ABOUT

Oaxaca Profundo was founded in 2015 in Oaxaca City. The name is a grace-giving, a bow, and a dedication to the Mexico Profundo (literally “deep Mexico”) made famous by Guillermo Bonfil Batalla in Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization. There, Bonfil Batalla took to task the “imaginary Mexico,” the dominant and colonial Mexico of the history books that makes up a tiny fraction of Mexico’s local worlds. He detailed how the conquest never ended, but was transformed into an independent, self-serving, nationalist project that continues to both exploit and absorb the culture, lands, and livelihoods of the Mexico Profundo. Today, that project is stewarded by tourism.

Oaxaca Profundo is an attempt to honour the stories and livelihoods that have been brought under threat by the mechanisms of domination in the imaginary Oaxaca. This is a project that seeks to remember and serve the many Oaxacas, the countless cultures, the dense diversity of languages, the endless edible foodways, and how resistance requires the regeneration of local worlds. To forge a world where many worlds fit and feed each other, our mandate arrives as deep learning, humility, and hospitality.

VISION

The sessions we have created are designed to be uniquely of their time and place, each curated by local activists, storytellers, apprentices, farmers, craftsmen and women, alongside Oaxaca Profundo animators. This is to say that each session and each group is dynamic, that although the themes of each session are fixed, how they are approached reflects the relationships between our hosts and guests on any given day. We focus principally on deep learning and radical hospitality, each of which can and must be carried to the places our guests return to – a reciprocating cycle that feeds the grassroots of Oaxaca and the homes of those who visit it.”

FOOD OF THE GODS: CHOCOLATE & MAIZ

The original Oaxaca Profundo offering. A deep, delicious and delirious dive into the mythic and mysterious worlds of cacao (chocolate) and maize (corn). English.

Wednesday to Sundays | 9:00am-1:00pm |
$1000p Per Guest* | Minimum 2 Guests |
Upon Request and Reservation.

  • What: Oaxaca’s markets, chocolatiers, and streets are our classrooms as we taste and learn about the mysteries of chocolate and corn not only through Mexican and world history, but through flavours. Via pre-hispanic cacao drinks, local seeds, very rare types of chocolate, and heirloom maize foods we endeavour to learn about Oaxacan chocolate and maize
    traditions.

    We discover the mysterious path of the humble cacao bean and the corn seed from their beginnings to its modern incarnations today and learn why they are the Mesoamerican food
    of the gods.

    Guests are challenged to consider their approach to the vast differences in taste, textures, and context that root Oaxacan and Western chocolate traditions and how all of this might inform our relations to money, death, time, and ceremony. Note: this is not a cacao ceremony.

    Where: Oaxaca’s Centro Historico. Our classrooms for this session include two local markets among four heirloom maize and chocolate drink vendors.

    How: Walking. There are 2 classrooms we visit on foot, so please dress for impending weather. Bring a hat and water, and be prepared to walk and learn.

    *Discounts Available for Student Groups and Mexican Citizens (Please Inquire)

EARTH, FIRE & FOOD

Learn, burn, and sculpt the ancient union of Oaxacan clay and cuisine with master storytellers, ceramicists, and chocolate makers. Earth, Fire & Food is a day-long, deep immersion into the cultural, spiritual, and technical wisdom of Oaxacan pottery traditions that weaves together food and pottery, cooking and kilning.

Santa Maria Atzompa | 9am-4pm | $1600p per person* | Minimum 4 Guests | Upon Request and Reservation.

  • What: We will explore the process of turning clay into ceramics, each step being undertaken and taught together. Moreover, we will be getting our hands dirty learning the living alchemy of earth and fire, listening to master storytellers, and discovering the old relationships between the fire that cooks our pottery that cooks our food.

    Earth, Fire & Food includes a day-long, hands-on workshop of the Oaxacan pottery-making process, from the raw materials in the Earth to the mixing, sculpting, and firing, to the finished product in the workshop. You will get to participate in an interactive, metate-made Oaxacan chocolate demonstration and tasting. Finally, we sit fown for a delicious, organic,
    home-cooked meal with our hosts, followed by a parting gift for our guests from our hosts, selected especially for this session.

    *Discounts Available for Student Groups and Mexican Citizens (Please Inquire).

RESPONSIBLE TRAVEL 101

The most important introduction to travel you’ll ever need. A no holds barred invitation into the consequences of our travel and how it might be otherwise. Homework for your trip, before it begins. English or Spanish.

Oaxaca Centro | 1.5 hours | $500p Per Guest* | Minimum 4 Guests | Upon Request and Reservation.

  • What: Created in response to the continued backlash against tourism and tourists and Oaxaca, as well as the countless greenwashed attempts to conceal tourism’s consequences, Responsible Travel 101 is a mandatory introduction to how we arrive and
    proceed in places not our own.

    We ask questions that attempt to survive the answers thrown at them. We invite you to join us so that your travel might be couched in wonderings bigger and deeper than “sustainable,” “eco-” and “regenerative.” What does it mean to arrive uninvited in a place? What does it mean to arrive as a tourist, as a foreigner? What are the consequences of my presence on
    the scene? How might we proceed responsibly in an age of abandonment? What does all
    this have to do with the place I come from?

    This short class confronts head on what it means to be responsible and what it means to be a traveller in our time. It contends with how these things cannot be subtracted from the
    consequences of tourism. It lays bare the real and enduring consequences of travel, and asks everyone to become faithful witnesses, students and stewards to a more hospitable
    world.

    Please bring a pen, paper to write on, an open and intercultural mind, gratitude, and a readiness to listen deeply and court the questions that are needed in our time. The seminar will be about an hour long and end with a question-and-answer period.

    *Discounts Available for Student Groups and Mexican Citizens (Please Inquire)

STUDENT GROUPS

Oaxaca Profundo specializes in hosting student groups from all levels of the academia and beyond. Our programs/curricula are constructed with the themes of deep learning and radical hospitality at the forefront. They are always decolonial, interactive, local, and challenging. In a time such as our own, educational travel must confront and unveil the spells and spectacles we inherit, instead of amplifying them.

  • Oaxaca Profundo is proud to host students and study abroad groups from all over the world. We have hosted university and college groups, from undergraduate to doctorate students to explore the history, culture, food, and myth of Oaxaca.

    Group sessions inform not only
    intercultural differences, but also students’ specific study abroad programs, ranging from activism to agriculture to gastronomy to indigeneity and design. Our student groups include, but are not limited to the following institutions:

    ● Indigenous Studies Department at Trent University
    ● Sociology Department at University College Roosevelt
    ● Bard Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College
    ● Department of Geography & Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico
    ● Department of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Southern California
    ● Center for Latin American Studies at San Diego State University
    ● Department of Design at Monash University

    We readily mould our offerings to our guests’ curriculum confines, telling the stories and asking the questions that reflect the needs of each course and professor. We work closely
    together with our academic colleagues and clients to ensure that the deep learning on offer is contextual, concise, and clear for students. Likewise, for those professors and programs
    looking for full-service study abroad programs while in Oaxaca (including transportation, accommodation, a learning/study hall, and other services), Oaxaca Profundo works closely with the Unitierra Oaxaca to offer such services. To learn more, feel free to get in touch with Chris directly and we can go over any questions or concerns you might have.