Author: danizwindling

Ocotlán de Morales, San Bartolo Coyotepec, San Martin Tilcajete, San Antonino Castillo Velasco

If you have more than 2 days in the Oaxaca region, make sure to visit these 4 little towns. All close to each other, this short road trip is easily done in 8 or so hours 

Like the rest of the area around Oaxaca, all four of these cute towns are homes to many multi-generational family shops maintaining and enhancing traditional arts, crafts, and cuisine. Each town also features a colonial church and a market worth checking out.

While San Antonino Castillo Velasco is renown for the embroidered blouses and fine arrangements of dried flowers, San Martín Tilcajete is home to world-renown alebrije artists, San Bartolo Coyotepec is famous for its barro negro – polished surprisingly light black pottery, and Ocotlán de Morales is intimately linked with the paintings of Rodolfo Morales and the colorful pottery by the Aguilar family.

  • First stop: San Antonino
  • Doña Carmelita and her daughter are famous for their delicious empenadas
  • Blind sculptor Don José García in San Antonino Castillo Velasco is one of the most inspiring most lively and dearest people i ever had a chance to meet. Here he is in his outdoor studio, next to a pile of clay and surrounded by some of his works. He loves mythology and his sculptures are often zoomorphs. His male figures all have his face while the female ones always have the face of his beloved wife of many years.
  • Don Jose
  • Don José’s work in progress: the face is his, just like all male human faces in his work
  • Don José’s children are also artists. These are some of his son’s works.
  • And another of Don José’s whimsical self portraits
  • Ocotlán Flee/Cattle/Random-Stuff market in the middle of the cornfields between San Antonino and Ocotlán de Morales has everything. Even drum kits
  • …and calculators and santa teddies and yellow buckets and pictures of praying children
  • …and hash pipes
  • …and fried crickets
  • …and chicharrones
  • …and home-made honey
  • …and cute calves
  • …and colorful saddles
  • …and a girl in a dog costume passing out handbills
  • Ocotlán cathedral Santo Domingo de Guzmán
  • Façade of Santo Domingo de Guzmán
  • The cathedral door and ceiling in arabesque style
  • In Mexico, these yummy fruits are called “tuna”
  • Cacao beans
  • These flowers in the Ocotlán market smell like cocoa
  • Grasshoppers
  • Candy to decorate your Día de los muertes cake
  • HOT!!!!!
  • Frida!!! Much like all the artisans and vendors, this beautiful woman – owner of the most popular mole stand in Ocotlán, has been struggling with a four-month closure and current limitations on restaurants and vendors. She took her mask off and posed for me happy to have a customer. I never felt more welcome as a tourist anywhere…
  • Frida’s famous moles. At least one of them is made with the local cocoa
  • Culinary art in progress
  • Chocolate maker
  • Ma
  • The sword featured in the Conan the Barbarian movie! Hand-made in this taller
  • While in Ocotlán, I made and bought a hat! What do you think???
  • Here I am molding that hat
  • The base of my hat was made by this tailor. Yes, that’s a chain securing his sewing machine
  • A friendly and photogenic hat maker
  • A mural in San Martín Tilcajete
  • A mural in San Martín Tilcajete
  • A mural in San Martín Tilcajete
  • A mural in San Martín Tilcajete
  • Lalo Cura, my favorite mescal brand, is sold in this tiny easy-to-miss hole in the wall bar
Workshop (taller) of a great blacksmith: Apolinar Aguilar. He makes swords, knives and martial arts weapons as well as domestic utensils, letter openers, cake serving sets, fish cleaning knives as well as all kinds of clandestine defense weapons like whips, belts, rings that have sharp fighting blades. He hand-forges each item using methods that date back to the colonial period. One thing that is different is his source of metal: he uses old car parts, bronze plumbing pieces, and door fixtures. The handles are made of other materials: tropical wood, antler, ox bone.
Apolinar and his brother Angel made swords used in Conan the Barbarian!!!
To get inside his workshop I had to have my temperature taken, I had to be sprayed from the top of my head to the soles of my shoes with disinfectant, I had to have my hands thoroughly drenched in sanitizer. This is a routine procedure if you’re entering any space here in the Oaxaca region
Alebrijes are brightly colored Mexican folk art sculptures of fantastical creatures. My favorite alebrije taller is also world-renown and it belongs to artists Jacobo y Maria Angeles. I had a privilege of meeting Jacobo while at the taller. He was reviewing the work on several pieces in the room that prominently displayed photos of him gifting alebrijes to Pope Francis and of him and his wife Maria talking with Pixar artists while serving as cultural and artistic advisors on the movie Coco.