small altar near­by to com­mem­o­rate the chil­dren who have died.

On the first day of the fes­ti­val, the depart­ed chil­dren return–church bells ring in the after­noon announc­ing their arrival. The next day the chil­dren leave and the adults come to vis­it the living.

In the evening, the difun­tos leave their loved ones’ hous­es and spir­it to the ceme­tery, where they are joined by the liv­ing for a live­ly fies­ta, with mari­achi bands play­ing and plen­ty of mescal, beer and soda to drink.

The fes­tiv­i­ties last well into the night, when the difun­tos final­ly depart for anoth­er year.

(A word of warn­ing: Stay­ing too long and drink­ing too much mescal might hin­der your departure.)

—John Lamkin is a free­lance trav­el writer and pho­tog­ra­ph­er – Vis­it his web­site.