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
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