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!
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.
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.
Juanita, the Mexican-American woman I met at Pachote Market, will ride down here with me in my car in September…a road trip to Las Vegas to see Greg, to Phoenix to see friends and across Texas to the border at Loredo. On the way to Oaxaca we will stop in Querataro to visit my old friend Patty Gutierrez. Juanita now lives in Guadalajara, where she was born, after raising her children in LA…two blocks from where we lived in Highland Park in 68 and 69! She is in Sacramento now visiting her son and daughter and will take the bus to meet me in Portland.
Her daughter Veronica teaches English to children at the Colegio Motolinta de Antequera, behind la Iglesia de Los Pobres on Dalias Street in the Reforma section of town, where incidently she watched the attack of police on the teachers outside her building a few days ago. She met her husband when she came here for a temazcal workshop in nearby San Jose…her husband’s parents were the instructors and she often translates for norteno participants now.
A Temazcal is a traditional sweat bath. The word is Nhuatl (Aztec) in origin and means “steam” (temaz “house (calli). Temazcals were common throughout prehispanic Mesoamerica and an important component of traditional therapeutic and purifying rituals. The temazcal itself is a small, closed, domed structure traditionaly constructed of adobe. To produce the steam, rocks are heated and herbs and water thrown onto the hot stones. (Claustrophobics might want to think twice.) It has become the fashion, Veronica says, for many Europeans to come here and combine a Temazcal workshop with a traditional Oaxacan marriage ceremony performed by her father-in-law.
Yesterday morning Veronica and I met for a cup of wonderful organic fair trade coffee in the Friday/Saturday Pachote Organic Market. Elvira, a Zapotec woman I have made friends with is a part of a new women’s collective that grows and roasts their own fair-trade coffee…it is not certified organic yet…a long and costly process. Elvira also sells vanillan, pimiento (pepper) roasted pumpkin seeds, fresh strong cinnamon, panela and honey…all grown or made on her little farm. Sweet smiling Elvira comes to the city every week-end five and a half hours each way on the bus. She spends Friday and Sat nights with my friend Sharon before leaving 5am on the bus again Sunday morning.
At Pachote (and also found on the street and in the other markets) you can eat food prepared by indigenous women…tacos made from blue corn, drink atole, a hot frothy sweetened Oaxacan corn gruel drunk plain or flavored. You can eat chapulines, toasted grasshoppers…a Oaxacan delicacy. It is said that if you eat chapulines, you’ll be sure to return to Oaxaca. You can eat memelas, small soft torillas spread with asiento (rendered pork lard and bits of chicharron (called chitlins in southern U.S) and topped with crumbles of fresh cheese. If you are really hungry you can eat chicken mole, a sauce based on ground chiles and spices…sometimes with chocolate. There are 7 different moles prepared in Oaxaca, most of them referred to by color…colorado (red) coloradito (little red), amarillo (yellow) verde (green) and negro (black, plus chichilo and manchamanteles (tablecloth stainer.) You can eat quesqadillas, a corn tortila filled with cheese and squash flowes toasted on a hot comal or clay griddle. My favorite for breakfast are the tamals…corn masa filled with mole red or green often with bits of chicken…wrapped in corn husks and steamed. Or you can just drink a big cup of tejate…a traditional drink made of corn masa, cacao, mamey fruit seed and rosita de cacao flowers dipped by the tejatera from a huge wide, shallow bowl. I’m still learning to like this drink.
Veronica showed me those little round avocados that you can eat with the skin on…panela, dark sugar wrapped in corn husk made smoky-flavored after sitting around a charcoal fire…little mild round red peppers called canarios…small round sweet squash…baskets and bags made out of high-sierra pine…home-made Mescal, a Oaxaceno specialty made from the Maguey plant. It is recent (hot and strong), reposado (aged and smooth) or anejo (aged for several years in oak barrels with the flavor of cognac (expensive) and often above 50% alcohol. You can buy beautiful Oaxacan pottery fired without lead, huge purple flowers together with spindly orange flowers that remind me of the Indian Paintbrush that grows wild in Eastern Oregon…all good stuff…you see where my money goes.
Through Veronica I met Willy, a very sweet Swiss expat whose sister lived in her little casita for 20 some years. When she died a couple years ago, Willy, who had often visited, moved into her home. Willy cooked us breakfast of egg and tocino (bacon) tucked into grilled bollios (Mexican buns), cheese, fresh orange juice, and rich dark organic coffee made in his French Press coffee-maker in his little open-air kitchen with an incredible view of the surrounding valley. He showed us his “poleo” leaves, drying in the sun for tea…”la yerbo de boracho” Veronica laughs…boracho meaning “drunk.”
We talked about other local delicasies…like “huitlacoche” or what sounds like parasytic mushrooms that grow on husks of fresh corn that is fast disappearing because of pesticides sprayed on the corn. Veronica lamented that out of a thousand varieties of mushrooms only a couple hundred are still extanct because the locals pull up the “whole family” by the roots instead of leaving the “children” to grow larger in the future…destroying the plant…thinking of the “short term” need for subsistence.
Willy says he was an industrial design engineer by trade…but here he really is an artist…designing lamps made out of sticks and branches from around his home. I told him he could market that stuff in New York City…but he is not interested. He is also helping an international non-profit based in Europe to design an eco-education program in his beloved Sierra…not building buildings…but just to take people in on treks and teach them about local ecology. Willy is bilingual and is the most respectuful of local expats I have met….preferring to leave the revolution to those who know best how they want to conduct it for themselves.
And this is just the beginning of what’s to love about Oaxaca.
Took a tour of Colonial Reforma today…in the northern part of the city. Went to immigration to get my year-long visa and on the way the bus driver got into a stand-off with a car whose driver was yelling something at him at a stop-light. The bus driver gave him what-to…never heard so many madres and pendejos (assholes) in one sentence before…and he kept it up. The light turned green and the bus won…cut the guy clean off and forced him onto another road. I think I was the only passenger interested…the others have seen this before no doubt.
But on a bus going the wrong way back to the Centro…took a tour through the entire Colonial Reforma…gears grinding…brakes screeching…music blaring…and over those damn topes (speed bumps) every 50 feet, up and down the hills. The driver yells at me…where you from…in English. I know better than to say the US…that’s obvious. Oregon I said. Oh, I was there four months he laughed…strawberries I asked…yes he said…he was in Phoenix four years and Fresno for six years. You like Oaxaca? Yes, I love it! I noticed he didn’t ask me if I liked “Mexico” He asked me if I liked Oaxaca. I think he likes it too!
Have run into several young guys at the market who have picked strawberries in Oregon…their English quite good. Willamette Valley strawberries are the best in the world by the way…thanks to cheap labor by migrants from south of the border.
Laughingnomad 