Like many places in the world Oaxaca has it´s own traditional drink, Mezcal, and I can´t lie, I´ve grown quite fond of the stuff. Mezcal is similar to Tequila in that it is made from a type of the agave cactus, Mezcal from the Maguey, and Tequila from the Blue Agave, but the taste is entirely different. I will however concede that the effects have somewhat of a likening to each other. Now I will make no claim to be even something like a specialist on Mezcal but I do think that a couple of nasty hangovers and a trip to the Mezcal Palenque to see how it´s made qualify me to give at least a brief description.
One of the things that I like about Mezcal is that while it´s widely commercially produced it still has a great tradition of local production. Not every town, but many of them, have a Palenque where Mezcal is produced for sale locally. You won´t find any frosted bottles, fancy labels, or catchy slogans here though. No my friend you´re taking home your Mezcal in a recycled water bottle or a plastic gas can.
My First encounter with Mezcal came this last December when I came to Oaxaca to go to a friends wedding. I spent the first night in the city and found my way to a somewhat famous bar by the name of ¨Casa de Mezcal.¨ I promptly proceeded to get myself nice and liquored up, little did I know the abundance in which it would soon be available to me.
Mezcal at the wedding was something of an obligation, it seemed to be as central to the ceremony as, well, the bride and groom. A few guests were assigned the job of circulating through the party and serving up shots of Mezcal, and they took their task quite seriously. Once they offered you a shot you were taking it whether you had come to that realization yet or not. They all had the same approach as well, a typical pitch went some thing like the following.
- ¨¿Un Mezcalito?¨
For my non-spanish speaking amigos the –ito at the end signifies little. It would be sort of like saying, ¨one little shot of Mezcal?¨ Which is already a bit silly because as we all know a shot is a shot, and even if you did ask for a small one the glass was always over flowing by the time it reached your hand.¨
- ¨No, no I´m good,¨ you respond.
- ¨Oh come on, just one, no more than one.¨
- ¨No I just took one from that other guy.¨
- ¨Oh, but this is different, this is apart from that.¨
At this point you´re thinking, ¨What´s that supposed to mean?¨
- ¨That was that bottle, this is this bottle,¨ he then continues.
Seeing as it all came from the same larger container originally this is just completely ridiculous. It´s more or less the equivalent of saying;
¨Hey take a bite of this end of the hot dog.¨
¨No I just took a bite of the other end.¨
¨But that was that end, this end is completely different.¨
Now, seeing that you´re not budging, he changes up his approach and goes ahead and pours the shot.
- ¨Now it´s poured so you´ve gotta take it,¨ he says.
- ¨No I don´t,¨ you reply somewhat indignantly, adding a wag of the finger in an attempt to drive your point home.
- ¨Well what am I gonna do with it than?¨
What you feel like telling the guy is, ¨Hey asshole why don´t you take the damn thing. I´m already half way shitfaced and you´re the one who poured it anyways!¨
But, of course, in the spirit of the party and much to your own chagrin, and much to the pleasure of the mezcalero, you end up taking the shot. And he moves on to try his argument on the next sorry sucker who hasn´t yet acknowledged that he or she is about to take a shot of Mezcal.
Seeing as they´ve got god knows how many gallons of the stuff and five or six guys circulating through the crowd it´s never too long before some one else shows up offering you, ¨un mezcalito, solo uno…¨
Thursday, March 5, 2009
A Devilish Affair - Carnaval in San Martin
So the journey continues...I said farewell to Guatemala and Los Patojos and headed north to Mexico to visit my friend Bailin. Bailin and I worked together in Santa Cruz and he has since moved back to his home town of San Martin Tilcajete. San Martin is a small simple town about 40-min outside of the city of Oaxaca. When I say simple, I mean simple. Dirt roads, not a single hotel, restaurant, bar, or anything really. The only thing that draws any attention to San Martin is it´s tradition of artesian wood carvings and the yearly Carnaval celebration, which is what I had come for. I had come to San Martin in December to attend Bailin´s wedding and after hearing the stories of Carnaval decided that I had to come back and see it myself.
The purpose of Carnaval, I found out once here, is to celebrate the coming of Lent. The peak day of the party is always the Tuesday before Lent begins. While it´s all once Carvaval there´s really two celebrations going on at the same time. The first involves costumes and a mock wedding. The second is equal parts noise, beer, and motor oil.
The official Carnaval celebration starts Monday night with a costume ball of sorts. Folks get dressed up Halloween style and they have a dance in the central square. Those in costume dance around while most of the rest of town comes out to socialize and watch the goings on. Tuesday night is largely a repeat of the same but with a costume contest in which the cheers of the crowd decide a winner. During the day on Tuesday one of the families in town hosts a mock wedding in which two guys get married. One of them dressed quite convincingly as a women. Apparently they follow all the same traditions as a normal wedding, however I must admit I missed most of it as I was busy taking part in the ¨other¨ celebration.
Each Sunday for a few weeks leading up to Carnaval and especially on the Monday and Tuesday of the party a bunch of guys, mostly in their 20´s, dress up as devils and run around the streets just generally making noise and wreaking havoc. While some people wear actual costumes, mostly the little kids, the traditional devil outfit consist of facepaint of a mask of some kind, as many cowbells as you can get your hands on tied around your waist, a stick, rope, chain or something you can wave around, and the best part, you go shirtless and completely cover yourself in used motor oil. Die is added to the oil, either red or black, to increase the effect. As the oil obviously doesn´t dry as regular paint would your are transformed into a shining, glistening, very loud, and hopefully terrifying devil.
The purpose of the exercise is nothing more than to make as much noise as possible and give people a start whenever possible. All the devils run through the streets screaming and shouting and the cowbells really make a lot of noise, especially when you´re in a group, which you almost always are fro even if you set out with only a couple you quickly run into others and the groups grows and grows.
The game of it all is that the painted devils try or pretend to try to paint the other people they see throughout the day. The oil is hard enough to get off your skin and damn near impossible to get out of clothes so understandably nobody wants to get painted.
On Sunday and at the beginning of the day on Monday and Tuesday the painting was pretty innocent. Maybe a couple of fingers smeared across the cheek, or a grasp of the fore-arm, at most a slap on the back or shoulder. However as the party goes on the painting got worse, and understandably so as the other main activity was drinking.
There are a few unofficial rendezvous points where the devils gather in mass throughout the day, the only one of which didn´t involve drinking was the elementary school right at the hour the kids got out. While San Martin doesn´t have any bars it is host to a few little tiendas, most of which are just a spare room in somebody´s house stocked with the essentials, which of course includes cerveza.
Every hour or so, well maybe half hour, the group would find it´s way to one of the tiendas. Someone would buy a case of beers, on credit, no on carried money as it would just get covered in oil, and pass them around.
Another chief meeting point was the house where the official party was taking place. You had to make an entrance with lots of noise and a lap around the party, but then they offered refreshments of water, juice, beer(of cousre), and no party here would be complete without Mezcal. Of which there was no shortage.
So as the day wore on and the devils got more devilish the painting got worse. The group mentality was also in full effect. Often times the first devil to paint someone would just give them a little swipe but then everyone else had to get in on the action so by the time the group passed the innocent spectator would be left with face, arms, and hands pretty well covered. A few unfortunate souls fell victim to not just a hug but a group hug. Once the first person crossed the line it was as if the group decided, ¨alright, this persons getting it!¨ The rest would jump in like a pack of ravenous dogs going for the kill. With hoots and hollers of triumph the pack would quickly move on leaving in their wake a victim in dire need of a shower and a new wardrobe.
One unfortunate hombre, a fellow devil but in costume rather than paint, actually got his shirt stripped off by the pack and body completely painted. By the end of the day there was hardly a person in town that escaped with out at least a mark of some kind.
Bailin and I went running all three days possible while I was in San Martin. On Sunday I had yet to actually witness the goings on so I decided to forego the oil and just use some colorful paints. I painted my face, arms, legs, and a shirt, and topped it off with a colorfully painted hat. It was definitely a good and creative paint job but seeing as I looked more like a parrot head on my way to a Jimmy Buffet concert than a terror invoking devil I decided to change it up a bit for Monday. I started off with oil on my arms and legs but retained the shirt. That didn´t last long however as at the first cerveza stop the of the group insisted I go gull blast. So I striped the shirt and donned the motor oil. Tuesday I didn´t bother with shirt and went oil from the get go.
According to Bailin´s family I was something of a star and the talk of the town as no one could recollect a ¨gringo¨ ever actually taking part in the painting before. In the week since I´ve had a number of total strangers, the barber, the lady working at the tienda, and a few people just on the street, strike up a conversation about how I painted myself.
It was an interesting reversal of roles to take part in the celebration. While I had come here to see what their festival was like I quickly became the observed rather than the observer. Furthermore San Martin has next to no tourists on a normal day, maybe the occasional person coming to buy a carving, but for Carnaval a couple of van loads of heavily laden fellow gringos showed up to see the spectacle. It was real interesting to be the one with the camera pointed at me rather than the one with the camera in my hand.
The purpose of Carnaval, I found out once here, is to celebrate the coming of Lent. The peak day of the party is always the Tuesday before Lent begins. While it´s all once Carvaval there´s really two celebrations going on at the same time. The first involves costumes and a mock wedding. The second is equal parts noise, beer, and motor oil.
The official Carnaval celebration starts Monday night with a costume ball of sorts. Folks get dressed up Halloween style and they have a dance in the central square. Those in costume dance around while most of the rest of town comes out to socialize and watch the goings on. Tuesday night is largely a repeat of the same but with a costume contest in which the cheers of the crowd decide a winner. During the day on Tuesday one of the families in town hosts a mock wedding in which two guys get married. One of them dressed quite convincingly as a women. Apparently they follow all the same traditions as a normal wedding, however I must admit I missed most of it as I was busy taking part in the ¨other¨ celebration.
Each Sunday for a few weeks leading up to Carnaval and especially on the Monday and Tuesday of the party a bunch of guys, mostly in their 20´s, dress up as devils and run around the streets just generally making noise and wreaking havoc. While some people wear actual costumes, mostly the little kids, the traditional devil outfit consist of facepaint of a mask of some kind, as many cowbells as you can get your hands on tied around your waist, a stick, rope, chain or something you can wave around, and the best part, you go shirtless and completely cover yourself in used motor oil. Die is added to the oil, either red or black, to increase the effect. As the oil obviously doesn´t dry as regular paint would your are transformed into a shining, glistening, very loud, and hopefully terrifying devil.
The purpose of the exercise is nothing more than to make as much noise as possible and give people a start whenever possible. All the devils run through the streets screaming and shouting and the cowbells really make a lot of noise, especially when you´re in a group, which you almost always are fro even if you set out with only a couple you quickly run into others and the groups grows and grows.
The game of it all is that the painted devils try or pretend to try to paint the other people they see throughout the day. The oil is hard enough to get off your skin and damn near impossible to get out of clothes so understandably nobody wants to get painted.
On Sunday and at the beginning of the day on Monday and Tuesday the painting was pretty innocent. Maybe a couple of fingers smeared across the cheek, or a grasp of the fore-arm, at most a slap on the back or shoulder. However as the party goes on the painting got worse, and understandably so as the other main activity was drinking.
There are a few unofficial rendezvous points where the devils gather in mass throughout the day, the only one of which didn´t involve drinking was the elementary school right at the hour the kids got out. While San Martin doesn´t have any bars it is host to a few little tiendas, most of which are just a spare room in somebody´s house stocked with the essentials, which of course includes cerveza.
Every hour or so, well maybe half hour, the group would find it´s way to one of the tiendas. Someone would buy a case of beers, on credit, no on carried money as it would just get covered in oil, and pass them around.
Another chief meeting point was the house where the official party was taking place. You had to make an entrance with lots of noise and a lap around the party, but then they offered refreshments of water, juice, beer(of cousre), and no party here would be complete without Mezcal. Of which there was no shortage.
So as the day wore on and the devils got more devilish the painting got worse. The group mentality was also in full effect. Often times the first devil to paint someone would just give them a little swipe but then everyone else had to get in on the action so by the time the group passed the innocent spectator would be left with face, arms, and hands pretty well covered. A few unfortunate souls fell victim to not just a hug but a group hug. Once the first person crossed the line it was as if the group decided, ¨alright, this persons getting it!¨ The rest would jump in like a pack of ravenous dogs going for the kill. With hoots and hollers of triumph the pack would quickly move on leaving in their wake a victim in dire need of a shower and a new wardrobe.
One unfortunate hombre, a fellow devil but in costume rather than paint, actually got his shirt stripped off by the pack and body completely painted. By the end of the day there was hardly a person in town that escaped with out at least a mark of some kind.
Bailin and I went running all three days possible while I was in San Martin. On Sunday I had yet to actually witness the goings on so I decided to forego the oil and just use some colorful paints. I painted my face, arms, legs, and a shirt, and topped it off with a colorfully painted hat. It was definitely a good and creative paint job but seeing as I looked more like a parrot head on my way to a Jimmy Buffet concert than a terror invoking devil I decided to change it up a bit for Monday. I started off with oil on my arms and legs but retained the shirt. That didn´t last long however as at the first cerveza stop the of the group insisted I go gull blast. So I striped the shirt and donned the motor oil. Tuesday I didn´t bother with shirt and went oil from the get go.
According to Bailin´s family I was something of a star and the talk of the town as no one could recollect a ¨gringo¨ ever actually taking part in the painting before. In the week since I´ve had a number of total strangers, the barber, the lady working at the tienda, and a few people just on the street, strike up a conversation about how I painted myself.
It was an interesting reversal of roles to take part in the celebration. While I had come here to see what their festival was like I quickly became the observed rather than the observer. Furthermore San Martin has next to no tourists on a normal day, maybe the occasional person coming to buy a carving, but for Carnaval a couple of van loads of heavily laden fellow gringos showed up to see the spectacle. It was real interesting to be the one with the camera pointed at me rather than the one with the camera in my hand.
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