Oaxaca

Wouldn’t You Know It…Car Trouble

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Gerardo and I were going to take Max (who in his 70’s uses a cane) to the Abasco Market Friday to find tobacco economico. The car died before we got it out of the courtyard. Needs a new alternator, the garage mechanic said. Damn…after putting over a thousand dollars in the car before coming down here. But it’s a ’92 Toyota. Max said alternators don’t last forever. Just happy the car didn’t die in the Abasco parking lot or I would have had to sleep in it to keep all it’s parts from disappearing!

Sitting in the courtyard waiting for the mechanic to come (2 hours late…this is Mexico after all, we always say) we consumed a considerable amount of beer and mescal while Max regaled us with stories about his long life.

Conversation In The Zocalo

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It is creepy odd…the dirty war at night we don’t see…the bustling life of the Zocalo by day.

Monday was Mike’s last day in Oaxaca. Merilla & Peter, expats from Australia, Mike and Gerardo and I met for coffee at 1:30pm at the Terranova Cafe in the Zocalo. Benito and Jose happened by. Mike mostly entertained the small children who were vending woven wristlets and chiclets…and I was mostly trying to understand the Spanish being spoken at the table.

At 6:30pm, after beer, comida and much conversation, Merilla, Peter, Gerardo and Mike and I retired to the Casa de Mescal for mescal and a cerbeza ultimo. By 9pm we headed home.

Mike left tuesday (this morning) in the dark to catch an 8am plane for Las Vegas. Good-bye house…good-bye friends. Two cents says he will return on November 6 with my son Greg. I truly hope he does. I am ready for down time and Mike can take Greg around.

Funeral & Friends In The Zocalo

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After getting home from the trucha dinner Saturday night, Gerardo had called me. He had just heard on the radio that one of the APPO guards at a barricade had been shot and killed early Saturday morning. 7am this morning (Sunday) I walked to the Zocalo to see what was happening. The family and few friends were gathered around the casket…flowers everywhere. I asked a long-haired Mexican book-seller what was going to happen next. A march, he said…and then the church funeral.

I sat for a couple of hours and watched…not feeling like taking pictures. Then I saw my friend Sharon barrelling through the Zocalo…trying to catch the people marching to the church with the casket. We headed back to the Zocalo for coffee. Then Benito showed up. Then Benito’s law professor. Then a young French woman who is working with local banks to encourage micro-lending. Then Mike appeared after working all morning on his photos in the apartment.

By 1pm Sharon drifted off to read her Spanish-language newspapers, Laura left to catch her bus for Mexico City and Benito, his professor and Mike and I headed off for the Tabula Rasa which wasn’t open yet. Found another cantina, of course. Mike took pictures of the signs on the bano (bathroom) doors…Viejas (old women) and Machos for men! What does that tell you about Mexican men’s attitude toward woman?

By 4:30pm I stumbled home for a siesta leaving Mike to take pictures in the Zocalo. Gerardo called. I begged off. Am getting too old for this! Go find Mike, I told him! Call me later tonight!

And so it continues in Oaxaca

Soccer & Trucha In Huayapam

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After getting in at 3am early Saturday morning, Mike and I returned to Huayapan at 7am Saturday to take Bardo’s son’s soccer team to a tournament…all 12 of them…in my car. You can watch a soccer game just so long. So Bardo and I went back to the house for a light lunch with his wife Mica…leaving Mike to snap a few pictures of the players. Returning to pick up the kids, Mike introduced me to a gracious woman at the soccer field who had studied with Osho in India, (remember the Rajneeshies in Oregon?) who invited me to a weekend meditation retreat!

Back at the house, out came the three liter jug of mescal I had bought from a vendor in the Zocalo. By this time, Gerardo, the tourist guide friend of Bardo’s who had spent 10 years in the states, called me on the phone. I’ll be there in a few minutes, he said.

After a few rounds of mescal, beer and coffee and conversation, we all headed off to the mountains for a fresh trusha (trout) dinner. (Sorry, Charlie, we missed you!) By 8pm we were on our way back to Bardo’s after Mica and I each bought an armload of lilies…and so the days are going.

International Tourists

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Tomorrow Thursday at 10 AM there will be a people’s consulta at Santo Domingo Plaza in front of the church, which the “international tourists” will attend, carrying their cameras and wearing a hat and sunglasses.”

Note: I will not attend…don’t want to get deported for interfering in Mexican politics.

Monte Alban & Huayapam

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Yesterday morning Mike and I drove 30 minutes to Monte Alban…a gigantic Zapotec ruins on top of one of the mountains surrounding Oaxaca City…passing early morning walkers along the way. We were the sole visitors this morning in this ancient ruins…meditating on the lives of this great indigenous people…looking sadly at the carvings of naked vanquished enemies. And we are surprised that the descendents of this proud people are standing up to their oppressors and shouting Basta!?

Around 500 BC ancestors of Oaxaca’s Zapotec people founded what many believe to be Americas’ earliest metropolis. They raised monumental platforms, pyramids, palaces and ceremonial courts. Encompasing 3 sq miles, Monte Alban flourished for centuries as a city with as many 40,000 at it’s height a thousand years later until an invasion of Mixtecs from the north who became the ruling class in a number of valley city-states. The blend of Mixtec and Zapotec art and architecture sometimes led to new forms especially visible at the sites of Yagul and Mitla.

Monte Alban is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

By 10 am we were drinking bad coffee with Mirella, my Australian friend and my friend Sharon in the Zocalo.

Then I walked across the Zocalo to visit Max at a sidewalk cafe. After awhile, I received a call from Gerardo. “Come to Bardo’s and bring some beer and cheap mescal,” says Gerardo. Just as I hung up, an old Mexican comes by our table selling a three-liter gas can full of mescal…smooth yellow mescal…”anejo” (aged) mescal. I bought a liter of water, dumped it out, gave Max a liter and took off for the apartment to get Mike who had collapsed in his room earlier for a nap. “Hey, Mike, get up, you want to party?” And off we went to Huayapam…of course getting lost in a small village but finding our way through dirt roads to Bardo’s house. I gave out my gifts I had brought for the family and Bardo sent out for great pastor tacos with those glorious sweet roasted onions while Gerardo regaled us with the story of his march, his hard life in Mexico and ten years in the US while poor Bardo, tired of listening to Gerardo’s untranslated (slurred by this time) English, finally retreated with his wife Mica to their bedroom to watch TV.

Dodging the burning tires and barricades through the Centro, we finally made our way home at 2am…eating left-over vegetable soup and guacamole before collapsing into our beds.

Driving From Oregon To Oaxaca

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After finally getting the title and registration to the Toyota, I drove down to Klamath Falls Oregon from Salem to see my second family Bea and Sal Florez who are being well-taken care of by a couple in their home. Then took a long boring drive to Las Vegas to see my son Greg. Didn’t wait in Salem for the title to arrive in the mail so my friend Lyn said she would fedex it to Las Vegas while I was there.

When I informed him that the woman who was going to drive down to Oaxaca with me had reneged and that I was driving down alone he had a fit and called his best friend Mike in LA and asked him to please accompany me. We drove to the border at the new shiny Columbia Friendship Crossing 30 minutes north of Loredo Texas. At the crossing I discovered I had a copy of my title and registration but after all the wrangling in Salem I had left the original on the copier glass in the back of the pharmacy in Las Vegas. The friendly border guards mercifully let me through with just the copy! I immediately called Greg and had him go to the pharmacy to see if he could collect my title and registration…maybe somebody had turned them in. Lo and behold, there was the original…after 3 days…still on the glass! So with the help of my iPod and new car speakers we continued down on wide empty expensive toll roads only getting good and lost once after taking a detour through the city of Monterey.

We spent three nice days visiting my friend Patty Gutierrez and her husband Jose in their little casita in San Juan del Rio south of Queretaro…a nice break. We were all invited to dinner in the home of a broiled chicken vendor…their first real contact with American tourists and after being given two clay jars as a gift I was horrified when I dropped one which exploded on the tile floor of the courtyard.

We visited the sacred Rock of Bernal…a UNESCO World Heritage site…the largest North American monolith and the second largest in the world……soaking up the quiet soft vibes. This enormous rock is considered the encounter point between the indigenous communities of the region and the mestizo society that erected the village of Bernal below. Well-known as ‘tonalita’ the volcanic rock, at a height of 288 meters from the base to the peak, became exposed by erosion.
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After ending up on a toll road going the wrong way and finding our way back in Mexico City and driving through beautiful rolling mountains back to Oaxaca I was finally “home.”

Getting Visa At Immigration

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Went to the zocalo at 7am…burned out car half a block from zocalo on Bustamante. Wanted to go to immigration to get my visa…waited half an hour for bus on Pino Suarez…none came so I took a taxi to immigration. Edna at immigration said 5 buses were burned last night but I saw none. Their land line was down for a few hours this morning. Buses and shopping carts are blocking all streets on all sides of Gigante Market but the store itself is open and the ATM is working. . Most other businesses are closed. People are grouped at various corners. On the way back the taxi didn’t want to take me to the zocalo so I returned home to Fiallo St..

Sunday Morning In Oaxaca

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I am cranky this morning. I was up all night because of a very noisy wedding party in the courtyard below my apartment window. So I went to my favorite food stall in the Benito Juarez market where I had Spanish-English intercambio with Dulce, a 19 year old university student, while eating breakfast of eggs, beans, potatoes and milk with coffee. We will watch my bootleg copy of “Nacho Libre” this evening together…probably in Spanish. It will be fun to watch her reaction to the movie.

Bought a copy of Noticias where I struggled to read an article about the German writer, Gunther Grass, who has just admitted he was in the German SS for a few months during WWII. The press is making a big deal out of this. I spotted a long-time German expat sitting a few tables away, who I had talked to briefly yesterday, so I took my article and joined him for a short but very interesting German history lesson before he had to leave on the bus back to Mexico City. In the absence of any historical insight, we Americans see everything in black and white. And this politically correctness drives me crazy I said. Yes, he said…it’s a disease! It leaves only room for a simplistic view of things, he said. And stops dialogue, I said! With that he gave me a good handshake and left for his bus.

Lovely Oaxacan Family

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Last night I visited a gentle sincere Oaxacan family that lives about 20 minutes in the mountains northwest of the city in San Andreas Huayapam. The couple roasts fragrant locally grown coffee and delivers it to outlets all over.

I gave them flowers I bought at the 20 November Market and they made some of their fresh coffee…but only after insisting I have a glass of Oaxacan Mescal.

The couple and one of their best friends and my colorful Mexican translator, who spent several years meandering around the States, and I sat for hours at their outdoor kitchen table and talked…about coffee…and a hundred other things. Two other couples stopped by for a few minutes.