Tuesday, August 23, 2005
rainy days in San Cristóbal
OK, lest you think my time here is all exciting trips to the jungle, I thought I'd include a more mundane entry. It's been raining off and on for four straight days here in San Cristóbal, not as hard as in the jungle of course but enough to make it hard to get the laundry dry. After returning from the last trip on Friday I crashed for about twelve hours. Saturday was my housemate L.'s birthday, she's 29, so she and T. had a few friends over for veggie-burgers and we whiled away the rainy afternoon in idle conversation and silliness. Then we all went to a party in the evening that was a combined celebration of L.'s birthday and going-away party for another friend of theirs, an architect who works on projects in the Zapatista communities and will be spending a few months in Spain and Brazil. We got to the party around 11:30 when it was just getting warmed up, and it was still going strong when I left around 4:30 am. The beer ran out early and people started in on posh (local cane-based firewater) mixed with pineapple juice. It was the activist crowd, about half Mexican and half foreigners who work in various NGOs and projects. Lots of dancing to cumbia and salsa, with a surprise appearance by a group of mariachis that brought everybody together into the patio to belt out old Mexican favorites.
In the last few days I've been catching up on reading and errands in town, and drafting a presentation on my research project for a seminar at the Institute of Indigenous Studies tentatively scheduled for Friday. If the timing and travel logistics work out, I may head out Friday afternoon for the next in the series of Zapatista encounters - the one this weekend is designated for NGOs and should be a large gathering. Then next week I'll head back to the Caracol where I'm supposed to get a response to my reqest for permission to work in that region. On Sept. 1 or thereabouts I move into my new house, and right after that I'll probably take another trip to El Conejo. Then I got a cheap airfare to Mexico City from Sept. 13-20 so I can apply for a renewal of my visa and visit friends who are grad students in Latin American studies at the UNAM (national autonomous university of Mexico, about 10 times as big as EMU!).
Our new housemate A. is back from San Luis Potosí in northern Mexico, where she and a bunch of anthropology classmates took a road trip to attend a student conference. She said the conference was so-so but at least one of the keynote speakers was great, and some of the scenery on the trip was nice. Good thing, since it was a 30 hour ride, stopping only for bathroom breaks. The house is full now, as R. also arrived from the northern zone of Chiapas yesterday, and his sort of adopted daughter V. turned up today with several relatives in tow. R. has taken care of V., who is about 20, since her father who was a friend of his died. It´s a big responsibility, since V. has leukemia, so she crashes at our place when she´s coming from the countryside on her way to the state capital of Tuxtla Gutiérrez for chemotherapy. A bunch of the internationals in town have pitched in to support the treatment and transport. At breakfast today L. and I were filling in R. on the Zapatista encounters, and he casually remarked that he hadn´t seen Marcos since before 1994. Turns out he was one of the early Zapatistas and knew Marcos since the ´80s when he first arrived in Chiapas and "was just a kid, student age." He had kind words for all the original Zapatista leaders except Daniel, the one high-level Zapatista to defect--"but he wasn´t from the northern zone, he wasn´t a Ch´ol," R. hastened to clarify. Adding to the hubbub in the house, the younger dog Bohtil is in heat for the first time, and L. & T. have introduced her to a couple of suitors so far but she´s not quite ready. I´ll let you know when I´m an uncle.
Last night I went to visit my anthropologist friend Jan and his wife Diane, who have been here for the summer doing some interesting research on migration and family remittances and the changing political economy of Tzotzil highland communities. They're heading back to California next weekend and are frantically trying to finish up some work. They also invited another friend, an older woman religious worker from Chicago who has done a lot of work in the highland community of Magdalena and just finished a Ph.D. at Wisconsin. We debated anthropology and historiography, and Jan & Diane reported on last weekend's Zapatista encounter which they attended. As anthropologists who have been working in the highlands for decades with people of a wide variety of political persuasions, they have scrupulously avoided any Zapatista gatherings up to now so as not to burn bridges with any of their more traditional/conservative indigenous informants. But they were curious to check this out, and they also realized that their perspective was somewhat limited by lack of exposure to the dynamic of Zapatista communities and in general to the communities of the jungle, which are quite different from the highlands.
Jan and Diane were quite impressed by Marcos, whom they had never seen in person before. He has a charismatic presence but also a folksy and down-to-earth, humorous style that is captivating. They also noted, as in the meeting that I attended, that his summation at the end of the event demonstrated careful and empathetic listening. On the other hand, the meeting they attended was one designated for "leftist social organizations" (vs. the one I went to for "indigenous groups"), and they were somewhat dismayed by the fractious and sectarian state of the Mexican left. Many of the groups in attendance represented various splinter groups from the old Mexican Communist Party, sporting portraits of Lenin or Trotsky or Stalin according to their particular flavor of preference, with stale symbols and rhetoric that had little meaning to most Mexicans let along indigenous people. They noted that this time the Zapatista comandantes made their entry on horseback, as though to mark their distance from these "old left" squabbles; while at the same time giving everyone their say, leaving no one excluded from the conversation they are attempting to convoke. The atmosphere sounded rather different from the family environment of the gathering with indigenous groups, but it's all part of the initiative to create a space for discussion that really doesn't exist anywhere else in the Mexican political scene. Meanwhile the mainstream media and pundits here continue to focus on the impact of "The Other Campaign" on the 2000 elections and the prospects of PRD candidate López Obrador. The Zapatistas reiterated that they're not asking people to abstain or to vote in any particular way; that their alternative campaign was not an electoral one; and that all they asked was that people be honest about their choices.
In the last few days I've been catching up on reading and errands in town, and drafting a presentation on my research project for a seminar at the Institute of Indigenous Studies tentatively scheduled for Friday. If the timing and travel logistics work out, I may head out Friday afternoon for the next in the series of Zapatista encounters - the one this weekend is designated for NGOs and should be a large gathering. Then next week I'll head back to the Caracol where I'm supposed to get a response to my reqest for permission to work in that region. On Sept. 1 or thereabouts I move into my new house, and right after that I'll probably take another trip to El Conejo. Then I got a cheap airfare to Mexico City from Sept. 13-20 so I can apply for a renewal of my visa and visit friends who are grad students in Latin American studies at the UNAM (national autonomous university of Mexico, about 10 times as big as EMU!).
Our new housemate A. is back from San Luis Potosí in northern Mexico, where she and a bunch of anthropology classmates took a road trip to attend a student conference. She said the conference was so-so but at least one of the keynote speakers was great, and some of the scenery on the trip was nice. Good thing, since it was a 30 hour ride, stopping only for bathroom breaks. The house is full now, as R. also arrived from the northern zone of Chiapas yesterday, and his sort of adopted daughter V. turned up today with several relatives in tow. R. has taken care of V., who is about 20, since her father who was a friend of his died. It´s a big responsibility, since V. has leukemia, so she crashes at our place when she´s coming from the countryside on her way to the state capital of Tuxtla Gutiérrez for chemotherapy. A bunch of the internationals in town have pitched in to support the treatment and transport. At breakfast today L. and I were filling in R. on the Zapatista encounters, and he casually remarked that he hadn´t seen Marcos since before 1994. Turns out he was one of the early Zapatistas and knew Marcos since the ´80s when he first arrived in Chiapas and "was just a kid, student age." He had kind words for all the original Zapatista leaders except Daniel, the one high-level Zapatista to defect--"but he wasn´t from the northern zone, he wasn´t a Ch´ol," R. hastened to clarify. Adding to the hubbub in the house, the younger dog Bohtil is in heat for the first time, and L. & T. have introduced her to a couple of suitors so far but she´s not quite ready. I´ll let you know when I´m an uncle.
Last night I went to visit my anthropologist friend Jan and his wife Diane, who have been here for the summer doing some interesting research on migration and family remittances and the changing political economy of Tzotzil highland communities. They're heading back to California next weekend and are frantically trying to finish up some work. They also invited another friend, an older woman religious worker from Chicago who has done a lot of work in the highland community of Magdalena and just finished a Ph.D. at Wisconsin. We debated anthropology and historiography, and Jan & Diane reported on last weekend's Zapatista encounter which they attended. As anthropologists who have been working in the highlands for decades with people of a wide variety of political persuasions, they have scrupulously avoided any Zapatista gatherings up to now so as not to burn bridges with any of their more traditional/conservative indigenous informants. But they were curious to check this out, and they also realized that their perspective was somewhat limited by lack of exposure to the dynamic of Zapatista communities and in general to the communities of the jungle, which are quite different from the highlands.
Jan and Diane were quite impressed by Marcos, whom they had never seen in person before. He has a charismatic presence but also a folksy and down-to-earth, humorous style that is captivating. They also noted, as in the meeting that I attended, that his summation at the end of the event demonstrated careful and empathetic listening. On the other hand, the meeting they attended was one designated for "leftist social organizations" (vs. the one I went to for "indigenous groups"), and they were somewhat dismayed by the fractious and sectarian state of the Mexican left. Many of the groups in attendance represented various splinter groups from the old Mexican Communist Party, sporting portraits of Lenin or Trotsky or Stalin according to their particular flavor of preference, with stale symbols and rhetoric that had little meaning to most Mexicans let along indigenous people. They noted that this time the Zapatista comandantes made their entry on horseback, as though to mark their distance from these "old left" squabbles; while at the same time giving everyone their say, leaving no one excluded from the conversation they are attempting to convoke. The atmosphere sounded rather different from the family environment of the gathering with indigenous groups, but it's all part of the initiative to create a space for discussion that really doesn't exist anywhere else in the Mexican political scene. Meanwhile the mainstream media and pundits here continue to focus on the impact of "The Other Campaign" on the 2000 elections and the prospects of PRD candidate López Obrador. The Zapatistas reiterated that they're not asking people to abstain or to vote in any particular way; that their alternative campaign was not an electoral one; and that all they asked was that people be honest about their choices.
# posted by Richard Stahler-Sholk @ 12:45 PM 
