Frida, Diego, Mexico: December 2010

Here in Mexico, images of Frida Kahlo are everywhere.  She peers from the shelves and walls of tourist shops where her image is emblazoned on handbags, t-shirts, masks, and children's toys.  In the homes of friends, Frida is on tissue boxes and table cloths, refrigerator magnets and matchboxes.  So ubiquitous are images of her face that I occasionally feel as if she is watching me.

On a recent trip to Mexico City, I visited the Frida Kahlo museum at Casa Azul, the home Kahlo kept with Diego Rivera, the great man of Mexican modern art.

Seeing the two great artists' works together caused me to wonder at the iconic status of Kahlo as compared to Rivera.  Diego Rivera's works are everywhere in Mexico and on everything grand from monumental public buildings to landmark department stores.  From the perspective of art for ahhrt's sake, Rivera is a far greater, far more important painter.  Frida's works are mainly on display as riffs and reproductions on posters, bead curtains, and postcards.

But, the very fact of the ubiquity of Kahlo's pictures speaks to their importance as cultural artifacts.  They are talismans of identity and pride - displayed not just as decoration, but as symbols of their owners' sense of themselves as women or as bohemian and feminist, as survivors and as Mexicans, with all that implies given Kahlo's own multi-ethnic background and contested sense of self and cultural identity.

In spite of the brilliance and technical expertise of Rivera, the smaller, much more personal works of Frida Kahlo, rendered with such seeming naivete, are by far the more popular, the more beloved.  And, if the popularity of Kahlo in the election for the great icon of Mexico held during the recent bicentennial celebration (where I believe she may have come in third behind Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata) is any indication, Frida Kahlo's influence extends far beyond the arts.

Diego Rivera was once the dominant artist of Mexico, his success a source of national pride.  He was the undisputed king of the arts and a symbol of modern, industrial Latin America.  But Frida has surpassed him, I believe, exactly because her art is not so grand, not about the macro, the modern, the bold statements about the brilliance of the age of industry and the greatness of the industrial working class.

Modernism has betrayed us.  Scientism is destroying us.  And the great age of industry has proven to hold little or nothing to lift the human spirit above the great, heaping piles of profit made of our exploited humanity.

Frida is the artist of the post-modern world.  She painted about the parts of us that the homogenizing force of modernism and industry attempted to deny.  She illustrated the belittled world of feelings - the struggle to see ourselves as whole, beautiful, precious, especially because of our differences and imperfections.  She painted the world as herself, in fragments.  In the course of doing so, she turned herself, uni-brow, mustache and all, into an icon of beauty, cultural pride, and the unsinkable, inextinguishable, undefinable stuff of which we are made.

Her oeuvre is the chutzpah of the bullied child as she rises to her feet and shakes the dust from her skirts; it is the steel that holds the transgendered woman's head high as she enters a strange room; and in amongst the bold statements about the indomitability of the self, there is the longing for communion that causes us to struggle against the tears and dropped threads in the fabric of human experience.  If Diego was the "what" of great social movements, Kahlo is the "why," the hope.  

Beach Dog

I was warned not to fall in love with beach dogs.

Here in San Pancho, beach dogs are everywhere.  They sleep in the street, fully expecting cars and pedestrians to give them the right of way, and they play on the beach, making passersby into friends and meal tickets for a day.

I had a beach dog friend named Frijol.  He showed up on my doorstep one day and just decided that we were meant for each other.  I didn't feed him, thinking the last thing I needed was a dog, but he stuck around regardless, always waiting outside the door for me to let him in for a nap, or take him on walks in the jungle.

When he would nap in my kitchen he'd roll onto his back, legs akimbo, eyes shut tight, so sound asleep I could step over him without him ever noticing.

I have no idea why he trusted me so much.  He rarely lay on his back, exposing his belly to others, even if they were friends.  If he did roll onto his back and others made the mistake of stepping over him he'd jump to his feet and take off.  But with me, he wouldn't even open his eyes when I rested my foot on his belly and gave him a little rub with my heel.

When he came to visit, often for days at a time, he'd run up the gravel path, sit outside the door, and wait.  He never just walked up.  He always ran, as though something exciting was awaiting him.

When I let him in, the very first thing he would do is bury his head in my lap.  Then, he would jump up and wrap his forelegs around my waist.  It was a ritual, just between us. Within minutes, he'd be asleep, flat on his back.

Frijol rarely ate in my house.  He, like most people around these parts, preferred street food, in his case out of trash cans.

That, I'm afraid, was his demise.  Someone poisoned Frijol.  He died yesterday in his favorite restaurant, a creperie on Calle America Latina, right next door to the first house I lived in here in San Pancho.

I was warned not to fall in love in with him, but I'd do it again.  We gave each other happiness.  He was one of the best parts of my two years in San Pancho.  I'll never forget him.

I read and I write...read and write...

And two months later, I suddenly remembered I have a journal!

I've been buried under work lately.  The work is good, satisfying, new, interesting, and all-consuming.  Every day I read and I write, and then I read some more and write some more before finally shutting down my brain for the night and indulging in media - movies, bad TV, YouTube.

I never thought I'd become on of those people who sits around watching hours of video on the internet.  But, when you live in a town with no movie house, and no late night bars and restaurants, watching funny (anti)Asian karaoke on YouTube is a refuge from boredom.  I'm properly ashamed.

The reading has pushed me to the outer edges of my very limited (mis)education.  If not for wikipedia, I'm not sure I'd be able to keep up with the new vocabulary words I'm encountering.  For instance, any of you ever hear of the word "irredentism?"  What about "plantocratic?"  Care for a little "despoliation?"  Or would you prefer to "bricolage?"

Yet I perservere.  Here are a few of the greatest hits in my reading:

Subaltern:  a term in post-colonial social theory to refer to everything (and everyone) that lives under the thumb of empire.

Marronage:  a verb referring to the act of escaping and becoming a fugitive of slavery, often forming marroon communities.

Diaspora:  the movement or migration of a group of people away from an established or ancestral homeland, often by force, as in the Korean diaspora following the Korean War, and the African diaspora driven by the slave trade of the 16th-19th centuries.

Manumission:  the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves.

Antinomy:  a fundamental and apparently unresolvable conflict or contradiction, as between freedom and slavery.

I'm sure by now you have a pretty good guess regarding the subject matter of all of this reading.  Those of you who are in the human rights field are probably closest to the mark.

I am reading about all things related to what one of the authors on my list, Howard Winant, refers to as "the world historical dimensions of race...the new world racial system" which presents itself as "beyond race," "color-blind," and, most vehemently, post-racial, even as "the disparities between the world's North (more white than not) and it's South (more dark than not) are intensifying, and when northern fears of 'swamping' by immigrants" is growing ever greater as we head toward a future, right around the year 2050 to be precise, when whites in the U.S. in particular will find themselves living in a country in which no one racial group will dominate (and that I'm guessing will be an economic subaltern to China).

If you see me around San Pancho, finally getting out and enjoying the beautiful weather we've been experiencing lately, ask me how all of this relates to the most recent U.S. national elections.  I will talk your ear off.

On Being Chinese in Mexico

I'm not Chinese.  I thought it best to establish that upfront to make sure there's no confusion.  There isn't a Chinese bone in my body, not that I believe one's bones reflect one's ethnicity, but I'm sure you get my meaning.  I'm not Chinese.

Normally, I don't consider such distinctions particularly relevant.  I mean, I'm as proud as can be of my actual ethnicity, but it's not like every time I meet a new person I think, "I know you think I'm Chinese but I'm not."  However, here in Mexico, I find myself frequently saying, if not to someone else then at least to myself, I'm not Chinese.  And no place was this as much the case as in Mexico City. 

In Nayarit, I occasionally get an "hola Chinito!" or a curious look.  Kids here are especially good gauges of people's interest.  When I walk by kids unabashedly stare.  If I smile, they often smile back and get excited as in, "mama the Chinito just smiled at me!"  Normally, I'm not offended.  I just roll with it, aware that in much of Mexico referring to someone by the color of their skin, the cast of their eyes, their weight, height, hair texture, past bouts of alcoholism, famous childhood trauma, or almost any other characteristic is considered a-okay.  There's no real intention to offend.

However, in Mexico City, the staring often felt a bit more like an affront.  In a city where people assiduously avoid eye contact most of the time, and where making direct eye contact is often considered a come on or a challenge, people still stared. Usually, the starer would quickly avert their eyes.  However, now and then, the staring continued, even turning to glaring.

Once, while eating a taco in the neighborhood tianguis, an old woman sat next to me, crowding me with a grocery bag and obviously making a case for priority seating by bumping into me with her chair, her arm, and then with her leg as she settled in.  A friend of hers stopped to say hello and remarked at the number of "Chinos" in the market (by my count, zero, but whatever).  The old woman glared at me and responded to her friend, "en todo tu pais!"

She would not even accept ownership of her own country, she was so spitting mad at the number of Chinos it had allowed in.  Her friend glared at me, just to make sure I was fully aware that they meant me, and then stalked off.  Altogether, it felt very much like Portland, Oregon circa 1986 when the Japan Wars made anti-Asian racism as commonplace as teal fleece and Birkenstocks.

In Mexico City, Barrio Chino occupies only two blocks along Dolores Street.  According to the Mexican government, less than 20,000 Chinese immigrants live full-time in Mexico City amongst a fantastically diverse population of millions.  However, Chinese nationals are everywhere, especially in the financial district and downtown.  There's even a Chinese character on Hoy, the Mexican version of The Today Show.  The character, named Chinito, looks to be around 30, yet has a bi-level Tinkerbell style hair-do and 'tween appropriate costumes.  One would think he was 12.

But, in spite of their small numbers among Mexico City natives, the influence of China is growing  at a time when the Mexican economy is struggling.  And, while I have no evidence to support my assertion, the glaring and the pushiness sure felt like resentment of that growing influence.

Of course, the dirty looks weren't all that came my way.  Most people were polite, and in the majority of one-on-one interactions with people, perceptions of my ethnicity seemed immaterial.  Among some, my Chino status caused me to be received as a (I'm guessing rich) new customer.

I guess it's the same story the world over.  Perceived economic opportunity opens people to new ideas, and competition for scarce resources pisses them off.  It's just a base human response to the need to make ends meet, one way or another.

A Letter to a Friend Upon Returning Home: October 2010

Hola D., 

Back in San Pancho again after the world's second longest bus ride from el D.F. to La Penita.  If you haven't done it yet, don't, not unless you absolutely need to save the money over traveling by air.  It was perfectly okay, especially if you enjoy vibrating, which the bus does a lot of, and watching Spanish dubbed straight to video U.S. movies.  I'm not big on either of those activities, but my guess is that of those two, vibrating is pretty popular, at least if sex store inventories are any indication.  A friend of mine used to have this store called Toys in Babeland that sold bedroom toys, and the bestsellers were always vibrators...but I digress.  The bus ride was way too long and extremely boring, even with the vibrating.  

I can't read while in a moving car or bus without hurling so I was stuck listening to Spanish lessons for four or five hours until I finally drifted off to sleep.  Talking was not an option since I was the only one awake on the bus with the possible exception of the driver (I say possible because he hit the topes going into and out of towns at such speed I'm guessing his eyes were open, but only about half way).

El D.F. was fantastic.  I blogged about that experience but without many details.  I won't offer many more here, but suffice to say I found the city remarkable.  At first it was a little overwhelming, but it became manageable when I gave up on seeing it all and settled into a routine confined mainly within four neighborhoods - La Condesa, La Roma, Polanco (for gay haircuts and walks in beautiful parks and a couple of fantastically expensive eating experiences), and Zona Rosa.  Most of our time was spent house-sitting for a friend in La Condesa and caring for her dog Zulema, truly a great treat.  We loved Zulema and she in turn loved us back so lavishly we almost had to bring her to San Pancho with us.  

The parks in el D.F. are wonderful.  The famous parks - Chapultepec, Lincoln, et al - are awe inspiring, but what I loved most of all were the little neighborhood parks in Condesa and Roma.  They're full of public art and people and dogs, lots and lots of dogs.  Every now and then a gay couple necking on a bench reminded me that Mexico City recently legalized same sex marriage.  Funny how so many of us in the U.S. carry around the impression that Mexico is a conservative back water when it comes to social politics.  In fact, while it is conservative on many issues (as is the U.S., even in liberal meccas like Portland and Seattle where gay marriage is decidedly not legal), Mexico City, at least in some of her neighborhoods, seems to have fully embraced gay male couples.  

We ate in every imaginable kind of dive and a fair number of nicer restaurants until that got too routine, not to mention expensive, and then we cooked in, something we enjoyed especially because of the abundance of markets full of fresh produce. I particularly loved the Mercado San Juan with it's fish mongers and butchers and seemingly endless array of fruit stands and purveyors of ethnic culinary treats including Thai fish sauce and Filipino shrimp paste, freshly made tofu and fine Spanish hams.

And the bicentennial celebration was amazing!  The fireworks were so spectacular we could see them from our apartment window miles from the Zocalo.  We didn't brave the crowds downtown, but we did walk through the parks in our own neighborhood and saw people walking about dressed as Frida Kahlo, Zapata, or Hidalgo heading to the capitol or to neighborhood parties where most of us watched the festivities on TV.  

But, all good things must come to an end.  We left D.F. for Cuernavaca, the capitol city of the state of Morelos, a couple of weeks ago for language school.  We had a home stay and private classes (because there were no other students).  I came to Mexico not speaking a word of Spanish and more than a year later I can speak about 5 words.  I had no idea I was such a shitty language learner.

I usually think of myself as a 51% person.  I'm no genius, but when it comes to learning aptitude, in most subject areas at least, I'm better than average.  But attempting to learn Spanish has been humbling.  I'm definitely not 51%.  But then, everyone is bad at something and language happens to be my weakness - that and a million and one other things like algebra and science, art, music and geography, but whose counting, right?  

The school seemed lost in time.  I was surprised by how dated everything was, from the confusing online test, to the books about the Contra war and the life of Sandino, and the even more telling dearth of more recent titles.  

My teacher was a woman in her 60s who went to high school in her 30s in order to be able to learn to read and write.  I found her story inspiring and thought we'd hit it off, the two of us having a self-professed lack of formal grammar training in common.  But, it turns out, her approach to language was all rules and very little intuition.  She also talked at what to my less than 51% ears sounded like lightening speed, and on subjects as complicated as the unhealthy eating habits of Mexican teens, liberation theology and the Catholic Church, and the alternative structures of governance being created by the autonomous communities of Chiapas.  For bits of time, I found myself emotionally devolving to the days when, as an uncoordinated 10 year old in grade school P.E., I would pretend to have to go to the bathroom or feign illness in order to avoid my turn at bat in softball games.  

We did get to go to the pyramids in Cuernavaca and to enjoy weather spectacular beyond belief for this time of year.  The city is lovely in parts, and it is, as the locals say, all up and down being built mainly on the south facing slope of the Sierra de Chichinautzin mountain range in an area riddled with deep gulches and ravines dug by mountain-fed streams.

Cuernavaca's remarkable climate has won it the nickname of City of Eternal Springtime.  I'm not sure of the meteorological assets that make the climate there so stable, but its famous weather has attracted the rich and royal for centuries.  Today, it is known by many as the Beverly Hills of Mexico, with the vast majority of new housing starts at the high end of the market.

In Cuernavaca proper, where most of the poor of city lives and where we lived for almost two weeks, the neighborhoods feel altogether overgrown and over-developed. Over the last 70 years, Cuernavaca's population grew by almost 800%, from around 80,000 to over 800,000, and most of that growth has been in spurts.  This rapid and awkward growth pattern is very evident in most of old Cuernavaca where skyrocketing housing costs have caused concentrations of poverty, and is less obvious but no less definitive of the shape and location of the expensive, vacation suburbs of the new Cuernavaca that sprawl away from the city center.

In spite of the heavy traffic and overcrowded sidewalks, I loved the city, mainly for it's amazing weather.  It is cool in the mornings and warm but not hot in the afternoons.  The evenings quickly cool and nights can be a bit nippy, just the way I like them.  I ended up spending a bunch of time hanging out at an old hacienda near the centro, drinking beers and decompressing after the daily routine of 4 or 5 hours of classes.  The hacienda was beautiful, capturing and magnifying all that was great about the place and its mountain location, what with it's grand old trees, rainforest landscaping, and wide verandas full of shaded, open air tables and lounge chairs.  Like the school, that place, too, seemed lost in time.  

Classes stretched out over two weeks, and the weekend was open so we took advantage of the free-time to take a little trip to Taxco.  Taxco is a beautiful colonial town in the hills of the state of Guerrero about an hour and a half by bus from Cuernavaca.  Taxco grew up around sliver mining and the crafting of fine silver jewelry, and its main industry these days is tourism.  It's obviously successful as it was packed to the gills with touristas engaged in one of my least favorite activities - shopping.

In spite of the crowds, Taxco is beautiful.  The vistas were breathtaking and our hotel, a converted colonial convent, was stunning both for it's beauty and it's low, low price. Staying there cost only $40 a night.  In Taxco we found our way into a hippie restaurant with vegetarian menu items and decor representative of an aesthetic that seems ubiquitous throughout neo-hippy Mexico.  It was full of Hindu and Buddhist iconography(one is led to believe they are basically the same thing), airbrushed wall murals, over-sized novelty candles, mirror beaded shawls, and other relics of 70s era hippydom, and not a little bit of old fashioned hippy food and music.  Appropriately, the next day we happened into a funky old antique shop where we had fun meeting a fascinating elderly paleo-hippie antique dealer who sold us an overpriced old plate for our home stay mother who collects tourist plates representing what she refers to as "travels," taken through the experience of students' stories.  

Our old hippy acquaintance had wonderful stories to tell.  It felt like a privilege to pay too much in order to support his remarkable lifestyle.  

Of course, you know I can't resist describing our home stay mother.  She was something, nearly 70, a recent widow, and a lover of gay men and others who, but gently, stray from the path of tradition.  She had another boarder staying with her who is a deaf, gay college student named Diego who she has counseled into accepting his sexuality and, apparently, becoming a weight-obsessed, serial dating disco queen.  Boy she could talk.  The constant talking was fine for Jon who could understand her, and Diego who couldn't hear her, but Ascaut, as she called me, could only really follow about 40% of the conversations.  I was sleepy by around 9pm every night from the strain of listening and trying to understand.

The stories were long and complicated and as often as not populated by ghosts and strange dreams, unfaithful relatives, her weekly dance classes, Diego's love life, and her errant daughter who lives in Houston, has leukemia, and refuses to marry for immigration papers.  It's an accomplishment for me to have gathered that much from our talks but I'm pretty sure this was only the tip of the iceberg.  Jon has mercifully chosen to spare me the rest of the details.

Our home stay mama was very sweet and we would have stayed with her for a few more days, but our trip to Cuernavaca was interrupted by news of our house having been broken into in San Pancho.  We returned to deal with whatever there might be to deal with and, honestly, to escape spending more time at school.  Don't get me wrong.  The people there were absolutely great.  It was just the pedagogy that left something to be desired, at least for me.  I'm sure many benefit greatly from the earnest tutelage offered there.  

Break-ins have been happening a lot down here as you know.  We didn't lose anything personal and the damage was minimal.  The only thing broken was the screen in a kitchen window and the only valuable thing stolen was our gas tank, some speculate by the gas man himself.  They left the year's accumulation of coins on our kitchen table, a laptop computer, our landlord's TV and DVR, and loads of other things including new clothes still in their packages. Odd, huh?

And that brings us to the present.  I'm sitting in my kitchen watching the gas man replace the gas tank I suspect he might have stolen.  

We were kind of stunned to see the town when we got here, though we're told the worst is over and that much has already been repaired.  The bridge is still gone and the footbridge that has replaced it isn't exactly what you'd call solid.  The river is still rushing but cars seem to be getting through it at the usual secondary crossing.  One friend apparently drove through it in her bug, but then she'll will do almost anything - not someone to emulate in these matters.  I'm unsure about going through it in Bosque (the name of our Jeep) but we'll have the brave it soon if we're to get any decently priced groceries.  

The beach is a ruin, but beaches heal pretty quickly on their own, as I'm sure you know from having lived through tropical storms in Hawaii.  I haven't had a chance to take a close look, but it's a pretty amazing transformation.  Most people seem to be proceeding as though everything is fine and nothing has happened.  Funny how once things start getting back to something like normal, folks just forget the past and move on.  The families who were washed out of the arroyo have even returned to their former lots, and before the end of the rainy season, confident that nothing so bad can happen again.  Keep your fingers crossed that we don't get more rain this year.  

I hear your house is fine and that it turned out to be a real refuge for your neighbors.  Their house leaked like a sieve.  It was kind of you to let them live in your place until the rain stopped.  

I'm about to do some investigating to see what else is up, but it looks like businesses are re-opening and that folks are bracing themselves for what will likely be a terrible high season.  I guess that's good for people like us who don't care for the tourist rush, but I think the economic consequences will be pretty serious and we need to brace ourselves for some hard work this winter.

That bridge isn't likely to be up again for a while, and news of the damage has spread far and wide.  Between not having a bridge, the damage to our beach, and bad news about airlines bankruptcies and narco trafficking, I'm afraid folks will stay away in droves.  Oh, and the hospital reports that they have had 500 cases of viral pink eye.  

I'm not touching anyone, just so you know.  Air kisses are fine but touching will have to wait until pink eye season is well over.  There are lots of things about being a teenager that I miss, but pink eye, mumps, and mononucleosis aren't among them.  

When you coming back?

xoxo

P.S.  No pictures this time.  I just got a new computer and haven't transferred the files yet.

d.f. - September 2010

La Ciudad de Mexico, just plain Mexico to most of it's residents, is a fantastical, giant, sprawling, monstrous, beautiful, exciting, diverse wonderland of a city.  Mexico is the national capital, the largest city in the Americas and the third largest metropolitan area in the world.  At last count, about 21,000,000 people live here in 16 boroughs spread out over almost 1,500 square kilometers of the floor of the Valle de Mexico, 2,240 meters above sea level in the dead center of the country.

The city is surrounded by volcanic mountains.  If you can get up high enough on a clear day, you can see peaks looming on the horizon in every direction.  The view would take my breath away if I had any left in me at this altitude.  I'm breathless much of the time; breathless and goo goo eyed and overwhelmed at the marvelous things I'm seeing.

The city is ancient, but there's something new and very modern about her, especially in Condesa, the neighborhood I've called home for the last two months and where I've marveled over the number and variety of parks and plazas, high-end restaurants and bars, fondas and tacquerias, tianguis, mercados, museums, and librerias.

Condesa was once full of art deco architecture and Porfirian mansions, but the 1985 earthquake took down a lot of those old buildings.  Now, there is a mix of older architecture and buildings more recently erected that exude a 70's and 80's vintage charm.  One almost expects to see Holly Go-Lightly, returning to her New York 15 or so years after her escape, looking around and saying, "groovy!"

But as marvelous as Condesa is, Mexico is much, much more that one neighborhood.  Just look at the wonderful things I've seen!

Magnificent examples of pre-Hispanic art and architecture - artifacts of the ancient and remarkable cultures of Mexico on display in the National Anthropology Museum, one of the best in the world...

and Ecobici rent-a-bikes!  If only Portland was on this tip...or San Pancho.  There's a strong environmental consciousness emerging here in Mexico, and it's famous air pollution problem, the metal helmet of smog, is slowly being mitigated...

and recycling is starting...it's a small start, but maybe, just maybe...

and everywhere examples of marvelous contemporary architecture and art; lot's and lot's of beautiful art!

Frida, of course.  Frida is everywhere...

and the Museum of Modern Art with it's amazing sculpture garden was revelatory...

and a remarkable example of architectural ingenuity, below, at the anthropology museum - a gigantic umbrella roof held aloft by this central post/fountain...

and more art...

and more, including this sculpture, below, made out of styrofoam packing material...more evidence of a growing environmental sensibility...

and the beautiful traditional crafts of Mexico - these are but a few examples from a collection in the modern museum that indicates a strong and growing feminist sensibility in culture and the arts...

religious iconography!

 And restaurants.  Lots and lots of restaurants including some unexpected little twists...evidence of globalization everywhere...

plazas and parks and fountains...

 

including fountains where people bathe and wash clothes...

 the amazing Palacio Bellas Artes...

the aqueduct...

gay couples holding hands and kissing in parks...

the Zocalo that has to be seen to be believed...so big and so remarkable, especially on the Grito de Dolores when the fireworks were overwhelming...

the Angel de la Independencia in the Zona Rosa...

and Parque Chapultepec that is so, so much more than pictures can describe...

I was in awe of the monument to the Ninos Heroes...

and everywhere there were street performers, including this "group" of dancers, one a real live man and the rest mannequins...hmmm...

 and bookstores, including this one that carried a book familiar to many in my generation - can you see which one I mean?

And there was so much more.  And never did I feel unsafe.  The reports about how dangerous it is here in Mexico are greatly exaggerated.  You should see it for yourself.  

A new job and a trip to the (really, really) big city: August 2010

A view on a rare clear day in Colonia Roma, Mexico City

After more than a year of worry over work, I finally managed to fall into a new job in June.  I'm a partner in a consulting firm that provides research and capacity building services to groups working on issues of racial equity in the U.S.  It's a logical extension of the last 30+ years I've spent chasing organizational missions aimed at eradicating racial and sexual violence, winning indigenous rights and immigrant rights and humane criminal justice policy; doling out free food packages; opening emergency shelters; and marching, protesting, and generally raising a ruckus in the hope that speaking up is a meaningful step toward making the world a better place.

How's that for a mouthful?  I only wish that all of those years of investment resulted in more victories. The sad truth is, my years of work have mostly been about trying to keep things from getting worse.  And, lately, worse appears to be the general trend in U.S. politics.  Boy is it a mess up there.  

But mess or no, I'm back in the political game as a consultant and strategist, helping community leaders and public policy advocates fighting for reforms that benefit those on the down side of unjust power relations.  Only now, after years as a player in the field, I'm a coach.

My colleagues include my friend Soya, someone whom I've worked with in the past, both in her former role as an immigrant rights leader in the U.S. and when we were both program officers for the same social justice foundation.  Soya has been with me on my sojourn in Mexico, one of the 5 who became 3 who left the U.S. more than a year ago to chase a dream of creating a life here.

As I write, Soya is in Chicago, representing our little firm at a conference.  When she returns, it will be to San Pancho, to a little, leaky apartment with a rooftop terrace (sans guard rails as is often the case in rural Mexico where no insurance and no money means no lawsuits and very little in the way of safety codes). Her apartment is right under Eva's tacqueria, next door to the yoga studio on Calle Egipto,  and a stone's throw from the house on Calle China that we once kept together.

The new job, at least in it's current iteration, was not in my plans until, well, there it was, a golden opportunity to continue work I've loved since I was a teenager, and among friends, and with start-up capital provided by an investor.  The best part is that I can work in Mexico.

The change in jobs has brought on a change of moods. I'm suddenly mobile, and my new mobility has inspired wanderlust.  I want to travel and try out different places in the world.  San Pancho is still home, but the summers, I think, will be times to live here and there, mostly in other people's (off)seasonal homes, among their things rather than among my own possessions, as house-sitters if possible, as renters if necessary.

This August, I started to try to satisfy my wanderlust by arranging to spend two months in Mexico City and then two weeks in Cuernavaca.  The trip is intended to speed up my language learning and to provide a much needed dose of something different to do.  For those who follow this journal, that's how I ended up with a view of the Plaza Villa Madrid and the Fuente Cibeles, in La Colonia Roma, smack dab in the...well, I'm not sure you could call  it the middle, but somewhere in the vast expanse that is Mexico City, the third or fourth largest city in the world.

More than 20 years after moving away from rural Hawaii, my escape from urban living and return to el campo was necessary for my sanity.  I needed to know whether I was destined to return to the life I so often missed.

My return to rural living in the tropics sparked warm(and not so warm) memories on one hand while, on the other, also helping me to see, finally and with some clarity, how much the world has changed since my Hawaiian childhood.  Long held points of reference and nostalgia drenched memories of the past have finally come face to face with the reality of change; of progress or something like it, and much to my surprise. I sometimes feel the fool, not having realized just how much time has passed and how the changes that occurred during those now nearly 3 decades have transformed rural communities.  And if time and the shifting tides of global capital have changed rural Mexico, what can it mean for change among the less remote rural plantation towns of Hawaii?

If you don't believe me when I say things have changed, really changed, check Exhibit A, below, a page from a yearbook from my high school back in the day -

Notice the kid with the mushroom?  In the school yearbook?  That's innocence - maybe not as the term has been used to sell us the illusion of an easier and gentler past to return to via evangelical churches and Republican politics, but no doubt we were less jaded. I'm sure the faculty yearbook advisor had Euell Gibbons on the mind, not Timothy Leary.

Perhaps even more telling is this yearbook ad by the plantation manager, congratulating the new graduates, the vast majority of whom were expected to go to work for him alongside their parents and grandparents.  Note his wish to continue being of "support" to the class of 2000?  There would be no 2000 for the sugar company. They went belly-up in the 90s, a victim of globalization.

This was before the war on drugs; before AIDS; pre-Reagan and Bush and Bush; back when the global economy wasn't quite so global; before the internet and You-Tube and Sky TV; and long before 9/11 and the war on the "axis of evil."  Back then, dressing down was de rigueur, going back to the land was not considered a granola move because almost know one knew anything about granola, and those of us on the down side of traditional power relations were feeling our oats, believing better days were soon to come.  Oops!

My escape to rural Mexico has forced me to recognize that times have changed, and they just keep changing, faster and faster.  I've changed, too.  And the inevitability of change is why, I suppose, as was once famously written, you (or at least I) can't go home again.  I'm as much urban as rural anymore, and now and then I need a little fix of urban living; a shot of gin with my tonic to make life go down a little easier.

That long story is why I'm here, amidst the crowds and the pollution, sitting breakfast at sidewalk cafes, and hopping around the bars and museums and bookstores and restaurants of Mexico City.  And now we're caught up, sort of.  The story of here, or my little slice of it, comes next.