Last week, with friends, I attended the annual San Andreas Huayapam Fiesta about 25 minutes northeast of Oaxaca City. Very well organized with a lot of people for such a small pueblo. There was a local band that played music during the fireworks that scared the heck out of me and kept me well back from the action. Men ran up and down with with fireworks shooting out of structures built like bulls and castles. Once in awhile small boys would chase after a wheel that would spin off into the crowd.
Then a huge structure was lit with continuous fireworks shooting up and down and up into the night sky. Young men walked around giving out free copas of mescal and cigarettes. Food stands and carnival rides for the kids surrounded the band stands and dance area. I understand that each family was assessed $30 for the fiesta…a very large amount for most people. By the end of the night no one had ended up in jail as is often the case. When the fireworks were finished a great band played for the dance that began at 1am. The band played until 5am with no break.
It was reported on a discussion site that “Felipe Calderon took the oath of office as president of Mexico this morning in a ceremony that lasted four minutes. The house of legislators came to blows several times before he arrived, and the shouting continued throughout with a pause for the national anthem.
The PFP surrounded the building.
The video camera showed Arnold Shwarzeneger approaching the chamber, smiling as if he were about to be interviewed as a star presence. I think the whole thing ended before he got in the door.”
It has also been reported in the Mexican media that the Governor has a list of 100 foreigners they are looking to arrest that helped out the resistance here. I imagine these are mostly journalists and others from countries like Cuba and Venezuela. But some expats here are worried that their visas won’t be renewed if they have been found supporting APPO.
I want to make it clear that I have posted no articles to any foreign press nor have given any financial or other assistance to the APPO nor to anyone supporting APPO. I do scan blogs and discussion sites for information that I can use to assess my safety here. As a foreign expat I am keeping a very low profile. I don’t want to risk not being let back into the country.
I drove Lester and Max to San Pedro de Cajonos yesterday. Left at the intersection at Tlacalula and then an hour and a half up into the Sierra del Sud mountains. Beautiful drive. San Pedro hangs on a cliff above a valley. The Blas family makes Alebrijes there.
Getting back to Oaxaca City about 5pm, I drove up Guerrero St. where Max lives to find milling crowds of frantic people who were attempting to undue the effects of PFP tear gas with handkerchiefs soaked in vinegar and Coca Cola. A march had just gotten to the city and the PFP didn’t much take to having the Zocalo surrounded by APPO supporters.
Exhausted from the day’s drive, I went to bed at 8pm to find out the next morning that over 2000 people, many innocent bystanders, had been arrested and beaten and taken to jails…but not charged. I also found out that Max had a method to his madness…knowing I might have been caught in the middle of it all had I stayed in the city.
Well, I don’t know what we did to deserve our weather…we have been freezing our asses off especially at night. I wear everything I’ve got to bed…houses don’t have heat here. I have been turning on the oven and opening the oven door in the mornings…will probably hear from my landlord…
A friend who used to live in Mexico had this to say: “It is too bad you don’t have a wood stove in your apartment. But that is the curse of the middle class. Poor people have fires inside their houses if but a bit drafty. Very rich have heating. Middle class just has the appearance of luxury without the amenities.”
It’s Thanksgiving today. Have been running around a lot so will probably just hole up in my apartment and work on computer pics and videos and music…a luxury.
After getting back from Hierve el Agua last Sunday, I holed up in my apartment for two days. It has gotten really cold and windy. There is no heat in the apartment so I turn on the oven and open the oven door.
A couple nights ago, three friends and I went to a restaurant/cantina for great seafood soup with crab and shrimp and a beer. Then we sat on some bar stools in Max’s favorite bar next to the restaurant for an ultima (last one for the road) mescal where he had had an interesting “conversation” with a Mexican deaf-mute the night before…neither one knowing what the other one was intending. Max’s account was hilarious. I was the only woman there besides the female bar maid…and was introduced all around to the regulars…working class middle aged men…unlike the other cantinas I had been to where the patrons were hard-drinking young machismos.
Yesterday Sharon and I went to the Tlacalula Sunday Market…busy and full of brightly dressed indigenous people as usual. I bought some small carved coconut half-shells to serve my mescal and we both bought a petata…a large woven mat that people sleep on in the villages…from a tiny old woman with really rought hands from San Leandro…a town near Hierve de Agua. I will use it for a floor cover. We stopped in Huayapam on the way back to see Charlie and Bardo. Mica had gone to a movie.
Saturday I will go to a mountain village,San Pedro de Cajonos, (be careful how you pronounce Cajonos) to visit a family that carves Alebrijes…small painted fanciful animals. Thursday is Thanksgiving in the States.
In the middle of November there were a series of Women’s Marches protesting the dead and disappeared and the assault of some women by the Federal (PFP) who had been occupying the Zocalo.
Last weekend I took Mica, Bardo and the kids from Hauyapam, and Charlie, who used to be a coffee bean roaster in Oaxaca in the 70’s but now is a roaster in Canada and here for a few weeks, in the car to Hierva El Agua about 50 miles into the mountains. There cold water mineral springs fall over steep cliffs and solidify into rock-hard deposits forming algae-painted slabs in level spots and accumulating into what appear to be grand frozen waterfalls…shining in the sun.
The governor is building a huge glassed-in pyramid-shaped restaurant within yards of the springs…giving diners (what diners?) a spectacular view of the Sierra Sur mountains where the indigenous Mixe live…but the place is accessed by pot-holed dirt roads. The only place to eat was an empty shack…interestingly named “Alice’s Restaurant” where we were the only patrons. The first evening a good-looking young woman gave us black beans, salsa and bread and coffee while she nursed her ten-month old little boy…her two year old by her side. She says it is common here for women to have ten children…but she has had her tubes tied, she says.
We stayed in the only bungalow…with “matrimonial” bed in a loft and two sets of bunk beds below. There was no gas for the stove or water heater. The gate-keeper in the same building had spent six years in LA and wanted to practice his English.
The next day we sat next to a smoke-filled wood fire in the corner of the dirt yard of the “restaurant” while an older woman made fresh corn tortillas on a huge comal. The tomatoes for the fresh salsa were roasted in the wood ashes…giving it a wonderful smoky flavor. She amazingly was able to grind the chilis on a window sill next to the fire. We devoured the avocados and cheese memelitas with the salsa and coffee…running for cover from the wood smoke whenever the woman stoked the fire. Best-tasting Oaxacan food yet!
On the way home, we stopped at a small family-run traditional mescal factory to buy jugs of Mescal. I will buy a small oak barrel with a spigot at the market to keep the mescal from drawing the taste of the plastic jug. The maguay plants are ground to a pulp in a round concrete “trough” under a huge marble “wheel” that is pulled round and round by a donkey. The mescal I chose had been stilled and aged with several different local fruits-and chicken breasts-in addition to the magay plant! Smooth, slightly sweet and full of flavor…40% alcohol…compared to the young 100% alcohol stuff that burns the gullet all the way to the stomach.
This week, Joe, a recently retired CPA from Chicago who is living in my apartment complex and teaching English, and I will have lunch together. Joe was married and has two grown children. Has also come here for a new life. Funny and gregarious…very nice guy. A young couple has just moved into the apartment (there are four apartments) from Canada. He is a writer …they have a 4 year old little boy who is squaring it off with the little girl in the manager’s apartment…neither of which knows the other’s language. They are driving the mothers nuts!
Can’t believe I’ve been here six months already. When my visa expires in August I will go to Asia to see my son and his wife, Josh and Amy, in Beijing China and son Doug and Luk, his wife, on the island of Koh Samui in Thailand…then probably back here if everything returns to normal politically. If not I’ll just stay in Asia.
Yesterday, Charlie and I visited an American and his wife, Tony & Rebecca Raab, who have a beautiful bed and breakfast called Casa Raab about 20 minutes outside the city. Tony has built a hand-made authentic Zapateco mescal still. Some of the best I’ve tasted. Certainly worth a personal tour.
I went to Santo Domingo yesterday to check out the activity there. The teachers and their supporters have moved their encampment up the hill to the streets in front of Santo Domingo Church where marches now end and speeches are given. Vendors from the Zocalo now line Alcala St. running down from the church and TVs sitting precariously on boxes run non-stop videos. Traditional and contemporary Mexican music blares loudly nearby. Vendors provide a variety of food…tacos and memelitos…unique to Oaxaca. There are information tables and a few banners fly…walkers having to duck under nylon supporting lines. What activists say that “the people” want is a deepening of democracy — fair elections, a free press, responsive government, public safety and jobs. I suspect there is lot more going on than that.
As an expat living here for six months, I have yet to explore the abundant beauty of this primarily indigenous State…cooking classes, art museums, music…and Spanish language classes!
At 8 in the morning the PFP advances upon the University of Oaxaca and begins firing at the radio and the university campus. Helicopters fly over and descend upon the radio university. At 9 in the morning 2 military convoys arrive as well as another convoy of PFP to help in the displacement of the radio. Throughout the morning police and tanks continue arriving. The Federal Preventative Police violently attack the people, throwing tear gas/gas bombs at the people that work inside of Radio Universidad of Oaxaca. Tear gas is also thrown from the helicopters. At 11:40 in the morning 18 people had already been detaining, including a student leader of the movement, two minors and a professor of the University of Oaxaca.
The people form a human chain in the area immediately around Radio Universidad. The radio calls out to neighbors to come out into the streets and give flowers to the military who are also in the areas around CU with their fire arms. The radio underscores that this is a peaceful resistance. They do not want deaths or injured people.
At ten in the morning the PFP severely attacks the population in the cross of five men where the barricade is located. In some areas of the city it is reported that the PRIistas are firing into the air, hoping to discourage people from leaving in the streets in solidarity with Radio Universidad de Oaxaca.
Medical help is sought. Many people are hurt as the PFP is using tear gas, a non-lethal arm, as a lethal weapon, firing it directly into people’s bodies at point blank range. The hospitals do not want to receive the injured people of the social movement.
Two of those detained were liberated. Vargas, the PFP official, was the one who had apprehended these people. They were savagely beaten before being released.
Marches in solidarity with Oaxaca, heading toward Radio Universidad, continue to leave throughout the morning.
In the afternoon, the PFP finds itself virtually surrounded by various groups who are in solidarity with the APPO and unable to leave.
At 5pm the PFP leaves the university zone after 6 hours of conflict, throwing tear gas bombs into houses while withdrawing.
The day of struggle left more than 70 injured persons and 32 detained by police, some of whom were flown away in helicopters of the federal police and army.
It is an example of dozens of videos you can buy in the street for $2.00 each. They were filmed and edited by amateur videographers, activists and/or supporters of the “movement.” To get the other side of things people can watch government controlled Televisa or TV Azteca.
Laughingnomad 