Oaxaca Research Trip 1

Part 1 of the research trip.

Posted 3rd September 2010 by David McGuinness

After a short wait in Mexico city airport we boarded our flight to Oaxaca. We were upgraded to first class for this flght without even asking which was nice. Even better we had the whole first class cabin to ourselves. The air hostesses could not suppress a smirk as they went through the pre-take off safety show – first in Spanish, then in English. I felt strangely obliged to watch as we were the only ones there. “If you are travelling with small children…”; we clearly weren’t, glancing back over our shoulders to double check no one had slipped any into our bags.

We drove thrugh the city’s colourful streets and We were dropped off at our hotel on Parque Juarez, named after the beloved son of Oaxaca. Juarez belonged to the Zapotec, an indigenous people fom Southern Mexico predominantly. His parents died while he was very young leaving him destitute. A priest who was looking after him noticed his sharp mind and looked after his education in the hope that he would become a priest. Jurez studied law instead and later entered politics, quickly rising through the ranks to become the country’s president. He is one of the country’s few leaders that left a purely positive legacy and no hint of scandal in his wake. That a Zapotec could rise so high within Mexican politics did much for the sense of unity and belonging in the country. Parque Juarez, the small park which our hotel faced, was bustling. A group of about seventy or eighty people were bopping away to salsa, another smaller group were waving long poles around in a show of martial arts force and at long tables people of various ages were scribbling furiously into small notebooks.

After a couple of hours nap we headed into the centre of the town, which was even more bustling – dancers, musicians, balloon sellers lined the streets, alongside vendors of all sorts in a colourful mishmash of styles and cultures. Oaxaca is at the heart of all thing indigenous in Mexico with more indigenous group than anywhere else in the country and this was clearly visible on its streets. At the centre of Oaxaca lies the city’s famous traffic-free square known as the Zocalo. This is a fantastic place to people watch with cafes lining the edges of the square and a constant flow of people weaving in and out of the square or sitting enjoying its shady benches. Given the flight fatigue we had an early night with the intent of meeting with a couple of NGOs and tour operators in the morning.

This blog is part of an Off-The-Beaten-Track Travel Diary. Click on the link below to navigate through this journey.