50 Fun Facts About Oaxaca

Chapulines, a crunchy Oaxacan snack seasoned with garlic, lime and chili, are which toasted creatures?

Grasshoppers get their Mexican name from the Nahuatl word chapolin, and early records of the Spanish conquest already mention people eating them.

Which vegetable do Oaxaca City carvers turn into elaborate sculptures for a competition held every 23 December?

Radishes grown oversized for the event are carved into whole scenes, a contest the city's mayor made official in 1897 to build on a Christmas market custom.

Which Jack Black comedy about a monastery cook turned masked wrestler was shot entirely in Oaxaca?

Nacho Libre is loosely based on Fray Tormenta, a real Mexican priest who wrestled in a mask for 23 years to support the orphanage he ran.

Which Pixar film turned alebrijes, the fantastical painted creatures carved in Oaxaca, into glowing spirit guides?

Coco casts Pepita, a winged jaguar-like cat, and Dante, a hairless Xolo dog, in the role; Pixar's researchers stayed with families in Oaxaca while developing the story.

Which Mexican painter adopted the Tehuana dress of southern Oaxaca as her signature look in self-portraits?

Frida Kahlo favoured the dress of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, whose markets are famously run by women, as a statement of pride in indigenous Mexico.

Cochineal, a crimson dye that became a prized colonial export of Oaxaca, is made from what?

Dried insects supply the colour: the cochineal is a tiny scale bug, and Oaxacan weavers still use it for their reds.

Árbol del Tule, a Montezuma cypress near Oaxaca City, holds which world record among trees?

Stoutest trunk: the tree is so broad that it was once thought to be several trees grown together, until DNA tests showed it is a single one.

The red 'worm' dropped into some bottles of Oaxacan mezcal is really the caterpillar of what?

A moth called Comadia redtenbacheri is the parent of the red maguey worm, and the custom is newer than it looks: a bottler first added larvae in 1950.

Oaxaca cheese, or quesillo, is stretched into ribbons and wound into balls, giving a texture like which Italian cheese?

Mozzarella curd is made by the same stretching method, which Dominican friars brought to Oaxaca; the ribbons are rolled up like a ball of yarn.

Which conquistador was rewarded with the title Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca after the fall of Tenochtitlan?

Hernán Cortés received the title in 1529 but was passed over for the more powerful post of viceroy, which went to a high-ranking nobleman instead.

Which Oaxacan beach town draws surfers to Zicatela, a break nicknamed the Mexican Pipeline?

Puerto Escondido means Hidden Port, and its wave earned the nickname by matching the force and shape of the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii.

Zipolite, a hippie-era beach on Oaxaca's Pacific coast, became the first in Mexico to legally allow what?

Public nudity is legal on the sand here, and each February the beach hosts a naturist festival run with the local hoteliers' association.

Mazunte on the Oaxacan coast swapped a slaughterhouse for Mexico's national conservation centre for which animals?

Sea turtles made Mazunte the centre of Mexico's turtle hunting in the 1970s, and the village lived almost wholly on the trade until a 1990 ban.

Oaxaca's Isthmus of Tehuantepec is the shortest land crossing between the Pacific and which other body of water?

The Gulf of Mexico lies about 200 km away at the narrowest point, so a canal was proposed here as early as the 16th century, long before Panama got one.

Which Mexican state on the Guatemalan border is Oaxaca's only neighbour to the east?

Chiapas meets Oaxaca on the Isthmus and is one of just four states that touch it; the Pacific Ocean closes the gap to the south.

Oaxaca is divided into 570 of which local units, more than any other Mexican state has?

Municipalities here are small and numerous, and almost three quarters of them govern themselves by traditional custom instead of party politics.

Hierve el Agua, east of Oaxaca City, looks like frozen white waterfalls but is actually formed from what?

Mineral deposits build up as spring water loaded with calcium carbonate trickles over the cliffs, much as stalactites grow in caves.

Mexico's tourism agency laid out Huatulco on the Oaxacan coast in the 1980s on the model of which Caribbean resort?

Cancún was the template when the agency bought 21,000 hectares here in 1984, though much of Huatulco's western shore is now protected as a national park.

Which renewable energy source is Oaxaca's Isthmus of Tehuantepec famous for harvesting?

Wind power suits the Isthmus because the gap lets air rush from one coast to the other; the strongest gusts have their own name, the Tehuano.

The x in Oaxaca is now said roughly like an h, but which sound did it spell in medieval Spanish?

Sh, as in shop, was the sound of x when Spaniards first spelled the Nahuatl name Huaxyacac; speech shifted in the 16th century but the spelling stayed.

Which Zapotec shepherd boy from the Oaxacan village of Guelatao grew up to become president of Mexico?

Benito Juárez spoke only Zapotec and could not read when he moved to Oaxaca City at 12; he went on to become Mexico's first Indigenous president.

Which Oaxaca-born general ruled Mexico for over thirty years before the Revolution of 1910 forced him out?

Porfirio Díaz took the presidency in a military coup and served three separate spells in office, the longest rule of any Mexican leader.

Which Zapotec capital was built on an artificially levelled mountaintop overlooking the Valley of Oaxaca?

Monte Albán's Main Plaza was once coated in white plaster, and treasure from its Tomb 7 is now displayed in a former convent in Oaxaca City.

Which people set up a military post in the 1400s on the spot where Oaxaca City now stands?

The Aztecs built their post at the foot of Cerro del Fortín, and the first Spanish expedition of 1521 raised its own town on the same spot.

Which crop, found as seeds in Oaxaca's Guilá Naquitz Cave, is the earliest known to be domesticated in the Americas?

Squash was being grown here up to 10,000 years ago, about 4,000 years before maize and beans were domesticated in the region.

Which independence hero and former president was shot at Cuilapan, Oaxaca, after being betrayed and seized at Acapulco?

Vicente Guerrero, Mexico's second president, had abolished slavery across almost all of the nation in 1829; the monastery that served as his prison still stands.

The Zapotecs of Oaxaca are credited with one of Mesoamerica's first systems of what, later echoed by the Maya?

Writing in Zapotec glyphs dates to about 500 BC and used a separate sign for each syllable; scholars see it as a forerunner of the Maya and Mixtec scripts.

Which Oaxacan ruin, named from a Nahuatl word for the underworld, is famed for walls of geometric stone mosaics?

Mitla's mosaics are built from small cut and polished stones fitted together without mortar, a style found at no other Mesoamerican site.

Before it was renamed Oaxaca, the Spanish colonial city in the valley went by which name?

Antequera survives in the nickname la Verde Antequera, a nod to the green stone used in so many of the old city's buildings.

The Zapotecs of Oaxaca's Central Valleys call themselves Be'ena' Za'a, a name usually translated into English as what?

The Cloud People was a literal claim: the Zapotec elite believed they descended from beings who lived among the clouds and would return there after death.

Which rich, slow-cooked sauce is Oaxaca so famous for that the state is nicknamed the land of seven of them?

Mole in Oaxaca can call for over 30 ingredients, and cooks still argue over the list of seven: some doubt that manchamanteles, a fruity stew, counts.

Mezcal, most of which comes from Oaxaca, is distilled from the cooked heart of which plant?

Agave hearts are cooked in pit hearths before being crushed, and the finished spirit has a strong smoky flavour; Oaxaca's main variety is espadín, meaning smallsword.

Which Oaxacan street food is a dinner-plate-sized crisp tortilla spread with pork lard, refried beans and cheese?

Tlayuda tortillas can top 40 cm across and are cooked longer than ordinary ones on a clay comal, which leaves them slightly leathery.

Tejate, a frothy maize drink made in Oaxaca since pre-Hispanic times, also contains which fermented beans?

Cacao beans are ground with toasted mamey pits and a blossom called rosita de cacao, which rises to the top to form the drink's pasty foam.

Which unlikely ingredient goes into the still for one style of mezcal, Oaxaca's best-known spirit?

Chicken breast gives mezcal de pechuga its name, and the meat joins fruit or herbs for a later distillation instead of the first.

Which local softwood do Oaxacan villagers carve into the brightly painted alebrijes sold to tourists worldwide?

Copal has been carved so heavily that the native trees have run short, and reforestation efforts have had only limited success.

Alebrijes began with Pedro Linares, a Mexico City artisan who saw them in a fever dream and built them from what?

Papier-mâché was Linares's trade, and he also made the red cardboard devils burned in Mexico during Holy Week; Oaxacan carvers took up his creatures later.

The Oaxacan town of San Bartolo Coyotepec is famous for polished pottery in which colour?

Black with a metallic sheen is a modern touch: in the 1950s a potter known as Doña Rosa found that polishing the clay before firing made it shine instead of turning dull grey.

Teotitlán del Valle, a Zapotec village near Oaxaca City, is best known for which handmade product?

Wool rugs from the village are woven on hand-operated looms and coloured mainly with natural dyes; weaving there goes back to at least 500 BCE.

Artist Francisco Toledo, a fierce cultural conservationist, fought to stop which global chain building in Oaxaca City?

McDonald's was one target; Toledo also led protests against a convention centre planned for a local mountain, and he helped found the city's contemporary art museum.

Which July festival in Oaxaca City, also called Mondays on the Hill, lets each region show off its own dance?

Guelaguetza comes from a Zapotec word for the reciprocal exchange of gifts and services, and the festival has its own open-air amphitheatre on Cerro del Fortín.

In the Zapotec city of Juchitán, Oaxaca, people known as muxes are commonly described as belonging to what?

A third gender is the usual description, and a Juchitán legend says the town's patron saint spilled a whole sack of such people there by accident.

Which Oaxaca-born painter of Zapotec heritage rejected the politics of Mexico's muralists and moved to New York?

Rufino Tamayo believed the revolution would harm Mexico and felt he could not paint freely at home, so he left in 1926 and made his name abroad.

Which Grammy-winning singer from Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, records in Mixtec, Zapotec and Nahuatl as well as Spanish?

Lila Downs is the daughter of a Mixtec cabaret singer and a Scottish-American art professor from Minnesota, and she speaks fluent Mixtec herself.

Yalitza Aparicio, a trainee teacher from Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for which film?

Roma was her first acting role, and it made her the first Indigenous Mexican woman to be nominated for the award.

Dios Nunca Muere, the unofficial anthem of Oaxaca composed by Macedonio Alcalá, is written in which musical form?

Waltz it is: in one telling, villagers from Tlacolula asked the ailing composer for one to honour their patron, then proved it was his after his brother claimed it.

Oaxaca is only the fifth-largest state in Mexico, yet it ranks first in the country for which natural measure?

Biodiversity here takes in about half of all the species found in Mexico, including one in three of the country's frogs and salamanders.

The Mixtecs of ancient Oaxaca, masters of lost-wax casting, were Mesoamerica's foremost workers of which metal?

Gold pieces by Mixtec smiths were so prized that they formed an important part of the tribute the Mixtecs paid to their imperial overlords.

Mixtec scribes of Oaxaca painted their royal histories and family trees in folding books made of what?

Deerskin fold-books such as the Codex Zouche-Nuttall tell the epic of a conquering ruler known by his birthday name and his personal name, Jaguar Claw.

Which lightning god, the most important deity of the ancient Zapotecs of Oaxaca, was worshipped as the bringer of rain?

Cocijo's name is simply the Zapotec word for lightning, and he was also said to be the creator of the world.