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 Travel & Outdoors | January 2008 
Oaxaca's Ready for Tourists to Return for Its Art, History and Mole Sauces
 Rachel Dissell - The Plain Dealer
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| | (Andrew James, Oaxaca Mexico) | | |
Tourists all but disappeared from Oaxaca, a Cleveland-size city in southern Mexico, after teacher protests turned violent in 2006. The laid-back feeling and cultural celebrations faded amid tear gas and troops.
A year later, the political graffiti is whitewashed and the city of Oaxaca (wuh-HA-ka) and its citizens are trying to sing, dance and feed their way back into the hearts of visitors.
One sign of the continuing unease is on the leafy zocalo, a square lined with restaurants, coffee shops and an ice cream shop featuring exotic flavors - like mescal (a liquor made from agave) and pineapple with chiles. Uniformed police officers and their auxiliary counterparts cluster on the corners of the square.
The intent, it seems, is to make the area feel safe. But the result leaves you wondering, "Why all the security?"
Mostly, the officers give directions to tourists who wander into town laden with backpacks, looking for hostels and hotels.
Oaxacans rely on tourists to buy up the mescal and black pottery special to the region. But they also still have pride in what their beautiful city has to offer, such as stunning churches like the Cathedral de Oaxaca and Basilica de Nuestra Senora de la Soledad (both built in the 1500s and 1600s), and no fewer than five museums displaying art from pre-Columbian to modern times.
Just a few miles southwest of the city, the ruins of historic Monte Alban stand nestled 6,000 feet up in the mountains overlooking the Oaxaca Valley.
Founded around 500 B.C., the archaeological site draws foreign and Mexican tourists. Monte Alban is the earliest metropolis of Mesoamerica, and offers a maze of carved stone monuments, buildings and staircases.
Visitors can get to the site on the many vans and buses running from the city.
In Oaxaca's city center and the surrounding area, there's plenty to keep tourists occupied.
Foodies especially will be pleased with the range of possibilities, from courtyard restaurants dotted with white tablecloths and smelling of wine and garlic, to crowded food stands outside the city's center that serve tostadas loaded with spiced beef and stringy Oaxaca cheese or hearty pozole, a stew jumping with bits of pork and creamy lumps of hominy.
In the same central market area, the smell of chocolate draws visitors to a corner store called Mayordomo, where workers use wooden paddles to mix special blends of chocolate. Some of the blends contain vanilla-flavored sugar crystals, while others are a thicker, spicier variety used in the mole negro.
In most restaurants, if asked, waiters will recommend a mole.
Oaxaca has long been dubbed "the Land of Seven Moles" because of its extensive array of traditional sauces that often include more than 15 ingredients and take days to perfect. Mole negro, the most familiar - and the most complicated because it takes two days and more than 40 ingredients to make the traditional way - is also the most treasured for its complex blend of chocolate and guajillo peppers. Many restaurants will help out mole newbies with a sampler featuring a rainbow of selections - the red mole coloradito, the mustard-colored amarillo and creamy, grassy-looking mole verde.
Just about any hotel or hostel can recommend a Oaxacan who will open up his or her kitchen to teach the tradition of making mole.
Socorro Pinelo teaches groups as intimate as one or as large as 25. Her sunny, tiled kitchen is a welcoming place to try your hand at mashing spices with a stone mortar and pestle, or to press masa and watch it brown into tortillas on a ceramic stone over a fire. The class costs $50 for about four hours, and includes a shopping trip during which Pinelo and her regular vendors turn the market into a classroom.
During the trip, students get to sample warm sweetbread, chocolate and tejate, a traditional drink served from a glazed green ceramic cauldron. It's a cold mix of corn, cacao, cinnamon and a melony fruit called mamey (rumored to be an aphrodisiac).
Visitors who feel daring can buy a small paper cone of chapulines, spiced fried grasshoppers, just to say they tried them.
Pinelo's English is limited, but her son Gerardo, who helps with the class, is an excellent translator.
Over vibrant bowls of mole verde around the hefty wooden table in the kitchen classroom, Gerardo explains how hard the past year has been for Oaxacans, who depend on tourists. He understands the reluctance of people to visit a place that only a year ago was a hotbed of teacher protests turned violent.
"But we here in Oaxaca have a lot to offer," he said. "The people are coming back."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: rdissell(at)plaind.com |
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