Today Oaxaca is famous for its delicious food and local craftsmanship.

And rightly so.

But did you know that these traditions are thousands of years old and have their origin in ancient Zapotecan culture?

Join us as we eat our way through Oaxaca, Mexico.

Major funding for The Desert       Speaks was provided by The Kemper and Ethel Marley Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Desert Program Partners.

And by Arizona State Parks.

music Corn feeds hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world.

It started out as a plant that some people would call a weed.

It was natives of very dry regions of southern Mexico, near the modern city of Oaxaca, who discovered its true value as a food.

Corn has become the most important gift ever to come out of the desert.

The city of Oaxaca is located in the semi-arid highlands of southern Mexico.

For many hundreds of years it's been the crossroads of middle America, with a great parade of indigenous groups passing through.

It is still the Indian capital of Mexico, especially Zapotecs.

Today's Zapotecs depend on corn as their civilization has done for thousands of years.

5,000 years ago corn was domesticated very close to the city of Oaxaca near Puebla in the Tehuacán Valley.

And that allowed the development of very powerful cultures.

Corn was the basis of the Mexican diet and is still the basis of the Mexican diet.

From this corn, these small ears like this, from these valleys, came the basis of the diet of Mexican civilization.

And it came basically from here.

Yes.

Look, these two varieties, how far apart, came from here.

Well, corn has many, many different varieties.

Some are extremely primitive, some are highly developed.

And from this corn, from where we get our daily tortillas and most of the products, many products through the world.

Same corn, the same basis for our civilizations in central Mexico, our civilizations in southwestern United States, our civilizations in northwest Mexico.

All of it, corn inherited.

Yes.

We are just at the cradle where corn was created.

Dr. Burquez is an ecologist who is also an expert in the cultures of ancient Mexico.

The use of corn allowed the construction of extraordinary cities.

One of them is Monte Alban.

Monte Alban is an emblematic city so it's a very large city that just shows how powerful Mexican history is and how far back it goes.

The Zapotecs were very powerful warriors.

They conquered the area, they developed a flourishing culture, they have extraordinary developments in the arts.

But as happened to most cultures, they eventually declined.

And they declined because people didn't want to work anymore and the nobility was parasitizing the peasantry so much that everything started to crumble up.

That opened the way to new conquerers that brought new ways of looking at life, that brought new styles of construction, and brought new forms of art.

Those were the Mixtecas.

All of the cultural societies needed a very tight measurement of time.

And the more sophisticated the culture, the more sophisticated their sky observations.

The Zapotecs were exceedingly good astronomers and they built these structures as this observatory to keep track of the seasons, to keep track of the timing of the year.

That was extremely important to time up the crop seeding, the crop harvesting, the time in which rain was suspected to come.

Throughout the history of mankind, brief periods of peace were followed by lengthy wars.

The Zapotecs were not the exception.

The Zapotecs were engaged in lengthy wars against their neighbors.

These stones are depictions of warriors that were ritually mutilated.

These wars were the response to the acquisition of new resources, resources needed to sustain the growth.

Resources like coral, like pitayas, like corn, that were the basis of the economy of the Zapotecs and most Central American and middle American cultures.

Monte Alban is divided in five different stages by archeologists.

But what did really matter to us is that Monte Alban is a magnificent city that persisted for almost 1500 years until it was abandoned 1000 years ago.

Monte Alban is at the very roots of Mexican culture.

And we Mexicans have Monte Alban as one of our emblematic cities and as part of our past.

The genius of Zapotec craftsmen made the city of Monte Alban the wonder of ancient Meso-America.

Zapotec brilliance and creativity continue in the hearts and homes of Oaxacans even today.

All of my town makes these types of sculptures.

The figurines that we create here in San Martin Tilcajete are Zapotec figures.

It's been done for generations.

For example, we recreate those images that our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents created, following in the same Zapotec tradition.

These are the most difficult pieces I've made.

This is one whole piece that comes from the trunk, this tree trunk.

It takes a lot of time to carve a piece like this.

You need to be calm when you do this work, and you must be patient.

You need to give it time to develop and to take on a shape.

After shaping it, you let it dry for almost a month, then sand it off.

And finally, you paint it.

Making the figurines gives us a better life.

Working in the fields, you know, gives us subsistence but is not quite enough.

We use the copal wood.

Copal is one of the best types of woods.

It's beautiful.

It's able to give the best features and enables us to make exotic figures that grab your eye.

Just as an example, look at this.

This is copal.

If you look at this piece, it's a tree branch that is very twisted.

So we take advantage of it.

From it we create these fantastical wood carvings.

This lizard doesn't really have a tail like this.

One of the pleasing aspects of this he says is the combination of the reality of the way the lizard is in real life and the fantasy that he brings to it.

And the tail is a fantastic tail.

It doesn't match the real lizard.

But it brings to it a real Zapotecan reality that we can't see.

This tree is where the wood comes from.

This is copal.

It's a type of wood that gives us the ability to create these wood figurines from its branches.

If I were to cut this branch off right here, you can see the curve and we use our imagination and then create an armadillo.

For example, the branches here are straight.

We can cut them off to create a singing coyote with his face turned toward the moon.

If you want a fantasy figurine, we can cut the branches.

We can take a head from here, a hand from here.

But this would be a figure fantastic.

Only in the Zapotecan mind and imagination.

Cutting up here there is a tail of this fantasy animal, here is the body and the head would go up here.

But it's like nothing that exists in this world.

It's a complete Zapotecan fantasy.

In this town we are all artisans.

We are proud to demonstrate, to create, to make these wood figurines.

It's income to the town.

But we make the fantasy figurines from the heart.

Native desert plants have both artistic and practical uses.

They call this kind the Mexican Fence cactus.

It grows, sometimes it'll grow in the U.S., not very well.

But it doesn't branch so you can make them as tall as you want, nothing will get through.

I think the reason it's valued is it tends not to branch, it just sends up these straight stalks.

So it uses very little space, the space that a wall will take.

Oh, my goodness.

What are those?

Pitayo de mayo, isn't it.

It's appropriate.

This is May so it's the pitayo of May.

And they're coming out.

And the fruits are there.

There is a beautiful bursera tree and frankincense tree.

Another franc.

One of the tall ones.

Look how the exfoliation's here, these little piece of bark rustle in the wind.

It's a charming part of the tree.

I think maybe that's the signal that the fiesta is about to begin.

That's right.

We are now in San Martin Tilcajete, a typical Oaxacan town and gets his name because of the presence of a cajete, that is a hole in the ground.

The cajete was a water source and this old man was telling us that there was a big flow of water coming out of the cajete and this place was an enchanted place that provided all sorts of good things for the town.

The cajete was guarded by a demon, a good demon.

And as time passed and new generations became less and less respectful, the water source dried and now they only have the cajete and a small well where they still get some water but never as before.

There is a lot of exchange, social exchange, food exchange, forget all the offenses and so on.

It's a great event for the town.

This is the Dia de la Santa Cruz, the Holy Cross Day.

These tamales are so fresh that they're hot.

Hot enough to burn me.

But ah, inside we see beans, the black beans of Oaxaca, and a very fragrant herb called epazote.

It's used with beans and to spice a lot of things.

It's a very distinct taste.

It's used all over Mexico but in Oaxaca they use it in great quantities and it makes for a distinctive flavor.

Very Oaxacan and delicious.

The corn that made those delicious tamales is often bought at local markets like this one, in Ocatlán where you can find just about anything you can imagine.

Including the cactus fruit called pitaya.

I could easily eat 20 of these.

All right, here goes.

Mmmm.

Oh.

On a hot day, when you're really thirsty, there's nothing better than pitaya than to slake your thirst, maybe followed by a little mezcal, of Oaxacan vintage.

I'll go for the pitaya.

Yes, I'll go for the pitaya.

The heart of every Mexican town is it's market space and it's been that way for thousands of years.

More than goods and food are exchanged.

The air is full of gossip, proposals, ideas and politics.

I wonder if there's a demand for hats here.

You don't think I need a new hat do you?

Well, you need a Oaxacan hat.

I've never tried on a donkey stomach hat.

It really is too big, is it not?

It is too big, yes.

It's a shame.

I've always wanted a donkey's belly hat but, yeah.

I'm going to stick with my own.

You found the perfect excuse, David.

That's right.

It is.

That's a neat hat, though.

I heard that for Ocatlan here, people come from as much as 50 miles away every week to bring their stuff to sell.

And there's a gob of it.

They do so and you can see the amazing diversity of fruits, textiles, different sombreros, hats, and different products around.

Just these bags of de con ciruelas, there's nothing like that in the United States.

Here in Oaxaca, there are marketplaces in each town on a different day of the week.

And so Ocatlán here is on Friday and everybody comes from miles around to see their friends.

Yes.

Tomorrow is Oaxaca.

D. H. Lawrence wrote about the Oaxaca market and he said it was the perfect excuse to allow the intermingling of social classes without any suspicion.

Oh, my.

This is clear, beautiful bread.

Very nicely done.

And very fresh.

I guess they make it every morning.

For sure.

Ah, the bees, the honeybees love the honey on the.

It should be very sweet.

Yeah.

I think maybe I'll stay far away.

On special days in larger cities like Oaxaca, the market spills out onto the sidewalks and even onto the steps of churches.

Dia de la Santa Cruz, the Holy Cross Day, the third of May is a major celebration throughout Mexico.

And in major cities like Oaxaca they set up these wonderful flower markets because people will dress the cross in their homes honoring the cross, the holy cross.

It's a special day also, it's a major day for the brick masons.

Brick masons have taken as their symbol the holy cross.

This flower just seems to be everywhere for the Day of the Cross.

I know we call it frangipan, what's it called down here.

Down here it's called cacalosuchi or sucheal.

Cacalosúchil.

Yes.

That's a great name.

There's plenty unusual in Oaxaca but the food is as different and as far as I can tell is as good as any, I mean, here's a display of.

Amazing.

How many different chiles?

They say that there are about 100 different kinds of chiles.

All a different flavor.

Yes.

And that can be prepared in all sorts of combinations too.

Here's several right here.

Oh, gosh.

Frijol negro, black bean.

Frijoles negros, that's right.

And then they make, what's, mole negro, the black mole.

Yes, there is mole negro.

You know that Itolo Calvino, this famous Italian writer used to say that Oaxaca culinary expression with 100 different kinds of chile and a lot of time to explore and roast them and mix them.

And each one has its own little essential flavor, slightly different from any other.

And Calvino says and that will create fountains of ecstasies.

I agree with that.

That fountain of ecstasy that Alberto mentioned is exemplified in chocolate.

Judging from the smell, what do you think it is?

Well, it smells like chocolate to me.

I think we're near the chocolate center of the universe.

Let's go in here.

So here we have the product of another native plant of Mexico.

Chocolate.

Cacao.

Cacao.

So this is a box full of money.

Did you know that cacao was used as currency by the ancient Mexican cultures.

This is as valuable as gold, huh?

That's right.

So this is a piece of cinnamon that's added and this is the almonds that they grind up to make what they call the almondrado or the almond flavor.

This first stage in the mill mixes the chocolate and grinds it with almonds and cinnamon but not with the sugar.

The original chocolate was not mixed with sugar.

Then it comes out as a semi-liquid and it's mixed with the sugar and they then process it through further mills to come with the product that we see for sale over here on the counter.

And this is the real chocolate as, with sugar in it, that existed since the time of the Spaniards.

Mmmm.

Delicious, David.

It's food for the gods.

It's amazing.

It's bitter, it has not sugar in it.

But it still has that addicting power of chocolate.

We can't convey the aroma, the smell, the overpowering smell of chocolate and it affects some center in my brain and I expect it affects almost everybody's brain, forms and addiction even without sugar.

Mmmm.

Oh, that, that hurts good.

Mole, a sort of gravy made with chocolate, is just one of the many delicious native foods found on the sojado, the town plaza.

I know these are all foods that originated here in Oaxaca and Puebla, beans, corn, chile, avocado, squash.

But I must tell you, I don't know what that is or that is.

Well, this is flor de calabaza, is the flower of the squash that is prepared in several different ways here in this region.

It's delicious.

But what's that.

These are chapulines.

Chapulines are grasshoppers.

I'm supposed to eat grasshoppers.

Oh, they are delicious.

You should try them.

They are eaten in this region and all through central Mexico.

But Oaxaca is the central place for that.

And not only chapulines, you should try gusanos and bagay.

You should try caterpillars from the palo verde or manteco.

Ants.

Many, many different ones are delicious.

Insects are as an important part of the diet as these other things?

Insects were an essential part of the diet.

All right, I'll try them.

This once.

And they've got chile on them.

A little bit.

Tastes like something strange with chile on it.

And salt.

I love them.

Actually, they're not bad.

I really like them.

Here's a leg.

I haven't had a chance to have a leg yet.

Tastes like chicken.

There are many places in the world to get great food.

But if you want to try food that has founded civilizations and is still available, you need to come to the valleys of southern Mexico, especially Puebla and Oaxaca.

This is really very, very good.

Next time on The Desert Speaks , we're off to the Four Corners region to find markers from ancient solar calendars.

Seeing these relics on just the right day offers glimpses of the artistic life of some of the first Americans.

The edge of this rock can be aligned with those standing stones that we've seen.

.like Pueblo Bonito, you look at the rock there.

Of course getting there can be half the fun.

So this is the sunken plaza.

Patio Hundido.

And I guess that this was always where they carry out some very important ritual.

Major funding for The Desert       Speaks was provided by The Kemper and Ethel Marley Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Desert Program Partners.