Tuesday, September 06, 2005
southern perspectives
Had a nice dinner party last night to inaugurate the new house. The chicken enchiladas in mole sauce came out great, if I do say so myself. I confess that I cheated and went to Chedraui for a few food treats for the party. That's a new grocery superstore/mall that has sprung up on the outskirts of town in the last year, complete with an attached McDonald's and cinema multiplex (OK, 4 screens) featuring Hollywood's worst. The Chedraui was a cultural experience of sorts. Patrons seemed evenly divided between Mexican fresas (literally "strawberries," the Mexican slang word for yuppies), foreign residents, and Tzotzil women with babies slung over their backs. The food handlers all wear plastic bags over their hands, and what struck me most was the way the checkout clerks have all been programmed to speak transnational corporatese ("Would you like to sign up for the Chedraui lottery today?" and "Thank you for shopping at Chedraui, good day"). But they do have imported cheeses and wines.
Monday is an odd night for a party and I didn't have time to track down all the people I had hoped to invite, but everyone's schedule is complicated and I wanted to be sure my old housemates T. and L. could make it - L. just came back from giving some popular communication workshops to communities in the Petén (jungle region of northern Guatemala) and she was leaving again right away for two weeks in Guadalajara where she's enrolled in a course. About a dozen people came over, a mix of academics and NGO/human rights types and a gringa who was working in the Petén and came back with L. to look into projects to work on here in Chiapas.
Health was one topic of conversation, as there was a dengue fever epidemic in the Petén, and L. who is still recovering from hepatitis was hoping none of those dengue-carrying mosquitos had her name on them. Also M., one of the anthropology grad students who works in jungle communities here and is part of "the gang," is down with a bad case of amoebas so she couldn't make it, and it's definitely not like M. to miss a party. I brought her some of the leftover food today and she said she had been delirious with fever and doubled over with abdominal pain, but today the medicine seemed to be kicking in. Being a good anthropologist, of course she doesn't refuse any food or water that's offered to her in the communities, regardless of the source - one of the many dilemmas of field work here.
The other main topic of the evening was Hurricane Katrina. People were shocked that a government as rich and powerful as the U.S. was so unwilling or incapable of helping the neediest. Many Mexicans are surprised to learn about the extent of poverty in the U.S., for example in Louisiana and Mississippi. We talked about the politics of natural disasters, which often suddenly reveal the fault lines of a social and political order. People here remember the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which was a real turning point in exposing the corruption and callousness of the ruling PRI. Similarly the 1972 Managua earthquake contributed to the decline of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, as the ruling family's greed broke the unwritten pact of division of spoils with other factions of the country's elite. Last night's gathering was shocked at the "shoot to kill" orders in New Orleans, designed to protect private property but already resulting in killings of rescue workers mistaken for looters. Comparisons were inevitably made to the killing of the hapless Brazilian after the London bombings. Someone pointed out that many more people had died in New Orleans than in the Twin Towers, and that national security would be better served shoring up dikes and levees than in the misguided "war on terror." Commentary here on the hurricane also highlights what to many Mexicans seem like incomprehensible peculiarities of U.S. culture, such as the U.S. emphasis on individualism and inability to conceive of government prioritizing social needs, or the value placed on private property seemingly over life itself. On a more mundane note, the local academics were bemoaning the presumed inundation of Tulane University, with the best Latin American studies library in the U.S. and repository of much historical documentation from Chiapas.
Conversation also turned to local politics. There is a sense of foreboding about the next gubernatorial election, as the current "moderate" who was elected on an anybody-but-the-PRI coalition ticket turned out to be a huge disappointment, and now the most reactionary wing of the PRI is poised for an electoral comeback (a microcosm of the national political scene). The likely front-runner for governor of Chiapas is Roberto Albores Guillén, who was appointed interim governor to fill the remainder of the term of the last governor, who the PRI sacrificed to take the fall for the 1997 Acteal massacre. Albores unleashed an even more ruthless counterinsurgency campaign than his predecessor, and since he was never elected to begin with, he is eligible to run. This prompted someone to wonder aloud, wistfully, why nothing much had come of the "transitional government in rebellion" of Amado Avendaño. Don Amado was a much-loved independent newspaper editor, lawyer, and defender of indigenous rights who ran for governor in 1994 after the Zapatista uprising. His car was run off the mountain road from San Cristóbal to Tuxtla during the campaign--"he was accidented," as they say here--and he survived and went on to probably win the election, but the PRI candidate was imposed through the usual electoral fraud. He then set up a parallel "rebel government." It was a nice bit of political theater that helped mobilize some civil society activism, but it was eclipsed by the wave of government and paramilitary violence in the subsequent years. Don Amado died last year at age 65, and his maverick spirit is much missed in Chiapas.
Well, tomorrow morning early I'm heading back to El Conejo for a few days. I'm hoping to learn more about how the teacher training project there is organized. No doubt I'll be slogging through a lot of mud and rain, and I can't wait for Bela to come back from the States with the size 13 rubber boots I ordered (not available here in such gringo bigfoot sizes, of course). I hope to get back in time to participate in next Monday's seminar at the institute, though transportation is hit or miss. Then on Tuesday I head for Mexico City for a week. The excuse is to apply for an extension of my visa, but I'm also going to visit my friends José Manuel and Nancy who are grad students at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), and visit the Librería Gandhi (an excellent bookstore near the university), maybe catch a good movie or two at the Cineteca. I'll also be there for Mexican independence day on September 16th, so I'll get to eat the traditional chile en nogada (a dish prepared in the colors of the Mexican flag) and check out the political mood in the zócalo, sort of Mexico City's equivalent of Tienanmen Square.
Monday is an odd night for a party and I didn't have time to track down all the people I had hoped to invite, but everyone's schedule is complicated and I wanted to be sure my old housemates T. and L. could make it - L. just came back from giving some popular communication workshops to communities in the Petén (jungle region of northern Guatemala) and she was leaving again right away for two weeks in Guadalajara where she's enrolled in a course. About a dozen people came over, a mix of academics and NGO/human rights types and a gringa who was working in the Petén and came back with L. to look into projects to work on here in Chiapas.
Health was one topic of conversation, as there was a dengue fever epidemic in the Petén, and L. who is still recovering from hepatitis was hoping none of those dengue-carrying mosquitos had her name on them. Also M., one of the anthropology grad students who works in jungle communities here and is part of "the gang," is down with a bad case of amoebas so she couldn't make it, and it's definitely not like M. to miss a party. I brought her some of the leftover food today and she said she had been delirious with fever and doubled over with abdominal pain, but today the medicine seemed to be kicking in. Being a good anthropologist, of course she doesn't refuse any food or water that's offered to her in the communities, regardless of the source - one of the many dilemmas of field work here.
The other main topic of the evening was Hurricane Katrina. People were shocked that a government as rich and powerful as the U.S. was so unwilling or incapable of helping the neediest. Many Mexicans are surprised to learn about the extent of poverty in the U.S., for example in Louisiana and Mississippi. We talked about the politics of natural disasters, which often suddenly reveal the fault lines of a social and political order. People here remember the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which was a real turning point in exposing the corruption and callousness of the ruling PRI. Similarly the 1972 Managua earthquake contributed to the decline of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, as the ruling family's greed broke the unwritten pact of division of spoils with other factions of the country's elite. Last night's gathering was shocked at the "shoot to kill" orders in New Orleans, designed to protect private property but already resulting in killings of rescue workers mistaken for looters. Comparisons were inevitably made to the killing of the hapless Brazilian after the London bombings. Someone pointed out that many more people had died in New Orleans than in the Twin Towers, and that national security would be better served shoring up dikes and levees than in the misguided "war on terror." Commentary here on the hurricane also highlights what to many Mexicans seem like incomprehensible peculiarities of U.S. culture, such as the U.S. emphasis on individualism and inability to conceive of government prioritizing social needs, or the value placed on private property seemingly over life itself. On a more mundane note, the local academics were bemoaning the presumed inundation of Tulane University, with the best Latin American studies library in the U.S. and repository of much historical documentation from Chiapas.
Conversation also turned to local politics. There is a sense of foreboding about the next gubernatorial election, as the current "moderate" who was elected on an anybody-but-the-PRI coalition ticket turned out to be a huge disappointment, and now the most reactionary wing of the PRI is poised for an electoral comeback (a microcosm of the national political scene). The likely front-runner for governor of Chiapas is Roberto Albores Guillén, who was appointed interim governor to fill the remainder of the term of the last governor, who the PRI sacrificed to take the fall for the 1997 Acteal massacre. Albores unleashed an even more ruthless counterinsurgency campaign than his predecessor, and since he was never elected to begin with, he is eligible to run. This prompted someone to wonder aloud, wistfully, why nothing much had come of the "transitional government in rebellion" of Amado Avendaño. Don Amado was a much-loved independent newspaper editor, lawyer, and defender of indigenous rights who ran for governor in 1994 after the Zapatista uprising. His car was run off the mountain road from San Cristóbal to Tuxtla during the campaign--"he was accidented," as they say here--and he survived and went on to probably win the election, but the PRI candidate was imposed through the usual electoral fraud. He then set up a parallel "rebel government." It was a nice bit of political theater that helped mobilize some civil society activism, but it was eclipsed by the wave of government and paramilitary violence in the subsequent years. Don Amado died last year at age 65, and his maverick spirit is much missed in Chiapas.
Well, tomorrow morning early I'm heading back to El Conejo for a few days. I'm hoping to learn more about how the teacher training project there is organized. No doubt I'll be slogging through a lot of mud and rain, and I can't wait for Bela to come back from the States with the size 13 rubber boots I ordered (not available here in such gringo bigfoot sizes, of course). I hope to get back in time to participate in next Monday's seminar at the institute, though transportation is hit or miss. Then on Tuesday I head for Mexico City for a week. The excuse is to apply for an extension of my visa, but I'm also going to visit my friends José Manuel and Nancy who are grad students at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), and visit the Librería Gandhi (an excellent bookstore near the university), maybe catch a good movie or two at the Cineteca. I'll also be there for Mexican independence day on September 16th, so I'll get to eat the traditional chile en nogada (a dish prepared in the colors of the Mexican flag) and check out the political mood in the zócalo, sort of Mexico City's equivalent of Tienanmen Square.
# posted by Richard Stahler-Sholk @ 7:12 PM 
