Some Aspects of Travel in Mesoamerica

1.The food.

I´ve never been so affected by the public and intestinal presence of fried meat. It is more common than bread in this country, impossible to get away from, so why resist? As a result, I have been on some accidental version of the Atkins diet for four months now, and the results have been as advetised. The idea of me eating to lose weight is thoroughly insane of course, but what can you do when you live in a shoe, hecho en Mexico?

That´s been my policy from the start, and 500 or so tacos de bistec later, I feel this strange absence of... fresh vegetables and fruit, most grains, anything steamed, etc. The cornucopia of bistec, chorizo, rais, pollo, carnitas, and so on is so omnipresent that it becomes difficult to disassociate food and eating from the inevitable heaps of fried meat piled in every corner.

In Mazunte, I discussed the dietary situation with a medical student from Conneticut, who corroberated the symtoms I was experiencing: a very slight light-headedness/other-worldliness combined with a distinctly hollow feeling around the solar plexus, as though having just been probed with a cow tongue. Unhealthy, but survivable was the conclusion.

The interesting thing is, of course, that Mexican food, as Mexicans themselves are always saying, is

muy sabroso, muy rica, que delicioso

. The quickest way to get a Mexican totally excited is to ask him/her what good foods are available for consumption. The eyes widen in excitement as the long list of chalupes, chiliquiles, enchiladas, ceviches, sopas, tlayudas, tamales, etc is revealed with great detail, hand-to-pursed lips gestures, and general fervour. Too much for an aphasic like myself to remember in proper detail of course, but the fine and rich mole, a semi-unsweetened chocolate sauce covering chicken, rice, tamal/anything edible, has not gone unnoticed I happy to say.

A typical example of all this being the other night when I wandered back to my friend Odet´s house to find the courtyard covered in streamers, and a surprize birthday party for her mother in full swing, including a band blasting out the best country music of the state of Tabasco.

I had some bread rolls in hand, my idea of a meat-free dinner, and Odet kept asking me if I wished to feed properly. Like a typically guilt-ridden norteño guest, I protested repeatedly throughout the evening until finally I wandered into the cocina at about 1am to find enough uneaten pollo de mole con arroz to feed an army. Having been primed by a few ´taqilas de refresco´, i.e., hard liquor hideously mixed with goldish yellow pop, I finally indulged a little while being interrogated about the translations of ´puta´,
´fuck you´, ´mierde´, ´cabron´, etc. by a gang of sweet-faced 12 year old schoolgirls and boys(some still in their uniforms), cousins of Odet, who I was meeting properly for the first time. In such moments of pure Mexican hospitality you quickly learn to forgive other moments of pure Mexican lieing, filth, and general city-of-20-million-people craziness.

2. Cycling.

Some people have asked if I, bicycle addict, have done any cycling in this country, with its incredible mountain vistas, etc. Cycling in Mexico has much potential, and I of course regret not bring my own bike along. While teaching in Chiapas I was lent a kids 24¨ mountain bike of the K-mart variety for a month or so. It had been in a crash and had the mild issue of a permanently loose steerer tube, one half-broken pedal, and bottom-of-the-line untightenable brakes didn´t stop me from ascending from the bottom of the Chiapas valley to the mountain pass and descending to the next valley (Suchiapas)whenever I had the chance. The one thing that worked on that bike were the gears, and despite its overall heaviness, I could climb reasonably well on it. Well, that is, for a bike with a maximum (knobby) tire pressure of 45 lbs., which is lower than what´s on my dad´s 1963 Raleigh cruiser. When you have nothing at all to ride you learn to appreciate a piece of crap that gets you out of a hot, polluted city and over a lush, cool green mountain or two, and back again in a couple of hours.

I rented a couple times and rode mountain bikes at altitude, in St Cristobal and Oaxaca City. The trouble is, the Mexican idea of mountain biking, at least to those renting bikes to touristas of unknown experience, is hilly roads, some possibly without pavement. Despite repeated pleas for ¨senderos de bici de montaña¨, I was always handed a roadmap with hills.

In Oaxaca, this amounted to a large circuit through a part of the Valle Central, which began with the ascent of Monte Alban, a proper 2000 metre ¨puerto¨ that nearly hospitalized my hapless Danish companion of the day, Martin, who was already having trouble just living and breathing in the general altitude of the state. Well, he looked young and strong enough. It turned out that Martin´s primary knowledge of mountain biking was being acquainted with his neighbour back in the very flat Danmark, who was on the Danish Olympic mountain bike team.

At more than one point, I was riding with one hand on Martin´s back (which was mostly covered by a horribly swaying Guatamalan dufflebag full of odds and ends), pushing him upwards. It was slow.

After we finally summitted at the semi-famous Zapotec pyrimid and registered the complete insult of a 45 peso entrance fee, we descended a ways to the dirt roads of the countryside, and I sent Martin packing after a short discussion weighing the mild shame of returning a full day´s rental after an hour-and-a-half versus that of abandoning and being stranded halfway through a 50km loop in the heat of the day.

The real lesson is that having your own bike is the answer, as you can ride it all you like, where you like, for as long as you like, without Martin coming along.

The Revolt of the Oaxacaqeñas

Oaxaca City


If you go far enough in Mexico you will eventually run smack into a political crisis, a scandal, or an open revolt, or possibly all three at once. Far enough being usually about 200 metres. In Oaxoaca City, the heart of a pleasant mountainous state known for its carpetweavers, Zapatec ruins, and heaps of expatriots living the easy life under sunny skies, there is definately an open revolt.

Since a march by the teachers´ union on 14 June was attacked brutally by 3000 state police, the city has seen the quick form alliance of different civil society groups: indigenous, socialist parties, and unions demanding the immediate resignation/impeachment/overthrow/fucking off of the state`s iron-fisted governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz who naturally is seen as being behind the whole no-negociation, shoot-first, arrest later policy. Ulises, as the protesters refer to him, is generally thought to have come to power through traditional means, that is, by vote-rigging and intimidation and has ruled in the traditional way.

For two months, a planton(a street takeover/protest camp) has made the struggle visible all over the normally tourist-filled zocalo. A small poster in English stands out amidst the Spanish political graffiti:

Please excuse the inconvenience while we
are making our history.
Once we have finished you will be able to
return to your regular tourist experience.

Streets have been barricaded, asphalt ripped up, trucks with ¨APPO¨ (Asemblea Popular del Pueblo Oaxoaqueña) spray-painted on them block off roadways. This is not a protest that goes home at three o´clock. The original issue the teachers were protesting against was the total lack of desks, textbooks, pencils, etc., in much of the state schools, plus the general lacking of the youngest students: without shoes, clothes or any food in their stomachs in many cases. The same level of public education for all Mexicans is guarenteed by the Constitution, and they wanted the governor to do something about it at last. This June march and planton was met with a 4 a.m. military-style assault (helicopters, tear gas, live ammunition) that left many wounded, half a dozen dead, and an explosion of political rage that has yet to subside.

Just yesterday another march of twenty thousand here in the city was attacked by police and a 50 year old mechanic who was marching with his wife (a biology teacher), was shot to death by riot police. If it wern´t for the planton of PRDistas five kilometres long in Mexico City (where thousands of supporters of Manuel Andres Lopez Obrador have successfully demanded a recount of the narrowly lost presidential election, by .6% of dubiously scrutinised 41 million votes), this regional struggle would be the top of the news. With this new killing yesterday (complete with photos of the dying man), in fact it IS in many front pages.

Mexican politics is a three-ringed circus of huge gestures and booming rhetorical sweep to match. Behind that there is a great frustration with the status quo in this economically expanding country of over 100 million. Legitimacy is badly wanted in a sea of corruption and incompetence. I saw a photo of the first ¨reconteo¨ in progess in the newspaper with a caption that read something like,

Counting is closely watched in the first of the votes to be re-examined.

In the photo an armed federale scrutinizes the IFE workers re-tabulating results at a table. One can imagine thirty more photographers in front of them. It is a ¨Ya basta¨ moment from a mainstream perspective, where the suggestions of a rigged election are being investigated ´voto por voto´ and damnit, this time it better be done properly. Its like every Mexican´s self-respect is on the line now - if this re-count can´t be done without interference then NOTHING can be done properly by Mexicans in the name of their own governance. It´ll be interesting to see the results, especially if Calderon wins a second time, but by an even smaller margin.

The contradictions of a modernizing society that is a constitutional democracy run by oligarchs are evermore rising to the surface. But contradictions of honesty are a part of the Mexican culture and character. While teaching English to teenagers, I was forced to confront the fact that half of my most advanced students plagiarized their final essays completely from the internet, even after I had caught nearly all of them doing it to some degree on the first draft of their initial essays and given them copies of the MLA guidelines for documenting sources plus the obvious lecture with embarassing examples.

The human urge to cheat in the face of difficulty is very great it seems, especially here.

Mayan if I smoke?

What is it about the indigenous of Chiapas?

The Bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, Samuel Ruiz, took a tour through his new diocese in 1962 and came to a realization, the same one that Bartolome de las Casas understood when he arrived in 1523: these people are already the children of god. That is, the Indian is so modest and generous and good that he or she only needs to be steered towards the door of the church, not corrected by it, and having spent a very little bit of time in the Bishop´s diocese, I must say that I agree.

Take last night for example. I found myself in the very fine plaza of Comitan de Domingez, around eleven p.m., feeling a little peckish. The square was nearly deserted, just a handful of teenagers and some Mariachis drifting around in the semi-darkness, making a few strains on the old mandolin. An old woman stood by her buckets, and modestly inquired if I was interested in a tamalito de mole or two.

Well indeed I was, and I sat myself down and tucked into a couple that she served me, still hot from the banana leaf each was wrapped in. And damn me if they weren´t the finest tameles de mole I´ve ever had in my whole meandering life of sordid travels. Eight pesos worth of pure gastronomic goodness. You´ll rarely find a more inept and unethusiastic traveler than I, but at that moment I felt the sweet taste of victory right there in el centro de Comitan. But that´s not the point I was trying to make.

The point was that this woman embodied all that is so good about the Mayans, the calmness, the grace, the absolute grandmotherly sweetness of that lady. Its these very traits that the Spanish conqistadores must have come across, and promptly set about raping, enslaving, and killing in just the way a good European will when they´re far from home and feeling relaxed. More recently, we can say with perhaps greater authority (which one always wants), these are the traits that have kept Chiapanecan indigenous people totally ignored by the political process, and totally exploited by the economic one.

Is this an attempt to blame the Mayans for the exploited misery that they have lived in for for five centuries, a nasty, backhanded compliment that nice guys finish last? Well, not exactly. Its more a comment on the behaviour of the mestizo society here in Mexico, which is of course little different from that of you-know-who in you-know-where. And still the Mayans keep their dignity.

(It must be said that most of the Mayan communities high in the highlands of the Lacandon forest and elsewhere really are scared witless of outsiders and want nothing to do with them, for very good reasons that you may have heard about already. But the need to make a peso or three drives many of them into town to sell whatever they can cobble together. The truth is, I don´t know a goddamn thing about what the Mayans are like with each other, just through the inevitiably limited interaction I´ve had buying a bottle of water, etc. But from that and a bit of reading I´m happily making sweeping generalizations. If you don´t like it, denounce me in front of the Comintern and satisfy yourselves by reading blog entries about the long-drop toilets of darkest Siberia, a freezing hell I´ll never see the end of.)