Unfolding Stories

Long road from Llano Grande

I wake in the freezing cold in Llano Grande, 9500 feet above sea level.  Heading outside to the ecological toilet is a bit of a shock to the system, but the sun soon starts to warm the air and the frozen ground.  By the time I start walking in an hour I'll be too hot again.  Breakfast is heavenly, never mind the cold of the unheated cafe: coffee, thick brown bread, tortilla with cheese, beans and a hot salsa.  The three hour walk to Cuajimoloyas is with a local guide, a 16 year old boy who lives in Llano Grande (pop. 58), goes to school at Cuajimoloyas and works with the local ecotourism project http://www.sierranorte.org.mx/en/home.htm  at the weekend.  He's a good guide - knows all the best places to take photos and most importantly safe places to stop and have a rest (no prickly cactus plants or scary animals).  Saturday's walk was over 5 hours, so I needed plenty of places to stop for a breather.

Llano Grande panorama

We arrive in Cuajimoloyas at 1.30, in plenty of time for the bus back to Oaxaca which is due 'between 2 and 3'.  I sit in the sun at the side of a small shop, and enjoy lunch of a sandwich and grapefruit juice.  Amazingly enough there's an internet cafe here, so a chance to catch up with the news from Oaxaca.  Not good: Saturday's march turned into a major conflict between the PFP and the APPO, with the marchers trying to surround the police, the police taking the APPO base at Santo Domingo, protestors setting fire to cars, buses and a lot of buildings in the centre of town, and the APPO leader declaring the situation uncontrollable on Saturday night.  It seems as if the situation is calmer on Sunday morning, but yet again I don't know what I'll be going back to when I return to Oaxaca.

Meanwhile back in the mountains, no sign of the bus. Plenty of people waiting so I know I'm in the right place, a group of young people up hiking for the weekend, an old lady who keeps me company on the pavement at the side of the road.  3pm comes and goes.  The bus will be here soon, she promises.  ("Ahorita" - a favourite expression here - with no fixed end point or indication of when soon might be).  4pm comes and goes - still no sign of the bus and my companion is starting to look less optimistic.  Sometimes it doesn't come, she confesses.  By 4.30 it's clear the bus isn't going to turn up, and it's another two hours wait to the next one.  (If there is a next one).  It will start to get cold again soon.

The group of students hail a passing truck and thanks to good old Mexican hospitality we cadge a lift all the way back to Oaxaca.  As gringo girl I'm invited to sit inside.  The driver (thankfully) doesn't speak at all, except to exchange a few words in Zapotec with his elderly companion. He's concentrating on getting his cargo of 6 students in the back safely down the winding road.  The journey downhill is beautiful in the evening light and I'd happily sit in silence and soak in the view.  His friend is intrigued by me though, and is keen to hear about my trip to the mountains, and what I'm doing in Oaxaca.  Am I from Canada he asks.  I explain where I´m from, then later he tries again: is Scotland close to Canada? Well in some ways I suppose except for the mighty Atlantic in between.  Finally as we get close to the city he wonders if I've ever been to Alaska...?

The journey home

These kind companions take us back to Oaxaca in half the time it would take the bus, and we manage to get back before dark.  No sign of trouble.  I hail a taxi and the taxi driver is phlegmatic, everything's quiet here.  (I think they must be paid by the tourist board to say this.  No taxi driver has ever admitted to any problems here.)  I get home, greeted by a rapturous dog, and a quick, simple supper.  The temperature has risen again, or maybe it just feels hot after the bracing climate of the mountains.  I go out in sandals for the first time in a week.  We have a quiet evening playing dominoes at a neighbours house.  People swap news of what's happened, shock at the damage done to the city they love, tales of businesses that will go under with no insurance to pay out, opinions about what might happen next, satisfaction that the police at last are acting to protect their interests, to allow them and their city to live in peace.  All of this is interspersed with cups of coffee, copious supplies of biscuits, admiration of the Christmas decorations (Christmas starts early here...), plans for a baby shower, jokes, laughter and shouts of cheat! at the dominoes.  An attempt to keep going as normal, to distract each other from the harshness of the situation. 

And whatever the trials of the situation here, after a long trip into the hills, two days walking, a freezing cold night, a crazy trip back, it feels so good to be home in Oaxaca.

Cheese sandwich

When is a cheese sandwich not a cheese sandwich?  When it's a Mexican torta, made from ever so slightly toasted bread, two halves of a roll laid flat on the warm top of the oven, insides spread with beans, stringy 'quesillo' cheese from Oaxaca, then layers of tomato, onion, lettuce, avocado, and a couple of slices of chili.  When you´re having a picnic in strong alpine sunshine in the Sierra Norte on the last Saturday in November.  When you've travelled 2 and a half hours in the bus to get to Llano Grande and walked for 2 and a half hours to get to this rock.  When you're perched on the rock looking out across pueblitos, woods, mountains, high above the clouds, sitting on top of the world.

Reading the news

Keeping up to date on the situation is a must here, though it´s hard to work out the most trustworthy sources of information.  TV news is pretty dire - they show the same video footage over and over again, cut to create the most alarming and dramatic impression possible.  There´s no TV news at the weekend.  (This is beyond me). There are two regional papers and this is the first place that most people look.  Both papers though take clear political sides, one supporting the governor (and said to be in his pay) and one more leftist.  The main problem for me is the style in which they are written - dense Spanish with a lot of coded references that are hard for a learner to unpick.  I´ve also failed to get used to the lurid 'police news' section, with close up pictures of corpses and the victims of crime...

Buying a paper isn´t the norm that it is in the UK though.  Partly because people get fed up with the bias in the coverage - no-one believes anything in the news, or anything a politician says - but also because the 5 or 7 pesos for a daily paper (about 25p) is more than most people can afford to pay.  They will check the front pages at the news stand though, or read other people's papers.  (I was reading a paper in the zocalo on Friday, trying to work out what the police were up to as there was a lot of movement going on, and was amused to find a family of four standing reading the news over my shoulder). 

There are occasional English language news stories on the net (Guardian Unlimited seems to have the most interest in Mexico - we only seem to hit the BBC when the situation gets particularly hot).  The easiest website for me to follow is that of the Universal based in Mexico City - short reports, updated by the minute (good for keeping track of marches and police activity) and lots of photos.

But mainly people rely on networks of family and friends - swapping updates, phoning each other from different parts of the city, confirming or denying 'news' reports - and you learn to sift the information from these sources too, based on what else you know about your informant, how much you trust them, what side of the movement they're on.

Catching the headlines

Cold snap

It’s unusually cold here just now – down to 4 degrees last night, unheard of in Oaxaca, and a challenge in a world without warm clothes or any form of heating. It’s almost replaced ‘the situation’ as the favourite topic of conversation. Yet even the weather has a political edge here. They speculate that the cold kept crowds away from Obrador’s alternative swearing in ceremony in Mexico on Monday (the crowd was big, but not mega big). The cold APPO protestors had to leave their tents outside Santo Domingo for the night. Someone burnt them down when they were away. And the cold policemen of the PFP were busy buying gloves, scarves and jumpers in the stores around the zocalo on Monday when they were suddenly called to duty, running out of the shops to pick up their riot gear. Pure Oaxaca.

Political space

I venture for the first time today to the ‘APPO’ zone in the square outside the cathedral of Santo   Domingo. It’s quiet and peaceful when I’m there. Lots of small groups of people, an increase in the level of graffiti on the walls leading up to the zone, political placards, people with flyers and books, a few covered stalls like the colourful country markets. I can hear the sound of shouting though, of people marching, protesting. I can’t work out where the noise is coming from, there’s no sign of any marches. Then I realize that one of the groups is watching a TV showing video highlights of the ‘struggle’, the battles between the APPO and the federal police, key moments from news coverage. The revolution as seen on TV.

On the stalls leading away from Santo Domingo people are selling cheap home-made CDs of this footage alongside t-shirts bearing APPO logos, key dates in the battle, the face of Che. Seems there’s money to be made anywhere, even on the edges of a modern urban revolution.

Five minutes down the hill there’s a different political space – different atmosphere, different ideology. Different things being sold. Here the federal police are guarding the entrances to the zocalo, for five months the encampment of the APPO. Now it’s the police quarters – they can’t leave or the square would be retaken, so they have to eat, work, sleep here. There are rows of mobile toilets. Riot equipment lined up on the streets ready for use. Hammocks and two-man tents in the gardens of the square. And the resourceful locals are here too, selling food, warm items of clothing, polishing the policemen`s boots.
Buying and selling, it’s everywhere in Oaxaca, and it’s what binds these two spaces together. The unmistakable, unswerving need to make a living, whatever the circumstances, whatever the ideology.

Making a living: cleaning boots in the zocalo

Cactus beauty

Flying from Mexico to Oaxaca I happen upon one of Milton Erickson´s teaching tales. He suggests that his client go to the botanical gardens, look at the cactus plants, and see what he sees. And every day I am in the state of Oaxaca I see another cactus plant, and stop, and look, and see what I see. Resilience. Wild beauty. Nutrients. Healing. Knowledge from the past. Ridiculous combinations of plant and tree. Tall cactus plants shooting up into the sky. Frames for the landscape. Sharp, tearing thorns. Bearers of outrageous fruit and flowers. A refusal to be dull and lifeless. Standing proud in the arid landscape and just. Being.

Standing tall

New life

The second time I call in to the Learning Centre on Calle Murgia I get to meet the owner and director I guess. He is in an interesting guy, looks 60 but is at least 70. He has been in Oaxaca for over ten years running this learning centre. He used to be a high heidjun in the government of San Francisco, running AIDS programmes in the 1980s, a big job. I ask him what brought him to Oaxaca.

I´d retired from my job, he tells me. My partner had just died. I came here for a few months break. And I just thought - wow. I love it here. I love being with the people. They´re so - themselves. Working hard to make a living. It was such a relief to get away from upper middle class managers. I felt like I was coming back to earth. And suddenly it was like there was a possibility of a new life opening up again. And the old, dead life - friends, networks, the big house I had ready for my retirement - held no appeal. And so I stayed. And I don't know if you've ever had that feeling when you realize that your old life is over, and you have to leave it behind, and suddenly, out of nowhere a new life opens up, right in front of you, and you just know it's time to change?

I can only smile in response.

The road to Yagul

The bus driver drops me on the carretera at the junction with the road to Yagul. I cross the highway and look up at the road stretching head. I start walking. There’s not a soul in sight. No people, no cars, no houses, no men working in the fields. Nothing. Just fields and rocks and cactus plants. For the first time since I have arrived in Oaxaca I ask myself what on earth I am doing here. I keep walking. The shape in front of me turns into an angry, barking dog. Keep walking. Pretend not to be scared (heart thumping). The dog is guarding a solitary house, and there is a boy in the yard carrying a gun. I guess he’s going to scare off the dog if he needs to, but I can’t be sure. None of the rules, the norms, the behaviour that I have learnt will help me here. I keep walking. I want to go back, but that means walking past the angry dog. I start climbing uphill. Another shape turns out to be a man walking down from the ruins, clearly European. I ask him in Spanish if it’s far to Yagul. He smiles. Just five minutes more, at that bend in the road. I breathe out and relax. It’s not much further. I am not the only insane solitary European walking along this lonely road in the middle of nowhere hoping to see some dusty ruins.

I keep climbing, reach Yagul, look back down the road to the highway. It’s nothing. A fifteen minute walk back. The dog’s back in his yard. I enjoy exploring the ruins but in some ways they’re less interesting than that short, scary, exhilarating walk.

The road to Yagul

Sunday market

Tlacolula is a major market town – and transport interchange - about 30 minutes drive from here. On Sundays it hosts a market, known as the day of the ‘tianguis’ (the coloured material that cover the stalls). Taking photos can’t do justice to the sights, sounds, smells of Tlacolula Sunday market. Tlacolula is…….Stalls piled high with fresh fruit, vegetables, chilies.
Shoppers exchanging news in Zapotec.
The square outside the church heaving with people talking, relaxing, but mainly eating street food after the exertions of exchange.
Feeling conspicuous as the only gringo girl in town.
A boy walking goats through the main aisle of the market.
The air thick with the smoke from chickens frying in a pan.
Sing along Mexican dance music pulsating from cheap CD stalls.
Overlaid with a microphone voice-over promising the best prices in town (there’s an Only Fools and Horses feel to the place despite the romance of the country market).
Girls, women, old ladies in brightly coloured traditional dress, mixing turquoise, bright red, orange.
Women walking slowly but happily with heavy baskets of goods on their heads.
Old women with long, grey hair plaited with beautiful ribbons of reds,blues and greens.
Girls carrying large, fat, (live) hens.
Fresh flowers wrapped in newspaper, with brief cuttings of the weekend news (`conflict in
Oaxaca might spread…´)
The bus back to Oaxaca packed with people.
An assault on all your senses, immersion in a place that is a million miles from home.

Bus jacking

I am standing on the road outside Chedraui, wondering if the buses to Mitla are still going down this road. They did once, but the barricades ahead make it more complicated. As I am watching the traffic I see six men walking down the middle of the road. This is what grabs my attention first. It’s a pretty dangerous thing to do. Then I realize they are wearing masks, and that they are young men from the APPO stronghold near the university. They flag down a lorry, and the driver heads off for a side route, his vehicle to become part of a barricade. It takes the bus driver longer. As the passengers get off, they stop and wait for their money back. Everyone is waiting, the driver, the passengers, the watchers on the site of the road, the angry young men in masks waving hand made bazookas. And it seems to be understood by everyone that you can push things so far, but no further. Asking people to get off their bus is one thing. Getting them to pay twice another.