Scenes around Oaxaca

A random assortment of scenes around the city.

I love the Mexican architectural style that puts an open patio at the center of a building. Our daughter takes violin lessons in this one:

There’s a lot of political graffiti around the city. My favorite is probably “La religión es el opio del pueblo” (“Religion is the opium of the people”), because the way it’s written one can easily read “opio” as “apio,” which would render Marx’s opinion “Religion is the celery of the people.” Only a powerful taboo against spray-painting a church has kept me from sneaking up to it in the dead of night and turning the “o” definitively into an “a.”

Most graffiti isn’t on churches, but unfortunately some is. I must admit the impact of this particular, powerful and somewhat disturbing graphic is magnified by the fact that it’s painted on a Catholic church building:

Translation: “I abort obligatory motherhood.” I would love to ask the artist which forces, in their view, are most responsible for forcing women into motherhood: social pressure? coerced sex? lack of other options? lack of contraception? Contraception is widely used, Mexican Catholics having as little regard as U.S. Catholics for the church’s opinions on this point, but it’s used much less in rural areas, where the birth rate is double that of urban women. Abortion is illegal in most of Mexico, even if one’s life is at risk. So it’s not easy to avoid motherhood without embracing celibacy. Clearly, this Lucha Libre fighter is having none of it.

This hopeful message is painted a few meters along–“Capitalism and patriarchy will fall together!”:

That church’s former convent houses the Casa de la Cultura Oaxaqueña (Oaxacan Cultural Center), and the munchkin took art and dance classes there. I sat in this cafe one day to do my Spanish homework while she was in class. This wall says “Life is a work of art”:

I love this mural on the adjoining wall also:

If you wish the Christmas machine wouldn’t get cranking so early, take heart: you could live in Oaxaca, where a local supermarket set up this tent-o’-toys in the first few days of September:

No, it never snows here, but Christmas means snow anyway. The other day I heard Christmas music in the same supermarket. I could tell it was Christmas music even before a recognizable tune came on, which is interesting. The recording with the recognizable tune was a small child singing “Jingle Bells” in Spanish and off-key. I like shopping in the mercados better anyway: collections of stalls, either open-air or gathered under one roof, selling everything from chocolate to cheese to fresh-squeezed juice to stationery.