Oaxaca

Guelaguetza “Postponed”

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The Asemblea of teachers and social groups succeeded in shutting down the indigenous dance festival, the Guelaguetza, that was scheduled for the 17th & 24th of July. Governor Ruiz announced the festival would be postponed but no other date was given.

It is said that the Asemblea is planning an alternative free dance festival.

Governor Ruiz has asked President Fox for funding to help the hotel association and the secretary of tourism reimburse tourists and hotels for lost revenue.

Hopefully Ticketmaster will refund the tickets for my friend and I.

Early Morning In Oaxaca

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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The first picture is out the back…trees full of singing birds. The second picture was taken outside in front of my upstairs apartment.

Now if the round-the-clock explosions up on the hill where the road to the Gueleguetza Auditorium is being constructed…would stop…

4th Megamarch Of Teacher Strike

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Photo From “Oaxaca Noticias”

The local “Oaxaca Noticias” newspaper estimated 500,000 marchers at the 4th Oaxaca Megamarch…a historic event that included supporters from several neighboring states.

Starting with a motorcycle cavalcade and many automobiles, the fourth mega-march to oust the Governor stretched out along five miles of the nine-mile route from the airport road to Benito Juarez Soccer Stadium. When the first marchers arrived at the stadium many were still at the airport road.

By 11pm my friend and I who had been watching from the Soccer Stadium were exhausted and went home. By that time the street was still full of marchers coming from the airport.

One Oaxacan Migrant Family

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Yesterday I went to Tule…a small town of about 15,000 near Oaxaca City. What a charming place. Most of the men are gone up north, my driver said (as a huge brand new black diesel pickup backed up to a vendor’s booth) and come back before Christmas. Yes, I know, I said.

I read that as much as 70% of Oaxaca’s budget is augmented by money from the migrants. The problem is that this takes the pressure off the local political system to make substantive changes in the economy.

I am finding out that some migrants up north are willing to live in crummy conditions so they can save every penny and then come back and build a house and buy a car. Everyone’s dream. On their web site June 17 MSNBC featured an article entitled “Migrant’s Money Goes A Long Way In Mexico. The article goes on…”Last year, Mexican migrants sent home a record $20 billion, making them Mexico’s biggest foreign earner after oil, according Mexico’s Central Bank. In the first four months of this year, the amount was $7 billion, a 25 percent increase over the same period last year. Half of it flows into poor villages like Boye, a corn-growing community of 900 people founded by Otomi Indians long before Europeans came to the Americas. Clementina Arellano grew up with her six brothers in a shack in this dusty town. She now has a home with Roman-style pillars at the doorway and a garden full of flowers and singing birds. How did she transform her fortunes so dramatically? By waiting tables and sweating in a furniture factory for about 10 years in Hickory, N.C., and sending home up to $500 a month.”

I am still emailing a girl I mentored for several years while working with a violence prevention/alternative education program for Latino school drop-outs. Her Mixtec family lives/lived high in the Oaxacan mountains. The girl, I’ll call her Maria, isn’t in the US legally and can’t come back, but she told me in an email that I could go with her family to her village next time they came down. She said they had a huge house that was “big enough for the whole village to fit into” and there would be plenty room for me. I know because I saw a picture of it when I was in her home. In the summers, when other migrant children were attending the Summer Migrant School Program, Maria and her siblings would continue working in the fields to help their parents earn money.

Maria had never been anywhere in town except school and wasn’t socialized vis a vis US culture. She and her cousin were angry…had joined a gang and were getting into fights in school. I used to take them places…would always have a thermos of coffee in the car with me. Now Maria says whenever she smells coffee she thinks of our trips…cute. Most of the Mixtec families from Oaxaca were wonderful and I fell in love with the people.

Maria had two incisors that were growing straight out of her gums. A local dentist was willing to extract them for free (write it off) and give her braces. At her last appointment she sold her jacket to buy him some flowers. I told the receptionist later to make damn sure he knew where the flowers came from.

The parents would leave the children, some just toddlers, on their own for two months every year and return to Oaxaca to work on “their land” so they wouldn’t lose their right to it…since the land is communal and if it isn’t worked a certain amount of time each year, they would lose access to it and would also be ostracized from the community, Maria said.

Maria was in the program for nearly 8 years…from the time she was in the 7th grade until she was a junior in high school and finally went to a live-in alternative high school program. She is now living with a significant other…has a two year old and is in a nursing program at Portland Community College and working. Her primary language is Mixtec. She has done this on her own. She was very artistic and had dreams of being a clothing designer…or maybe just wearing the clothes that designers design. She would draw these jaw-dropping pictures of girls in gorgeous elegant dresses…

I understand why the teachers are striking! Basta!

Market In Tlacolula

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Yesterday my friend Sharon and I hopped a diesel-spewing bus for the hour ride to Tlacolula, southeast of the city, where vendors from multiple little villages around the Oaxaca Valley come on Sundays to buy and sell. The market is huge and we haven’t managed to cover it all by 4pm when it begins to close.

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Crispy Rendered Pork Fat When Broken Up Into Pieces Is Called Chicharones

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On the way out I buy boiled goat meat in a delicious sauce for my dinner. We stand in the aisle of the bus on the way home. I will return to buy a rug for my bedroom.

June 14 2006 Police Attack on Teachers

Posted on by Laughingnomad

This is an eye witness narrative written by my friend Patricia Gutierrez from Queretaro who, with her luck and mine, visited me the night of the attack on the teachers in the Zocalo in Oaxaca City on June 14, my birthday…14 days after I arrived in Oaxaca.

Video Of Attack

Last Tuesday, June 6, my newly minted husband, Jose Roberto, and I, decided to go visit my dear friend Zoe Goetz, from Salem, Oregon, who had just moved to the city of Oaxaca, the state capital of Oaxaca, around the 1st. This same city is described in a travel guide as being quaint. Unfortunately like many of its citizens we got another, non-touristy, view of things.

When we arrived, at my friend’s apartment on the 14th, around midnight, we saw some people, teachers specifically, gathered in the Zocalo which is in the heart of this historic city, sitting under tarps and holding signs protesting their education system, salaries, etc. They are also demanding the ouster of their governor, a member of PRI the country’s very corrupt and sole governing body for over 70 years up until 2000 when Pres. Vicente Fox won. In general they blame the governor for their bleak and further deteriorating situation. We had seen something of these protesting teachers (protesting for over 20 days) on the evening news in Queretaro where we live, but from what happened next things had clearly been downplayed in the media. And truth be told I guess we are like most people in that it really doesn’t seem real when you watch these types of events playing out on TV, over and over I might add, in the general comfort of one’s living room, sandwiched in between commercials for Pepsi and the World Cup and Condoms (yeah this is Mexico they’re more honest about their sexuality I guess).

When we woke up the next morning at Eunice’s, Jose and I were suffering with terrible sore throats, burning sinuses and headaches. So we figured a little bit of Vitamin C and aspirin from the local pharmacy would help. Zoe pointed us two blocks up from her apartment, toward the Zocalo. So off we went.

There was a strange odor hanging in the air. Our eyes, noses and throats burned even more. There were barricades made up of lines of people (in other areas we would also see small buses) near where we were stopped. We asked two passers-by about a pharmacy as nothing appeared to be open. We were informed that we would probably find nothing open as the police had swept the area intent upon removing the protesting teachers, and their supporters, at about 4 a.m. with tear gas and bullets dropped from overhead by low-flying helicopters. Several people gathered around us when they realized we were tourists and we were asking questions as to why all of this had occurred?!

We also heard unconfirmed reports from those present, that the police had shot and killed two children and four teachers. When we asked where the bodies were we were told that the police had them hidden in their police station.

There were so many injured from amongst the teachers that the local hospitals said that they could receive no more injured. There was a confirmed report of 50+ injured protesters.

There is a confirmed report of one police officer being injured.

We met many, many articulate, concerned and compassionate individuals. Talk about grace under fire. These folks were the epitome of it. And, like the rest of us, wanting only to be heard and treated with respect.

You can imagine our reaction to all of this. We definitely were a long way from Salem, Oregon, that’s for sure. We became even more alarmed when we realized there was a police helicopter flying very low right above our heads and we turned and saw a man with a broken piece of mirror trying to obstruct their view by shining it on the helicopter while someone else on the ground near by was taking a video of the scene. Jose and I rushed back to the apartment feeling utterly overwhelmed by what we had seen, heard and smelled at the Zocalo.

When we shared all of this with Zoe we realized why she had gotten an odd text message from her landlord earlier that morning advising her to not leave the apartment and not go downtown (to the Zocalo). We clearly never do as we are told. Jose decided that if nothing else he would go back and take pictures of the situation and share these over the Internet. He made Eunice and me stay behind. That lasted about 10 or 15 minutes. Zoe and I decided that we had to go and find him and not leave him out there on his own, and see for ourselves.

Everyone simply shared their story with us. No one demanded anything of us.

Jose asked permission to take the pictures that I am passing along here. We were escorted past the barricades so that we might speak with a spokesperson for the protesters. We met a local human rights worker who had been told all of the same things we had heard. He was trying to collect evidence so that he might further assist them in their cause, and call in support from the federal level. We also met a teacher who was beaten by a police nightstick. He had 2000 pesos stolen by the police. He only makes 3200 pesos every two weeks. It takes about $11.40 in pesos to purchase one U.S. dollar right now. Someone else had an empty canister of tear gas. A young woman said that they had collected shell casings from what appeared to be a large caliber weapon. We encountered a few healthcare workers who were volunteering their time trying to care for the injured protesters.

Since Jose and I arrived here we have watched on the evening news, on a daily basis, some form of civil unrest in various states across this republic. Mostly on a very large scale. When we go grocery shopping or to the movie theater it is customary to see police officers patrolling outside, in the parking lot, and inside of the theater with an AK-47, sub-machine gun and the like.

Here the authorities are scarier than any criminal element that may be lurking about.

At no time did we feel threatened by any of these protesting teachers.

Mexican Cumbia Dancing

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I had forgotten how much fun it is to dance to Mexican music! I think I am a Mexican trapped in a gringo body! Last Friday, Gerardo and his mom, Socorroo, invited me, a few of her friends, Michael, a charming very long-haired young guy from LA who is staying with the family while he studies English, Chin, a young guy from San Francisco but originally from Taiwan, an Australian couple who will be moving to one of the apartments in my building and a few others to go dancing with her at El Pescador at 510 Miguel Cabrera St…only a couple blocks from my apartment. Two bands play the club…one up and one down. The one up was a kind of Mexican cumbia band with a drum pad, an incredible singer, a bass guitar and electronic keyboard. We started at 4pm and after many drinks, including the local Mescal and some finger food delicioso, we closed up the place at 10:30 when everyone drifted off to other clubs.

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Chin and one of Gerardo’s mom’s friends.

Chin was really cute. His face was red all night…blushing from all the attention he was getting from the middle-aged Mexican women in the group who were having great fun dancing in their very suggestive way…especially when we formed a circle putting each person inside by turns! Chin will never be the same after Mexico!

I was sitting next to the Australian woman who I thought was Mexican. After some time I finally turned to her to greet her in Spanish. She laughed a great laugh as she answered me in English! In past lives her husband was a heavy metal rocker and his hearing is nearly gone so he is now playing Mexican music. His wife is also in the music business where they met and married two years ago. They are a hoot as many Australians are! It will be fun to have them in the apartment building. But don’t get a TV, her husband warned me…you’ll just be tempted to listen to English!

After the club closed, Gerardo’s mom and I joined Gerardo and his classmates who were having farewell drinks for their visiting law professor from Mexico City at an upscale place called El Pichon north of the city. The group is studying to be tour guides and I had a rather interesting conversation with a twenty-something young guy sitting next to me who wanted to know all the terms for making love. Why is it that some middle aged American women want to be with young Mexican guys in Mexico, he asked. This information was new to me. Some tour guide he is going to make, I thought.

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Two of the girls in the tour guide class.

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Law professor and Socorro in earnest conversation.

Attempting a conversation in Spanish with the law professor, I learned a fine distinction between words. We were talking about the coyotes who take Mexican migrants across the border to work. I mistakenly called them ciyotes with a long “i”. Puzzled, he finally figured out I was refering to coyotes with a long “o”. He laughed and told me that, ironically, a ciyote is the sole of the foot (or shoe). A coyote is an animal…and also what the curriers are called. You never forget words that are corrected on-the-spot.

This Mexico gig is going to be alright, I thought at the end of the night. But going to have to figure out an excuse for turning down drinks in this country!

A Field Guide To Getting Lost

Posted on by Laughingnomad

My son, Josh, the little weasel, asked me what it felt like to be living alone in Oaxaca. It got me to thinking. Then I picked up a book at Sharon’s apartment entitled “A field Guide To Getting Lost,” a book written by a woman in San Francisco. It reminded me of a blog entry I wrote one thoughtful day in Bangkok. Here it is for those of you who missed it.

June 12 2005

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“What A Perfect Day…It’s Such A Perfect Day…And Then We Go Home.”

Have been re-reading a book that I have been dragging around with me for the last year. Pico Iyer can set my imagination afire like no other travel writer. One of his pieces reminds me of the fall of 2003 when I was traveling alone down the coast of Viet Nam. Imagine all the people sharing all the world: I was riding behind Mr. Binh, my kind motorcycle taxi driver, and after three days on the bike my rear-end was numb. He takes me to a small food stall by the side of the road leading out of a little town on the South China Sea, where we wave down a local kamazake minibus that will careen down Highway 1 to Hue. The bus is crammed full of Vietnamese one on top of the other so I sit on some rice sacks until someone gets off and I, the older one, am graciously allowed to have the emptied seat. A couple of giggling girls offer to share a small sweet tangerine with me.

The driver had very long hair-possibly in his 50’s-with a pocked and scarred face…signs of a life lived on the edge. This guy is feeling powerful and narrowly misses oncoming overloaded trucks leaning at odd angles. He is having a great time and I am breathless waiting for my life to end. Suddenly when he throws a dirty towel to the back of the van and it lands in my face he looks back with a grin to see if I am alright. Gasping, I return his thumbs up with a laugh.

“Travel the World and the Seven Seas…Everybody’s Looking For Something. Some of them want to use you�some of them want to abuse you.” For Pico, the best kind of traveling is when you are searching for something you never find. “The physical aspect of travel is for me,” he says “the least interesting…what really draws me is the prospect of stepping out of the daylight of everything I know, into the shadows of what I don’t know and may never will. We travel, some of us, to slip through the curtain of the ordinary, and into the presence of whatever lies just outside our apprehension…” he goes on to say. “I fall through the gratings of the conscious mind and into a place that observes a different kind of logic.” Transcendence… and pure Pico.

“Nobody told me there would be days like these! Strange Days Indeed.”

El Pochote Market & Cinema

Posted on by Laughingnomad

North and east from my apartment on Fiallo St., through the Zocolo, under tents and guy-wires, I walked to meet my new friend, Sharon, at an organic market called El Pochote, just north and east of Templo Santo Domingo. It had rained hard the night before and on the way I got drenched with at least a bucket of water. I looked back to see where the water came from and saw a woman poking a stick upward to release the water collected on top of a plastic tent. As I looked at her, she seemed to bear a silent look of terror on her face. She’s afraid of “susto,” I thought…afraid I would caste an evil spell on her. But that was just my interpretation, of course, having had very limited experience with health care for Zapotec and Mixtec migrants in Oregon. Unhappily, I continued on.

The market is very small and no one seemed to know where it was except a western-looking guy with an eastern European accent carrying some books. So an hour late, I finally caught Sharon leaving the market. We walked across the street to a bakery and bought some deep-fried peppers stuffed with chicken, nuts and I don’t know what else but it was fantastic…juicy and the flavors just kept coming and coming. Then she took me to see her roof-top apartment where, as a master gardener, she will raise plants and herbs. Nearby we visited the the Oaxaca Cultural Center that offers free art, music and photography classes within a beautiful old nunnery. I loved the feeling inside…children making art, practicing the piano…

Then we returned to the market where I bought some lead-free Mexican kitchen pottery for my apartment. We shared some mole enchiladas and a tostada “sandwich” and then watched part of the International Indigenous Film Festival (on extremely uncomfortable seats) that is being held at the Cine Pochote at the market site. Exhausted, we trudged home.

The next day Sharon visited me to see my apartment and then walked east to the nearby Mercado 20 de Noviembre where I bought a plastic shopping bag, some grapes, green beans and some perfectly formed green onions and cilantro to make salsa. Sharon was tired and getting a cold so she left for home, while I stopped and had a bowl of delicious menudo (tripe soup) before leaving.

Sharon says she will soon go with me to Mercado Abastos, so huge she says I can easily get lost, to the Women Artesans Of The Regions of Oaxaca cooperative for shopping and will take me to her favorite coffee shop.

When I returned to my apartment Gerardo’s cousin who lives downstairs, was delivering a set of T Fal cook-ware, some glass mixing bowls and a big bottle of purified water. I had only emailed Gerardo asking for those things that morning! Incidentally everyone drinks bottled water here. A young guy from Texas sitting next to me on the plane to Houston had been at the University of Oregon delivering a talk on toxicology. He told me the water here was full of arsenic. Incidentally, he said the water in the Willamette River in Oregon has a high level of arsenic also.

Hector, Sharon’s apartment manager, told her about a very good curandera (healer) so this week we will visit her and have a healing, sauna and massage.

Meanwhile, Gerardo, who wants to get a masters in tourism, has offered to drive me to nearby villages while we practice 30 minutes English for him and 30 minutes Spanish for me.

Later, checking email, I excitedly discovered that my old friend, Patricia Gutierrez, who married a Mexican national and lately moved to Mexico, will be driving here next week with her husband “to give me a hug” and get her mail that I brought from Oregon.

Someone else in an email asked if I thought the next president, at the upcoming election, will be good for Mexico. I know nothing yet about Mexican politics, and have to search out some good sources of information.

I have been making open pot “sheepherder’s coffee, in my new T Fal french “milk pot” like my dad used to make in sheep camp. I had forgotten how good it can be. (Whatever is a milk pot?!) But I need to find some coffee filters for my new coffee pot. People in Mexico drink Nescafe. Ugh! Never got used to it even after visiting Asia off and on for nearly four years. Also, I am having a hard time remembering to put TP in the basket instead of flushing it…

Now if I could just learn to use the buses!

Oaxaca City

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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After three weeks in Salem sorting through 40 years of junk…one pile for St. Vincent de Paul, one pile for the dump, one pile to sell at the Assistance League and the rest in boxes to be stored in the basement until the house is rented out again…I took off for Oaxaca Mexico leaving Bob with the house.

Inhabited over a period of 1,500 years by a succession of peoples – Olmecs, Zapotecs and Mixtecs – the terraces, dams, canals, pyramids and artificial mounds of Monte Albán were literally carved out of the mountain and are the symbols of a sacred topography. The nearby city of Oaxaca, which is built on a grid pattern, is a good example of Spanish colonial town planning. The solidity and volume of the city’s buildings show that they were adapted to the earthquake-prone region in which these architectural gems were constructed. Oaxaca City is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Monsoon season here for the next couple months…hot and humid but not as bad as Thailand…rains buckets several times a day then sun comes out.

Houston airport is huge and I nearly missed my plane connection. No problem getting off the plane here…small plane from Houston configured with two rows on one side and one row on the other). 32 pesos or about $3.00 into the city from the airport on the shuttle.

Oaxaca City, pronounced “wahaca,” is generally referred to as Oaxaca and that is the way addresses read…Oaxaca, Oaxaca Mexico. The Zocolo (central plaza) and the streets for blocks around it are closed from traffic due to a teacher’s Oaxaca State union strike. DSC00616.JPG

Teachers are here from every region. They are camped out in pop tents and under plastic tarps…just sitting with piles of belongings and food. There is a big inequality of teacher’s pay…they get anywhere from 50 pesos to 600 pesos a day. (about ten pesos to dollar). Here is one brushing her teeth. brushing teeth.jpg

But Gerardo (apartment manager) said many of the teachers are under- educated and the strike is bad for the city. Someone said the unions are very powerful here…teachers are forced by the unions to sit in the streets or they won’t get union benefits. Teachers still receive full pay even though they are striking. Kids are the losers. The government apparently isn’t listening. Heard last night that they took over the airport and all the planes are grounded. So guess I got in just in time.

The city is charming…two story buildings…some very colorful. Outsides often are drab but inside the outer gates the interiors are beautiful. The whole of the Centro is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.

My apartment is a two story building with four apartments inside an outer building. I have a key to the outer “portal” and key to an upstairs apartment. When we arrived the carpenters were literally installing the kitchen cupboards…shavings and dirt and tools everywhere. Good thing I stayed in the hostel the first night. The 5-bed hostel room was clean and lovely (Paulina Youth Hostel) but hot as hell and stuffy…apartment much better. Free breakfast was great. So Gerardo took me to his house where his mom fixed coffee. They have had over 200 guests in the last ten years…showed me a picture of the principal of an elementary school in Beaverton who stayed with them for several weeks while studying Spanish. His mom has a cooking school on a patio outside the kitchen. Patio walls painted indigo blue and yellow. Then Gerardo took me to a supermarket to get ingredients for his mom. Then he took me with him to tour the Ethno Botanical Garden. After the tour I ran into a woman about my age, Sharon, who sat across from me on the plane. She has just moved here from Connecticut. She had earlier worked for the City of San Francisco for 25 years. She also lived in Veracruz for three years and is fluent in Spanish. She will be a good friend. We are meeting at a market Sat morning. Then Gerardo and I went back to his house where we feasted on yellow mole that his mom made for us. A young guy from CA staying with them and who is studying Spanish joined us as well as a German woman in her 30’s who is here studying Spanish for the 3rd time. Gerardo’s mom and she and I are going out next Friday to a bar to listen to salsa music. Gerardo, 25, is defending his bachelors thesis on human resources on tuesday.

When we got back to the apartment it was finished, clean with huge vase of flowers on kitchen table. I couldn’t believe it!

But the beds are hard as a rock…was really sore this morning. I miss Lyn’s bed…it was perfect. Going to have to get some foam or something! Kitchen pretty sparsley outfitted…about like Greg’s! 🙂 But I do have a brand new blender, juicer, coffee pot and fan. Wish I had some of the stuff from Azalea St. DSC00658.JPG

Glad I brought my down pillows…pillows here lumpy and flat as a pancake. DSC00662.JPG

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Went shopping at the supermarket last night at 8…finished at 10 and took a taxi home in the slogging rain. Most stuff had unrecognizable labels. Places here don’t cater to tourists like in Asia. I am realizing how comfortable I had become getting around in Asia…not so confident here…but went out walking today to get my bearings and then went to Sam’s Club (like Costco) in a taxi.

Lost my credit cards twice and found them again…not good for the nervous system. Tried to buy a sim card for Thai phone but it didn’t work…didn’t work in US phone either.

Unpacked already…extra bedroom has two twin beds waiting for my son Greg and his friends…and anyone else who wants to come. Wifi works great. Bought a bottle of wine and a wine glass…guess I’ll burn some sage and celebrate.