On The Plain Of Snakes: A Mexican Journey

by Paul Theroux

There was a good reason for Oaxaca being unaltered, and unalterable. A few days after arriving in this colonial town in a high valley, justly celebrated for its beauty and its traditions, I was reminded again of how “the past of a place survives in its poor”—how the poor tend to keep their cultural identity intact. They depend on its compass and continuity and its pleasures for their self-esteem, while the rising classes and the rich tend to rid themselves of their old traditions, except in a showy or ritualized way, because they became wealthy by resisting them and breaking rules. Oaxaca, with its powerful and visible identity and its living culture, was hard-up as a result of staying true to itself.

The stone that gives Oaxacan architecture its distinctive mottled yellow-green-tan color is volcanic tuff, known in Spanish as toba volcánica, or cantera verde, which is quarried from hills all over the region. In spite of their plain facades, many of the larger buildings had shaded patios and courtyards, and large interior rooms, and some interior courtyards with roofed entryways (zaguanes) resembled atriums, with fountains, stone carvings, and brittle palms in dusty pots.

The sanctions against bulldozing the classic architecture of Oaxaca and making room for resorts have kept the town’s soul intact.

That most of these street vendors are Indians—Zapotec and Mixtec—deepens the town’s cultural authority: five hundred years after the conquest—Oaxaca was founded in 1529—the same indigenous people persist, tenacious and undiluted, still speaking their ancient languages, easily recognizable as Mexico’s native aristocrats, their same hawk-nosed profiles chip-carved on the murals disinterred from the ruins at Monte Albán and Mitla, not far away. As Benito Juárez (raised speaking Zapotec) described his own family, they are “Indios de la raza primitiva del país”—that is, Indians of the original race of the country.