I came to Oaxaca not to see Mexico, but rather to see that which appears to be Mexican. I came to see old men in cowboy hats and serapes and old women in colorful scarves selling handmade tortillas on the streets. I am not disappointed.
This Mexico has appeared to prove its authenticity and the genuineness of the other. In so doing it has reaffirmed my own authenticity. If they are different, then so must I be. This is comforting in an era whose main purpose seems to be the acceleration and diffusion of identity. I inhabit a space in which I can whisk myself to the edge of the continent and not miss an episode of “Six Feet Under.” I watch CNN and check my email on America Online. From my hotel room I dial a cell-phone with a Virginia area code attached to a friend living in Washington and visiting family in Florida. I pay for the call with a credit card from a bank whose location I don’t know – toll free numbers and web pages are place enough. When I spend pesos or dollars with the card I get frequent flier miles so that I can leave again on an airline appropriately named “United.”
My fellow travelers and I are from Diamler Chrystler in Detroit and Germany, forest preservationists from Switzerland and Colorado, a British ex-pat living in Marina Del Ray California, traveling with her English mother while her Indian father stays at home with her beagle, and a couple from Mexico City here to see their country, others reaffirming a self lost in the Zona Rosa. We shell out $250 pesos or $25 American dollars (the tour guide accepts either, post-modern musings break down where capital and easy conversion rates are concerned) and pile into a van.
Over dirt roads and through barren land we bounce and climb our way to petrified waterfalls, actually calcium deposits built up over centuries by underground springs. Proof of age as proof of real. In this small town, and others like it across the country, there are only women, children, and old men. The young men are in the United States, legally or otherwise, following crops and poultry. They live five or ten to a room, sending all the cash they can home. Our real Mexico, the traditional country of the tour, is flat broke. There is little water and less work. The corn is dead or dying and there are no factories. Between money made selling lunches of quesadillas and Coca Cola to tourists and that sent home by those cleaning our houses and tending our gardens while we’re away, there is enough to buy shoes for the boys, shoes that will be worn on the long trip north to Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago.
Back in the van. Authenticity is on the clock.
Next, an actual, traditional, rug factory. A demonstration of combing and spinning wool. My cohorts and I watch as an old woman picks a white lady bug larvae off a cactus and rubs it on her arm, and shows us it’s now red. We ooh and aah. Next, her assistant, an old man, takes a glass of water, adds a few crushed and dried lady bugs, and voila, the water’s red. Next he shows us an ordinary lime, nothing up his sleeve, squeezes the juice and taa daa, the water’s orange! Some natural baking soda and presto back to red. With flourishes that would make David Copperfield proud he shows off his trick, the magic of PH balances, an effect straight from Mr. Wizard via the Zapotec.
Our guide, Raul, produces a book, “Out of the Volcano” which, he tells us, “is from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC” about real native crafts from Mexico. This family, this workshop, this old woman, are featured. This is real authenticity, documented and certified by the official keeper of the real authentic, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. I have traveled several thousand miles to see a real culture as verified by an organization around the corner from my apartment. Mexican credentials established we are offered a selection of handmade rugs to purchase. The family gives prices in pesos and Raul translates them as dollars. We get a discount for paying by personal check.
Back in the van. It’s past mid-day and there is more proof of identity to see and buy before dark.
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