I think, however, we all were the most enchanted by the women of Chicahuaxtla. Chicahuaxtla is a Triqui community, isolated and surrounded by beautiful misty mountains. The central valley of Oaxaca is steeped in Zapotec culture (with a little Mixtec thrown in for flavor), but the Triqui people are an indigenous group linguistically distinct from any other in Oaxaca. Florencio has pointed out Triqui women in the Oaxacan markets by their colorfully striped red huipiles (what we might label a poncho of sorts). The Triqui are famous for their woven textiles, and the women of Chicahuaxtla (I just like typing that name, let's be honest) are award-winning weavers.
All their weaving is done on back-strap looms, portable and versatile. For around two hours this Friday, we learned how to use these looms straight from Martina and her daughters. It was one of the closest interactions we have had to Oaxacans outside Florencio, and we were all pretty taken with the experience. At one point I looked around to see everyone around me laughing at a joke that had to be translated into three different languages to make it around the group, and it occurred to me what a once in a lifetime interaction this was.
This has been an interesting week for me, to say the least. I studied abroad just one state over almost two years ago, and this is my first time back to Mexico since (if you don't count a jaunt across the border on LAST year's Hendrix trip). In many ways I am more comfortable in Oaxaca City than I would be in a city like New York or San Francisco. I just know it better. This puts me in a very different place mentally than my companions on this trip, and I often wonder what I miss simply because it's no longer new to me. I miss the "travel high" that normally comes with leaving the U.S., that panicky excited feeling in my stomach every time I do something as simple as ordering a coffee by myself. It sharpens the senses and makes everything vivid and burned into your mind when you leave, and I've worried on this trip that I will have missed that.
But this weekend was something I have never been able to do in Mexico, and that is why I wanted to write the blog post for it. I never had the opportunity or the confidence to speak with the indigenous people in the markets in Puebla (not that Puebla has nearly as high an indigenous population as Oaxaca), and it's from living in Mexico for a time that I get how crazy of an opportunity this was. A group that is so normally cut off and separate from tourists like us (and mestizo Mexicans, to be honest) was suddenly open to interaction. We have Florencio to thank for that, in more ways than we know, I'm sure. It takes a lot of trust to let strangers into your community like that, especially when your community is so routinely threatened from the outside.
Despite our tired bodies and buzzing minds at the end of each day, we have a lot to be thankful for with this trip. I have never bought straight from the producer so much in my life! We've discussed the strange juxtaposition of feeling like such a gaggle of tourists and yet participating in opportunities no normal tourist would ever have. Those two hours of weaving lessons helped me feel like we got a taste of less observation and more interaction, which I know is what we all crave.
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