125th Night of the Radishes December 24, 2022
Who on earth celebrates Night of the Radishes, and does it for more than a century? In Oaxaca de Juarez, they do. Noche de los Rábanos features radishes of all sorts of grotesque shapes and sizes, arranged in frightening artistic displays, but for a short time only. Under the late afternoon sun, the wilting is already well advanced. An acrid smell of oniony rot stings my eyes.
Radishes became a staple in Mexican cuisine, from tacos to pozoles, after the Spanish introduced the root during the colonial period. As the story is told, one harvest in the 1700’s was so abundant that many of the radishes were left in the ground. Some friars later pulled up the forgotten radishes and, marveling at the specimens, dedicated themselves to God’s glory by growing the grandest and strangest radishes He would allow. Thus, a tradition was started. Radishes that resemble the Virgin Mary are especially revered.
In Oaxaca City, where detailed woodworking flourishes, produce-venders started employing a craft of radish-carving to attract customers. The practice became so refined that, in 1897, a contest was started at the Christmas Market on the Zocalo, which has occurred ever since, on December 23rd. This year’s event, the first since 2019, has hundreds of entries. Crowds hurry to take photos of the displays before the whole pungent scene ferments into sauerkraut.
I honestly cannot keep track of the daily renovations to the Zocalo these weeks. Armies of carpenters and riggers must work through the night. The Triqui squatters who were summarily evicted at the start of the month have returned, although their posters for justice and their few tents are confined within traffic tape outside the Municipal Palace. There is simply no space for them on the plaza these days.
Stages, scaffolding, lighting, sound, and screens are being erected constantly, only to disappear the next day and reappear on a different corner. Assorted Christmas displays include an antique marimba collection, a zoological exhibition of mounted insects bigger than my hand, and a life-size nativity scene with elephant, camel, horse, rooster, and more sheep than I can count (but no baby Jesus, not yet). Like Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, the visuals verge on overkill. It is an expression of goodwill, and relative wealth, for the benefit of Oaxaqueños and tourists alike, not so much for the Triqui and other disenfranchised poor.
The Andean pipe player is blowing Jingle Bells outside Restaurante Mayordomo, his woolen back to the Cathedral. Dashing through the snow, you know, in a one-horse open sleigh, ho ho—he blows. No one knows the lyrics here, and that is just as well. The lyrics make no more sense to Mexicans, or to Andeans for that matter, than does his rendition of Sounds of Silence, which can be heard on most days, indeed, wherever one finds Andean pipe players on Mexican plazas. It was the obvious song to learn, once they had mastered El Condor Pasa, the Paul Simon song that put Andean pipes on American radio, back when cultural appropriation was still a good thing.