OAXACA!
On our first day in Oaxaca de Juárez, we stumbled onto a calenda (moments after a close encounter with a glamorous tourist in a shiny Bronco). Girls. One must be careful while zooming over the cobblestones.
One minute we were peering down from a terraced square, the next we were inches from a squabble of middle schoolers, brass bands blaring, jolly papier-mâché characters jogging overhead. My favorite were the marmotas, large balloon-like lanterns spinning uninhibited like liberated ballerinas. It was a celebration for a local school, and spectators (us, duh) were pelted with sunflower seeds and peanuts as students, teachers, and parents marched. Stopped. Marched again. No barrier between celebration and bystanders. Just people moving together.
We started our 6 month trip in Oaxaca to celebrate the wedding of Carolyn and Turner. They organized a calenda to carry their wedding party through the streets and this homage to a city they love highlighted my key learning about Oaxaca. People out here love to celebrate! And they aren’t afraid to have their voices heard.
On our second day, we toured with Raúl, a Zapotec guide who taught us about Benito Juárez, the first fully Indigenous president in the Western Hemisphere, and the legacy of reform and self-determination that still shapes the region. You can see it in the murals, the print shops, the layers of posters and paint across the city walls.
We also learned about Francisco Toledo, the artist who reshaped Oaxaca’s cultural landscape by building museums, libraries, and gardens, and by using his influence to bring attention to social and ecological issues like protect traditional foodways and exposing corruption. His legacy framed my thinking about the abundance of studios and street art in Oaxaca today.
We visited Monte Albán, climbing ancient steps and unexpectedly traveling into another time! (I had no idea what we were about to see that day). We watched lucha libre- wow, theatrical! We spent two days in Capulálpam walking without lights through a cave with a contemplative guide. “Firm steps,” he said. Left hand up to find the damp stone. Trust what you cannot see. We carved wood at Subterráneos, with a very patient teacher, Axel.
A struggle I felt deeply on this first leg of our journey is the tension between cultural heritage as an economic engine and the machinery of capitalism. Culture draws tourism. Tourism brings money. But where is that money going? On average, the working class in Oaxaca makes $12 per day. I wrestled with my own participation in the machine, flattening living culture into something consumable. I keep asking:
How do we build systems where culture isn’t a commodity but protected infrastructure?
Where are celebration and resistance partners?
How do we connect passion with a patient practice that sustains the common good?
And in the meantime, the calendas dance down the street. Artists question the status quo. People gather in caves and carve stories into wood. Oaxaca feels like a place holding many complex truths. It was an honor to witness even a small part of it.
I’m Exploring:
Divided over Tourism: Zapotec Responses to Mexico’s ‘Magic Villages Program’ by Toomas Gross
Street Art as a Discursive Site for Negotiating Pluricultural Governance: A Case Study on the Oaxaca Commune by Lorraine Affourtit
Rearticulating the Social: Spatial Practices, Collective Subjects, and Oaxaca's Art of Protest by Ivan Arenas
Investing in Creativity as Social Infrastructure by Laura Zabel
Arts investment around the world: policy, place and philanthropy by Eliza Easton
The Race to Save Mezcal From the World - Jay Cheshes
