One Foot in the World, the Other in the Isthmus

You can cross oceans, live in other cities, and marvel at other places. But some roots travel with you.

Zenaido Torres

The Isthmus of Oaxaca never seems to leave me.

No matter where I travel, where I live, or where I eat, my memories remain rooted there.

Although I was born and raised in southern Veracruz, my family comes from the Isthmus. On my father’s side, from Tehuantepec; on my mother’s, from Zanatepec. And somehow, without even trying, they taught me to love that land until it became part of my roots, perhaps even more than Minatitlán, where I was born.

Although I have to confess something: I don’t really feel like I belong to any one place.

But if I had to choose my roots, they would definitely be in the Isthmus.

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I spent part of my childhood there, about three years, with moments I remember as both good and bad. But I would also have to add all those summer vacations, even when I was at university.

Back then, it meant taking a bus from Mexico City and spending about twelve hours on the road before reaching Zanatepec. That’s why, whenever someone asks me if really long flights drive me crazy, I just smile and answer with a certain amount of cynicism:

No. I spent years training for them.

Now that I’ve made Zanatepec one of my homes, I drive there. It takes me almost as long, sometimes even longer, because I make strategic stops: places I’ve learned to recognize over the years, places where I enjoy eating or where I stop to visit someone special to me. And, of course, I wander through small towns along the way. Going there or coming back, there is always somewhere worth stopping.

I suppose that contradiction is also part of who I am.

One day you might find me walking around Bath and, a couple of weeks later, sitting with my mother and the rest of the family, drinking chigorolo.

If you don’t know what that is, you need a little more Isthmus street cred... but I can give you the recipe. It has Mezcal.

I can feel equally at home in both places.

But family isn’t the only thing that keeps bringing me back again and again, nor is it the only reason I decided to make a second home there.

It’s something more.

It begins on the road, when hundreds of wind turbines start appearing in the distance, now part of the landscape of the Isthmus. You see them multiplying along the highway, in a scene that reminds me of those old matchbox illustrations, and you know you’re getting close.

That you’re returning to a land that, somehow, keeps calling you back.

The Isthmus is filled with culture, customs, and traditions that refuse to die despite modernity. They evolve, of course, but they’re still there. Visible. Constant. Alive.

And few things show this as clearly as its celebrations.

A village celebration can last at least three days: the day before, when the food is prepared; the main celebration; and, of course, the day of leftovers. Some last much longer and require the stamina of a marathon runner.

It can be surprising the first time you experience one. Eventually, you start seeing it all as perfectly normal.

There is that sense of community. Everyone is invited... well, almost everyone.

And if you’re a man, you’d better show up carrying a case of beer as a sign of good manners and basic civility. If you’re a woman, you’re expected to give what is traditionally called limosna, a contribution to the celebration.

Then the rounds begin, and the beer bottles, always the small cuartito size, can start piling up in a row in front of you. You have to keep up... with an occasional round of mezcal to keep all that beer from filling you up too much.

The men usually sit on one side. The women dance together to sones, cumbias, and whatever the band happens to be playing, although there is always some gentleman who would rather dance than stay in his seat.

Then there’s the food.

Roast pork, Isthmus-style beef barbacoa, baked potatoes... although by then you should have planned carefully and saved some room, because the appetizers have already made the rounds: little tamales, guetabinguies, empanadas, fried tacos, cheese balls, shrimp salad, totopos.

And all around you are women in traditional dress: embroidered enaguas and huipiles, flowers and braids adorning their heads, or the unmistakable resplandor worn by Tehuana women.

But reducing the women of the Isthmus to their traditional dress would mean seeing only the photograph.

There is much more to say about them.

Women in small towns are often portrayed as submissive, relegated to the background. That is not the woman I grew up seeing in the Isthmus.

The Isthmus women I know are strong, proud, and hardworking. They manage, trade, organize, decide. Their presence is felt within the family, but also throughout community life. Much has been written about the supposed matriarchy of the Isthmus, and the reality is surely far more complex than a single word can describe. But spend some time there and it is difficult not to notice the space women occupy.

And then there are the muxes.

Often described as a third gender of the Isthmus and particularly associated with Juchitán, muxes occupy a distinctive place within Zapotec society. They deserve far more than a rushed paragraph here. Perhaps I’ll write about them another time.

Because that, too, is the Isthmus: a culture that makes you look back without necessarily living in the past.

Traditions change. Some things disappear, others transform, and others cling with admirable stubbornness to their right to remain.

Perhaps that is why I keep coming back.

I have known places that fascinated me, cities where I could imagine myself living, and cultures that have made me question my own way of seeing the world. Travel does that.

But it has also taught me to look differently at the place I come from.

I still say I don’t feel completely at home anywhere. Perhaps after so many years and so many places, I no longer need to.

But some lands get into your roots.

You can leave. You can live in another city. You can cross oceans and marvel at what you find on the other side.

And then, one day, you come back.

You sit with your family. You hear the music and the fireworks. You hear the loudspeaker that might announce anything from food for sale to someone’s passing. You dip a totopo into your coffee and eat it with sour cream and dry cheese.

And you realize that, although you may have left many times, that place never really left you.

That’s what the Isthmus is to me.

I can leave many times.

But there is a part of me that, apparently, never did.aveling through them.