Easily missed sanctuaries hold a vast and important history

When exploring any of Mexico’s 16th century cathedrals, make sure to visit the side chapels. Arrayed the length of both sides of the sanctuary, frequently side chapels are dedicated to a person or object of local veneration. These can be quirky figures who are not embraced by the Catholic Church in general yet were sanctioned by the bishop of the local diocese.

My favorite is the chapel of the Cross of Huatulco in Oaxaca’s cathedral. That little chapel houses a most unusual story. It pulls together Quetzalcoatl, Apostle Saint Thomas, English pirates on round-the-world voyages, and two beatified Indigenous Mexicans, all in a space of no more than thirty square meters.

There was a marvelous text describing the Cross of Huatulco but it was removed in the early 2000s when the chapel was re-dedicated to honor Juan Bautista and Jacinto de los Ángeles. They were Indigenous leaders martyred in Oaxaca in 1700 and beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2002. There is now a life sized painting of them standing side by side looking like a Grant Wood “American Gothic” portrait with Andy Warhol colors.

The now-missing text described an event occurring long before the arrival of the Spaniards with their Christian religion. “Since time immemorial the Indigenous people of Huatulco knew of a cross on the beach which they venerated because it could heal them of their afflictions. It had been carried there by an elderly man arriving from the direction of Peru. He spoke kindly to the local people in their own language – Mixtec.”

The text went on to say, “The Cross, according to tradition, was brought by the Apostle Saint Thomas, called Quetzalcoatl.” My! That in a Catholic cathedral!

Don’t think I’m making this up. Back before digital cameras I asked a member of one of my study groups to take a photo of the chapel as well as text. Not an easy feat in the dimly-lit sanctuary while respecting the no-flash rule.

Think of Quetzalcoatl as a changing god of Mesoamerican mythology, a god that is always on our side. He gave the sun a gift of his own blood so as to keep it moving and creating day and night. From the bones of his mother and father sprinkled with his own blood Quetzalcoatl created our humanity. People didn’t fear Quetzalcoatl as they did so many of their other gods.

Quetzalcoatl’s name is a play on words. It means “precious twin” or, more properly, “precious duality” because quetzal feathers were highly valued and coatl is the Nahuatl word for twin as well as serpent. Thomas, the name of the Apostle “known as Quetzalcoatl”, also means twin.

There is a real-life character known as Quetzalcoatl who may have been the one bearing the cross. Ce-Acatl was a preist to the god Quetzalcoatl who became the Emperor of the Toltecs. In 999 the 52-year old emperor, the link between people and their most beloved god and thought of by many as a god-person, departed Tula in self-imposed exile.

The chapel in Oaxaca shows that the archbishop of Oaxaca endorsed the idea of St. Thomas/Quetzalcoatl bearing the cross. Higher-ups did too. Pope John Paul II said at the Aztec Stadium in Mexico City in 1999, “A thousand years ago today, Quetzalcoatl was a precursor of evangelization in these realms. As he neared death, he clutched in his hands a cross.”

So how do Sir Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish fit into the picture? Both were privateers who put down anchor in Huatulco, an area of nine bays on Oaxaca’s Pacific coast.

Francis Drake stopped at Huatulco in 1579. Thomas Cavendish stopped there in 1587. Both ransacked the port and made off with cattle and other supplies.

Cavendish went further than Drake. He went after the cross of Huatulco planted in the sand. Cavendish ordered his men to cut down the cross with saws and axes. They couldn’t. He then ordered one end of a rope be tied around the cross and the other around a mast of his ship Desire. They tried under full sail to yank it out of the beach. They couldn’t. The ship came to a standstill when the rope went taut. Finally he tried to burn the cross. It wouldn’t burn. Giving up, Cavendish set off on more profitable pursuits.

People marveled at the resiliency of the cross, and took slivers as relics. The bishop of Oaxaca at the time feared the cross would be whittled down to nothing and ordered it brought to the city of Oaxaca. For him it came out of the sand with little effort.

He made smaller crosses from the original. One was sent to Pope Paul V. Another was sent to the Santo Domingo Church in Puebla. A third is in the Merced Monastery in Mexico City.

A fourth is still proudly displayed in the side chapel in Oaxaca above the heads of the martyrs Juan and Jacinto. Check it out.

Making a Better Mexico

Mal de Pinto is a disease that leaves white splotches on dark skin.  It used to be endemic in the Mixe region of Oaxaca.  In the late 1950s the Mixes brought it under control to the point that a bounty was offered to anyone detecting a new case in the region.  The heroine behind that story is Lini de Vries, who came to make Mexico her home.

Lini was born in 1905 in New Jersey to Dutch immigrant parents. In 1935 Lini joined the Communist Party and in 1937 she volunteered to serve as a nurse in the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.  After World War II wound down she was trailed and hounded by the FBI.  Fearing a subpoena by the House Un-American Activities Committee, she packed her duffle bags and with $100 in her pocket, her 4-year-old daughter Toby holding her hand, she boarded the midnight flight from Tijuana to Mexico City in the early hours of December 12, 1947, day of the Virgin of Guadalupe.  

She was offered a place to live in Cuernavaca by Constancia de la Mora, daughter of a prime minister to the former King of Spain. Lini covered her expenses by teaching English.  Her passion was nursing and public health.  She taught English for five pesos an hour and taught nursing for free.  

She moved to Oaxaca in 1952, taught English and nursing and soon was working for the Papaloapan River Commission, a federal government development program patterned on the Tennessee Valley Authority in the U.S. The plan was to build roads, bridges, schools, clinics, powerplants and flood-control dams. 

Three diseases threatened to bring the project to a standstill.  Malaria was prevalent in the lower regions, Mal de Pinto in the area around the largest dam, and onchoserciasis caused by the bite of a black fly in the mountains. Engineers and even public health workers were leery of entering the region for fear of contracting river blindness or the disfiguring blotches on their skin.

It was Lini's idea to train the rural school teachers -- federal employees with a good rapport with the communities -- to provide the necessary treatment for each one of the diseases.  Mal de Pinto required three vaccinations.  After the first, the symptoms disappeared and the patient felt cured.  However the disease progressed without the other two follow-up vaccinations. Teachers kept track of the dates for the second and third vaccinations and went out in search of the patients if they didn't come in for them.  

As the Papaloapan project reached completion, Lini accepted a position at the University of Veracruz in Jalapa where she taught anthropology and public health and set up a program for foreign students.  

It was in Jalapa that the FBI caught up with Lini.  Her friends and colleagues knew her fear and soon President Adolfo López Mateos learned of it too.  He reportedly told his Secretary of Foreign Relations that he would deal with the extradition request himself. As I recall the story, the president drew two parallel lines diagonally across the request and wrote between them "Lini de Vries is a Mexican citizen and cannot be extradited for political reasons."  On May 10, 1962, Lini received a telegram from the president requesting she report to his office to receive her citizenship papers from him personally.  Lini's autobiography ends with "all fears of the FBI seemed to lift off my shoulders.  Suddenly I felt free.  I was home."

I met Lini seven years after that.  Her Cuernavaca home was a bed and breakfast. She sold Oaxacan arts and crafts in a shop in her garden.  She hosted events in her living room.

Lini told of hiring a man to paint her living room walls.   She returned from shopping that morning to find a red splotch on her wall.  Raising her voice she said "I wanted it white, not red!"  "Don't worry Señora, it is just the rear end of a horse.”  Lini had the whole wall scraped revealing a mural underneath. Turns out that Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo lived in that house at the corner of Motolinia and Humbolt streets while Rivera painted the mural in the Cortez Palace. Lini suspected that her mural was an experiment with technique by Rivera and a Russian friend.

It was around the dining room table in Lini's home that my Spanish language school, the Cemanahuac Educational Community, was planned and took shape.  Lini insisted "You can't teach the language in a cultural vacuum.  You must also teach about the people who speak the language."  She helped us do that. As dean of students Lini contributed with her intelligence and wit and taught classes in public health and anthropology.  

The Days of the Dead make me think of Lini and the book frequently called the Book of the Dead -- the phone book.  Lini worked her way through nursing school as a telephone operator and had a keen ability to remember phone numbers.  When I couldn't find a number I knew I could call Lini and she would know it by heart. 

Money that grew on trees

Chocolate is one more of Mesoamerica’s many gifts to the world and, “chocolatl” or chocolate is another of the many Nahuatl words to enter our modern vocabulary.  Cacao, the bean from which chocolate comes means “food of the gods.” Who can argue with that?    

Chocolate probably originated in the Amazon region but Spaniards first encountered it in Mesoamerica.  The Mesoamericans cultivated a cacao species different from that of the Amazon; it appears there was little to no cross fertilization of the two species. 

The cacao bean (in English frequently referred to as cocoa) gave lie to the adage "money doesn’t grow on trees."  For millennia, in this part of the world, it did.  The cacao bean was an accepted unit of currency throughout Mesoamerica.  Even purchasers with no cacao beans in hand used prices set in beans to guide their barter.   A buyer purchasing a length of cotton cloth know how many cacao beans the blanket was worth and how many his bags of corn were worth, thereby knowing whether to add or subtract corn in order to seal the deal. 

Columbus, on his fourth voyage, encountered and seized a Maya merchant dugout canoe described as "being as long as a galley and eight feet wide, had a cabin amidships, and a crew of some two dozen men, plus its captain and . . . women and children.  It carried a cargo of cacao, copper bells and axes, pottery, cotton clothing, and macanas (wooden swords set with obsidian blades)." Columbus' son Ferdinand wrote, "They seemed to hold these [cacao beans] at a great price; for when they were brought on board the ship together with their goods, I observed that when any of these almonds fell, they all stooped to pick it up, as if an eye had fallen [out of their head]." 

Indeed they were valuable.   A thousand cacao beans, the product of a single tree, could buy a slave at the Laguna de Terminos market.

Reference to cacao and chocolate is found in ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing.  Vases, which seem designed to hold beverages, have been found with hieroglyphic text identifying the owner and its intended use as a cup from which to drink chocolate. 

Throughout Mesoamerica cacao was considered sacred and used for medicinal and ritual purposes.  Today it is known as an antioxidant with the ability to lower cholesterol and blood pressure as well as having mythic aphrodisiac properties.  Cortez was sufficiently impressed and reported this property of chocolate to the Spanish court.  The legend continues -- probably accountable for chocolate as a preferred gift for Valentine’s Day.

In prehispanic Mesoamerica, "xocolatl" (bitter beverage in Nahuatl) or perhaps "chokolatl" (hot beverage as a combination Maya and Nahuatl word) was the preferred drink of the upper classes. They were the only ones who could afford to drink their money.  Frothy, hot, water-based chocolate was reportedly available all day long in Moctezuma's palace.     

Though Mesoamerican money did grow on trees, it grew in climatically restricted areas; its use as a favored drink of the ruling classes kept it scarce.  If there was an abundant harvest, supply and demand would kick in -- more people could afford to drink it and they would sip it right back to its former scarcity -- an inflation-proof currency.

The cacao tree is unusual in that its fruit can grow anywhere on the bark.  It grows on the tree trunk, along the branches, or dangles from the end of a branch.  Each pod, the size of a small papaya, of which there are about twenty per tree, contains thirty to sixty cacao beans in a mucilage-like substance.  After harvesting pods, farmers must quickly break them open and dry the seeds, or they will rot.  Today the seeds are dried on large cement terraces in front of houses.  Overflow crops even dry on the shoulder of highways.  If kept dry, seeds last for years. 

Cacao trees grow in low, humid, tropical regions of Mesoamerica, especially along the coasts of southern Mexico and Central America.  Cacao orchards are pleasing places in which to walk.  The trees grow as undergrowth in the shade of taller trees that fix nitrogen into the soil.  If you’d like to visit such a farm I suggest you combine it with a trip to the Comalcalco archeological site near Villahermosa, a cacao-producing area of Tabasco.

Today a brisk trade goes on between Tabasco where most of Mexico's cacao is grown and Oaxaca with the highest per-capita consumption of chocolate.  Next time you're in the city of Oaxaca find a chocolate molino near the market. Choose your preferred combination of cinnamon, almonds, sugar, and cacao, have it put in the grinder and prepare for a grand treat.  Purchase a "molinillo", lathed from a single piece of wood, in the market and use it to turn your chocolate into frothy hot chocolate.  A chocolate molino is one of my favorite stops in Oaxaca. 

The first daughter in Oaxaca

Oaxaca has been much in the news this week, both for the shaking of the earth and the earth-shaking news that President Obama's oldest daughter Malia was visiting.
Long before these momentous events, Santo Tomas Jalieza, just south of the city of Oaxaca was famous for its cotton sashes, belts, purses, and tabletop runners -- all woven on traditional Mesoamerican backstrap looms.

Girls, even as young as President Obama's younger daughter, Sasha, already master the craft.  Backstrap looms have no frame or structure.  One end is tied to a tree or pole and the other tied around the weaver's waist.  Seated on the ground, the weaver moves closer and closer to the other end of the loom as she works her weaving.  At first glance designs appear to be geometric. A closer look reveals a variety of discernable insects, flowers, turkeys, birds, deer, fish, and vases.

Families sell their cotton weavings in the town's market on the south side of the plaza.  Women of Santo Tomas produce and sell their products as individuals or family-based units, but they cooperate as a community.  Customers make selections based on quality, design, or even the captivating personality of the vendor.  Prices are the same at every stall in the market.

Even the playing field with regard to one’s location within the market is leveled. In public markets is it best to be at the entry?  Or, is it better to be farther into the market?  As a customer do you buy at the first stall?  Or, do you go further into the market making your purchase after seeing various vendors?  Perhaps marketing specialists know the answer.   Recognizing there are better locations than others, women of Santo Tomas Jalieza hold an annual raffle of the designated spots under the market's roof -- that's all there is, a roof; no walls.

Friday is the best sales day in Santo Tomas -- that's market day in Ocotlan.   Santo Tomas is two kilometers off the road between Oaxaca and Ocotlan.  A stop in Santo Tomas is included in most of Oaxaca's day tours to Ocotlan's market.

Other days of the week clientele is so sparse that rather than spending the day attending stalls at an empty market, the women of Santo Tomas have developed a method to be alerted when customers arrive.  A brass bell hangs from a horizontal beam near the market.  Tour guides and group leaders know to ring the bell insistently; within ten minutes a market is set up.

A number of years ago I arrived with a group and noticed a Japanese camera crew near the market -- filled with empty display racks and no vendors.  I suspected they didn't know about the bell.  I got out of my van and rang the bell; sure enough within minutes women arrived carrying bundles of cotton sashes, belts, and purses.  They draped them over the racks The market was open, ready for business!

Several months later I received word from Masaki Kimura, a Japanese friend and artist, telling me he would be returning to Cuernavaca.  He had studied Spanish at Cemanahuac  and exhibited his work while here.  His letter said he’d planned to go to Spain that year but a television program had prompted him to change his mind and return to Mexico.  On arrival he played a recording of a Japanese television quiz show.  Two teams were shown a video clip of a strange event.  Winning the prize required accurately explaining what was happening.  Neither team came up with the right answer for why the gringo stepped out of a van to ring a bell in a small Mexican town.  After both teams gave up, the video showed women of Santo Tomas rushing to set up their market stalls.

Santo Tomas Jalieza's signature cotton weavings are also sold in the city of Oaxaca's craft stores, and by vendors in its zocalo.  Sales have been very slow for the last couple of years.  The U.S. State Department's Travel Advisory is scaring away their customers.  Few school and university programs from the USA are traveling to Mexico.   I'm hoping that the silver lining of last week's earthquakes will be an objective view in future advisories.  As a result of the earthquake the White House released word that Malia Obama was unscathed and enjoying her trip to Oaxaca as a member of Sidwell Friends School's annual service-learning project.
 
Some will say the Secret Service detail accompanying Malia would also provide security for the entire group.  However there was no certainty her parents would allow her to participate in her school's trip to Mexico. It was scheduled with or without Malia. It is heartwarming to know a member of the first family in the USA will report home the wonders of Mexico, the warmth of its people, the needs they have.  She will tell her story of participation in a program meant to alleviate some of those needs -- needs most of us who read The News know from first-hand experience.
   
I wonder about the ethics of those who write the State Department advisories being the same people who benefit from substantial so-called "hazardous duty" salary bonuses. 

I hope the Secret Service detail did not sanitize Malia's trip to the point of not allowing her to acquire sashes, belts, purses from Santo Tomas Jalieza.  Every reader who’s enjoyed coffee, or comida, in a restaurant facing the zocalo in Oaxaca has been similarly enticed.  For years I’ve worn a treasured belt decorated with a sash from Santo Tomas.