Juanita, the Mexican-American woman I met at Pachote Market, will ride down here with me in my car in September…a road trip to Las Vegas to see Greg, to Phoenix to see friends and across Texas to the border at Loredo. On the way to Oaxaca we will stop in Querataro to visit my old friend Patty Gutierrez. Juanita now lives in Guadalajara, where she was born, after raising her children in LA…two blocks from where we lived in Highland Park in 68 and 69! She is in Sacramento now visiting her son and daughter and will take the bus to meet me in Portland.

Her daughter Veronica teaches English to children at the Colegio Motolinta de Antequera, behind la Iglesia de Los Pobres on Dalias Street in the Reforma section of town, where incidently she watched the attack of police on the teachers outside her building a few days ago. She met her husband when she came here for a temazcal workshop in nearby San Jose…her husband’s parents were the instructors and she often translates for norteno participants now.

A Temazcal is a traditional sweat bath. The word is Nhuatl (Aztec) in origin and means “steam” (temaz “house (calli). Temazcals were common throughout prehispanic Mesoamerica and an important component of traditional therapeutic and purifying rituals. The temazcal itself is a small, closed, domed structure traditionaly constructed of adobe. To produce the steam, rocks are heated and herbs and water thrown onto the hot stones. (Claustrophobics might want to think twice.) It has become the fashion, Veronica says, for many Europeans to come here and combine a Temazcal workshop with a traditional Oaxacan marriage ceremony performed by her father-in-law.

Yesterday morning Veronica and I met for a cup of wonderful organic fair trade coffee in the Friday/Saturday Pachote Organic Market. Elvira, a Zapotec woman I have made friends with is a part of a new women’s collective that grows and roasts their own fair-trade coffee…it is not certified organic yet…a long and costly process. Elvira also sells vanillan, pimiento (pepper) roasted pumpkin seeds, fresh strong cinnamon, panela and honey…all grown or made on her little farm. Sweet smiling Elvira comes to the city every week-end five and a half hours each way on the bus. She spends Friday and Sat nights with my friend Sharon before leaving 5am on the bus again Sunday morning.

At Pachote (and also found on the street and in the other markets) you can eat food prepared by indigenous women…tacos made from blue corn, drink atole, a hot frothy sweetened Oaxacan corn gruel drunk plain or flavored. You can eat chapulines, toasted grasshoppers…a Oaxacan delicacy. It is said that if you eat chapulines, you’ll be sure to return to Oaxaca. You can eat memelas, small soft torillas spread with asiento (rendered pork lard and bits of chicharron (called chitlins in southern U.S) and topped with crumbles of fresh cheese. If you are really hungry you can eat chicken mole, a sauce based on ground chiles and spices…sometimes with chocolate. There are 7 different moles prepared in Oaxaca, most of them referred to by color…colorado (red) coloradito (little red), amarillo (yellow) verde (green) and negro (black, plus chichilo and manchamanteles (tablecloth stainer.) You can eat quesqadillas, a corn tortila filled with cheese and squash flowes toasted on a hot comal or clay griddle. My favorite for breakfast are the tamals…corn masa filled with mole red or green often with bits of chicken…wrapped in corn husks and steamed. Or you can just drink a big cup of tejate…a traditional drink made of corn masa, cacao, mamey fruit seed and rosita de cacao flowers dipped by the tejatera from a huge wide, shallow bowl. I’m still learning to like this drink.

Veronica showed me those little round avocados that you can eat with the skin on…panela, dark sugar wrapped in corn husk made smoky-flavored after sitting around a charcoal fire…little mild round red peppers called canarios…small round sweet squash…baskets and bags made out of high-sierra pine…home-made Mescal, a Oaxaceno specialty made from the Maguey plant. It is recent (hot and strong), reposado (aged and smooth) or anejo (aged for several years in oak barrels with the flavor of cognac (expensive) and often above 50% alcohol. You can buy beautiful Oaxacan pottery fired without lead, huge purple flowers together with spindly orange flowers that remind me of the Indian Paintbrush that grows wild in Eastern Oregon…all good stuff…you see where my money goes.

Through Veronica I met Willy, a very sweet Swiss expat whose sister lived in her little casita for 20 some years. When she died a couple years ago, Willy, who had often visited, moved into her home. Willy cooked us breakfast of egg and tocino (bacon) tucked into grilled bollios (Mexican buns), cheese, fresh orange juice, and rich dark organic coffee made in his French Press coffee-maker in his little open-air kitchen with an incredible view of the surrounding valley. He showed us his “poleo” leaves, drying in the sun for tea…”la yerbo de boracho” Veronica laughs…boracho meaning “drunk.”

We talked about other local delicasies…like “huitlacoche” or what sounds like parasytic mushrooms that grow on husks of fresh corn that is fast disappearing because of pesticides sprayed on the corn. Veronica lamented that out of a thousand varieties of mushrooms only a couple hundred are still extanct because the locals pull up the “whole family” by the roots instead of leaving the “children” to grow larger in the future…destroying the plant…thinking of the “short term” need for subsistence.

Willy says he was an industrial design engineer by trade…but here he really is an artist…designing lamps made out of sticks and branches from around his home. I told him he could market that stuff in New York City…but he is not interested. He is also helping an international non-profit based in Europe to design an eco-education program in his beloved Sierra…not building buildings…but just to take people in on treks and teach them about local ecology. Willy is bilingual and is the most respectuful of local expats I have met….preferring to leave the revolution to those who know best how they want to conduct it for themselves.

And this is just the beginning of what’s to love about Oaxaca.