Gifts of An Old world

I've just returned from a trip to Mexico - to the city and environs of Oaxaca, a few days in the city of Puebla, and the better part of a day in Mexico City. This was my first real trip to Mexico. Many years ago, on separate occasions, since I was so close and curious, I spent a day each in Tijuana and Juarez, both border towns. My interest in Oaxaca developed after reading of the rituals of its crafts and culinary scenes. So when I read of the trip, "Oaxaca and Puebla:Ancient Civilizations and Modern Cuisine of Southern Mexico," I signed up.

There were walks through the remains of ancient Zapotec and Mixtec communities and the Great Pyramid in Cholula, three cooking sessions, each featuring a different aspect of the area's cuisine and the art of its food preparation. At the market, Mercado Benito Juarez, and along its border streets in Oaxaca, I saw mounds of cooked grasshoppers, string cheese, breads, and leather and silver goods, weavings, embroidered clothing, and the distinctive black pottery of the area, barro negra. At The Chocolate Factory, I tasted, and for the duration, my breakfast beverage was Mexican hot chocolate. I was a tourist, unabashed, with the face of Frida Kalo on each side of the mesh green bag slung over my shoulder I bought for twenty pesos at Benito Juarez.

As I walked the promenades and narrow streets lined with vibrantly painted shops of ochre, blue, pink to the zocala, the main town square, I was struck by the young families strolling with babies in the arms of their parents. I watched the faces of these young mothers and fathers, as they carried their pastel swaddled infants in the crook of their arms, close to their hearts. No strain. Toddlers, too, up in arms watch the crowd, secure in their perch. Hardly a stroller or carriage in sight. Nor any of the contraptions I see at home with babies entrapped, their little limbs hanging loose and their sleepy heads cocked to one side.

   I like to think these young families are carrying out age-old practices of the promenade, walking with their very young in their arms, that this practice is part of their culture and ritual. I don't think these Mexican parents are part of "babywearing" contemporary philosophy. And their carrying is different from the photographs I see in magazines and film of indigenous women in other lands working in fields or cooking over open fire, walking to water, or in the marketplace with their babies contained in cross-body slings. The mothers and fathers I saw with children in their arms were simply strolling amidst the crowds along the ways to and from the zocalo.

Or, perhaps, they simply cannot manage a stroller over the treacherous gray stone cobbled, uneven surfaces of the streets and walkways of these historic old cities.