Viva Mexico, Nos Vemos

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I am leaving Mexico 2 months after arriving in Mexico City, having stayed 1 month longer than I had originally planned. I thought it fitting to express some final impressions of this country as I head south.

¨Over there--one argued to oneself-- were Chitzen Itza and Mitla and Palenque, the enormous tombstones of history, the archaeologists´Mexico; serapes and big hats and Spratling silver from Taxco to delight the tourist; for the historian relics of Cortes and the Conquistadores; for the art critic the Rivera and Orozco fescoes; and for the businessman there were the oil fields of Tampico, the silver mines of Pachuca, the coffee farms in Chiapas, and the banana groves of Tabasco. For the priest prison and for the politicians a bullet. You could buy a lot for your dollar, everyone said.¨

So wrote Graham Greene in his travellog of the 30´s called The Lawless Roads. How do you capture a country in words? To portray its essences, the mexicanisms, the positive and the negative, the people, the culture? How to not overgeneralize? I am much better at capturing places and things perhaps than the overwhelming task of representing PEOPLE and CULTURE. It is safer. The latter is a lot of responsibility.

Mexico is truly a mestizo culture, a mix of the ancient and the new, the old world and the new world, with one of the largest and most vibrant cities in the world and with parts of the rural countryside that hasn´t changed much in centuries. ¨Past epochs never vanish completely,¨writes Octavio Paz. These layers mix and shift and slide into each other, sometimes fruitfully, other times violently.

Mexico has been exciting, illuminating, at times frustrating, but beautiful, the people warm, generous, greeting with the kiss to the cheeks, fast to make friends, welcoming. To any would be travelers, I say, the world is so much more open than we have been lead to believe. It is rather easy to travel. If you want to do it, do it. Imagine someone saying, don´t go to the USA because an amish student killed somebody or there are hurricanes in the south and tornados in iowa and ohio and bears in the rockies. You will be mugged for sure in washington, d.c.!

We are so filled with fears.

I have made friends with many mexicans and have also met many interesting Dutch, French, German, Israeli, Czech, Italian, and British people. I have met Ozzies and Kiwis (from australia and New Zealand), and people from Hong Kong teaching me cantonese. (In case you were wonderng, the sound for 5 is just a closed mouth hum. But make an upward tone because a straight tone is NO.) It is no generalization to say we americans/norteamericanos are put to shame by our language deficiencies...Europeans are naturals and they learn growing up and in college multiple languages. I was shocked when told by Liliana--who sees a lot of foreigners go through here--that I was the only norteamericano she had met who speaks spanish and wants to learn more!!

For me, the food can be monotonous unless you are in a place like San Cristobal or mexico city. It is not as bad as Graham Greene says, ¨It is all a hideous red and yellow, green and brown, like art needlework and the sort of cusions popular among decayed gentlewomen in british teashops.¨ But when it comes down to it, Mexicans eat cheese and corn and pig and chicken, with garnishes of more cheese, creams, tomatoes (here called jitomatos), guacamole, onions. Sopes, quesadillas, and enchiladas are really the same thing to me with different arrangements of the same substances. These are the restaurants. Of course you can find lots of fresh fruits and vegetables in the markets.

I have had to get used to certain things, like the chicle/gum boys, the breastfeeding in public, the not opening of places at the advertised time.

In the short time I was here, I have attempted to learn as much as possible about the people, the history, the politics, the language and have come out of it learning much more than I had imagined. I haven´t yet left one country and I feel I already have a deeper understanding of the world. There are things that you learn while travelling that can´t really be expressed in words. You absorb things consciously and unconsciously. You are changed from the inside out. As you respond to the changing realities outside, you inevitably adjust internally as well. I have tried to remain open and spontaneous, willing to change my plans, willing to learn different things, willing to meet new people and learn from them. My goal has been and still is to understand this world and understand what it means to be human. And while I´m not sure such a thing is entirely possible, I am sure that without traveling the world such a goal remains that much more elusive and difficult.

My travels have been blessed, without a hitch. After getting sick those few days with giardia parasite in San Miguel de Allende, I haven´t had so much as a stomach ache. But I expected to get sick. Apart from a few near misses by buses and cars, I have not encountered any danger. Violence and crime exist and are real possibilities if you stumble into the wrong places, like anywhere, but I haven´t seen any. (I did hear a couple stories of travelers getting pick-pocketed on the metro in DF and a girl whose purse was stolen in Guatemala). On two occasions, overzealous men have talked to me and grabbed my arm. I don´t know what they were selling or begging for, but I let them know in no uncertain terms that their efforts were unacceptable. For some reason, I don´t like strangers touching me. A nice, firm¨Fuck Off!¨ has universal meaning.

These things apply just as much in east st. louis, NYC, etc. as here. The main thing is I don´t wander in unlit areas by myself. If i notice anybody, especially if it is a group of young men, taking undue interest in me, i go the other way. Pretty simple. I think you have to try pretty hard to get mugged. But if it happens, so be it...

The first principle of travel (or as thich naht hanh would put it, first mindfulness training): don´t expect things to go your way. ¨you mean you expected the bus to get there on time?¨ You mean you expected not to get caught out in the rain after dark? You mean you expected your ride to take you off the mountain? Cultivating an attitude of radical acceptance to what comes my way, positive or negative, which are mental projections anyway. Let the world be the world. You never know when a presumed negativity opens other doors like it did in amecameca. Like a friend of mine says to whatever comes, ¨Just the way I like it.¨

That being said I am just a human, and there are also irritating things about mexico...the obnoxiousess of their noisemaking, mostly. I´ve commented on this, but I don´t think you REALLY understand so I am going to belabor the point. Strategically placed speakers blare at ridiculous volumes. It´s like Mexicans just discovered speakers and are attempting to test their absolute maximum wattage. They manifest themselves in three primary places: stores, plazas, and cars. The stores are trying to get peoples´attention to come inside. they don´t know it has the opposite effect. They play the radio, which at least once every half hour plays this unbearable mexican ballad by alejandro santiago that girls swoon over and shakira´s ¨dance like this...hips something¨... Can a person die of of hearing a song too many times? Yes, I think it´s called cancion-itis. The plaza speakers are more rare and usually come out on Sundays for political or religious messages.

Finally, the cars. I´m not talking about your average youth blaring his bass with the windows down. That´s universal and tolerable. Here VW bugs periodically stroll the streets, usually in the late afternoon to evenings, speakers attached to the roof, blaring its message, usually advertising something for sale. Add to this the trucks that carry LP tanks that drag behind them metal balls that scrapes the street, like the metal talons of demons on the fiery souls of hell. I am just too damn sensitive too noise. That being said there is the absence of the the general hum of highways and industrial buzz that characterizes are cities. Even at my country paradise out in Ohio I could hear the hum of the interstate. I haven´t encountered that here.

But there is no point complaining about the little things, especially when you see people who have near to nothing living near the edge of existence. Though nothing like I saw in India and i haven´t been to central america yet. It is a reality check. You realize how little you need to exist and to be content.

What is poverty? It is a very subjective word. Poverty compared to what? What do we really ¨need¨? Many of the things we call poverty are not. No microwave or hot water or satellite tv? My experience is that many people without most modern ¨conveniences¨ and live with basic shelter and food are doing just fine. Who is to say they are any less or more miserable or content than we are? Aren´t there other factors more important to a decent life?

Now I am not one of those romantizers of poverty either, like some I people I meet. When there are ramshackle shelters and hunger and dirty water and disease and high infant mortality it is not pretty. That I call poverty.

I was at a cafe yesterday and ordered a coffee and cinammon roll...I had just sat down and two kids came up to me to sell little wooden, painted animals, very ugly. (the animals, not the kids) This happens all the time, especially in the plazas, with crafts and shoeshiner boys and women with beautiful shawls and cotton and wool textiles. They want to lower the price, now 20, now 15, now 10, as if that is the obstacle to my stubborn refusal to buy. It´s not the price, I want to say. The crafts are often worth far higher prices, and I would happily pay more. Its that I don´t want or need those things. These and beggars will sometimes come when you are at a cafe or restaurant. You might think this is annoying, but isn´t that the best time to beg? That´s when I would do it, when these tourists and mexicans are filling their bellies. Why not give them an opportunity to fill their consciences, too?

How many times can you eat a full meal when there are bare-foot hungry humans outside on the streets? How many times can I log in and pay for the Internet?

That moment, when they are mere objects, not people, drives a subtle wedge in your soul. Oh, with practice one can ignore the uneasiness it causes, drive it down deeper and deeper, like a thorn caught in one´s fleshy point between the forefinger and the thumb, you can´t remove it so you let it submerge itself. Maybe, you think, in time it will work its way out. Sometimes it does. At times you completely forget it is there....other times it is painfully present

I have struggled with this since India. There it was necessary for me to shut off as a human being in order to survive emotionally and psychically. There it was just too much, too many showcases of human suffering and cruelty. One can drown in feeling TOO much. So to survive you flip the switch. But when you shut off, a part of you dies as well. One can also drown in one´s own inhumanity...like being turned inside out. The depth of this feeling hasn´t occurred in Mexico, but I can feel it crawling on my skin and I want to prepare myself for Guatemala.

But there are no easy answers or responses. You can´t give to everybody or save the world. So I have finally come to a decision. Are you ready? It is radical! I give when I feel like it and don´t when I don´t. Is that whimsical? I use my judgment and my mood.

Through the course of a day I give about the equivalent of $2-3 to those who seem to really need it. I didn´t buy those animals or textiles from the boys. Nor to the roving school children who ask for your signature and some pesos ¨for school supplies¨. I did however give 20 pesos to an older bare-foot Indian woman (they are ALL INDIAN...to the last, throughout all of mexico) Her name was Maria Lopez. And to the man who had a work accident and he showed me his scars and the tube that was sticking out of him. His name was something like Menchu.

I ALWAYS ask their name and about themselves. They sometimes seem shocked someone would care to know. To know and treat them as a humans, instead objects of pity and irritation, swatting them away like so many mosquitoes: How dare you interrupt my reading or my dinner!

Or worse: not treat them at all. Invisible.

What is $2 to me?

When Maria left an SUV came around the corner and drive up the hill. On the back was a christ-fish. the juxtaposition was alarming. The more you see of the world the more ridiculous a fish looks on the back of an SUV! It is hard to explain. More than ridiculous, it is amusing...no, not amusing, it is tragic, blasphemous....scandalous.

The person that fish supposedly represents would find them strange and hypocritical. The person that fish representswould be with maria, not in the back of that Ford (or in the co-pilot seat as some would have it). For the price of that SUV a whole town could be fed for months. That vague fish cries out, ¨give away your possessions!¨ I´M not saying do THAT, to give up your desires, but for god´s sake, think about what that fish means besides personal salvation.

This is what I think as I sip my coffee. I don´t have my roll because I just gave it away to Ibida, an adolescent tzotzil girl who was clearly hungry. So I reached into my bag for some peanuts.

But also in my bag besides cacahuates: an Ipod (video too!) and a digital camera and a cell phone. Plus all i need to power them....batteries and cables, etc. With the contents of my small day pack I could feed many people for months. My cell phone bell last month probably could have fed Maria and Ibida for weeks.

¨You hypocritical asshole!¨ I say to myself. But then I assuage my conscience by saying, ¨But then again I never claimed to be a follower of the fish. I never put a damn fish on my car.¨

Once a mexican I befriended asked me, ¨Why does everybody take drugs in estados unidos?¨ I was surprised at her question; i thought she was referring to marijuana or cocaine. ¨No, sabes, para el deprimetido.¨ Ah, for depression. Anti-depressants. Her impression was that americans had everything in the world, big cars and houses and tvs and computers but we were all overworked and anxious and depressed and that´s why we go to the doctor for drugs.

I said not everybody is like that, but I agreed that it was an issue. I said i thought we had two major addictions: ¨El Prozac y la biblia.¨ Prozac and the bible. How many Mayans do you think take prozac? But they do have their rituals and shamans. It has always interested me that Americans have the most affluent society ever and are also hyper-religious yet also an abundance of depression and violence and suicide. So we have beautiful things and beautiful gods...yet are still discontent? Think of the number of people you know who have switched from drugs to religion or vice versa.

Don´t get me wrong, I´m sure Prozac and la biblia have helped many people in positive ways, but I told her I have never felt the need for either of those. I prefered to experience the world as it is, the full twisted range, even with all its dark, low valleys of depression and the ectatic high mountains of joy, rather than the solid but sure plain of fabricated hope and manfufactured content. (some of you will have recognized the play on chomsky there)

Octavio Paz compares mexico to america: ¨they (usa) believe in hygeine, health, work, and contentment, but perhaps they have never experienced true joy, which is an intoxication, a whirlwind. In the hubbub of a fiesta night our voices explode into brilliant lights and life and death mingle together, while their vitality becomes a fixed smile that denies old age and death but that changes life to a motionless stone.¨ (Labrynth of Solitude, 24) I don´t think this is true as a generalized characterization of the two cultures, but there is something about that last line that rings true.

We think that if we aren´t humming nicely with a fixed smile of the celebrities and magazine beauties at 10,000 feet, that if we dip below some random altitude of happiness, there is a problem. A problem!?

Did you think we were born to wear a permanent smile on this earth? Do we really want a permanent smile?

Do you think americans have a denial about death and old age and the all the wonderful imperfections of life...do we try are damned-est to erase, whiten, inject, cover-up, or otherwise ignore them? We call them imperfections because we think life can be perfected if only, if only, if only, if only.....But in truth those imperfections are only life as it is.

Remember: Mexicans bring out (and celebrate) the hideous-humorous images of the dead at the end of this month.

The novelist Graham Greene travelled to Mexico in the 1930´s. It was a different Mexico then. He writes about his experiences in The Lawless Roads, a depressing and cynical travellog with some good writing and occasional flashes of insight. But he was a British outsider on assignment during a dark and brutal period, when the zealous revolutionary government was suppressing the Church: churches were closed, priests were forbidden on pain of imprisonment and death from performing masses and wearing religious symbols.

Graham traveled a near identical route as me, only without the benefit of modern mexico´s efficient bus and highway system, hostel network, internet connections, and bottled water. It was interesting to follow along on his path, which was my own, until he reached his destination, San Cristobal, my own final destination in Mexico.

Writing about Mexico, Paz said that during his 2-year stay in the US he had clearer insights and reflections about Mexico. I find there is truth to that. Sometimes you understand things better from the outside rather from the inside. It allows for perspective. I remembered having that experience upon going to India. It also allows you to have perspective on yourself, without the defining limitations of your society, family, friends, and peers.

But Mexico like everywhere has many social and political ills. Today is October 2nd and the anniversary of the government massacre of students in 1968 at Tloleco. A young band plays in the zocola in fron of the church playing Green Day and Rage against the machine with banners saying they will never forget and declaring their support for the Oaxanan struggle and Zapatistas. As I write, there are Navy helicopters flying over Oaxaca city where the APPO, union of teachers and others have shut down the city since May. They are doing routine surveillence the goverment says. Some fear a confrontation. Meanwhile Lopez Obrador is making his rounds through the states. Meanwhile the wounds of indians fester in the jungle. There is always the lurking possibility of revolution here it seems.

I can´t pretend to really understand these problems or know what the solutions may be.

But the people and economy and cultures of US and Mexico are inextricable linked. It seems to me that if we remain in denial about that we both lose. It must be remembered that what we call USA has been longer Spanish (liguistically, geographically, culturally) than English. I invite all our senators and business men and especially xenophobes and reactionary nativists to Chiapas for 2 weeks. If you want to understand the immigration issue, please come to the south. There are no walls or filters that can stop the people from seeking jobs in usa. It is rather interesting that the same people who are reactionary anti-immigrationists are often same ones who support economic policies that contribute to the stream of humanity going north. Similarly, Mexican has their immigrant problem, with Guatemalans crossing their southern border. Like all our national problems, we have to start looking at the ROOT, not the symptom. We have to consider the effects of policy on farmers here who are forced off their lands and find their way to the city or across the border. What would we do?

But ultimately I didn´t experience the Mexico of writers Graham Greene or Octavio Paz, nor even of my fellow travelers. I didn´t share Greene´s hatred and not-subtle cynicism. He hated the food, he hated the nature, he hated the people. I think he hated life. Nor did I encounter Paz´s hidden, masked, mexican, hesitant to outsiders.

In fact, I experienced the opposite, an interesting, vibrant, friendly mexico. I only experienced my own Mexico. Ultimately it is subjective. Ultimately the traveler is just one ego floating through time and space absorbing and reacting, absorbing and reacting. Just like life.

Okay, I must go south now. This will be my last entry for a while.

I have to cross some borders and unmask some villains.

I will definitely be returning to you, Mexico, Hasta Luego!

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Photos

What?
I saw these fat pharmaceuticos in every town that I went.

Liliana at Natura Cafe
A cafe that buys exclusively from chiapaneco oragnic coffee growers. Liliana also works with local Mayan women with their crafts and gives workshops on organic, sustainable practices. Even better they didn´t play Shakira here.

Maxi
Boys and girls like this selling Mayan handicrafts are ubiquitous in San Cristobal. This boys´name was Maxi and his mother made these belts and wristbands.

Comments

[Tom M.]

la biblia = prozac
facsinating, Ryan, I am really enjoying this. It makes me want to ask for a sabbatical and go off somewhere... perhaps not Mexico. Every dept. and program at Sinclair is being asked to write up a report justifying its existence (or more precisely, its budget) ... by December 15... aren't you glad you're not here?