Exploring Oaxaca

On November 26, 2007, I headed back to the city of Oaxaca which I've used as a jumping off point for my last three explorations. I began in Central Oaxaca in little Yaxe, which means Green Corn in Zapotec, because I could get there and back in one afternoon. Too, I was touched (probably because of the approaching Christmas season) by a story I'd read of a young boy who died in Yaxe in an electrical storm. In the arid, cactus studded semi-desert terrain of that part of the Mixteca Alta, scores of white plastic greenhouses have sprouted, a recent innovation. According to fellow travelers in the colectivo, the green-houses have been introduced by arabes, Arabs, a term which many use to describe Mexicans of Lebanese and Jewish descent. I learned that various crops, particularly tomatoes, thrive in the sheltered environment. Vegetable oil is used as an insecticide, and precious water is conserved by using drip systems. By chance, I met the uncle of the boy featured in the story I'd read, a studious lad who rarely went to el campo with the goats. The day he went with his cousin was his last. “Little shepherd boy on the hill in the sunshine lying...” when a sudden storm came up.

Yaxe City Hall

Yaxe schoolboys who told me all about their village

Yaxe

Yaxe as seen from the air on tomzap's 2008 Flight to Huatulco