Governor Salomón Jara Cruz’s legal threat on Tuesday was the latest charge of cultural appropriation emanating from Oaxaca. Earlier this year, a group of 300 Oaxacan artisans accused two U.S. fashion brands of using traditional huipil patterns in their clothes.

In the current complaint, the governor emphasized concerns that the creators did not obtain consent from the community of Villa Hidalgo Yalalág, whose signature huarache craftsmanship inspired the sandal. He also expressed his disdain over the use of the name “Oaxaca” for the new shoe.

“We will approach our brothers and sisters in Yalalág to file a report for identity theft,” Jara Cruz stated at a press conference.

The Oaxaca Slip-On was officially unveiled this week during a massive Adidas event at the Puerto Rico Museum of Art in San Juan. Adidas has taken over the historic facility’s exhibit halls and gardens for three weeks to celebrate five years of creative partnership between Adidas Originals and renowned Puerto Rican reggaeton star Bad Bunny.

Chavarría and other creative forces from Adidas kicked off the event by participating in panels that also unveiled new models — including the Oaxaca Slip-On.

The shoe features a premium leather upper in a hand-woven style reminiscent of traditional Oaxacan huaraches, paired with a chunky Adidas sneaker sole.

An acclaimed U.S. designer known for fusing streetwear, political activism and Chicano cultural references, Chavarría said the shoe seeks to merge Indigenous Mexican footwear heritage with Chicano style and contemporary streetwear.

“I celebrate Latino culture and celebrate queer culture because that’s like me,” Chavarría told Sneaker News at the event. “But at the end of the day … it’s about human dignity. It’s about respecting and loving one another.” 

Chavarría was born in 1967 in Huron, a small farmworker community in Fresno County, California.

“It makes me very proud to be working with a company that really respects and uplifts culture in the most real way,” he added.

Nonetheless, Oaxacan artisans and officials have raised concerns about recurring incidents of cultural appropriation, where international brands, including luxury designers, have been accused of taking Indigenous Mexican designs without permission or benefit to the communities.

Levi’s accused of culturally appropriating indigenous designs

Previous cases have involved fashion companies such as Carolina Herrera, Zimmermann and Shein. The Mexican fabric company Modatelas was accused of plagiarizing traditional designs from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and the U.S. brand Anthropologie was accused of using the Xaam nïxuy design from a Mixe community without permission.

In 2022, the Ralph Lauren brand apologized after being accused of plagiarizing Mexican textile designs.

The Ministry of Culture has long argued these practices represent both economic harm and “symbolic dispossession” of Indigenous identity and creativity.

Villa Hidalgo Yalalág is a Zapotec community in the Sierra Norte region of Oaxaca, roughly 90 kilometers northeast of Oaxaca City. The community is recognized for its hand-woven huaraches, textiles and other traditional crafts that are emblematic of Oaxacan heritage.

With reports from El Financiero, Publimetro and Sneaker News

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Born in the coastal state of Guerrero, his family moved to the Bondojito area of Mexico City in 1947. It was a time when thousands of Mexicans were leaving the countryside, and the slum areas around the city were expanding faster than the government could provide adequate housing or services. Olivares became a tough boy on tough streets. Siblings died, his father left to find work in the U.S. and he was thrown out of school for fighting. According to boxing folklore, the headmaster once offered to present his graduation diploma early, on the condition that Olivares never come back to the school.

How Rubén Olivares began his boxing career

He tried his hand at carving wooden figures, a career for which he had little talent. Then, he and a friend decided the one thing they could do was fight, so they walked down to the local gym. Many boxers start as amateurs for fitness, or to toughen up, and then find they are good enough to turn professional. The day Olivares first entered the gym, he already had a professional career in mind.

He built up a reasonable record in the amateurs, including a Mexico City Golden Gloves title. But having missed his chance to compete in the 1964 Olympics, he saw no point in continuing to fight for free. At just 17 years of age, he had his first professional fight, beating Isidro Sotelo in Cuernavaca. It was the first of 24 consecutive knockout wins. Apart from his winning record, Olivares had that special star quality. While many boxers wear out their opponent, slowly mastering them until you sense a knockout is coming, from the moment Rubén stepped into the ring, you knew a knockout punch could come at any moment. Whatever else might happen, fans were not going to get a dull fight. 

With money coming in from fights, Olivares did not slow down when he left the ring. He was noted for his love of tequila and women. However, this lifestyle only made his fans love him more. As the wins accumulated, Ruben started to get attention beyond Mexico. The Los Angeles Times once described him as having “a smile that stretched from ear to ear and thunder in both hands.”

The man with thunder in both hands

Another young Mexican bantamweight catching headlines at this time was Chucho Castillo. He was noted for his quiet, almost shy approach to life, working ruthlessly in the gym but then quietly slipping away. He was one hell of a boxer and in December 1968 traveled to Inglewood, California, to fight World Champion Lionel Rose. The 10th round saw Rose knocked to the canvas, a moment that convinced the many Mexicans in the audience that their man had done enough to win the title. However, when at the end of 15 rounds, the referee raised the Australian’s arm in victory. There was first surprise and then anger. The riot that followed put 14 fans and the referee in the hospital. Five months later, Olivares came to Inglewood, where he beat Olympic champion Takao Sakurai of Japan in a title elimination bout. 

He was now set to meet Rose for the world title, which would once again be fought in California. The first round was even as the two men sized each other up. This was followed by an action-packed second that started with the fighters exchanging blows. Slowly but steadily, the brawl turned in the Mexican’s favor, and close to the bell, Rose was knocked to the canvas. The Australian got to his feet and fought on, but from this point it was a case of not who would win, but how long Rose could last. It ended in the fifth, Olivares becoming world champion at the age of 22.

The trilogy of fights with Chucho Castillo

All of Mexico now wanted to see Olivares fight Castillo. The former delayed the showdown by taking a few easy fights, but in April 1970, the two Mexicans stepped into the Inglewood ring for what would be the first of three fights that would define their careers. Olivares won the first clash on points, but it was close enough to justify a return. This time, he received a badly cut eye in the first round, a wound he claimed was from a clash of heads, something the Castillo camp denied. The referee kept checking the cut and finally stopped the fight in the 14th. It was Olivares’ first defeat in five years and 63 fights.

It is possible that by then, he was already in decline. Olivares notoriously hated training, and one reason his management team kept him fighting so regularly was to keep him occupied and away from parties. Not that the management had to push him into the ring. The money Olivares got from each contest quickly disappeared, lost in rip-offs, taxes, bad investments, and gifts to his relatives and friends back in the barrio. His bank balance always needed one more fight.

The end of Olivares’ career

By now, he was no longer putting the same effort into the gym work, while his party lifestyle meant he was increasingly struggling to make the weight limit. Yet Olivares was so talented and so proud in the ring that at first the decline didn’t show. In April 1971, he fought Castillo for the third time, surviving an early knockdown to win on points. He seemed back on form and won his next six fights. However, those around him were increasingly worried about his attitude and his playboy lifestyle. In March 1972, he met Rafael Herrera. It was a fight neither man wanted. Olivares was out of shape, and Herrera had been sick. When Herrera later won with an eighth-round knockout, Olivares was still surprisingly upbeat.  He had not, he announced, lost the bantamweight title, but had started his pursuit of the featherweight title. 

However, his life was growing increasingly wild. There is a story that while he was preparing for one fight, he and his opponent passed each other in the street. His rival was going out for an early training run just as Olivares was coming in from a disco. It was also at this point that the boxer started to get into movies, starring in “Nosotros Los Feos” and getting numerous other smaller parts. Despite all the distractions, Olivares won three more world titles. He beat Bobby Chacon for the NABF featherweight title in 1973, Zensuke Utagawa for the WBA featherweight title in 1974, and Chacon again for the WBC featherweight title in 1975. He finally left the ring in 1981, having lost three and drawn two of his last five fights.

Life after boxing

His life since then has had its ups and downs. On the downside, there was a marijuana-related arrest. In contrast, there was his induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. There were some television roles, but financially, his post-boxing career brought tough times. In his later years, Olivares was a regular in the Mexico City mercado, selling boxing memorabilia and autographs. There are children and grandchildren, and at 74, he is still active, still has that captivating smile, and still has the respect of the people who recognise him in the street.

Bob Pateman is a Mexico-based historian, librarian and a life term hasher. He is editor of On On Magazine, the international history magazine of hashing.

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The barbacoa feast of 100 sheep (lambs) and more than 2,000 chickens will be slow-cooked underground in two enormous, custom-built ovens as part of the annual Dajiedhi Fair, a six-day festival starting Wednesday.

State by Plate: Barbacoa of Hidalgo

The popular fair will feature church services, fireworks, dancers, music, carnival rides, craft sales and food — like other patron saint festivals in Mexico. But this event, like many others across the country in early August, pays homage to El Divino Salvador (the Divine Savior, aka Jesus).

Much of this year’s focus is on Sunday, when the large ovens will be ignited by local barbocoyeros (pitmasters) to begin the barbecuing process. On Monday, a free tasting for an estimated 15,000 visitors will begin at 11 a.m.

“It’s just a tasting, so we ask for your understanding that there should be enough for everyone,” emphasized Alex Santiago Mejía, a member of the fair committee.

For those wanting more, barbacoa will also be available for purchase for about 650 pesos (US $34.50) per kilogram.

Last year’s event featured the cooking of 68 sheep and more than 200 chickens, though organizers opted against trying to obtain a Guinness World Record due to costs.

Like last year, this year’s barbecue will be prepared in a traditional manner that dates back to pre-Hispanic times.

¡En #Actopan se rompió el récord Guinness de la fila de tacos de barbacoa más larga del mundo!

Este es un logro que pone en alto la gastronomía de #Hidalgo, reflejando el orgullo por nuestra identidad.#PrimeroElPueblo pic.twitter.com/cIs7mLuTR4

— Julio Menchaca (@juliomenchaca_) July 13, 2025

Sheep and chickens donated by Dajiedhi residents and farmers in neighboring towns will be prepped and seasoned by the barbocoyeros and volunteers.

The meats will then be cooked in stone pits that are lined and topped with maguey leaves to protect ingredients from the dirt and to seal in flavors from vegetables and mesquite branches placed in the pits.

Dajiedhi, population 2,400, is located in the municipality of Actopan, Hidalgo, about 30 kilometers north of the state capital, Pachuca. Its unique name is almost certainly Indigenous, likely of Otomí-Hñahñu origin, but its precise meaning is unknown to scholars.

In Actopan and other areas of the Mezquital Valley, barbecued meats have been prepared in earthen ovens since 1518, according to Mexico’s Ministry of Culture. The newspaper Milenio referred to Dajiedhi as “the birthplace of barbacoyeros.”

At the Barbacoa Fair in Actopan in early July, the community reportedly set a Guinness World Record for the longest line of barbacoa tacos — more than 12,000 placed side-by-side in a single row. Vendors made about 300 tacos each, and when the tacos were lined up, no overlapping was allowed, according to the on-site Guinness adjudicator.

With reports from Milenio, N+ and Central Hidalgo Irreverente

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In June of this year alone, Gabriela Solis told readers that Tenochtitlán — present-day Mexico City — was Mesoamerica’s largest city, Andrea Fischer described how New Age mumbo jumbo is passed off to unsuspecting tourists as ancient Mesoamerican wisdom and Chris Sands recalled the quesadilla’s Mesoamerican roots. But what was — or is — Mesoamerica in the first place?

What is Mesoamerica?

Mesoamerica is a historical cultural area that encompasses the area from what is now central Mexico down to northwestern Costa Rica, spanning all of present-day El Salvador and Belize and the western halves of Honduras and El Salvador. Alongside Iraq, China, India, Egypt and Peru, it is recognized as one of six “cradles of civilization,” or a location where civilization originated independently.

The term “Mesoamerica” — literally “middle America” in Greek — was never used by the region’s ancient inhabitants and is relatively new. It was first coined in 1943 by the German-born anthropologist Paul Kirchhoff, who spent the second half of his life in Mexico, where he helped to found the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH).

Kirchoff’s definition of the region had to do with language and culture. Mesoamerica’s peoples spoke languages belonging to six major language families — Uto-Aztecan, Totonacan, Oto-Mangue, Mixe–Zoque, Mayan and Chibchan — as well as a handful of other families and some language isolates.

The inhabitants of Mesoamerica also had a long list of shared features in their material and intellectual cultures, and though many features also appeared in cultures outside their area, it was only in this region that they were all brought together. Archaeologists and ethnographers since Kirchhoff have built on and critiqued his original list, but most agree that Mesoamerican cultures shared traits including the following:

Agriculture: The ancient peoples of Mesoamerica domesticated the turkey and dog and cultivated crops including cacao, agave, chia, cotton, chili peppers, tomatoes, avocados and — most importantly — the central trio of corn, beans and squash. They developed agricultural techniques so effective they are still used today, including terrace farming, the “floating gardens” called chinampas and the milpa system, which grows corn, beans and squash simultaneously in the same parcel.

Architecture: From Cañada de la Virgen in Guanajuato to Garrobo Grande in Nicaragua, Mesoamerica is dotted with stepped pyramids, probably the region’s most iconic type of ancient structure. Monumental public plazas and buildings oriented around the movements of the heavenly bodies are also common throughout the region, as are the courts where athletes used rubber balls to played the many variations of what archaeologists call the Mesoamerican ball game.

The calendar: Mesoamerican cultures were skilled in astronomy and developed a dual-calendar system, using a 365-day solar calendar and a sacred 260-day calendar with 13 months of 20 days each, with five inauspicious or unlucky days to complete the 365-day cycle. This system was related to Mesoamerica’s base-20 number system and the fact that 13 was a sacred number in several of the region’s cultures; the Nahuas of central Mexico, for example, believed in 13 heavens. This calendar is still used in some communities across the region: some Maya peoples of Guatemala, for example, train Day Keepers who maintain the sacred calendar for ritual purposes today.

Writing: On tanned deer skins and amate bark paper, Mesoamericans created folding books we now call codices in which they recorded the histories of their city-states and kept extensive tax records. The writing systems of Mesoamerica were diverse, including the logographic systems used by the Maya — in which a symbol represents a sound or word, as with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs — and pictographic Mixtec writing. Tragically, countless written records were destroyed by the Spanish during the colonial period, but surviving examples continue to shed light on pre-colonization Mesoamerica. 

Other common features of Mesoamerican cultures include a polytheistic religion featuring deities representing forces of nature and a feathered serpent god — Quetzalcoatl among the Nahua and Qʼuqʼumatz for the K’iche Maya, for example — ritual execution and self-sacrifice in the form of bloodletting, as well as specialized markets and the use of earrings.

When was Mesoamerica?

For Kirchhoff, Mesoamerica was bounded not only in space but in time, existing from roughly 2500 B.C. to 1521 of the present era. A.D. 1521 marks the fall of Tenochtitlán, the leading city of the Triple Alliance — better known as the Aztec Empire — to the Spanish and their Indigenous allies. Although several Mesoamerican peoples successfully resisted colonization for generations and dozens of cultures have survived to the present day, colonialism marked the end of Mesoamerica as a distinct cultural region in the same way as it had previously been.

Historians and archaeologists divide Mesoamerican history into five main periods. These are the Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Preclassic, Classic and Postclassic, and each is further divided into sub-periods. Mesoamerican civilization properly begins in the Preclassic, with the Paleo-Indian period seeing human beings first arrive in the region, perhaps as early as 30,000 years ago, and live as hunter-gatherers, developing agriculture and leaving the nomadic life behind in the Archaic period between around 8000 and 2000 B.C. 

The Preclassic period, falling roughly between 2000 B.C. and A.D. 250, saw social complexity skyrocket and the first flourishing of great civilizations, including the Olmecs of the Gulf Coast, sometimes considered the “mother culture” of other Mesoamerican civilizations. The oldest Mesoamerican writing and calendrical systems appeared during this period.

The monumental city-states that we associate with Mesoamerica emerged during the Classic period, with the most famous example being Teotihuacán, in present-day México state. This city dominated politics and trade in the region for centuries, with its influence stretching as far away as the Maya cities of the Yucatán Peninsula — which also reached the height of their splendor in this period — and its fall around the 7th or 8th century AD created a power vacuum across Mesoamerica. 

The post-Teotihuacán void came to be filled by the trading city of Xochicalco and later the Toltecs of present-day Tula, Hidalgo, during the Postclassic period, which lasted from A.D. 900 to 1521. The Toltecs themselves were succeeded by the Mexica (Aztecs), who at the head of the Triple Alliance between the cities of Tenochtitlán, Texococo and Tlacopan achieved control of central Mexico unseen since Teotihuacán. Whatever further consolidation might have happened under the Mexica was shattered by the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico in 1519.

Oasisamerica and Aridoamerica

You may have already noticed that, though extensive, Mesoamerica doesn’t cover all of modern-day Mexico. A great deal of it, in fact, is left out: Most of the territory of the northern border states and all of the Baja California Peninsula fall outside of the region, for example. If this wasn’t Mesoamerica, what was it?

In the 1950s, Paul Kirchhoff answered this question, building off the work he had done a decade earlier. Mesoamerica had two northern neighbors, he wrote: Arid America and Oasis America. These culture regions had essentially been created by the landscape and climate of what is now northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. The former, now called Aridoamerica by archaeologists, was inhabited by peoples like the Wixárika (Huichol), Pai Pai and Yaquis. Aridoamerica’s rough terrain and extreme climate, combined with its lack of rainfall, did not lend itself to sedentism or the consolidation of large political units and made a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle best suited to its environment.

What is now called Oasisamerica, on the other hand, was a cultural region of farmers living in settled villages, an arrangement made possible by the milder climate and more readily available water. It spanned parts of Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California, as well as several states of the U.S. Southwest. The modern-day Pueblo and O’odham peoples descend from the cultures of this area, and the cliff dwellings of the U.S. Southwest are among the most striking examples of their architecture. Oasisamericans maintained much stronger links to Mesoamerica than their Aridoamerican counterparts did, farming corn and participating in complex trade networks that brought Arizonian turquoise to central Mexico and scarlet macaws from modern Veracruz to Paquimé, in what is now northwestern Chihuahua.

Mexico News Daily

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Who can we thank for putting Oaxaca on the creative community map? The 10 artists below represent just a fraction of the region’s visionary prowess, each contributing to the development of Oaxacan expression in a powerful way.     

Rufino Tamayo (August 26, 1899 – June 24, 1991)
Painter, modernist visionary 

Rufino Tamayo was orphaned by age 12. Born in Oaxaca, his father abandoned the family and his mother died of tuberculosis. He moved to Mexico City to live with an aunt, helping run her family’s fruit stall. This experience would profoundly impact his artistic journey, inspiring the legendary watermelon motifs for which he is so well known. Fiercely independent, Tamayo rebelled against the art scene which, at that time, was largely a series of political statements by the likes of Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Instead, Tamayo chose to focus on a unique blend of European modernism and Mexican roots. He would eventually found two museums: Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, and Museo de Arte Prehispánico de México Rufino Tamayo in Oaxaca.

Francisco Toledo (July 17, 1940 – September 5, 2019)
Painter, sculptor, cultural activist 

Oaxaca’s landscape and culture laid the groundwork for Toledo’s surrealist, at times fantastical, paintings, known for their rough lines and rich textures. Thanks to a rural upbringing in a Zapotec family, he was immersed in legend, myth, and the region’s wild nature from a young age. After his parents sent him to high school in Oaxaca City in the hopes he would become a lawyer, Toledo went on to study art, spending time in Mexico City, New York, and Paris, where he would befriend Rufino Tamayo. A tireless advocate for Oaxacan heritage and social justice, Toledo founded the beloved Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (IAGO). Perhaps his most famous work came in the form of activism — in 2002, the artist organized a protest against a proposed McDonald’s in Oaxaca City, handing out tamales at the potential site and generating the slogan “Tamales sí, hamburguesas no.”

Rodolfo Morales (May 8, 1925 – January 30, 2001)
Painter, surrealist, restorer 

Morales grew up in a small Oaxacan village in a working-class family. A solitary child, he often turned to drawing to pass the time. While his parents recognized early on that Morales had artistic talent, it was his Aunt Petra who fostered his imagination and encouraged his creative side. Though his education was interrupted, Morales would later attend the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City to study art. His style, magical realism centered on the resilience of Oaxacan women and the matriarchy, can be found on canvas and the walls of important buildings, notably the Municipal Palace of Ocotlán, which showcases a colorful depiction of local village life. Morales dedicated his latter years to restoration, bringing back to life Oaxaca’s most historic churches and convents, including the 16th-century Convent of Santo Domingo.

Amador Montes (June 16, 1975 – )
Painter, curator, boutique hotel creator 

Amador Montes is one of Oaxaca’s most celebrated contemporary artists. He’s presented his paintings locally and globally, each piece inspired by dreams, memories, and emotions, evoking feelings of nostalgia. His luminous color palette—which reflects the full spectrum of hues ranging from bold to neutral—often features black lettering, notably the name Carmen. Much of his work is dedicated to his mother, and her name graces everything from Montes’ paintings to the two boutique hotels he opened in Oaxaca City, both named Casa Carmen. Beyond creating, Montes is also a curator, passionate in his support of young Oaxacan artists and known for hosting local exhibitions and creative dialogue.

Manuel Jiménez Ramírez (June 9, 1919 – March 4, 2005)
Alebrije pioneer and healer 

Manuel Jiménez Ramírez is credited as the originator of the Oaxacan alebrije, the state’s vibrant tradition of fantastical, hand-carved wooden animals and mythical creatures. As a child, he began by molding animals in clay, later discovering his true passion was in woodcarving. Known locally as “el divino,” Jiménez Ramírez believed himself to be the reincarnation of an artist, and his neighbors often regarded him as a spiritual healer. Beyond art, he worked as everything from a cane cutter to a bricklayer, basket maker, and community leader during Holy Week celebrations. Today, his children and grandchildren carry on the family legacy, shaping the artistic identity of Oaxaca at large.

Jacobo Ángeles (March 14, 1973 – )
Master alebrije carver and Zapotec cultural advocate

Jacobo Ángeles’ creative spirit was nurtured by growing up in a Zapotec household surrounded by woodcarvers and artisans. After the sudden loss of his father when he was just 12, the young creator took charge of the family workshop, teaching the craft of carving to his younger siblings and supporting the household.

He later married María del Carmen Mendoza, and together they built the Taller Jacobo y María Ángeles, a cultural hub where traditional Zapotec weaving and carving techniques blend with cutting-edge design. His alebrijes are notable for their intricate patterns — inspired by Zapotec symbols and ancient mythology — and frequently combine mythical creatures with human features. In 2014, Jacobo was invited to meet Pope Francis and exhibit 1,200 hand-carved nativity scene figures and Christmas ornaments at the Vatican Museums.

Josefina Aguilar (February 22, 1945 – )
Iconic potter and figurine artist 

Hailing from the same town as Rodolfo Morales, Josefina Aguilar is internationally lauded for her vibrant, molded clay figurines representing Mexican rural life, festive traditions, saints, historical figures, and community rituals. Taught by her mother and grandmother from the age of six, Josefina began gaining attention in her youth, and her works would eventually be collected by connoisseurs like Nelson Rockefeller. Despite losing her sight in 2014, Josefina continues to shape her whimsical muñecas (dolls), relying on touch while her children help her paint. Her home and studio are a beacon for folk art collectors, and her family remains a central force in the evolution and global adoration of Oaxacan ceramics.

Pastora Gutiérrez Reyes (dates not publicly confirmed)
Revolutionary weaver and women’s advocate 

BMW Foundation

Pastora Gutiérrez Reyes is a Zapotec leader and weaving artist from Teotitlán del Valle. In 1997, driven by the lack of opportunities for women in her traditional community, she cofounded Vida Nueva, the village’s first all-women’s weaving cooperative.

Together with her mother, grandmother, and friends, she guided the co-op to economic independence, education, and social change. Through Vida Nueva, Pastora helped bring public health education, workshops on domestic violence and support to further educate local women. Her impact is as much about advocacy as artistry: Today, the cooperative’s Mexican textiles are recognized for blending Zapotec tradition with the group’s innovative designs, and the co-op empowers women in rural Oaxaca.

Doña Rosa (September 4, 1900 – July 12, 1980)
Legendary innovator of Barro Negro 

In the 1950s, Doña Rosa — born Rosa Real Mateo de Nieto in San Bartolo Coyotepec — dramatically transformed the fate of Mexican pottery with a single discovery. Traditionally, the region’s barro negro (black clay) was matte and gray, relied on for its broad utility rather than its aesthetic. Doña Rosa found that by burnishing the clay with a quartz stone and firing it at a lower temperature, she could create a deep, lustrous black sheen.

This technique made Oaxacan pottery famous throughout the world. Doña Rosa’s descendants continue to run the family workshop to this day, and for art collectors serious about Mexican folk art, it’s a must-visit. Doña Rosa’s ingenuity not only upended an entire craft it also inspired a wave of creative and economic activity that continues to reverberate in Oaxaca’s Central Valleys.

Enedina Vásquez Cruz (1963 – )
Contemporary terracotta sculptor 

Enedina Vásquez Cruz carries the centuries-old tradition of Oaxacan ceramics forward with her award-winning terracotta figures and jewelry. Trained in her family’s workshop from a young age, Enedina innovated the art when she recovered ancient slip recipes revealing a method to create an earthy palette.

In fact, the recipes uncovered over 80 natural colors, all derived from traditional sources. Her detailed works are generally centered on Indigenous women in regional dress, as well as double-sided pieces depicting religious icons and historic narratives. Her ability to connect Oaxaca’s pre-Hispanic past to contemporary beliefs has garnered Cruz a number of major national prizes, making her a major force in the region’s artistic landscape.

Bethany Platanella is a travel planner and lifestyle writer based in Mexico City. She lives for the dopamine hit that comes directly after booking a plane ticket, exploring local markets, practicing yoga and munching on fresh tortillas. Sign up to receive her Sunday Love Letters to your inbox, peruse her blog or follow her on Instagram.

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Moya, a naturalized Mexican, passed away at his home in Cuernavaca on Wednesday after a long illness, surrounded by his family and his partner of 43 years, Susan Flaherty.

Rodrigo Moya, fotógrafo colombo-mexicano. QEPD. pic.twitter.com/1skRJIK06Y

— Malely Linares Sánchez (@Malelylinares) July 30, 2025

Mexico’s Ministry of Culture lamented Moya’s passing on social media, writing that “[h]is work acutely portrayed the social inequalities, popular struggles and revolutionary movements of the 1950s and 1960s. Author of the famous portrait ‘Melancholic Che,’ Moya captured historical processes that today are part of an essential legacy of memory and truth. May he rest in peace.”

Numerous institutions and journalists paid tribute on social media as well, including the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, the National Institute of Anthropology and History and Jenaro Villamil, the director of Mexico’s Public Broadcasting System.

The Coordination of Cultural Diffusion at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) said Moya “leaves us a lucid and profoundly honest legacy: a mirror where history still breathes.”

Moya, whose work has been compared favorably to Henri Cartier Bresson and Manuel Álvarez Bravo, photographed political unrest throughout Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s, including the guerrilla movements in Guatemala and Venezuela, the U.S. invasion of Santo Domingo, and the Cuban Revolution. 

He captured the human cost of civil and military uprisings and the people who lived through those turbulent times, and memorably described photography as “the most intense approach to life, to the nature of the world, to the beings and things that entered through my lens and remain there.” 

Moya referred to his subjects as “populating memory and the small surface of photographic paper, refusing to die, looking at me with the same eyes they looked at me with decades ago.”

He abandoned the profession of photography in 1968 to focus on print journalism and produce documentaries, although he continued to take photographs.

Some of his images from this later period were featured at The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University in 2015, billed as the first retrospective of Moya’s career to be exhibited in the United States.

They featured subjects such as the sea and residents of fishing communities, as well as the countryside, the streets of Mexico, religious processions and portraits of both anonymous people and celebrities.

Wittliff curators wrote that images by Moya published in eminent Latin American news magazines such as Impacto, El Espectador, Sucesos and Siempre! documented newsworthy events, “while providing an insider’s view, suggesting that his subjects were waiting for his camera.”

He said of himself: “I think my photos did have a constant search, but more than a seeker of images, I was a seeker of social contrasts, I was a seeker of the physiology of Mexico and the economic physiology of our countries.”

In a pamphlet explaining the exhibit “Eyes Wide Open” featuring photos by Moya, The Etherton Gallery in Tucson, Arizona, described him as “part photojournalist, part street photographer.” 

“The photographer renders timeless, the sweet, ordinary moments of life, like a girl looking out a train window in “La Muchacha.” His affecting portraits afford the same dignity to renowned artist Diego Rivera as to an agricultural laborer in “La vida no es bella”  (“Life is not Beautiful”).”

Moya was born in Medellín, Colombia, on April 10, 1934. His father was Mexican.

Moya took his famous photo of Che in July 1964 as part of a project to produce a book about the Cuban Revolution that was never written. On the last day of the visit to Cuba, he did a series of 19 portraits of the revolutionary, including the image of Guevara smoking a cigar, with a sad expression.

In 1997, Moya won Mexico’s National Short Story Award for his book “Cuentos para leer junto al mar” (“Stories to read by the sea”). 

With reports from La Jornada and El Economista

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In an audacious and innovative twist, the second international reimagining of the Dark Knight — “Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires” — is set in the 16th century among pyramids, ancient codices and Indigenous ceremonial rituals.

Unlike the 2018 Warner Bros. production of “Batman Ninja” which saw the modern-day Caped Crusader time-travel to feudal Japan, “Aztec Batman” is a period piece in which colonialism is intertwined with the Dark Knight’s vigilantism.

In the new 89-minute animated film, premiering in Mexican theaters on Sept. 18 and set to be released digitally on Sept. 19, Batman’s origin is completely altered and the setting of Gotham City is nowhere to be found.

Instead, the story is centered on a young Aztec boy named Yohualli Coatl, whose father, village leader Toltecatzin, is murdered by Spanish Conquistadors. The boy manages to flee to Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital city, to warn King Moctezuma and his high priest, Yoka (think “The Joker”), of looming danger.

Director Juan Meza-León, a Mexican storyboard artist who also co-wrote “Aztec Batman,” said the new film seeks to be “as faithful as possible to the essence of the characters, whether it’s Batman, Joker or Two-Face [Hernán Cortés].”

Although the film features completely new characters with different origins — including Jaguar Woman (Catwoman) and Forest Ivy (Poison Ivy) — “you can still see the spirit of their comic counterparts,” Meza-León says.

A new legend rises. AZTEC BATMAN: CLASH OF THE EMPIRES is coming to Digital 9/19. pic.twitter.com/YXn8VTzIng

— Warner Bros. Entertainment (@WBHomeEnt) July 25, 2025

“[Yoalli Coatl] goes through tragedy at the hands of the conquistadors. So that’s where you get the loss of the parents and also the loss of his village,” he told Anime News Network. “That motivates him and pushes him into a journey that, unbeknownst to him, is being led by the deities that guide him into becoming the bat warrior.” 

According to an HBO Max Latin America press release, Yohualli Coatl uses the temple of the bat god Tzinacan as a lair, where he trains with his mentor and assistant, Acatzin. There, Aztec Batman “develops equipment and weaponry to confront the Spanish invasion, protect Moctezuma’s temple and avenge his father’s death.”

The film featured a largely Mexican production team from Ánima Estudios, as well as Dr. Alejandro Díaz Barriga, an ethnohistorian who teaches at Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM), in an effort to ensure visual and narrative authenticity.

Horacio García Rojas, who voices Yohualli Coatl, spoke glowingly about the film at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 over the weekend, saying he hoped the character would lead to new narratives that include a greater diversity of ethnicities, languages, races and beliefs.

“To know that brown-skinned boys and girls like me can see themselves in a hero who shares their same features, who carries in his skin the history of a past that is still alive, a hero who fights for his own, fills me with emotion,” he told HBO Max.

However, not everybody was enthralled with the reimagination of Batman as an Aztec hero.

The recent launch of the official trailer has prompted criticism, especially from Spaniards who complained the film stirs up anti-Spanish sentiment and reinforces the Black Legend, a negative vision of the Conquest and Catholicism.

With reports from Yucatán Magazine, Expreso and Informador

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These types of celebrations are common throughout Oaxaca; just about every community has its own variant on the event, a syncretic festival that mixes the veneration of a Catholic patron saint with pre-conquest Indigenous traditions. This one in particular, the Vela de Xhavizende, originated nearly 200 kilometers away from Oaxaca city in Juchitán de Zaragoza, an eastern Oaxaca city of about 113,000, according to 2020 federal numbers.

The Vela de Xhavizende is meant to celebrate a 14th-century saint from Valencia, Spain, and also to bring good luck for the annual harvest. But what it’s also doing for this far-flung Oaxaca city community of Juchitecos, as they are called, is preserving their cultural heritage and sense of unity far from their original home.

Over the last several decades, Juchitecos who arrived looking for better work and educational opportunities have become a significant diaspora in Oaxaca city. Some estimates put them at about 10,000.

This celebration, which has taken place in Oaxaca city for over 35 years, is stewarded by the Association of Juchitecos Radicados en Oaxaca (Association of Juchitecos Living in Oaxaca). According to this year’s regada lead rider, Capitana María Sabina López Charis, her role as the “capitana” (captain) symbolizes “faith and celebration” as she leads her riders through the city’s streets.

López’s mother Nereyda is part of the association of stewards that organizes the festivities each year, and Nereyda and her daughters own Casa Juchitán, a Oaxaca city restaurant that champions traditional Istmeño food.

As I joined them for the mass and the regada this past week, López and her mother set aside a beautiful outfit for me, made up of an embroidered huipil, skirt, petticoat and gold filigree jewelry. López did my hair in braids and added flowers, which typically go with this style of dress. This is typical of Juchiteco celebrations, where everyone attending wears traditional attire. 

The family and friends getting ready at Casa Juchitán were given food and drink, including Juchiteco classics such as garnachas: mini tortillas fried in oil and served with tomato sauce, ground beef and chopped onion, sprinkled with dry, white cheese. A group of men (and a couple of younger boys) with their big brass instruments packed into the small restaurant to get food and big cups of fruit water (agua del día) and played as we made our final touches to our outfits.

At 3:30 p.m., López mounted a black horse brought to the front of the restaurant, and we began the walk through the city towards Our Lady of Guadalupe church in El Llano park. Upon arriving, our group was joined by other Juchitecas in beautiful, vibrant dresses. The church was full, and the priest gave a dynamic, uplifting mass in honor of the patron saint. He blessed the residents of Juchitán and those who had organized the festivities. After the mass, the whole community gathered behind López to begin the regada.

In Juchitán, regadas have roots in pagan ritual. In the original versions of the event, besides the fruits thrown into the crowd, there were also ox-drawn carts carrying people, gifts and a “queen” of the vela. This sharing of wealth was thought to bring good luck for the next harvest. 

Vico Peralta, a member of the association of Juchitecos, explained.

“They are gifts for nature,” he said. “Before, they used only fruits that came from the region, and the inhabitants returned the gift to the earth, giving away their fruits. This was before the arrival of the Spanish. After the conquest, they converted to Catholicism, and, now, apart from honoring Mother Nature, they also honor St. Vincent Ferrer.”

These days, carts are replaced by trucks, and the gifts thrown are things like plastic bowls, keychains and sweets. 

We walked southward from the church for several blocks before turning right on Calle Mariano Abasolo, heading towards the Alcala pedestrian thoroughfare. With each block, the streets became more packed, with people crowding the sidewalk to get a glimpse — and perhaps get their hands on some gifts being thrown.

By the time we reached the Templo de Santo Domingo church, the crowd completely overwhelmed us, partly because the regada coincided with the arrival of calendas — processions of musicians and dancers. 

Once the regada made it through, a small group with the band headed back to Casa Juchitán — where López and her family hosted a more intimate party late into the night.

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No match during this golden era created as much anticipation as the so-called “Battle of the Z Boys,” the 1977 confrontation between Mexican boxing champions Carlos Zárate and Alfonso Zamora. 

Both men came into the fight with world titles — Zárate the WBC title, and Zamora the WBA. Both were undefeated, and both were knockout specialists, who between them stopped 73 of their 74 opponents. So the scene was set for a dramatic showdown.

Friends and boxing stablemates

Zárate and Zamora shared some similarities beyond their raw talent. Both had been born in tough areas of Mexico City: Zárate, the older by close to three years, had been raised in the barrio of Tepito, where fighting and getting in trouble was part of life. Zamora also got into street brawls and had all the other problems of a young boy living on mean streets. Zamora’s father took him to the local gym, where the boy did odd chores and pounded the bag after everybody had left. The coach noticed and started Zamora on his amateur career.  

Both men also came through the amateur ranks with distinction: Zárate was a Mexican Golden Gloves champion in 1969 and ended his amateur career with a record of 33 wins and 3 losses. Thirty of his fights had been won by knockouts. Zamora stayed in the amateur ranks until 1972 and was rewarded with an Olympic silver medal at the Munich games. By then, Zárate had won his first 14 professional fights. 

At the start of their careers, both men were managed by Arturo “Cuyo” Hernández, which was hardly surprising, for this was an era when any Mexican boxer with world potential wanted to be in the Hernández stable; he was the forger of Mexican boxing’s world champions, the creator of its bantamweight golden age.

Hernández had been an average fighter, but as a manager he was unequaled. His knowledge, his temper tantrums and his ability to close a deal had guided three of Mexico’s greatest boxers  — Rodolfo “Chango” Casanova, José “Toluco” López, and Rubén “Púas” Olivares — to world titles. He had an eye for talent, the vision and the ruthlessness to bring out the best of the young fighters he spotted. 

Similar paths, different profiles

While their careers had followed similar paths, Zárate and Zamora were miles apart in appearance. Zárate stood 1.73 meters (5 feet 8 inches) and had the chiseled build of an athlete. Zamora was shorter at 1.63 meters (5 feet 4 inches), and his power came from a stockiness rather than a bodybuilder’s physique; his strength wasn’t notable until you saw him in action in the ring.

Zamora made his professional debut in April 1973, with a second-round-knockout win over Luis Castañeda. Over the next 13 months, he won 15 fights, all by knockouts, with only one opponent making it past the third round.

This pushed the young Olympic medalist rapidly up the world rankings, and on March 14, 1975, Zamora won the WBA bantamweight title by knockout, defeating Korean Hong Soo-hwan soon after Zamora had celebrated his 21st birthday. He would defend his title five more times before the fight with Zárate, according to a 1976 Sports Illustrated article about the desire among boxing fans to see the two Mexican champions face off in the ring.

On May 8, 1976, Zárate became the WBC world bantamweight champion, knocking out defending champ Rodolfo Martínez in the ninth round. By February 1977, Zárate had made his third successful title defense, stopping Filipino Fernando Cabanela in the third round.

Unsurprisingly, by late 1976, discussions of a showdown between the two Mexican boxing champions were picking up momentum. 

A Mexican matchup at Inglewood 

Both Zárate and Zamora had won their titles in Los Angeles, at the “Fabulous” Forum stadium in Inglewood, the center of L.A.’s boxing scene, which was one of the world’s most active. L.A. had a significant Hispanic population, so Mexican fighters were always popular there.

The biggest fights also drew fans from across the Mexico-U.S. border. They bought tickets in Tijuana or Mexicali, which gave them trouble-free 72-hour U.S. visas. So there was plenty of excitement in both the U.S. and Mexico at the announcement that the two Mexican bantamweight titleholders would face off at Inglewood.

Surprisingly, however, although the group of businessmen brokering the matchup had promised each competitor a US $125,000 purse, it would not be a title fight. The usual explanation given for this is that neither boxing organization was willing to lose one of their biggest champions. However, unification fights were big business, more courted than avoided, so boxing politics might have been involved.

But we have to wonder if there was concern about one or the other fighter making the weight limit. This nontitle showdown was agreed to with the required weight being at just one pound over the normal bantamweight limit. 

Yet, nothing took away from the excitement this matchup provoked. The two managerial teams carried on a war of words in the lead-up to the fight, which was enthusiastically amplified by the Latin American sports media, helping to sell 13,966 tickets. The fighters themselves remained above the nonsense and remained friends in their later lives. 

A 4-round disaster

The first round started with Zamora the more aggressive competitor, but Zárate took one of his best punches and stayed steady. Still, Zamora looked dangerous with his counterpunches. With both men known as knockout kings, there was doubt the bout would last long.

“What are the odds of this going the full rounds?” the match’s American commentator asked rhetorically. “You may want 100 to one.”  

Zamora started the fight looking for that one winning punch. This might have been confidence, instinct or the fear that Zárate would outlast him if the fight went beyond three or four rounds. Zamora was only 22, but he had already fought 30 professional fights in his lifetime. He later suggested he was not at his best for this fight and might well have been tiring of the routine of daily training.

The fight started out seemingly evenly matched, but by the fourth round, Zamora was no longer able to compensate for Zárate’s superior height and reach.

The second round saw Zárate holding the center of the ring, and while Zamora was throwing out punches, he was not dancing around so much. With a minute to go, Zárate landed a powerful left to Zamora’s chin. The taller man had clearly won the round. 

By the third round, as Zamora started to tire, Zárate’s height, reach and boxing skills were putting him in control. The one time Zamora did connect, Zárate brushed it off. By the end of the round, Zamora was knocked to the floor for the first time in the fight. Zamora later recalled that he thought he’d done well for three rounds, after which he didn’t remember much.

Certainly, the fourth round was a disaster for him: Zárate was now the more aggressive, and he dropped Zamora twice, at which point Alfonzo Zamora, Sr. threw in the towel. The white cloth landed over his son’s face, and while that was probably an accident rather than a sign of disrespect, the father was not showing much compassion. With barely a glance at his son lying on the canvas, he strolled across the ring and started a fight with Cuyo Hernández.

Life after the ‘battle’

After this fight, Zamora was never the same fighter. He lost his title in his next fight against Jorge Luján, lost three of his next seven matches and walked away from boxing when he was just 26. 

Zárate, in contrast, was at the top of his game for a few years, a man Ring Magazine later summarised as “handsome and well-mannered” and blessed with what the magazine called “his extraordinary punching power that was the soul of his fantastic mystic.”

Zárate won his next five title defense matches — all for big purses — which brought him the good life, including a yacht, an Acapulco apartment and cars. But when he tried moving up a weight category to fight super bantamweight Wilfredo Gómez, Zárate suffered his first defeat.

Coming down with the flu as he arrived in Puerto Rico for the match, Zárate’s team fed him orange juice, but that caused him to put on weight; Zárate had to take saunas and dehydrate himself to make the weight limit. This was probably the one time in his career that Zárate didn’t want to fight, and he was not happy with his manager’s determination to put him into the ring. 

After the Gómez fight, Zárate dropped back to bantamweight, and there were two more wins before, in 1979, he stepped into the ring at Caesar’s Palace to face former training partner, Lupe Pintor. Pintor had been fighting well leading up to the fight, but this still looked to be a match well within Zárate’s capabilities. Surprisingly, they went the full distance, with even Pintor looking shocked when the referee raised his arm as the winner.

Like many fighters, Zárate found retirement difficult, made harder by financial problems. After a five-year break, he returned to the ring and had 12 wins in a row, but once he came up against the big names — Jeff Fenech and  Daniel Zaragoza — for world title fights, it was clear that age had caught up with him.

There were then problems with drugs, from which the champion finally emerged, thanks to family and religion. He recovered, watched his son and nephew box, and in 1994 was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. 

Next year will be the 50th anniversary of Zamora and Zárate’s great fight, which will no doubt bring on a flood of nostalgia for an age when Mexican boxers were the world’s best fighters.

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I don’t say this to depress you, but as an introduction for the movie topic of the day. “Nuestros Tiempos” (Our Times), a Mexican movie currently on Netflix. It’s a film that reminds us of the extent to which how we live, and even how we love, is shaped by the circumstances of time and place.

It’s also a reminder of how quickly things can change. It boggles my mind to remember that when my mother came of age, she couldn’t get a credit card (in the U.S.!) without a male relative co-signer. She grew up in a time when pants were not permitted as part of the dress code for girls, and she couldn’t take birth control pills. She certainly couldn’t count on being taken seriously at work.

Hell, the little girl who first stepped into a newly integrated school, Ruby Bridges, is still alive and not even that old! It happened before I was born and in my mind is ancient history. See? Nothing truly “exists” for us if we weren’t alive when it did.

Movie: Nuestros Tiempos (Our Time)

This movie, honestly, did not do super well with critics. It was a little Polyanna-ish, I’ll admit, with all nothing-but-earnest characters who were just a little too perfect and gracious. But I still thought it was sweet. It made for both a good story and a sort of “look how far we’ve come” reflection around women’s rights.

The story centers around a married couple, two physicists who are deeply in love. In 1966, they both work at the UNAM (Universidad Autónoma de Mexico) in Mexico City. Their main project is a time travel machine that the physics department has sunk a lot of money into.

While they both teach, the wife is allowed to more as a favor than anything, and has trouble getting her higher-ups to listen to her — they openly prefer to deal with her husband. When their boss comes to dinner, it’s she who prepares a homemade meal and answers the door while her husband relaxes with a cigarette and a newspaper.

As you can likely guess, they get their time machine working one night and are thrust nearly 60 years into the future. Lucky for them, the leader of the current UNAM is a former student who’d fan-girled all over la doctora in the past, and she helps them settle and continue their work on the time machine.

The crux of the movie is that, without the overly patriarchal system of the past to boost him, the husband finds himself taking a backseat to his wife’s popularity and brilliance. Given his advantages in the past, it’s not a place he’s accustomed to occupying. The husband is never painted as bad or a bigot — just a product of his time.

Some of the moments of them discovering the future together are adorable. The first stop outside of the time machine is at an OXXO. They assume the cashier is deaf because she’s wearing earbuds and not responding to them. The cashier assumes their staring means they’re trying to pick out flavored condoms from a display behind her. “How could I ask for condoms with two ladies present?” the husband responds. Their fascination with the modern smartphone and how it works is also endless.

Others are a bit more heart-wrenching. When the wife returns with goodies from a sex shop, the husband is impressed with the lingerie, but shocked at a “retardant” for him. “How could you have shared things about our intimate life with someone else?”

Later, when the wife is nominated to give a special talk on an International Women’s Day event, the loss of status proves to be too much for her husband. In one of the most cringey moments of the film, he pops up and goes to the podium when her name is called. He recites an extremely cringy poem that would have elicited warm nods and smiles in “his time.” In 2025, though, he doesn’t seem to notice the uncomfortable shifting and staring among the audience.

Soon after this experience, he decides he wants to return to 1966. He wants his wife to go back with him, but — you guessed it — she likes actually being able to do her work and be respected for it.

To me, the real magic of this movie is in answering this question: does love hang around when power dynamics shift? And it’s not as if his wife is now more powerful than him; she simply stands, suddenly, on equal footing.

In “his time,” the husband is an exceedingly kind and encouraging person. In modern times, he feels the frustration that his wife did. The difference is that she’d known no other life, whereas he felt the punch of sudden loss of power and respect all at once.

It’s easy to be gracious when you’re consistently in a position to show grace with no risk to your status. When the world around you has changed but you haven’t things get stickier.

I won’t give away the ending. Don’t expect fantastic acting, but it’s worth a watch, and an especially interesting to compare the different sensibilities of the times in Mexico.

I wasn’t there, of course. But I see how women who came of age in that time period behave today, and that tells me more than anything how different things are now.

For my older readers out there, I’d love to hear from you — what changes have you noticed over your lifetime when it comes to gendered behavior?

Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sarahedevries.substack.com.

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