January 20, 2008

I will travel back to Puerto Escondido for some time on la playa. During the month I’ve stayed in Oaxaca, I’ve had la gripa for almost three weeks. It has been so prevalent in Oaxaca that it made the front page of one of the local newspapers. Many of us at the hostel, both hostellers and staff, had it. Lisa and I were both sick when we went to Monte Alban for an afternoon. Marcel and I were sick when we visited his Mexican friends. I was sick while doing my Spanish lessons on the terraza in the hot sun, hoping that would speed up my recovery. However, the contaminación (pollution) in Oaxaca, as in Taxco, makes it difficult to recover from respiratory ailments. Naturally, I didn’t want to miss anything in Oaxaca, so I continued with my normal routine of sightseeing and volunteer work. But it was becoming a little overwhelming.

I had been warned to expect culture shock; I just didn’t know what it would feel like. I reached a point where I didn’t want to know any more about Mexican people’s problems. I didn’t want to be in any more situations where I had to speak Spanish. I didn’t want to eat any more Mexican food. I was beginning to get annoyed when vendors approached me in the zócalo (after all, hadn’t they seen me here long enough to know that I’d already made my contribution to their economy?). I was beginning to get annoyed with Mexicans’ fatalism, their religiosity, their failed revolutions and their ability to accept the unacceptable. Being sick probably didn’t help my mood. Now that I’ve made plans to go back to the beach, I’m already feeling better.

Marcel and I are the two people who have stayed on at Hostel Paulina the longest, while everyone we got to know came and went. We spend so much time together that, despite the 22-year difference in our ages, people think we are either married or in a relationship. (So far, however, no one has suggested that we are mother and son.) The situation has been helpful to me in some ways. For one, it solves the problem of having to fend off Mexican guys who think I might be their ticket out of Mexico. Also, the fact that Marcel has lived in Oaxaca for six years and speaks Spanish pretty well has made it easier for me to get into some interesting “slice of Mexican life” situations.

One of the situations I got involved in started with meeting a friend of Marcel’s who is a part-time physical education teacher from Section 22 of the teachers’ union (which was at the centre of the uprising a year and a half ago) … and his three-generation family, including his wife, three children and a grandchild, all living in one of Oaxaca’s poorest colonias (suburbs) in a small cement brick house with no indoor plumbing, and a trough in the yard for bathing purposes. Marcel’s friend is not political and actually is not a supporter of APPO; however, as a member of the union, he had to participate in the occupation of the zócalo. (I’ll write more about the situation with APPO, but only after I’ve checked some facts. At this time, all I have is a disparate collection of perspectives.)

We helped the teacher’s family out with groceries, since the teachers had not received the second part of their Christmas pay (and, apparently did not receive it at all in the end – or had not received it the last time we saw them). Each time we visited the family, they fed us from their humble kitchen. We watched TV with them. (TV is ubiquitous in Mexico – even where there is no indoor plumbing.) We conversed, mostly in "Spanglish," but the conversations, I noticed, were always about problems. I sensed that the wife was depressed – and who wouldn’t be in her situation? I offered to give her a few days on the beach at Puerto Escondido (since her husband had recently returned from a weekend of “bikini-girl” watching there), and at first she seemed to like the idea. However, the day before we were supposed to go, she showed up at the hostel to say that she couldn’t go because her son had la gripa, which had resulted in facial paralysis, and she couldn’t leave him. Her son is 19 and extremely handsome, so the idea of facial paralysis was upsetting for all of us. We went with her to a public internet location to search for medical information on facial paralysis. That same afternoon we went home with her to see how her son was doing. Beyond having la gripa, he looked okay to us – with no sign of facial paralysis. We began to wonder if the idea of being away from home and family was not just a bit overwhelming to her. She said that she would be able to go on Monday (tomorrow), since she wanted to attend her daughter’s basketball game today. If she shows up, she’s welcome to come along to la playa; but I doubt she will.

If you get to know a poor Mexican family, you have to keep in mind that, for them, an aspect of daily life is the lack of basic necessities. When you enter the world of a poor Mexican family and you have money (compared to most Mexicans, all tourists "have money"), you should be prepared to be expected to help out in any way you can. I’m glad that my stay in Oaxaca has been of a limited duration; otherwise I would have overextended myself financially, simply because the need was so great.

We visited the family several times, each time taking a bus from El Centro de Abastos (supplies), an area that many tourists do not visit because it is known to be dirty and dangerous. (Returning late one night after visiting the family, we saw a nightmarish scene: crews cleaning up mountains of garbage from the area occupied by the vendors’ stalls.) Most buses traveling to outlying areas, including El Tule and Mitla, leave from this place, and if you don’t want to pay the price of a tour and prefer to get to these places on your own, it’s much cheaper and a lot more interesting to take a bus from El Centro de Abastos. That is, of course, if you don’t mind riding in a bus with no license plates, driven by a 15 year old joven. (Marcel said that sometimes when there is an accident, the driver runs away because he has no license and the vehicle is not registered.) It’s all normal in Oaxaca. And the music on the bus – ranging from Ranchero to Banda - adds to the ambience. Marcel and I visited El Tule and Hierve el Agua. Both are spectacular.

Tourists sitting at the café tables around the zócalo will be struck by the desperation among the vendors in Ciudad Oaxaca. Oaxaca is the second-poorest state in Mexico, and getting to el otro lado is a full-time preoccupation for many Oaxaqueños and Oaxaqueñas. The zócalo is still resplendent with poinsettias. Mariachis are still playing and collecting a few pesos from their audience. Children are still gleefully launching their globos into the air in front of the cathedral. (These globos are tubular balloons of various lengths, made of the kind of featherweight plastic, similar to that used in plastic shopping bags, and tied at both ends.) On the surface, all of this is "normal"; but there is a lot of tension in Oaxaca, and fewer Oaxaqueños/as are smiling now that the Christmas season is over. There are fewer tourists now, and so there is less money circulating. The desperation seems to be worsening as waiters preside over empty tables in restaurants and vendors around the zócalo vie with each other to sell something to the handful of tourists.

There was a recent manifestation by students against the one peso increase in bus fares, and a major manifestation by teachers involving a blockade of streets near the university. The newspaper mentioned a shootout, but didn’t report any injuries. There are also rumours of more actions by APPO, and evidence of a graffiti war between APPO supporters and "the powers that be" (a pro-URO municipal government) here. I saw a lot of new pro-APPO graffiti on buildings near the zócalo a couple of days ago and wanted to photograph them in the morning, but by then they had already been painted over with blue paint – the same colour on every building all the way up the street. The simple solution to the social unrest in Oaxaca would be, of course, for the government to use the funds available for improvements in infrastructure and social services to provide the people with the basic necessities of life – but then, that would mean taking the focus off filling their own pockets and those of their friends and supporters from the public coffers.

In the zócalo, vendors zero in on tourists in the cafés the moment they sit down. Within the first few minutes the poor tourists will be approached by several of them. During the course of a meal they could have 20 people offering to sell them collares, bolsas, blusas, rebozos, calendarios, juguetes, etc. Rosario and Chavela are two of the vendors with whom I had some limited (by my Spanish) conversations.

The first time I met Rosario, I was having a coffee at a table in front of one of the cafés around the zócalo. It was within my first few days in Oaxaca, and at that point I had no idea how much money it’s possible to spend “supporting the local economy” by buying items sold by vendors in the zócalo. Around 10 a.m. Rosario approached me with an armload of table runners and began her sales pitch (of which I understood only a few words). She explained the designs woven into the pattern – even calling over a waiter to translate mono (monkey). I figured that, since she put so much effort into trying to persuade me, the least I could do was reciprocate by buying. With the 150 pesos she received in hand, she crossed herself and kissed the money, thanking God. Just the night before, I had read about this superstitious practice in a travel guide. It meant that I was her first customer of the day. Since then, Rosario always calls out, “¡Hola, amiga!” when she sees me.

Both Rosario and Chavela (who sells necklaces) have children working in the States, some legally and some illegally, sending money home to help support their families. Both women work ten hours a day, walking around the zócalo selling their wares. On Thursday, as we sat talking about the difficulties of life in Oaxaca, Chavela warned me to guard my purse to avoid having it stolen. On Friday, my wallet was lifted from my purse (which I had carelessly left, in my open purse, on the table behind my open laptop). The apparent culprits were two niñas de la calle to whom I was showing my photos of Hierve el Agua. The loss was a relatively minor inconvenience for me, but it provided a couple of lessons. The first is: Never forget that extreme poverty often leads to anti-social behaviour. The ladronitas may have figured that I had an endless supply of everything they lacked -- and so they took some of it. In Mexico it’s called cambiar de dueño (to change owners), and it represents an adaptation by some who are desperately poor to the senselessness of being expected to live in extreme poverty while following all the rules created by the rich to protect their wealth. As it was expressed by Anatole France: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” My mistake was forgetting what it means to be poor. That being said, lesson number two is: Always keep your wallet or purse on your person and under your vigilant control ... but don't be like the tourist who told me recently that he "lives in mortal fear" of losing his credit card. I asked him, "How do you have any fun in Mexico?"

I had been considering whether to go back to Puerto Escondido or on to San Cristobal de las Casas. Considering that San Cristobal, at 7,000 feet, has an even greater variation in daily high and low temperatures than Oaxaca, at 5,084 feet (where temperatures often drop 30 degrees after the sun goes down), I’ve decided to go back to the beach for some rest and recreation. I’d like to go home with some tan in that vast area between my shoulders and feet.

Next year I hope to return to Oaxaca. By then, I hope there will have been some positive changes – although I feel that, unless world attention is drawn to the situation here, and the pressure of “the light of day” is put upon the Mexican government to step in to stop the abuses of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, things will be pretty much the same. I urge anyone traveling to Mexico to make a stop in Oaxaca. There’s a lot to see. El Centro Historico is still beautiful. Most importantly, the people are warm, friendly and helpful – and, for the most part, honest. Spend some money in Oaxaca to support the local artisans (whose work is magnificent and very inexpensive). Learn about the political situation here and about the struggle people are engaging in – at great risk to their lives – to bring about positive change. When you return home, tell people what you've learned.

When I reach Puerto Escondido, I’ll write more about life in Oaxaca as I experienced it and as I observed it being lived by the people I met. The story is complex, with many important aspects. For one, the usos y costumbres of some groups of indigenous people (important elements in APPO’s struggle against the government’s authoritarian abuse of power) contain human rights abuses of their own. Ironically, in the wake of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas in 1994, the Government of Mexico signed the San Andrés Accords, which guaranteed autonomy and certain rights to indigenous peoples. And yet, there are voices, representing about half of all the indigenous people, who are not being heard. They are the voices of women, for whom offer little benefit. For example, in the mountains around Oaxaca, in the Zapotec village of Santa Maria Quiegolani, women are not even considered “citizens” because, the men say, they do not work enough, or don’t do the right kind to work, to qualify them as such. (See: ”Women Lose in Mexico Indian Rights Gain") As usual, the Left, in general, is uncritically supporting the indigenous movement here while remaining silent concerning the demands of women. Again, como siempre, women’s rights are being sacrificed in the name of “the people.”

A truly powerful indigenous movement would recognize the rights of half its people to determine their own lives, to vote and to participate as candidates in local elections. Unlike the Zapatistas in Chiapas, who have prioritized the empowerment of women, the indigenous movement in Oaxaca, in failing of to do so, is undermining its own legitimacy and weakening its strategic advantage.

But machismo is strong here. Men with this mentality may believe that pitched battles with the army and police in the streets of the city are more “honourable” than the admission of their equality with women. My hopes for better things for Oaxaqueños/as lie with women like Chavela and Rosario and their compañeras, with their fine intelligences, their kindness, their humour and their almost limitless capacity for beautiful, productive work.

feral@renegaderesearch.org