What You See, and What It Is: Oaxaca’s Guelaguetza
- Paco Araujo
- Apr 4
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 8
A reflection on the hidden systems of Oaxaca
I wasn’t in Oaxaca for leisure. It was a four-day work trip—a dealers meeting, in and out. Just business. But those four days left a mark that hasn’t faded. Something about the city pressed deep—into thought, into feeling. Like a sacred rhythm I caught only in passing. Something I now feel I must return to, not just physically, but inwardly.
I didn’t go looking for guelaguetza. But I found myself craving it—desperately. Not the one that dances for cameras. The one that lives quietly. In service. In reciprocity. Even if that means finding a way to live it back home.
At first, Oaxaca offers itself in full color. The streets are vibrant. The air smells like roasted corn and wood smoke. Murals stretch across walls like poetry. But as I moved through the city, something felt... filtered. There were more tourists than locals in the visible parts. Too many rooftop bars, too many $5 lattes, too many signs in English.
The city center is beautiful. But it feels like it's being staged.
That’s when I saw a group of schoolchildren visiting the ethnobotanical garden and the Santo Domingo temple and convent. They weren’t performing their culture. They were living it. Laughing, asking questions, tracing their history with fingertips and curiosity.
It was there I realized: there are two Oaxacas.
One designed to be seen.
And one meant to be belonged to.
Later, I met César, a man from Querétaro married to a Oaxacan woman. He was honest about the cultural shift he’d been navigating. “Oaxaca moves differently,” he said. “You can’t force it. You have to earn your place.” His tone was part reverence, part surrender.
And with every step after that, I began to feel the systems underneath.
“La verdadera Guelaguetza no se baila. Se vive.”
The Guelaguetza is Oaxaca’s most famous celebration. A grand, state-sponsored festival held every July. Traditional dances. Music. Regional costumes. A dazzling performance of Oaxaca’s cultural wealth.
But then Cesar said something I can’t forget:
“The real guelaguetza isn’t danced. It’s lived. It’s not one day in July, it’s every day of our lives.”
The word Guelaguetza comes from the Zapotec word “guendalezaa”, which means offering or reciprocal exchange. A gift given freely, with the understanding that someday, you will also receive.
This idea is not a tradition—it’s a system. It’s embedded in how people live, give, and thrive together.
I heard how, in many communities, young men must serve the town for a full year after turning 18, unpaid. They work for the collective good. Then, they’re free to work independently for three years—before returning again for another year of service. This cycle isn't enforced. It’s expected. It’s part of being part of something.
And the town gives back too. If a young couple is to be married but their family can’t provide land, the community gifts them a plot to begin their life.
This is guelaguetza. Not a performance. A pattern. Not charity. A sacred loop.
Gentrification: The Curtain and the System Beneath
What’s harder to talk about is what happens when those sacred loops are disrupted.
In Oaxaca, gentrification doesn’t always arrive with bulldozers. It arrives with linen shirts and boutique hotels. It arrives as “investment” and “revitalization.” Streets get paved. Cafés get air conditioning. Neighborhoods like City Center, Jalatlaco, and Xochimilco become design-forward dreamscapes for digital nomads.
But behind every boutique, someone was displaced. Behind every renovated home, someone no longer belongs.
The system shifts.
Housing prices rise.
Locals are pushed out.
Land becomes a commodity, not a gift.
Culture becomes content.
And guelaguetza becomes entertainment.
What was reciprocal becomes transactional.
This is not just about real estate—it’s about feedback loops. Gentrification is a reinforcing loop: more tourism → higher demand → rising prices → displacement → loss of identity → more tourism, now seeking the "authentic" that no longer exists.
It doesn’t destroy culture all at once. It slowly removes the conditions that allow it to be lived.
And the danger is not just what’s lost—but what’s replaced.
Mezcal: The System in a Bottle
It took me a while to understand mezcal. At first, it seemed like a trendy drink—available on every corner, offered in flights and tastings, packaged for export.
But mezcal is more than a product. It’s a story of land, time, and ritual.
Mezcal can be made from over 30 varieties of agave. Only one—Espadín—is domesticated. The rest are wild, sacred, and slow. Some take 15 to 20 years to mature, growing in the mountains, untouched by chemicals. Scarce. Powerful. Irreplaceable.
Regardless of method—industrial, artisanal, ancestral—mezcaleros begin their work with ritual. They thank the earth for its gift. And they ask forgiveness from the agave before cutting it.
Even in the industrial processes, the ritual holds. Because it’s not about purity. It’s about relationship.
But like guelaguetza, mezcal has also been rebranded.
Tequila, in fact, is a type of mezcal. But in the early 1900s, it was separated and commercialized to distance itself from mezcal’s “peasant” image. What was sacred became sanitized.
What was guendalezaa became profit margin.
El Tule: The System That Still Breathes
On my last day, I visited El Árbol del Tule—a tree so massive, so ancient, you can’t quite take it in. It’s over 2,000 years old, wide enough to hold myth in its trunk. And though it’s called the "Tule" tree, it’s actually an ahuehuete, a sacred cypress. But tradition happened, and the name stayed.
And maybe that’s the point: some systems survive not because they are named correctly, but because they are loved deeply.
The community protects the tree like a living ancestor. They water it, nurture it, tell its stories. And in a beautiful tradition, the schoolchildren with the highest grades are chosen to guide visitors, pointing out the shapes and spirits hidden in the bark—the lion, the deer, the heart.
The day I visited, they weren’t there. But their absence only made the silence more sacred.
Because this tree didn’t survive two millennia by chance. It survived because it was kept in a system of care.
Not one visible in tourist maps. But one that lives in the stories passed from child to child.
So What System Are We Feeding?
I came to Oaxaca for work. Four days. A quick meeting. But I left carrying a question I can’t put down:
What systems do we preserve, and which do we perform?
Gentrification isn’t just an economic trend. It’s a system intervention that hides other systems behind its curtain.
But Oaxaca—beneath the layers, behind the staged performances—still breathes. In mezcal rituals. In guelaguetza lived. In ahuehuetes that outlast empires.
Culture isn’t sustained by visibility. It’s sustained by feedback. By giving back. By waiting longer than the market demands. By asking permission. By being part of something older, deeper, slower.
I didn’t go looking for that. But I think it found me.
And I want to go back—not just to Oaxaca. But to the system it reminded me is still possible.
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