Fritters with Brown Sugar Syrup: Bunuelos con Miel de Piloncillo y Canela

You don’t have to break the dish for good luck after eating these, as is done in Oaxaca. Just serve them with plenty of the cinnamon flavored syrup. Piloncillo is the dark brown sugar, sold in cones, that gives many Mexican syrups and candies a depth of flavor not achieved with white sugar. North of the border […]

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Waiting for the crowds, umbrellas frame a popular snorkling location at Tenacatita on Mexico's Pacific coast. © Gerry Soroka, 2009

Mexico’s endless Pacific beach: sun, surf, sand, seafood and solitude

Tomorrow’s champions are at work here, at Bahía de Navidad. In the hot afternoons along the wave-thumped beach of Melaque, lithe brown bodies dash along the alternately stirred and subdued sand and launch themselves at the sea. The steady winter sun descends in its unwavering plunge into a horizon washed faithfully by varying hues of […]

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Oaxaca wind farm

Tehuantepec: Hold on to your sombrero

The tehuano endlessly blows where North America stops. The tehuano, the unforgiving forever wind of the Isthmus of Tehauntepec, ceaselessly scours a path through the wide gap where the continent of North America ends and Central America starts. We entered this maelstrom upon leaving Highway 200 and departing the State of Oaxaca on one of our journeys to […]

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Intricate geometric motifs come to life on a warp of red, black and purple as a skilled weaver works on the backstrap loom. She is a member of the Tixinda women's cooperative in Pinotepa de Don Luis, Oaxaca. © Geri Anderson, 2011

Looms, weavers and the sacred snail on Mexico’s Costa Chica

“Don Luis, aquí. Aquí, Don Luis,” yelled a group of white-shirted men. They were calling for passengers in the camionera central in Pinotepa Nacional near the border of Oaxaca and Guerrero. We had dodged taxis, buses, minivans and pickup trucks in our search for the sitio Pinotepa de Don Luis. And now several animated drivers yelled and waved us […]

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Seat belt, cell phone and speed limit laws are enforced in Oaxaca

Driving in Oaxaca, Mexico, became a little more difficult in September / October, 2009. That’s when federal, state and municipal governments actually began enforcing the law, at least in the City of Oaxaca and in parts of the central valleys. Until then, rules of the road for driving in Oaxaca were on the books, but […]

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Magical Nude by Enrique Flores

Enrique Flores: Philanthropic Oaxaca artist has the golden touch

Enrique Flores is one of the most prolific Mexican artists of his generation. Of course having been mentored by the late great master of contemporary Mexican art, Rodolfo Morales, hasn’t hurt; nor has the fact that two of Oaxaca’s most prominent art galleries, Indigo and Arte de Oaxaca, were his patrons for many years. But […]

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A hot collector's item, the ceramic mezcal monkey is designed to hold mescal, the spirit distilled from the baked, then fermented agave plant. © Alvin Starkman, 2010

Mexico’s Mezcal Monkey: collectible ceramic folk art from Oaxaca

Designed to hold mescal, the Chango Mezcalero has become a very collectible folk art item whose history has been recounted infrequently, if at all. While by all accounts it originated in the State of Oaxaca, home of mezcal — the spirit distilled from the baked, then fermented agave plant — it’s now highly sought after by collectors […]

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