Guelaguetza July 20, 2022
July is the most festive month of the year in Oaxaca City. Random parades appear daily on the streets surrounding the Zocalo, clogging the central arteries with cars, buses, and potable-water tankers, each of which contribute to the festive music with honking horns in varying registers. The reveling will ultimately culminate in the week-long celebration of Zacoteca heritage called Guelaguetza.
One block after another takes on a colorful air in my neighborhood, as paper-cutout snowflakes are strung from rooftops across Calle Colon and Avenido Cinco de Mayo, beneath which march the familiar bands. They feature drums and horns, costumed boys on wobbly stilts, giant bobbing plaster heads with Zapata mustaches and Frida eyebrows, as well as a whirling white globe, which possesses some grand significance that still eludes me.
The actual Guelaguetza event is to be held under an enormous white circus tent that sits like a deflated blimp on a prominent hill just west of the Zocalo. Tickets sell for about 1200 pesos, but they have been sold out since our arrival last month. The excitement is especially high for this year’s Guelaguetza, as it is the first in three years.
Of course, the corona virus has not gone anywhere, and Cubrebocas are still the norm among the many pedestrians in Centro Historico. In this respect, Oaxaca is far cry from the mystics and naysayers of San Cristobal, who tend to believe science is merely some false ideology of the colonizers. Consequently, the light-footed dancers in floral dresses that accompany the marching band on Hidalgo keep most of their face-paint concealed behind masks, but this does nothing to dampen the spirit. One can sense the smiles in their eyes.
All of this Guelaguetza buzz notwithstanding, I spend much of my outdoor time trying to avoid the crowds of these galas galore, which only makes the decision to live smack in the middle of the most densely concentrated part of the city all the more bizarre. Nevertheless, it is possible to skirt the parades. To do this, I walk due north toward El Llano, The Plain—one of the city’s bigger parks, where rollerbladers and skateboarders challenge themselves on flat surfaces made uneven by the erupting roots of giant trees.
Sitting just off this park, on a quiet lane, is a pleasant little literary cafe called Revueltas, or Revolts. Lalo, the owner, gently peddles his coffee, a self-published magazine, and a mild form of social discontent to a curious audience of English-speakers, who are happy to receive his lectures on culture and tolerance.
This afternoon he is hosting a foreign film series which focuses on the inevitable conflicts between traditional values and modernity. The assembled group, all in their 60’s, seem to know each other, easily sharing their opinions of living here, creating art, managing hardships, admiring the sublime beauty of this place and its people. They seem so content, so pleased with their choices. One gentleman from California, Neil, has published not one but two historical novels on the abuses of empire, which he is eager to describe at length. I would seem to have found my niche in Oaxaca, a natural support group, a community of collaborators. And yet, I find myself repelled by the very notion. I am suddenly consumed with a desire to be walking on wobbly stilts downtown, grasping for tenuous meaning in the whirling white globe.
Vanessa is flabbergasted by my disdain. “Aren’t you happy to finally be around American people that speak English?”
No, I explain, because now I have no excuse to pretend that I do not understand what anyone is talking about.