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 Perhaps every town has its own
hidden life, something that very few travelers get to see—the normal life
that goes on after the last visitor leaves, or before the first arrives.
San Bartolo de Coyotepec, a pretty town 10 miles south of Oaxaca, Mexico,
is famed for its unique black mud pottery. Most people don’t know,
however, that the locals are huge fans of volleyball. Every day at dusk,
once the hard work of molding and baking ceramic is done, the locals meet
on dirt streets to play an intense game of volleyball on a makeshift
court.
The town’s name comes from the
Nahuatl words coyotl (coyote), and tepec (hill). San Bartolo
de Coyotepec is in the heart of the Zapotec region, but the Aztecs (who
spoke Nahuatl) dominated this area before the arrival of the Spaniards,
and the Nahuatl name stuck. San Bartolo is the local patron saint and
contributes the remaining part of the town’s name.
On a sunny day in the boisterous
handicraft market, I was trying to find some souvenirs to surprise my
friends back in Spain. The pieces were exquisite—their finish is a s ecret
passed down from parents to children, applied during the baking process.
The artists themselves were there selling their goods, and it wasn’t hard
for them to convince me to buy several jars and vases.
Once I was done at the market, I
decided to walk a bit deeper into the town to see what the locals were
really like. Stone houses, usually single-storied, lined dusty streets and
hid back gardens full of pottery fired that morning. Firewood piled high
next to huge ovens, children chasing chickens, a pair of horses tied to
a tree—the town presents a very tranquil picture. Then I saw at the end of
the street a group of men playing a game. At first I thought it was a
street soccer match, but little by little
I began to make out a net, and I realized they were playing volleyball.
The net, tied between two houses,
divided the players into two teams. The ground was sandy and puddles
dotted the field of play. Mud-stained T-shirts bore witness to the fact
that the game was serious. The feeling of competition and excitement
crackled in the air. In Spain soccer is king, but here it seems the ruling
sport is volleyball. They were playing two-out-of-three, and the losers
would buy the beers after the game. The infrastructure was ad-hoc, but the
event was anything but. “We get together every afternoon to play,” one
player told me. I could have guessed, judging by the quality of the
game. I was snapping pictures for more than an hour when Claudio got a
pass right in front of the net turning the game around, and Alfonso came
in from behind to spike the ball. End of game. Now it was time to
cool down with an icy beer.
I was invited to the celebration,
being the only reporter who had ever taken an interest in their game, and
we went to what they called a bar. It was actually the first floor of
Luis’ place, one of the players on the losing team. A room barely 300 feet square, with a refrigerator and a plastic table with seven or eight
chairs- a perfect p lace to hang out when the weather didn’t allow for
volleyball. Two posters hung on the wall; one of a half-naked American actress
and the other of a surfer at Puerto Escondido. Lighting was provided by a
bare bulb, held by the cable that fed it, and placed so that it
illuminated the table.
Once I had answered all of their
questions about Spain, I found out a little about each of them. With the
exception of Ernesto, who worked with his father in the field, all of the
others worked in the
pottery industry in some fashion. Almost all of their families had an oven
at home to fire pottery, and some even took credit for creating molds with
their own designs. Others simply worked in the small stores scattered
around the main square, selling their relatives’ creations from the day
before. It is a demanding business—seven days a week with only rare
opportunities for a break. The only release each day, Claudio told me, “is
to wait for 6 o’clock, hope it’s a clear day, and play volleyball.”
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