"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 75"
The sun blazed over the Oaxacan highlands, where pine forests covered mist-shrouded mountains and terraced cornfields clung to hillsides like green staircases. Su Yao's car wound through valleys dotted with adobe villages, passing women in colorful embroidered blouses selling pottery at roadside stalls, until it reached a Zapotec community nestled between two rivers. In a courtyard shaded by a giant oak tree, a group of weavers sat on woven mats, their fingers flying as they stitched vibrant threads into cotton fabric. Their leader, a 63-year-old woman with a braid wrapped in red yarn and a huipil (embroidered blouse) covered in animal motifs named Lupita, looked up as they approached, holding a finished tenango—a cloth adorned with mythical creatures, flowering cacti, and cosmic symbols in electric blues, oranges, and purples that seemed to hum with life. "You've come for the tenango," she said, her Zapotec dialect melodic like a flute, gesturing to piles of textiles laid out to catch the afternoon light.
The Zapotec people of Oaxaca have crafted tenango embroidery for over 800 years, a craft rooted in their ancient cosmology and agricultural rituals. The tenango—a hand-stitched cloth—serves as both art and a living calendar: its patterns map the movements of the stars, record harvest cycles, and honor deities like Pitao Cozobi (corn god) and Xochiquetzal (goddess of weaving). Each piece requires up to three months of work, with embroiderers aligning their stitches with the phases of the moon—full moon for "bold colors," new moon for "intricate details." Threads are dyed using plants and insects native to the region: cochineal for crimson (harvested from cacti), indigo for blue (grown in mountain valleys), and maguey sap for gold, with recipes guarded by maestras bordadoras (master embroiderers) through female lineages. The process begins with a ceremonia de bendición (blessing ceremony) where cornmeal and copal incense are offered to the earth, and weavers chant prayers to Centéotl (corn goddess) while working to "infuse the cloth with life force." Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this vivid craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Zapotec traditions while adding durability to the cotton base. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "sacred storytelling" and "innovation" was as different as the highland valleys and the Caribbean coast.
Lupita's granddaughter, Ximena, a 24-year-old who ran a cultural center while studying Zapotec astronomy, held up a tenango with a pattern of intertwined snakes and quetzals that represented the union of earth and sky. "This is for the Guelaguetza (offering festival)," she said, tracing the motifs that celebrate community reciprocity. "My grandmother dyed the threads during Día de los Muertos when the veil between worlds is thin—too many eagles, and the cloth brings war; too few, and it loses protection. You don't just make tenango—you weave the relationships between all living things into thread."
Su Yao's team had brought computerized embroidery machines and synthetic thread blends, intending to mass-produce simplified tenango patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "Mexican folk art" home decor line. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-stitched corn god motifs, the women froze, their wooden embroidery hoops clattering to the ground. Lupita's husband, Manuel, a 67-year-old gobernador municipal (community leader) with a cane carved from mesquite wood, stood and shook his head slowly. "You think machines can capture the tonalli (vital energy) of our ancestors?" he said, his voice deep as a canyon. "Tenango carries the stories of our people and the wisdom of the earth. Your metal has no stories, no wisdom—it's a stone, not a book."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Zapotec embroiderers grow cotton from seeds passed down through generations, planting them during the ceremony of the first corn to "ensure the fibers hold memory." The fabric is prepared during Tlaxochimaco (flower festival) when women gather wild marigolds to "bless the cloth with beauty." Dyes are prepared in clay pots over fires of oak wood, with each batch stirred counterclockwise to "follow the path of the underworld," and cochineal insects are crushed during the summer solstice to "capture the sun's fire in red." The seaweed-metal blend, despite its organic origins, was viewed as an intrusion. "Your thread comes from salt water that erodes our rivers," Lupita said, placing the sample on a petate (woven mat). "It will never hold the stories of our mountains."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the cochineal dye, turning it a muddy brown and causing the cotton fibers to fray. "It angers Tlaloc (rain god)," Ximena said, holding up a ruined swatch where the corn god pattern had blurred. "Our tenango grows more powerful with each festival, like a story told and retold. This will decay like forgotten myths, erasing our people's history."
Then disaster struck: seasonal floods swept through the Oaxacan valleys, destroying the cochineal cactus farms and washing away the weavers' embroidery supplies. The stored threads, kept in a wooden chest carved with Zapotec symbols, were waterlogged, and their looms—some dating to pre-Columbian times—were damaged when adobe walls collapsed. With the Guelaguetza festival approaching, when new tenango are displayed as offerings, the community faced a crisis of both culture and economy. Manuel, performing a ritual to calm the waters by throwing jade stones into the river and reciting ancient prayers, blamed the team for disturbing the natural balance. "You brought something cold from the sea to our fertile valleys," he chanted, as raindrops drummed on the palm-thatched roof. "Now the rivers are angry, and they take back their gifts."
That night, Su Yao sat with Lupita in her adobe house, where a clay pot of mole negro simmered over a wood fire, filling the air with the scent of chocolate and chili. The walls were hung with tenango textiles and black-and-white photos of Zapotec elders, and a small altar held candles, copal incense, and a bowl of corn kernels. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping tejate (cocoa drink) from a gourd cup. "We came here thinking we could honor your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Lupita smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of pan de muerto (day of the dead bread) sprinkled with sugar. "The floods are not your fault," she said. "The rivers give and take—that's how we know they're alive. My grandmother used to say that even wet thread can be dried, like a drowned story can be resurrected. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to show that tenango can tell new stories, without losing our cultural heart. Young people buy cheap prints from Mexico City. We need to show them our stitching still speaks to our ancestors."
Su Yao nodded, hope blooming like cempasúchil (marigolds) after rain. "What if we start over? We'll help rebuild the cochineal farms on higher ground, dry the waterlogged threads, and collect new indigo from mountain valleys. We'll learn to embroider tenango by hand, using your chants to the corn god. We won't copy your sacred symbols. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your quetzals with our ocean waves, honoring both your valleys and the sea. And we'll let Manuel bless the metal thread with a river ceremony, so it carries the earth's favor."
Ximena, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her sandals leaving muddy prints on the earthen floor. "You'd really learn to stitch the danza de los voladores (flying men) pattern? It takes years to master the perspective—your eyes will strain, your fingers will blister from pushing the needle."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the cantares (songs) you sing while working. Respect means remembering your stories."
Over the next four months, the team immersed themselves in Zapotec life. They helped build stone terraces to protect the cochineal cacti from future floods, Their hands were raw from carrying stones.and trekked with Manuel to collect wild indigo from remote mountain streams, learning to identify plants by their connection to Zapotec deities. They sat on woven mats, stitching until their fingers cramped, as the women sang cantares about creation myths and harvest celebrations. "Each stitch must be placed with intention," Lupita said, showing Su Yao how to create the quetzal's iridescent feathers. "Too hasty, and the story becomes muddled; too slow, and the energy fades. Like telling a story—you need passion and patience."
They learned to dye threads in clay pots over oak fires, their clothes stained red and blue as Ximena taught them to add aguamiel (agave nectar) to the cochineal dye to "make the color last like our oral traditions." "You have to crush 70,000 cochineal insects for one pot of red dye," she said, grinding the bugs in a stone mortar. "Each one is a gift from Xochiquetzal—waste them, and the color betrays the story." They practiced the puntada de cruz (cross stitch) that forms the tenango's foundation, their progress slow but steady as Lupita's 86-year-old mother, Maria, who remembered the Mexican Revolution, corrected their work with a sharp eye. "The patterns must flow like our rivers," she said, her gnarled fingers adjusting a stitch. "A jagged line breaks the story, like a dam stops the water."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and cochineal dye, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of maguey sap and beeswax, a mixture Zapotecs use to preserve ancient codices. The sap sealed the metal, preventing discoloration, while the wax let it blend with cotton fibers—a combination Manuel declared "feels like holding both stone and feather." "It's like giving the thread a Zapotec soul," she said, showing Lupita a swatch where the red now blazed against the metal's subtle shimmer.
Fiona, inspired by the way Oaxaca's rivers flow to the Pacific, designed a new pattern called "Roots and Tides," merging quetzal motifs with wave patterns in seaweed-metal thread. The birds' feathers gradually transform into ocean waves, symbolizing how Zapotec traditions connect to global waters. "It honors your ancestors and our sailors," she said, and Manuel nodded, pressing his hand to the fabric in a gesture of approval. "The best stories honor both roots and horizons," he said. "This cloth understands our place in the world."
As the floodwaters receded and new cochineal cacti sprouted, the community held a Guelaguetza celebration, with dancers in feathered costumes and musicians playing marimbas. They unveiled their first collaborative tenango at the village square, where it hung between two ancient oak trees catching the sunlight. The fabric featured the "Roots and Tides" pattern, its cotton base strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that glowed like sunlight on water, and traditional corn god borders that seemed to dance with life.
Lupita draped the tenango over Su Yao's shoulders, as the community chanted Zapotec blessings. "This cloth has two voices," she said, her voice rising with the music. "One from our Oaxaca, one from your sea. But both tell the story of connection."
As the team's car drove away from the village, Ximena ran alongside, waving a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and she tossed it in: a scrap of cotton dyed red with cochineal, stitched with a tiny quetzal and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in corn husks. "To remember us by," read a note in Zapotec and Spanish. "Remember that mountains and sea are both home—like your thread and our cotton."
Su Yao clutched the package as the Oaxacan highlands faded into the distance, the sun setting behind the mountains in a blaze of orange. She thought of the hours spent stitching under the oak tree, the cantares that seemed to carry the voices of generations, the way the metal thread had finally learned to dance with the cotton. The Zapotecs had taught her that tradition isn't about being trapped in the past—it's about keeping cultural stories alive, letting old patterns evolve while staying rooted in the land's wisdom.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Tigray team: photos of Selam holding their collaborative shema at a church festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new quetzal—Oaxacan valleys and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, a marimba played a lively tune that echoed across the valleys, a reminder of the music that connects all indigenous peoples. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless stories to honor, countless cultures to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility—listening to the land, honoring the storytellers—the tapestry would only grow more vibrant, a testament to the beauty of all things woven together in mutual respect.