Oaxaca

It's Palm Sunday in Oaxaca, and the zócalo next to this telephone center/Internet Cafe is teeming with musicians, pedestrians, and vendors of balloons and candy and trinkets. (Click here to see what the balloons look like.) This is the best zócalo I've been to--compact, friendly, busy. The cathedral stands in the middle of it, and since yesterday the steps have been filled with indigenous people selling palms braided into amazing crosses, crosses with Jesus, crosses with Jesus and flowers, crosses with Jesus and flowers and glitter. I bought quite a few sparkly Jesuses on the cross!

Several hundred people processed across the plaza into the cathedral at the beginning of the noon service. I went in, too, and now I know what it is like to be a peon. Remember, from your visits to Europe or Mexico, just how much floor space and how few pews there are in a 500-year-old cathedral? While the nobility sat, everyone else stood. And stood. And stood. As did I, trying my best to listen, comprehend, and not faint. I sang when I knew the words or the melody, tried to follow the passion story, passed the peace with everyone, but missed the offering and communion, because when the place is that packed, neither the offering box nor the wine and bread get around to everyone.

Just when I was sure the final benediction had been given, a male voice began to drone on and on and on again. A woman near me asked in Spanish if I were from North America. I said yes, and she introduced me to her husband, and we talked about California, and then I asked her, "what's with this second homily?" and she said, "oh, now they are blessing the palms." That she was more interested in chatting than listening to the homily was a clue that I could leave, so I did.

Oaxaca is a very beautiful town. Its most outstanding feature is the Iglesia de Santo Domingo (click here to get to a google page with images) and its former convent, now a very interesting museum on pre-Columbian and colonial Mexico. I learned that the first Spanish priests here used a cross but NOT the image of the crucified Christ because it was too similar to the human sacrifices that dominated the previous two thousand years.

Saturday, after the "Irreverent Church Tour" of the cathedral and two smaller churches, I had lunch with a Californian who took up residence here after being let go from her library job in San Francisco. Like me (and this is why we were introduced), she sold nearly everything she had and lives on rent from her two houses in Mill Valley. From the patio of her studio apartment, we could see most of the churches here as we ate guacamole, salad, and drank cold mint tea and beer. I got the inside scoop on being an ex-pat, and it doesn't sound half bad. In her case, how much more positive to start a new life in Mexico than apply for unemployment insurance and jobs in San Francisco.

I´m staying with another grandmother, a woman who once hosted a fellow student from Cuernavaca. My room is once again on top of the house, and has a terrace overlooking an empty lot and beyond it, a youth hostel. As in Cuernavaca, three generations live in or often visit this house, and there are also parrots and dogs. For me, traveling alone, it's nice to check in with a family for a meal three times a day, and speak Spanish. Travelers exploring churches and museums get to say little more than "how late are you open?" and "how much for this postcard?" Better to sit around a table watching telenovelas and listening to family members talk about their neighbors.

Tomorrow I take a tour to Monte Alban, the most significant ruins in this part of the country. Tomorrow night begins my pilgrimage to Guatemala, where another grandmother awaits me. It's an all-night bus ride (first-class, mom) to Tapachula, Mexico, on the border. In Tapachula, at 8:00 am Tuesday morning, I get a cab to the TransGalgosInter station and hope to get the 9:30 bus to Guatemala City. It's Holy Week, and everyone is on vacation, so I am a little worried about getting a seat on that bus. If my next post is from Tapachula instead of Antigua, you'll know I'm still cooling my heels in a bus station.