Noche de Rábanos, the Night of the Radishes

It’s a big night in Oaxaca. The zócalo is full of people carving radishes into elaborate scenes. Thousands of people file by to admire the very perishable art. Click on any image to enlarge it.

Night of the Radishes sign made from radish parts.

Radish woman

Radish oven

Radish cart

Radish Dragon

Tiny radish dancer

Radishes pulling a radish donkey

Radish roses and their maker

Solidarity radishes and their makers. The radish sign in front says, “Fuera EPN” or “Out Enrique Peña Nieto,” (President of Mexico).

Detail of demonstrating radishes–a rock-slinging radical radish.

Guy Fawkes made of radishes in radical radish demonstration

Radish fist

We held a small radish-carving party as a tribute to Oaxaca’s Radish Night.

Steve and the radishes.

Steve, Peggy and Christin work on carving

Steve’s radish bee

Radish sculptures by Peggy (she did the elf), Christine, Steve and Pat with the help of good local mezcal.

I made a radish clown nose. Steve models.

Pat’s radish nose selfie.

Radish sign (not ours–we just aren’t that good).

Virgin Days in Oaxaca

In a procession from a church in Oaxaca, women balancing portraits of the Virgin of Guadalupe spin and dance down the street.

Families flock to Llano Park in Oaxaca with their children dressed up to pose in Biblical scenes set up by photographers around the front of the church. Children sit on donkeys–either large plush ones or real ones. This self-possessed girl with perfect makeup and charming braids was ready for her close-up.

A little girl dressed as the Virgin of Guadalupe on a float in a procession.

Steve especially loved this guy dancing with a turkey under his arm in the procession for the Virgin of Guadalupe.

The full moon rises over Santo Domingo Church in Oaxaca. The domes are plaid.

I am woman and a mighty big key in Zaachila

The bathroom incident

Women line one street, cradling live chickens or hefting turkeys under their arms, waiting for buyers. On another street, women sell dried squash seeds and beans and corn and roasted peanuts. All around the square and inside the market building, vendors hawk bread and pastry, chocolate, meat, piles of peppers and tomatoes and onions. It’s Thursday, market day in Zaachila, a town about 12 miles from where we are staying in Oaxaca. It’s colorful, exotic, exciting. I don’t take pictures

I stand in line at the WC (2 pesos and you get a good amount of toilet paper to take into your stall). The ladies in line are mostly vendors wearing their aprons, braids down their backs. There’s no blending in for me in jeans and sneakers and straw hat and even at just 5′ 4″ more than a head taller than most of the women in line.

My oddness becomes even more clear when the tiny lady behind me taps me and in Spanish says, more or less, “This is for women.”

I turn and said, “Soy una mujer.” I am a woman.

The expression for utter embarrassment is universal. She cringes and looks horrified, and then giggles. All the women in line including me start laughing. I let her go ahead of me so she can get out of there, but I bet she’s going to be teased for awhile.

A quiet tomb

Above the market in Zaachila and behind the church is a small archaeological site–two Zapotec/Mixtec tombs. The only visitors while we are there were some policemen who come up to sit on benches under a tree to eat their lunch, and some girls in school uniforms who look like they were dodging grownups. If you click on any image, it will enlarge.

Miguel Fabián is the ticket taker and guide. He opens the steel doors protecting the tombs and tells me about them.

The mound might cover the ruins of a palace, but only two tombs have been excavated at all and are not much visible–look at the lower left.

The bones were on the floor and decorated with exquisite jewelry that got taken away to the museum in Mexico City. So did the pottery and other artifacts in the tombs, and Zaachilo only got to keep the bas-reliefs.

I ask Señor Fabián what the man carried–a big key? No, a penis, he says. Oh, a very big key, I say, almost as embarrassed as the woman who told me I was in the wrong bathroom.

Zaachila buses have a picture of Christ sitting on the cross, head hidden, and this message: “Nadie te amo como yo.” Nobody loves you as I do. Clearly, he got that line from his Jewish mother.

Mujeres at work

You know what you tell people to say in Mexico if you want them to smile for the camera? WHISKEY.

That’s one of the discoveries I made last week driving around for three days with the intrepid Yesenia Diaz Delgado, communications coordinator for Pro Mujer Mexico. Working as a volunteer, I took pictures of women who get loans and health care through the nonprofit. Here are some of the dynamic women working hard near Mexico City.

Click on any photo to enlarge it. All photos © Pat Arnow 2014.

Josefa Gomez Sanchez is tough on chickens but good-humored to everyone else  at her pollería in Tecámac, a big town just north of Mexico City. She is one of the micro-finance clients of Pro Mujer.

Josefa Gomez Sanchez at her pollería.

Arely Pavón-Torres has a green thumb that she has turned into a plant business from a workshop in her home in Xochimilco in the southern part of Mexico City.

Paola Torres, Arely’s mother has an indoor and outdoor kitchen. I want what was in the stewpot.

Paola  showed me her impressive collection of molcajetes, the stone vessels used for grinding food since forever in Mexico. These were just a couple of them.

A planting by Arely in a molcajete. I didn’t ask if it was one of her mother’s collection.

Me and Arely in her plant-filled courtyard in Xochimilco. Yesenia from Pro Mujer took the photo.

The landscape around the state of Hidalgo north of Mexico City where we traveled after Xochimilco was dramatic with cactus and canyons, mountains, fast-moving streams, and big poinsettias plants like these growing over rooftops.

Tomato grower Gabriela Gonzalez Lopez in Ixmiquilpan in the state of Hidalgo. She also runs a produce and chicken store at a crossroads nearby.
With her is Yesenia from Pro Mujer, who did all the driving through some profoundly bad traffic. She maintained her patience with both the jammed roads and my slow, tense-mangled Spanish.

 

We visited a farm that currently has just one two-year-old pig. She was happy to see us, grunting and looking for an ear scratch. Who can resist a cute pig portrait?

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