[DAVID YETMAN] More than a thousand years ago, an indigenous people of southern Mexico developed a new small empire with enormous artistic creativity and able to build monumental architecture.

A few centuries later, their empire was destroyed by greater powers and they were forced to the West.

Today, only two small towns remain.

They retain their ancient artistic creations, and their language is alive and well.

{SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE} Funding for In The Americas with David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey, the Gilford Fund, Arch and Laura Brown, and Hugh and Joyce Bell.

[DAVID YETMAN] A thousand years ago, the Popolocas of Southern Puebla, Mexico, built an empire within an inland desert.

Around the city of Tehuacán, their architects and engineers constructed a city replete with pyramids and ornate temples.

Now called Tehuacán Viejo.

For more than 3000 years, peoples of Mesoamerica have been creating new empires and advanced civilizations which have come and gone.

The most important of these were the Zapotecs who, in the Central Valley of Oaxaca, created from agricultural beginnings, a magnificent empire characterized by huge pyramids, government buildings and other structures.

The Zapotec empire expanded for nearly a thousand years.

To the north, they encountered people who resisted.

Those people may have been the people we now call the Popolocas.

The Popolocas had their own empire, much smaller than that of the Zapotecs.

It flowered and was defeated by another people coming from the north, the Aztecs.

Today, only two villages of the Popolocas remain, but they carry on their ancient creative traditions.

{FIRE CRACKLES} {SCRAPING} {MEXICAN FOLK GUITAR} {SCRAPING} {MEXICAN FOLK GUITAR} {SPEAKING SPANISH} In the highlands of Northern Oaxaca, the women of the isolated town of Tepelmeme, with Popolocan ancestry make tortillas.

It█s a heritage from the evangelizing Catholic priests who brought wheat to the high country.

One of the very few places in southern Mexico where it is still cultivated.

Oh, hay viene el Molcajete.

Good--Ay dios mio.

And of course, we have this very mouth-watering chili salsa.

[ALBERTO BÚRQUEZ] And then we have the tortillas!

[DAVID] In a side drainage of the valley below sits one of two Popolocan towns: Atzingo.

Here, the women support their families with their specialty; embroidery as they have for centuries.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} In this town, the main source of income for particularly for women, is embroidering.

They make the embroidery here and then they sell them or they take them on consignment to the women of San Gabriel Chilac, who they'll sell them for the real profit.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} Here, in Atzingo, most of the people speak in their homes, speak the Popolocan language it█s really refreshing to hear that.

{SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE} A millennium ago, Popolocas ruled over the region.

Their architects and engineers constructed monumental sites only recently excavated by the Mexican government.

The Popolocas are not a people well known in the celebrated history of Mexican archeology.

And yet, over a thousand years ago, they had already constructed a wide range of buildings of monumental size.

They were accomplished artisans and potters known throughout the region.

They constructed this site called their work on El Viejo or La Mesa, as their ceremonial and religious center.

It was the talk of the valleys at that time until the Aztecs came by three or 400 years later.

The Popolocas began this about 900 A.D.. [ALBERTO BÚRQUEZ] For sure, they started us a few huts here and there, and some cultivated the pieces of land.

But it grew to be an enormous site.

There are 30 pyramids in the area, and I heard that it covers more than 250 acres of buildings.

[DAVID] One of the things that the archeologists have been able to tell us is the breakdown of what these buildings are.

[ALBERTO] Right.

[DAVID] The palacio-- the palace, they call that, which is one of the smaller temples here.

But it's an important one.

[ALBERTO] Yes.

And then we have the temple of the wind.

This is the temple of Xipe Totec.

The one that was the skin taken off.

The high priest will dress with the skin of the of the slave that was or the warrior that was--[DAVID] Flayed.

[ALBERTO] Flayed.

{BIRD CHIRPS} [DAVID] So this is the big pyramid.

They call it the “Templo Mayor.” And it was bigger a thousand years ago, but is still pretty impressive.

There's something else the Aztecs brought: a reflecting pond.

[ALBERTO] Yes.

This place is dedicated to Tlaloc.

[DAVID] The God of Water, yeah, the Aztec god.

[ALBERTO] And water played a major role in all Mesoamerican cultures, particularly from the dry lands like here.

[DAVID] You know, Mexico has this wealth of archeological sites pretty much untouched.

Hundreds and hundreds of them.

So the government with normally limited resources has to choose which ones they put them in.

{MEXICAN TRUMPET} One of the reasons that the Popolocas were smart to choose this place and they knew it was the forest here, this marvelous tropical deciduous forest.

[ALBERTO] So, aside from the extraordinary view and the fancy properties of the site, the flora is outstanding with this vermillion in the understory.

[DAVID] And the the variety means they had medicinal plants.

They had plants that could produce food like cacti and for wood, firewood, which was essential.

There was no plant more important than the nopal, the prickly pear.

Yes.

One thing that North Americans always find fascinating is the bursaras.

These are sometimes called elephant trees, but they█re the tree from where in Middle East, frankincense and myrrh come from.

{UPBEAT MEXICAN GUITAR In spite of being conquered by Aztecs and driven out of the valley of Tehuacán, Popolocas retained influence in the adjacent valley of Zapotitlan.

The early priests ordered the Popolocas to gather in an urban area.

It is now the valley's only major town: Zapotitlan Salinas.

It is set in the midst of the greatest assemblance of cacti in the world.

[ALBERTO] The botanical garden in Zapotitlan is of world importance.

It█s a place where many columnar cacti occur, as well as many other plants and animals that are nowhere else.

For example, all these columnar cacti that surround us, a very important part of the culture of this locality and also a source of food, a source of firewood, a source of construction materials.

{OMINOUS STRUMMING} This place is very close to the heel of the mask, “El Cerro de la Máscara Kuta,” a Popolocan word that is a hillside that has a citadel on top that controlled the salt trade.

It█s sitting also in the town of Zapotitlan Salinas because it's surrounded by the salt works.

{OMINOUS STRUMMING} You have to look at the very special adaptations that plants do have to cope with the lack of water.

Water is very scarce and is only concentrated during a very short period of year.

[DAVID] These magnificent cactus forests extend well beyond the botanical gardens.

Their beauty and usefulness was not lost on the native Popolocans.

The Popolocan people are generally divided into two groups: the northern and the southern.

In the vicinity of Zapotitlan Salinas, the this valley, these are the southern Popolocans.

We could almost call them the people of the cacti.

The second Popolocan village, Reyes Metzontla, lies in the distant reaches of the valley of Zapotitlan, a side canyon of the famed valley of Tehuacán.

It's only a handful of miles by air, but more than an hour by highway.

The town is renowned for its harvest of cactus fruits.

Even more important, the towns potters carry on a tradition more than a thousand years old.

Almost everywhere you see, cactus planted hundreds upon hundreds of them.

It's well called the people of the cactus.

And here we have this sort of it's newly emerged crop, they call the pitahaya, it's a cactus fruit and it has always been here, but somehow there's been an increased international demand for them and now we can see them growing.

Here's one right here are not ripe yet.

The one problem they have is when they do turn color, which means they are ripe, the birds attack them.

So in some cases they will they will cover them with a piece of plastic to keep the birds out.

Important part of their work here, though, is not the pitahayas, it█s the pottery, the ancient Popoloca pottery.

And Doña Silvia is “una de las mas conocidas.” {SPEAKING SPANISH} [DAVID] They have the privilege here of having a local source of the clay.

But it's in it comes in rocks.

So they're going to show us how they break it up.

And then they when they get it broken, broken down, this is what it looks like.