Two summers ago S and I lived in Oaxaca for a couple of months. I studied Spanish and he worked on an archaeological dig at a site near Mitla, one of the more famous ancient Zapotec sites in Oaxaca. His site was a suburb, really, a place where the regular people of Mitla lived. Their houses were made of adobe brick and were more like compounds than the houses we're used to. Several rectangular rooms surrounded a patio that often contained an altar. Beneath the patio were the bones of the family's ancestors, sometimes bundled, other times laid out in the manner we think of when we imagine corpses buried in the ground.

Some of the men S worked with are Zapotec and they live not so different than their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. Their houses are also made of adobe brick; they are also more compound than house, with rectangular rooms surrounding a patio. Some of the compounds are for extended families, with two or three generations living next to each other and sharing the same patio. Now, though, the bones of the dead are buried in the church graveyard, not under the patio. It's been that way since Catholicism arrived on the backside of Cortes' horse.

But the Catholicism of Oaxaca is syncretic, not "pure." It's bundled up with Oaxaca's past, creating a whole new religion that allows for a chapel of "Black Saints" in Talcolula, or a chapel on top of a mountain in Macquilxochitl, the town S works in now and where so many of our friends live, built directly on top of a thousand-year old Zapotec temple.

Last summer we visited some of our friends there, Procopio and Thomas. Procopio's wife served us a simple, magnificent lunch: stewed zucchini with onions, cilantro, and fresh Oaxacan cheese; nopales with peppers, a bowl of ripe yellow plums, and fresh tlyudas, large Oaxacan-style tortillas, which she'd made on her adobe, mesquite-burning oven from corn she'd harvested in their fields, treated with lime, and ground herself. There is no electricity in Macquilxochitl, no running water. There is little work, too, so Procopio's children are scattered across Mexico and the US, each one picking fruit or soldering parts or fitting plastic into molds. They have a handful of pictures to remind them and not much more, since there is no mail service to Macquilxochitl and Procopio and his wife, while bilingual, aren't able to read or write. We have sent them pictures through other friends in Oaxaca City, two other archaeologists, one Oaxacan and the other Canadian, who have their own struggles since they're paid so little by the Mexican government.

One of the beautiful things about Mexican Catholicism is the exvoto, a gift to La Virgen or another saint for a prayer answered or a blessing received. Traditionally they were painted on tin by a specified town painter and scribe. This is still true today; if you go to the market in Oaxaca City you will see a man sitting at a desk with a typewriter. For a handful of pesos he'll draft a letter for you and even fill out the envelope. Frida Kahlo loved exvotos; at her blue house in Coyoacan, the atrium at the foot of the stairs leading up to her bedroom is covered, floor to ceiling, with them. Some answer little things -- a failed mole made right just minutes before the wedding party was to arrive; an argument straightened out among friends. Others big things, like a fight against illness, or recovery from an injury. I remember one that showed a man falling from the church tower. He'd lived, miraculously it seemed, so an exvoto was made to give thanks. Here's one I bought a few years ago in Oaxaca:



The woman, from Puebla de los Angeles, hurt her herself in 1924 while grinding corn on her metate, but with a saint's help, she got better and was able to get back to grinding.

Our friend Margarita gave S a blessed Virgen de Guadalupe image from the Basilica before he left for Afghanistan. She'd made a promise to Her: if S returned alive, then we'd have to make an exvoto to give thanks. My mother is a painter, so Margarita said perhaps she could paint it, but she understood that it would probably be me.

I've long been fascinated with virgin sightings and spontaneous religious events. I wrote about the overpass virgin here a couple of months ago. I don't believe in God. In fact, I have no "faith" in the religious sense. But I have an appreciation for tradition and mystery, and I like the communal aspect of urban grottos, and the idea of giving thanks when something's gone right. If S comes back alive, I will make an exvoto to honor Margarita's promise and our commitment to her. Perhaps it will involve photos instead of a painting, but its spirit will be the same. I don't pray, but I do hope. I hope he comes home.



This picture is from Toussaint, the Louisiana version of the Day of the Dead. In creole country outside of New Orleans, families gather at cemeteries to honor the dead by lighting candles around their graves and tombs, and sometimes drink and celebrate around them. I went out to a few cemeteries with two wonderful poets from my workshop, Beverly and Bonnie. What a night it was. Rain, fog. The candles were sniffed out nearly as fast as they were lit. We knelt down and helped relight them. I remember we got stuck in the mud at the last cemetery we visited and a young woman named Angel helped push us out. I remember, too, a young man with his son visiting the grave of his wife who'd passed away just a few months before. He was there with her parents and they seemed to be genuinely celebrating her life. It was beautiful.



I came upon this the other day in my neighborhood. I think it's related to a virgin sighting several years ago in Rogers Park. She was seen on a tree. I love the chairs -- red, brown, pink -- sitting there in waiting.