by Janet Blaser
The culture here is a whole new world in some ways. I’ve learned so much from the people of this village. People here do not spend any time trying to define who they are. They aren’t trying to be “better” or “more” or “spiritual.” They’re complex in their simplicity. There’s no guile here; no need to pretend they’re someone else. No need to put oneself in a box to be just one small part of the amazing humans they are.
I spent most of my life believing I needed to better myself. Change myself. Improve myself. Then I started paying attention to when I feel the most at ease in my body and the people I’m the most relaxed around. I’m drawn to people who are easy on themselves and others. Who don’t question their worthiness, have nothing to do with the yoga industrial complex, have never bought one self-help book. I’m not super-comfy around yoga people, or self-help crowds or people who are self-proclaimed healers, gurus and light-bearers.
I’d rather be on the beach with a good book and a nice shot of tequila, a cigar and some good music, than attend another superiority seminar masked as “help.” I’m good. You’re good. I don’t need help being myself. I am myself. And I love the energy surrounding people who are themselves.
Rebirth
I cried all day yesterday. For so many reasons, I cried, grieved, felt broken in two. I’ve been through the ringer. Especially in the past nine months. Yesterday was the nine-month mark since my fiftieth birthday and the events that led to why I left. Today I know the tears were a sort of rebirth—preceded by a nine-month gestation—and that this person I am today is not at all the person I was nine months ago. The fact that it was Easter isn’t lost on me. All this to say that today is a new day. I’m 50 and I’m just barely becoming me again.
I believe we all become who we are until the very day we die. I feel more carefree and child-like than I did when I was 20. I feel less certain and more raw than I’ve ever felt. This is me today.
I’m still broken. I don’t know how long it will take to feel whole again. But because of Yelapa I have the courage to stay broken open. To stay alive and awake and aware and tender in the face of this tremendous, beyond-ability-to-comprehend life.
I believe in myself again. I believe in my dignity. I believe that I’m going to have an exciting, bittersweet, joyful adventure and, for those of you who’ve witnessed a little taste of this chapter of my life, I feel honored and humbled and astonished and thankful you’ve been willing to join me.
D’ana Baptiste is a yoga teacher born in Utah, raised in Oakland, California, whose philosophy is to embrace all that life has to offer, using all the senses to do so. She graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a double B.A .in international relations and French, and then promptly moved to Mexico to teach aerobics. D’ana has been a part of the fitness/wellness movement for 23+ years. Her down-to-earth approach to business as well as her authenticity and confident personality have made her a natural leader in the mind/ body industry. She has developed a superior teacher training program in Utah and also manages and organizes workshops and retreats. Her nonprofit, Yogis in Service, is a grassroots volunteer “yoga army” which offers yoga to those in need, or who cannot afford it. When she’s not spreading her message, she learns much about life from hanging out with her three boys, who help her keep it real.
15. “I Call Oaxaca, Mexico, Home”
Norma Schafer
Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca
“How did you get there?” people ask. I ended up living in Oaxaca, Mexico, by accident, I reply. Life has a way of happening in surprising ways. Many of the best things that happen to us are a combination of serendipity and determination. Choices are presented to us in this journey we call “life” that we either recognize or not. When we do recognize them and take risk and action, they become life-changing events that can open us up to more than who we thought we were, creating opportunities for growth and creativity. It was this way for me.
It all began with a 2005 Christmas vacation.
Where I live is not in the colonial heart of Oaxaca de Juarez, the city founded in 1532 by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. My part of Mexico is based about 30 minutes away in a small Zapotec village called Teotitlán del Valle. You may have heard about it. It is famed for wool tapestry rugs that very talented weavers create on fixed frame pedal looms. Some even use ancient natural dye techniques developed by their ancestors. I live on land owned by a weaving family who invited me to build a casita there. I do not legally own it, though I paid to build it. There is no written contract, only a verbal agreement based on honor and trust.
Zapotecs have lived in the central valleys of Oaxaca for 8,000 years. Back then, they hybridized a plant kernel we call maize (corn) that is an important food source worldwide on land about five miles up the road from my casita. Monte Alban, their social, political and economic center, is featured by the Field Museum of Natural History as the most important civilization in Mesoamerica.
The textiles and the history called to me like the blast of an ancient Zapotec flute, pitched, piercing and deep.
It was winter. The sun was warming though we wore light sweaters; temperatures in the high-60s to mid-70s during the day, dropping to mid-40s at night; a perfect climate for walking, hiking and sleeping, I thought. I was with my “wasband” Stephen on vacation, invited to visit by our North Carolina neighbor Annie, who’d made the village her permanent home two years before.
Annie would come twice a year to North Carolina to visit and she always brought rugs to sell, usually made by young, up-and-coming artisans who needed a leg-up and some money in their pockets. When she laid the rugs out on the floor of my North Carolina home, I fell in love and wanted to know that place.
Many years before as a young woman living in San Francisco, I learned to weave and use natural dyes. I’ve always collected textiles and have been a maker—a knitter, quilter, sewer of home goods and dresses. Cloth is my calling, though I crafted my professional career in university administration, marketing, communications and development, and retired from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011.
It was only natural then, that Annie’s invitation came at exactly the right time. I hadn’t been back to Mexico since the early 1970s, though I’d traveled in Asia, Central America and Europe. I was thinking about retirement but avoiding the question. Going to a small rug-weaving village on vacation was about as far as I got.
At that time, Annie had taken two widows under her wing. The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law had both lost their husbands in recent months. Their grief was fresh. The men, both weavers, were the family’s only income source. The daughter-in-law, age 36, had three young children.
Magdalena and Josefina were (and still are) excellent cooks. Annie was helping them imagine what it would be like to start and operate a bed and breakfast. Stephen and I were the guinea pigs, the first guests. I can do this, I said to myself. I’ve been to rural China, forewarned about the basic living conditions.
Their sleeping, living and altar rooms surrounded an earthen courtyard where life centered: the cooking fire, dish and laundry tubs, playground, empty looms. We moved into the mother’s humble adobe bedroom adorned with her late husband’s hunting tools and machete. We strung a clothesline for our closet. Today, this is a beautiful and thriving B&B, complete with modern kitchen, plumbed bathrooms and four generations of family underfoot. We became a part of seeing the possibilities, and part of the support system.
On the day my life changed, I went in the opposite direction and took a different path. I always wonder what would have happened if it had been otherwise.
It was our daily practice to go to the internet café. (This was years before Wi-Fi reached the village). I was with my “wasband.” We usually turned left to return to the house, walking past the church and the market. This day was different. I turned right to meander through the rug market, doubtful I would find anything of interest.
A voi
ce called out to me in perfect English: “Would you like to see my rugs?” It sounded so perfect that I was taken aback and instantly said no. No one here could speak English so perfectly and I suspected a scam, encountering someone who had practiced this one line so well as a tactic to lure in unsuspecting visitors. Funny, how we make up stories.
As a textile lover and collector, I had made it a point to research weavers and natural dye techniques in Teotitlán del Valle before the trip. I was, and still am, interested in sustainability and public health in addition to the innate beauty of a piece made completely by hand. I knew that fumes from chemical dyes were dangerous and the residue ended up in the ground water, resulting in undocumented health issues.
Not much came up in my research. I wanted to buy and take home a rug, and I wanted to find an excellent maker who had not been “discovered” and whose prices were affordable. I wanted to buy direct and know the family. I made it my mission to go around town, talk to people, meet makers and learn about their weaving and dyeing processes.
Then, after the call-out in English, as an afterthought I looked up into the small space where a young man was standing. I could see the tapestries were extraordinary, of the finest quality, and I stepped in. Within moments, the “wasband” lost interest and left.
Eric Chávez Santiago and his sister Janet, curled in the corner studying, were college students, ages 20 and 18 then. Eric planned to graduate the following year and work in a bank. Janet set her sights on becoming an elementary school teacher. They were the first in their family to go to college. This is an important note, because education in this family was a key value, rare then when most their age completed middle school and went to work at the loom. They took me to their parents’ home to see the complete rug selection and I fell in love.
I remember being there for several hours, getting down on my hands and knees to touch the warp and weft that were joined together in traditional designs derived from the Mitla archeological site where Zapotecs lived in the late Classical period. I fell in love with the colors and the imaginative ways they were combined. I picked out favorites, laid them on the floor, and then rolled around on them to see how I felt. I especially fell in love with the caracol pattern, the ancient Maya symbol of communication, adopted by Zapotecs on the trade routes passing through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Oaxaca was coming alive for me. I didn’t want to go home.
When I did get home, after buying several rugs and hearing Chávez Santiago family stories about the decline in tourism and economic opportunity, I wondered what I could do to help. I also wondered what I could do that would get me back to Oaxaca and this small textile-making village. I was smitten.
I approached the Arts Center in Carrboro, North Carolina with a proposal to bring Eric and his dad Federico Chávez Sosa to the U.S.A. to teach and demonstrate and sell rugs. My premise was that it would benefit Mexican immigrants in North Carolina to understand and have pride in their rich cultural heritage, and for Americans to better appreciate the art and culture of Mexico. We joined in writing a grant to the North Carolina Arts Council that was funded. With letters of invitation and support, and with a call and help from Congressman David Price, Eric was awarded a 10-year visitor’s visa and Federico got a six-month visa. They came in spring 2006, and for the next three years, the family members regularly traveled to the U.S.A. to teach, exhibit and sell their work at galleries, universities, art centers and museums.
In 2007, they invited me to live on their land. Then, in 2008, with my coaching help, Eric Chávez Santiago became the founding director of education at the Museo Textil de Oaxaca, a position he held until the end of 2017. In 2018, he was hired by the Alfred Harp Helu family to open and operate the independent folk-art gallery Andares del Arte Popular in Oaxaca’s historic Center.
Janet finished college and became a linguistics educator, working with university faculty directors and students from the U.S.A. to preserve Zapotec indigenous language and culture.
Their youngest brother, Omar, has just completed an industrial engineering university degree and is instrumental in taking the family rug-weaving and design business to the next level. I helped him get a 10-year visitor visa to the U.S.A. and arrange for gallery and museum shows.
While the casita was being built, I lived with the Chávez Santiago family in their home, and began to bring small groups of visitors to study tapestry weaving and natural dyeing with them. Living with the family gave me an intimate perspective on daily life, religious practices, negotiating family relationships and interrelationships, and a chance to delve deeper into village life. My friendship circles grew to include extended family members and their children. I learned that the longer I lived here, the more layers of complexity were revealed. I learned that cultural competency depends on observation, acceptance, listening, understanding and suspending judgment. My host Federico urged me to stay calm and tranquil, remain patient: “Calma, tranquila, paciencia,” he would remind me if I became frustrated when things didn’t move along as rapidly as I expected. There is definitely a different pace here, family-centric, focused on the now with no need for urgency. This is a culture that has thrived for 8,000 years. I figured I had a lot to learn—and still do.
In 2007, I began writing a blog, too, that talks about Oaxaca life, culture, textiles, food and a lot more. My program offerings grew to include arts and textile workshops, and study expeditions. I spent all my vacation time in Mexico, stretching the long holiday weekends, yearning for the day when it would become my full-time home.
You will notice that I write this from the point of view that I have not left the United States of America, but that Mexico has beckoned me and I have chosen her.
Mexico offers me a world beyond the one I grew up in. I was raised to be fearful and cautious, to make personal and family decisions based on what would guarantee security, to put my own adventurous spirit aside in favor of the practical. As a college graduate, I never went to Europe for the summer but went to work instead. I continued to work for a lifetime, taking two vacation weeks each year to visit family on the west coast. In my 40s, I realized I needed to start building a retirement fund and work for Social Security benefits. I dreamt of being a Peace Corps volunteer and became a mother, transitioned to becoming a single mother needing to provide health care and contribute to the college fund. I learned to be responsible and dedicated. I never had the full self-confidence to break away from the expected, although during my professional working years I always pursued modest creative arts endeavors, finding ways to sell my work.
Oaxaca is full of life, food, color, opportunity and infinite exploration of the physical world. This environment for me is stimulating and encouraging. It’s a place that’s also grounded in tradition and family, where local families have lived in the same town for generations. Roots here are deep. One cannot be here without feeling grounded. There is assurance in this, a comfort and security that most of us do not know in the U.S.A. Tradition is to be celebrated and families come together frequently to celebrate each other and their communities—birthdays, baptisms, quinceaneras, engagements, weddings and yes, even funerals. Community service is honored and supported. I am in awe of how people resolve disputes and conflicts, how mutual support—emotionally and economically—makes up the fiber of closely-knit-together indigenous people.
This is one reason I choose to live in an indigenous village rather than in the city, although I have many expat friends with whom I visit when I do go to town.
My choice to live in Mexico is more about social/cultural lifestyle and what I value than anything else. In the U.S.A. we live in a diaspora, dispersed, far from our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. How often do we see them? How well do we know our aunts, uncles and cousins? Why do we do this? Because we go where we have employment. In Mexico, we stay because we have deep connections to family.
I never chose first and foremost to live in Mexico becaus
e my retirement dollar would go farther, although that has certainly helped. I chose to live here because I admire the culture, history, art, the work ethic of the people, their ability to innovate and adapt, to make use of things we might normally discard, and to endure despite deprivation and political pressure from El Norte.
I admire the ancient indigenous spirituality of paying attention to the earth, the cycles of life and death, planting and reaping, reverence for the natural world. The political and economic movements to preserve the original strains of corn from being contaminated by Monsanto, to preserve the varieties of peppers, tomatoes and squash—the gifts Mexico gave to the world—are sophisticated endeavors that few from El Norte appreciate or understand.
I love where I live, in a high desert valley surrounded by 12,000-foot mountain peaks, fertile because of rain and irrigation systems, with clear skies. My casita has no need for air conditioning or a heating system. When I walk my adopted street dogs out into the campo, I breathe deep. These are the first pets I have ever owned. I took them in out of their need and I stretched to embrace a new experience.
Here, the air is clean. I can see for miles. I’m healthier and stronger here. I walk trails shared by sheep, goats, cattle and herdsmen, along a path marked by stone pillars that delineate boundaries between villages. From the rise on the land, I see the Pan-American Highway MEX 190, once a footpath and trade route between Central and North America. Here, I feel a deep sense of connection to time and place.
And, yet, it is very important not to idealize or romanticize Mexico and living here. Many of us know it’s easy to fall in love. And, those of us with tendencies to fall hard and fast can make impulsive decisions. We can get in trouble. Did I anticipate the pitfalls? No. Would I have done anything differently if I had? Still, no.
Things That Have Tripped Me Up
Adjusting to a different pace, lifestyle and culture, i.e., the longer I live here the less I know