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.
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.
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.
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.”
Nothing is ever easy. Came up to pick up my car and found that my name wasn’t on the title and the registration had lapsed. Had to get a new title expedited from a friend in the Governor’s office. Can’t get doc appt till Feb. Won’t bore you with the rest.
Am going to pick those glorious Elberta peaches for canning at my cousin’s house in Waldport and then take off for Las Vegas…the Mexican Columbia Friendship border crossing at Loredo TX…and then Queretaro to see my friend Patty Gutierrez…then Oaxaca.
Am reading alarming reports from Oaxaca. Who really knows what is going on…
If I don’t show up in Oaxaca by the end of the month send out the Green Angels!
2006-08-26
International Herald Tribune
Por Tek Tung – The Body Snatchers
Fighting for a Gory Prize – A Race to the Death in Thailand
They are not rewarded with money, but Karma – as many volunteers believe the work is good for their soul
BANGKOK: — Sidestepping stains of blood and car fluid on the road, Niroot Sampi crunched across broken windshield glass to survey the crumpled and steaming wrecks of two cars.
“It’s not really that bad,” Mr. Niroot said. “Nobody died.”
That’s how it goes in the world of Por Tek Tung, Thailand’s premier group of professional body snatchers.
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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..
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.
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.
In Bangkok, in April of 2005 at the Thailand Foreign Correspondent’s Club I listened to a talk by Shirin Ebadi…a strong brave woman lawyer who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for defending human rights in Iran. Yesterday the NY Times reported (below) that she has been threatened with arrest if she doesn’t close her Center for Defense of Human Rights in Tehran.
Ms Ebadi is a self declared human rights activist, having already been jailed once, and one of the many attorneys who are working together with many of the nearly 200 journalists who are currently incarcerated in Iran. She said that it is impossible to determine the exact number of people jailed for their human rights work because the statistics are not released by the government and families do not want to tell why their members are in jail for fear of reprisal.
Her most adamant point was that violence and war solves nothing but instead intensifies conflict. She added that Iran is not in a position to pose any danger to any of it’s neighbors. Then she continued by saying that it is left up to various Non-Governmental Organizations in Iran to go into neighboring countries with messages.
In describing her work, Ms Ebadi stressed that “the power of the pen is much stronger than the power of arms…the work of the pen can do more than an entire army,” she said.
“So human rights activists are fighting for the freedom of the pen,” she said. “All societies need freedom of expression…the first stepping stone of democracy.” Regarding Burma, she said that the role of mass media is critical and the media should demand that the democratically elected leader and Nobel Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, be given her freedom from house arrest.
She said it is impossible for one person to make a complete change in a country and any change must take place through the people. “The world is a mirror that reflects the good and bad in us eventually,” she concluded.
I am afraid she will suffer reprisal.
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It’s a quiet Sunday morning…as Sundays are in Oaxaca…people home with their families.
I often think of this blog…and other blogs…and wonder what is the value of putting so many hours into writing about the myriad details of our lives…and other lives. Then I found this reply to a new blog on a favorite web site.
Will This Be Your Gift To The World?
This blog is about more than yourself, is it not? Twenty years ago…[or many more] you chose the meaning of your life – you picked a mission for yourself, did you not?
I wonder what you will make of this blog. This tribune is like no other. You are beholden neither to the story nor by the facts; here, you are just a man. You have no oath to impartiality. So I wonder – who is your master?
I cannot picture you a disciple, in belief subordinate to another man. I believe your life is your own – and to myself hope to be right. So here we face a false dichotomy: selfless and dedicated to a benevolent cause of your own making, or living in egoism, seeking for yourself a comfy niche?
Express yourself freely. Influence thoughts. Create memos. Whose lives will you touch with your words? Will you change the world by telling us how you view it?
Your words are strong, so I hope that your vision is a good and selfless one; that, guided by it, you will mark the world.
I try to see in others what I try to be myself. Odd.
Another person’s words…but articulated better than I would have. I wonder about these lines…this last has set me to thinking…another story perhaps.
Laughingnomad 