From the mountains of the Mexican southeast

I got home (see photo) and touched base with my housemates, who had also been traveling, in the state of Guerrero and in Guatemala. They are 2 Irishmen and the girlfriend of one of them from Tijuana, all activists who work in popular communications projects in indigenous communities in southern Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras; and a Ch'ol indigenous man who works in a community activism center when he's in town and spends the rest of the time tending his crops in the northern zone. Some visiting Norwegians dropped by, and then we were all invited next door for a going-away party for one of the Italians, an interesting collection of folks working on a variety of health and education and development projects. It occurred to me that I've been invited to more meals and parties in the month I've been here--generally by people I've just met--than in a typical year in the U.S.

One of the Irish guys was planning to go the next day to the first region where I had received permission to work, so I arranged to catch a ride in the afternoon. He and some of his workmates wanted to do some independent media reporting on the first of the Zapatista "civil society encounters" scheduled for this weekend in the region, coinciding with the 2nd anniversary of the formation of the Caracoles. And we were all assuming there would be a party for the anniversary, though nothing had been announced.

On the way out to the jungle on Friday, there was a jeep from National Security photographing license plates of the vehicles turning off onto the dirt road toward the meeting. We arrived at the Caracol, where preparations were underway for a big regional party to celebrate the anniversary of the Caracoles. I thought about scrapping my interviews and tagging along to see the meeting in the nearby community, but the Junta seemed to be making a big production about delegate credentials, so I decided to just stay in the Caracol for the party and then do my interviews there the next day. I hang out in the "internet cafe" talking with the Greeks (who are back) and with Hermann Bellinghausen, the legendary reporter on the Zapatista beat for the left-leaning daily La Jornada. He's very sharp, goes where most reporters won't to get the story, and he has a witty (albeit overly florid) writing style that has made him something of a minor cult figure among those who follow the Zapatista movement. All the other Mexican newspapers have coverage of the Zapatistas that's about as limited and distorted as the U.S. media (and the television duopoly here, TV Azteca and Televisa, are comparable to Fox News).

Eventually I go outside to check out the celebrations. Parties in the Zapatista communities are held on dates of political commemoration and usually last a day or two. They're something like a carnival or county fair, with a band and little food booths and people hiking in from neighboring communities and camping out for the night. The highlight is a "dance," with men and women gathering on opposite sides of a field and a few men shyly trying to invite the single women to dance. If they accept, it is without speaking or looking at the guy, and no touching, just a few shuffle steps, and no second dance unless they're engaged to be married. And of course there's no alcohol. The band makes up in volume for what they may lack in musical ability or equipment, and the scratchy speakers boom out the music all night. Sometimes there's an outdoor basketball game or tournament before the dance. And at some point the host community offers a meal with meat, a rare treat. In this case they killed a cow and roasted chunks of it on the second day of the party, and people lined up across the field for a taste.

My travel companions left the next day for the meetings in a nearby community, and I had some interviews with the political commission of the Junta. They were useful for general background and regional context, but I'm looking forward to spending time at the community level. Government centers anywhere tend to be a bit artificial.

It's another jungle downpour, so I'm catching up on writing. The second day of the party seems to be winding down, at least in terms of attendance, though the music continues to pound. I'm hoping to catch the 3 a.m. transport Sunday back toward town. I'm supposed to participate in a seminar on Thursday at the Institute of Indigenous Studies (IEI) at the National Autonomous University of Chiapas (UNACH), so I'll have to see if I have the energy to travel out to the other community in between. Probably not. The IEI was kind enough to give me an institutional affiliation. They were on vacation for the month of July, but I was introduced by an anthropologist friend to the librarian, María Elena, who has kept the library open half days during vacation. Also maybe because of the personal introduction (the way things work in Latin America), she has allowed me to check materials out of the library (which they usually don't do--and there's no photocopier!). There's also a sign on the wall saying "This library has no budget and depends entirely on donated materials," which I believe.

María Elena is a very kind elderly woman with an interest in indigenous linguistics and a librarian's love of scholarship, and she seems to take a kind of conspiratorial delight in the fact that I'm trudging out to remote places for my work, so she goes out of her way to comb through their small collection of yellowing documents to find useful material. Right before leaving on this trip I stopped in quickly to return some journals and was introduced to one of their talented researchers, who I've heard used to do clandestine organizing in indigenous communities before the Zapatista uprising. The institute has a much smaller budget and profile than some of the other local research outfits, but that means it's also more welcoming and less pretentious or bureaucratic. I'm looking forward to participating in the seminars, where everyone presents advances of their ongoing work.