About 5 miles from Cuatapec, Charly and I caught the annual Xalapa (pronounced halapa) Fair the night before we took the comfortable 1st class bus back to Oaxaca. A small nino was earnestly helping his mom set up her display of toys.
Some friendly guys from Puebla were helping set up the fair.
Young guy preparing a sweet bread.
A bar.
A designated “Magic City” the signs say. About 5 miles from Xalapa Veracruz NE of Oaxaca on the east coast of Mexico, I wouldn’t say it was exactly “magic” but this pueblo of about 4000 people was certainly charming. About 6 hours by bus from Oaxaca, Cuatepec is the center of Veracruz’s coffee growing area and Charly and I visited here to check out the coffee roaster factories…and the coffee. “Not as good as Oaxaca Pluma,” Charly loyally decides. But he finds a cute little 5 pound roaster he will have made and shipped to his home in a small town in B.C. Canada where he is in the coffee business. Charly’s just a friend…don’t get excited!
One morning, waiting for the coffee shops to open, we found this shoe shine man in the zocalo. Having made friends with the squirrels, he shows off a trick during which he lets a squirrel snatch a peanut from his mouth.
As he held up his hands about a foot and a half apart, he says he shined the shoes of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
On April 11, in a speech memorializing the 88th anniversary of the death of Mexican hero Emiliano Zapata, a leader of the teachers union, Pedro Matias affirmed that the month of May 2007 will bring a series of mobilizations which can include work stoppages at intervals, marches, encampments, and the blocking of public offices on up to a general labor strike, to demand the departure of Governor Ulises Ruiz, freedom for the political prisoners, cancellation of arrest orders and to achieve true justice to make a reality the ideals of Emiliano Zapata.” He said “this is the only way that remains for the people (to fight) against the repression, the impositions, the sacking and the pillage by the state and federal governments.”
I don’t know how long this can go on without even more of a backlash than there already is. As my dentist said, he expects another teacher strike but he doesn’t know if Oaxaca can “resist” another long siege like the last one that lasted 8 months.
A meeting scheduled for April 18 with the federal government is not considered sufficient because the agreements that they signed on October 27, 2006, have not been completely fulfilled. Seven months after signing this agreement, demands such as the rezonification for cost of living and assistance to education, the freedom for the political prisoners and the cancellation of arrest orders against the participants in the popular movement are still pending. And people are still being arrested and disappeared.
After saying that they have had 27 years of struggle and they are not going to renounce the constitutional right to mobilize, the speaker repeated that the state and federal government have had sufficient time to sort out the problems but they have not wanted to do so.”
Emiliano Zapata (August 8, 1879 – April 10, 1919) was born to Gabriel Zapata and Cleofas Salazar in the small central state of Morelos, in the village of Anenecuilco (modern-day Ayala municipality). He was of mixed Spanish and indigenous ancestry. He spoke the indigenous language Nahuatl and was recognized as a leading figure of the largely indigenous Nahua community of Anenecuilco.
A former sharecropper, Zapata became involved in struggles for the rights of the Indians of Morelos. When unrest finally broke out resulting in the Mexican Revolution, Zapata quickly took an important role, becoming the general of a guerrila army that formed in Morelos – the Ejército Libertador del Sur (Liberation Army of the South). Joining forces with Pancho Villa and others to fight the government of Porfirio Diaz, Zapata supported agrarian reform and land redistribution. His rallying cry was “Land And Freedom” (Tierra Y Libertad) sometimes translated as “Land And Justice.”
Though Diaz was defeated, Zapata continued to resist subsequent government leaders. He was ambushed and shot by Mexican troops on April 10 1919.
Zapata remains a folk hero in Mexico, where his name has often been invoked by rebels like the Zapatista Subcommander Marcos. He is often credited with the phrase “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees” and graffiti to this effect was often seen on buildings in Oaxaca during the teacher strike. However it is believed that the saying originated with Jose Marti, a leader of the Cuban revolutionary movement. T-shirts with Zapata’s image abound in Oaxaca markets.
There is another march in Oaxaca City today honoring Zapata with all the usual demands.
Those of us who have been living here through the teacher strike have been yelling our heads off about the misreporting of Rebeca Romero on the Associated Press Wire Service that were picked up by local media throughout the United States. Turns out she apparently had a conflict of interest.
Romero’s reporting did damage to tourism here by implying that the streets of Oaxaca were running with blood. The AP said it fired her for her reporting on Oaxaca.
It was hot as hell today…stayed home and worked on the video footage of a Tajate demonstration of Mica’s mother yesterday. Then at 6pm this! Actually we got hail when I was here last June too…
On Monday morning March 26, I went to my dentist appointment. The dentist was 45 minutes late. She explained there was a taxi strike and she had had to walk to work. The dust in this country is unbelievable and if I wash it myself with a pan of water I have to get on a ladder to reach the roof of the Land Cruiser. So I drove to the Periferico where I knew there to be an automatic car wash. But when I got to the big intersection at the Pemex station, the road was blocked with at least 50 taxis. So couldn’t come back down the same street to get back home. Had to turn right and follow a slow snaking line of cars around neighborhood after neighborhood for an hour to find a way back.
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Found a hilarious travel article on Bootnall today about the luxury tax…or dual pricing for foreigners as it is called:
The Luxury Tax – Asia, Europe, South America
By: Adam Jeffries Schwartz
The following is a guide to how the luxury tax is levied, worldwide.
ASIA
China has the highest tax in the region! Charging a hundred times the regular price is typical. If you negotiate at all, they will stand two inches in front of your face, and scream You PAY, you PAY NOW.
Note: Exactly!!!
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A brutal repression and massacre of resistors by federal and state police in the small city of Atenco, 15 miles south of Mexico City, in May of 2006, foreshadowed the repression that was to follow June through November 2006 in Oaxaca. Government forces were attempting to crack down on some flower vendors that they assumed were associated with activists demonstrating against government acquisition of communal land for an airport. A “>video on YouTube is the best (graphic) depiction and explanation by analysts and historians that I have seen so far…with English subtitles…of the machinations the government has historically used in Mexico:
A Mexican-American friend who was a student in 1968 in Guadalajara, told me that when students were demonstrating in the soccer stadium in Mexico City , police snipers killed some soldiers to make it look like the students had done the shooting. Immediately, police opened fire on the students…killing hundreds.
In July 1975 the army evicted squatters from a section of Oaxaca City, herded them into buses and imprisoned them overnight while what remained behind was burned. According to Murphy and Stepick in Social Inequality in Oaxaca…a History of Resistance and Change 1991 “the state director of the federal public works agency masterminded the invasion in order to increase his political power by recruiting support among the urban masses (against the demands of the poor). The director’s plan had been to convince the owner of a large tract of land to relinquish a portion of it in exchange for the introduction of streets and water on the remainder of his extensive holdings. The agency’s director used university students with ties to the Communist Youth Party as intermediaries to implement the plan.”
Sounds familiar. A plan sure of alienating the middle class from the dissenters.
Yesterday, after a leisurely visit over coffee at the Nueva Mundo coffee shop in the Centro with Sharon, I drove out to Plaza del Valle, past the University, to Oaxaca City’s northern style shopping plaza which is newish…built within the last five years anyway…which sports a Burger King, Office Depot, Sam’s Club, Sears, Pizza Hut and a street full of upscale car sales showrooms, grocery stores, a movie multiplex, a French department store much like Nordstroms…even a Blockbuster video rental outlet. Not what you think of when you think of Oaxaca is it?
A few days earlier, I had taken Joe to Mailboxes Inc, to pick up a shipping box for his return to Chicago in April. Parked in front, I figured, oh the car will be alright so the one and only time I have my car unlocked in Mexico, for less than five minutes, guess what happens? Some guys sitting on the sidewalk (maybe waiting for a suspect) lifted my car tool bag out of the back! So off to Sears to buy a new set of jumper cables after which I wandered through the mall in search of lunch.
In the food court, I stopped at a taco stall and ordered tacos with those fantastic green onions that taste so sweet after they have been charred on the grill. An order included six tacos for $1.60. Not realizing they were only about five inches in diameter I said, oh, muchos tacos! The girl responded with quite a bit of espanol rapido… ending with the words “medio de orden” or half an order. Ok. Sounded good. When the girl set the food in front of me I see a styrofoam plate with six grilled green onions and a few wedges of limon. “No tacos?” I ask. She made a half sign with her hands. So I had half an order…the half with the onions!
Laughingnomad 