Unfolding Stories

To freedom, and peace in Oaxaca

It is a great last evening.  Capturing so much of the experience of being here.

We start off visiting a friend's house to see her two new grandchildren, both born in the short time I have been in Oaxaca.  The women admire the little ones, take photos, wonder at how much they've grown already.  The babies sleep, cry, feed, burp milk onto my skirt.

We stop off en route to the town centre to drop some keys with a forgetful teenager.  She works at the large shopping mall near where I live.  It is packed with shoppers this weekend shortly before Xmas, driving slowly past this most Americanized of zones, Macdonalds, KFC, Burger King, looking for somewhere to park.

We head into town and this is the first time some of my friends have been across this junction in months.  It was a key battle ground and one of the last bastions of the APPO.  Now it is only blocked with traffic.

When we get to the centre there are barriers back across the main streets leading into the zocalo.  Wire barriers, lines of police, ambulances, fire engines.  There are rumours of trouble today and tomorrow.  Threats from the APPO that they will stop the Christmas festival "the night of the radishes".  A last throw of the dice perhaps.  Most people think it will come to nothing.  The protest seems muted - not least as most of their leaders are in prison.  The teachers have turned their back on them.  But still, the police are taking no chances.

And our last evening together is, fittingly, in the zocalo.  I guess the town square is still quieter than it would be on a normal December evening.  There are still riot police wandering about the square.  But tonight, for the first time, it feels like the place it is meant to be.  Men are putting up the stages to display the radish artworks for tomorrow's festival.  Small children play on the staging, running freely, laughing happily until well past midnight.  It is warm enough to sit outside.  The pavement cafes are thronged with people.  There are not too many tourists here and it is a night for Oaxacans to greet Oaxacans.  Businessmen, politicians, public figures, their wives and lovers are pointed out to me.  Everyone greets and waves.  My friends smile with satisfaction and pleasure.  This is the first time in six months they have been free to sit here and take a quiet evening drink.  It is hard to convey how much this means to them.

And they are proud and happy to be able to share this moment with me before I leave.  I am treated to a lethal tequila cocktail, coffee, cheese laden tacos, pizza with chilli sauce.  They breathe in their new found liberty.  We make a toast.  What else could it be?

"To freedom.  And peace in Oaxaca"

Human rights

And someone mentions the international team of human rights observers who are in Oaxaca to observe the situation.  The rest of the table erupts in fury.  Why are they protecting the rights of people who have hijacked buses, burnt buildings, held the city hostage?  What about our human rights?  The right to go to school, to university, to work, to cross the city without having masked men demand money from you, the right to walk the streets at night, to go out of an evening, to enjoy a coffee in the zocalo?  Who's asking about our human rights?  My friends mutter angrily into their drinks.  Someone else mentions the protest in Edinburgh in support of the Oaxacan teachers.  They latch on to this at first in astonishment, then delight.  "You can be our ambassador!" they decide.  You can create your own protest, set up a barricade, you've seen how it's done.  Tell them what's really going on. 

This would be hard.  Even after 10 weeks here it's impossible to work out what's really going on.  But I'm with them on one thing for sure.  The politicians, the journalists, the human rights observers, the international networks of radical protest groups - they all portray the conflict as being two sided, a fight between the protestors, and the state government.  The third and most important group - the people of Oaxaca - are by and large invisible and unheard.

And so my friends try and continue with the business of living.  Slowly getting back to normal.  To work, to study, to school. 

Tired.  Frustrated.  Angry.  Cynical.  Broke. 

Ignored.

Slow walk around Jaltepec

And Magdalena Jaltepec might on first appearances seem like a sleepy little town with not a lot to see or do.  But if you take a slow walk around town on a hot sunny day in late December you'll be amazed at what you find...

We start out from the museum, crossing the quiet town square.  There's a Christmas "posada" outside one of the houses, a representation of Mary and Joseph looking for shelter before the birth.  It will finally move to its church home at midnight on Christmas Eve.

We turn up to the new highway, "a dream" for the more remote communities of Jaltepec, shortening their journey time and connecting them with the villages and towns of the Mixteca beyond.  But my poet-builder friend also tuts and frets at the inadequacy of the work and the shoddy design that will lead to flooding when the heavy rains come.

Our goal is the village graveyard or "pantheon" on the edge of the town.   It's like exploring a miniature Mexican village including a full blown class structure.  A simple pile of stones for the poorest residents, the majority enjoying a reddish flat stone.  The richest or most powerful families display their wealth with mock chapels, ranging from beautiful to tacky to what can only be described as grotesque.

We meander down towards the river and the farm where my friend used to work.  There are pumpkins sitting out to dry, split open so the seeds will catch the sun.  Piles of corn husks.  Beans waiting to be threshed. 

The farm owner, the señor who taught him how to work the land, is butchering a large animal with the help of two of his grandsons.  Snarling dogs prowl the yard, guarding the meat.  His wife is washing the intensines, throwing blood-favoured water for the hens and turkeys to peck.

We finish up walking past the school, named after a local ruler ("8-tiger"), inscribed - as all the schools are - with a great quote: we write our own destiny.  The kids are out playing football, wearing sweatshirts and long trousers in a defiance of heat that all teenagers here seem to share.

And finally meander back up to the town square.  Empty band stand.  Nursery children clutching home made Christmas decorations.  Old folk passing the time of day. Church roof blushing in the sun.

Downtown Jaltepec on a busy Thursday afternoon

A poet's eyes

If you want a good guide, try asking around for the local poet.  My Jaltepec poet has opened my eyes to the world of the Mexican countryside.  I have never before encountered such an enthusiastic companion. 

We sit waiting for lunch in the town square.  Look at this!  he says.  And we watch, transfixed, at an army of ants hard at work.

Walking along the dry fields of maize I am tiring in the hot sun.  Let's go down here and look at this, he says, it's really interesting.  And it is.

It's just a pile of beans, drying in the sun.  But he starts to explain the process.  Drying the beans.  How the animals will walk round this circle, threshing the plants.  The white beans will fall to the ground, and then be sifted before sale.  And I can see it all, the animals turning, the beans falling, the hard grind of the peasant farmers, the low price of the beans, the need for their sons to find work in Mexico or the US, the beans arriving at my breakfast table, sustaining me throughout the day.

And suddenly the pile of dry plants is not just a pile of beans.  It's...poetry, of course. 

Exploring

And this I have learnt from my son: that it is better to explore one place than keep on travelling.  In ten weeks I could have covered a lot of ground, filed round palaces and pyramids, ticked off countries I wanted to visit. 

But then I wouldn't have had the chance to explore the state of (being in) Oaxaca.  Become familiar with the grid of streets in the city, the highways of the central valleys. 

Learnt to consider Jaltepec as my own.  Clocking different aspects of the hill as I move round the village.  Delight at catching a glimpse of the red roof of the church framed with a deep blue sky.  The smile of recognition at the sight of Tia Maria's comedor through the arches of the bandstand.

Made new friends.  Found a second home.  A place I know I can always come back to, and be welcome.

Expanse

And it has been amazing to have had such an expanse of time to be here.   To let things unfold. 

To have had the chance to explore such a wide, open, expansive countryside. 

To do things I could never have imagined doing on my own.

Feeling powerful, free, expansive.....limitless.

Lightness

I have finally handed over the three copies of the inventory and discs with photos and documents.   Over 500 pages with photos, descriptions, and references to the person who donated the object.  A good end product.  But a heavy weight to be carrying around with me the last few days. 

'And somehow I remember this is no. 334'

Strap marks

My feet are stained brown and white from the weeks of walking these hot streets in my sandals.  It will be some time before I can wear them again.  But a good while before the strap marks fade...

Missing (II)

The things that I will miss seem cliched somehow, but nonetheless true.

The warmth.  Day after day of warm, strong sunshine.  Cool evenings and nights.

The colour.  Women's dresses of yellow, red, green, blue.  Christmas decorations fluttering in the wind.  Red ribbons in plaits of thick black hair.  Chillies piled high in the market: all shades of reds and greens.   Turquoise paint in the freshly renovated colonial town centre.

A hearty breakfast that will leave me without hunger pangs for seven hours.

Walking down Calle Alcala in the December sunshine and suddenly thinking:  Here I am in the middle of this great continent of America.

The warmth of the welcome.  I still can't get over this.  I have just finished my presents shopping at a small outlet in the centre of town, selling goods made by female artesans in the countryside around Oaxaca city.  The shopkeeper chatters to me as we go along, encouraging me, gently, to buy different things.  By the end she is popping little extras into my bag ("I can't take it with me when I'm dead...").  Once finished we are firm friends and she asks me, as all Oaxacenas do, not if but when I will be coming back.  As I leave she gives me a hug and a kiss goodbye.  My eyes sting with tears.

But I think what I will miss most is the noise.  The constant backdrop of happy, infectious Mexican band music.  The crash of cohetes.  The call of the water seller, honk of the gas man, chimes of the rubbish collectors.  Men whistling to each other in place of shouts as they work.  Bus conductors thumping the side of the bus to count the passengers on and off.  Their shouts as the bus trundles past.  "Mitla!" "Tlacolula!"  "Oaxaca! Oaxaca!"

Colour, creativity and warmth of welcome: women's artesan market in Oaxaca 

Missing (1)

Things I won't miss: 

Pavements strewn with obstacles so I have to look down at my feet, not up at the beautiful coloured buildings.

Drivers who don't signal before they turn.  Buses belching dark smoke.  Cars who edge along bumper to bumper at junctions leaving no room for pedestrians to cross.  Drivers who never walk anywhere and have no concept of what it means to be a pedestrian.

Dogs roaming the streets.

Having to eat meat out of politeness.

Toilets that don't flush.  Toilets with no toilet paper.  Toilets built for much smaller people so there's no room for your knees.

The policy in the pueblos to open the gents toilets and leave the ladies' locked.  (I think this is based on the idea that women don't use the public space - except on special occasions).  Using the gents' toilets in the pueblos.

Uptight housewives pushing past me in Chedraui, elbows out, refusing eye contact.

Undrinkable tap water.  The reddish brown water that sometimes comes trickling out of the tap.

Not much after 10 weeks in a different world.  And things you can learn to live with, even so.