[opening of part two] jose the latin lover

Part Two.  The Border, East and West.

José was a wetback working in the United States, and he returned to his village in Mexico.

When he got back, all of his friends and family asked him, “hey, José, what did you think of the Americans?”

“The Americans?  They are a wonderful people!” José said.  “They all think that I’m a Latin lover.”

“A Latin lover, José?”

“Because every day after work, I went to this bar, and I’d walk in and they’d say, “look!  It’s that fucking Mexican!”

—My 89-year-old Mexican grandfather, a longtime resident of Nogales, Arizona

[opening of part three] dangerous to your health

[#] “Stay out of the water.”

Cyclist for Social Change, Retrospect.  Phoenix, Arizona, 3 July 2010.

The border between the United States and Mexico is 1951 miles long.  At the western end, fifteen-foot-tall steel beams wade out into the waters of the Pacific.  Seagulls perch upon their crowns, rolling tides eat at their sides, and children slip back and forth between them.  For two dollars, ice cream and elote vendors extend their hands through, with a smirk.  The beams are in on the joke.

In the distance, dolphins swim across the border into Mexico, illegally.  To the south, families whack at beach balls.  And to the north, a sign reads “Stay out of the water: Dangerous to your health”. 

A Border Patrol agent tells me to stay away from the wall.  “They might throw rocks at you,” he says.  I lick at my popsicle.  Rice flavored. 

My girlfriend and I pull off Arivaca Road and search for a lay-up site, where migrants molt before moving on to cooler climates.  A Border Patrol agent pulls up behind us and asks what we’re doing.  We present sandwiches.  “Having lunch,” I say.  He doesn’t need to know any more than that.

“Well, be careful,” he implores.  “There are a lot of dangerous people out here.”

Minutes later I am driving up and down the highway, disoriented.  I pull into a local restaurant to ask for directions, and a woman in her mid-forties approaches.  Her shorts are too short.  She tells me that I need to turn around.

 “And watch out for the Border Patrol,” she says.  “They can drive real dangerous out here.”

The customs agent in Brownsville asks me what I’m doing so far from home.  She gives me the once-over, the twice-over.  Three times.  I lean my bicycle against the wall.  She asks what I was doing in Mexico.  How long I was there. With whom I was there.  Where I’m from, where I was born, if I speak Spanish, if I speak Spanish well, where I learned to speak Spanish, what college I attended, what my college’s mascot is…

I’m crossing back from Matamoros into the United States by car with three others.  The driver and shotgun passenger are dark-haired, dark-eyed Latinas, while the passengers in the rear, myself and another Latina, are lighter skinned.  The customs agents ask for our identification.  He doesn’t say a word to the two in front.

It’s late at night when I’m crossing back into Douglas, ready for sleep.  I’ve been giving out socks to migrants in Agua Prieta.  Lots of migrants.  Lots of socks. 

The customs official knows our group from our many trips back and forth. 

“So you’re helping the Mexicans?” he asks.

“Yep.”

“And I bet you think that you’re doing some good, aren’t you?”

I had cleaned out blisters on the migrants’ feet.  “Yep.”

“You know,” he says, “Americans need help too.  Maybe you should spend more time on this side of the line.” 

“Thanks,” I say.  “There’s a lot of work to do on both sides.”

Sometimes I think about buying an empanada cart.  I think I’d wheel it everywhere.  Barefoot, in the sand, right into the ocean.

[opening of part one] the bicycle story

Part One.  The Road and the Rio Grande Valley.

There was this guy.  Every weekend for years and years, he would ride his bicycle across the border into Mexico.  Suspecting that the man was up to no good, customs agents checked him from head to toe every time he crossed.  They were convinced that he was trafficking some type of contraband, but they could never find a thing.  The guy swore up and down that he wasn't a smuggler, just a cycling enthusiast on the way to visit family.

The man decided to move to the east coast.  By this time, he and the customs officials had struck up a kind of awkward, playful friendship.  On his last trip across the line, the agents promised that if he told them his decades-long secret, just this once, they would let him cross unchecked.

"So what was it?" they asked.  "What were you bringing across all these years?"

The man drew up a wry smile.  “Bicycles.”

—Roy, whom I met at a film screening in Tucson

[opening of part four] the dancing death

[#] “... And the more I feel my own scars forming.”

Cyclist for Social Change, Retrospect.  Phoenix, Arizona,13 September 2010.

A reporter accosts me outside of the convention center in Gómez Palacio, Durango.  She wants to know if I am an adherent to the Other Campaign.  “Yes,” I say. “I am.”

“But why?” she asks.  “Why you?  You’re not from Mexico, are you?” 

“No, but the philosophy behind the Otra extends beyond Mexico.  The Other Campaign is an initiative for all peoples, not just Mexicans.” 

The reporter cocks her head to the side, and the features of her face are drawn to her nose, in a wince.   “Pues, sí…” she trails off.  Marcos exits the building, and the reporter runs after him.  “Stay right here,” she shouts, “so that I can continue talking with you.” 

She joins the whirling mass of reporters, photographers and autograph seekers.  I return to my compañeros of the Karavana. 

I’m back in Phoenix for Luis’ birthday.  “El Potro”, they call him.  “The Colt”.  The young and rising leader, in his black hat and boots, kicking up the dirt of our outdoor dance floor.  Banda blares in the background.  The dark hair, dark eyes of the crowd are sweating, sweating, sweating.

An old friend introduces me to a friend of hers.  The woman asks me about my project—my life—and I explain.  “The border?” she asks.  “What would interest you about the border?  O sea, how Mexican are you?”

The day after, a visiting researcher from the Rio Grande Valley asks me the same question.  “Ohhh…” she says, nodding her head.  “Your project is… interesting.  So, is this just some kind of adventure for you?”

At the comedor in Dateland, we hunch over our bowls of albondigas and watch a cheesy Mexican, made-for-TV movie.  The protagonist is a latter-day Vicente Fernandez—big personality, big voice, straight from the campo.  He belts out a corrido for his misbegotten love.  Her family, of course, doesn’t approve of their relationship, and they whisk her off to Mexico City.  Ten minutes later we watch as Vicente, the singing cowboy-campesino, rambles door to door in a city of thirty million, looking for his one and only.

Suburbia isn’t that much different than the campo, I think to myself.  Are Vicente and I both just wandering the world, in search of a romance we will never quite find?

Where is my border?

Lauren was ejected from her car when the driver somehow lost control and veered from the road.  The car flipped several times before smashing into a median, and Lauren was eviscerated under the weight of the vehicle.

I know Lauren from college, and two of my cousins went to high school with her, in Nogales.  We attended her service.  One cousin has also lost her best friend, Danika, in the accident.  It’s been hard for her, and she’s spent a lot of time with family.  I should give myself more time to grieve—some time—for a love that never quite was.  But a Saturday night later, I am once again at the DeConcini port of entry. 

From behind the fence, I watch as beautiful women cross into Mexico, on their way to the clubs.  A group of five or six walks past, and I ogle, slack jawed.  Qué guapas, I think. Oooh… I look closer, and I spot my cousins.  They are all dolled up and gorgeous, and I am apparently attracted to them.  Shit.

I whistle—whirp, wroop—but they know better than to look over.  “Ladies!” I shout.  “Cousins!” 

They turn their heads. “What are you doing here?”

“You know… Food and water for people deported back to Mexico.  Medical attention.  Abuse documentation… Humanitarian aid stuff.”

“Oh… well…” they say.  “Cool.  That’s cool.  We’re going out on the town.  Drinks and dancing.  Um… Are you going to be here for a while?”

“I’ll be here all night.”

“Okay, then we’ll catch you on the way out?  Great…  Well, see you later!” 

At three in the morning, tipsy, they shout through the fence as they cross into the United States beyond—“yeah, cousin!  Whoo hoo!”  Their figures fade to laughter, then black, and the checkpoint’s florescent din fills the night. 

This dead man has really fucked me up.  I haven't had time to process it—seeing him, smelling him.  Bouncing back and forth between my favorite chemically contaminated community of Mission and then Tucson with their No More Deaths, I haven't taken time to let this all sink in—my life, these travels, this weight.  It has.

I’m going to give you something, and I don't think that I’m going to give it to anyone else.  No promises.

"All I want to do is shout and sing and laugh and cry and dance, dance, dance.  Dance.  Dance in full-on sweat. Dance with my face buried in some woman's hair, my body pressed against hers. Dance until the throbbing music becomes my throbbing body.  Boom.  Boom. Boom. Dance until my legs go tired, my arms go limp, my feet burn and I sit, wasted and euphoric.

I want my body to ache, and I want to be completely, utterly depleted.

I want to dance just to remember that I'm alive.

Jesus, what a privilege.  To be alive and to be healthy.  To have a family and friends who are alive and healthy.  Well fed.  Housed. Privileged."

It's not just the dead man: it’s the sick and the lawyers who take advantage of them.  It's the poor and the mother fuckers who ignore them.   It’s you and me and those who actually want to do something, anything, and those who just don't care.

I'm crying in the middle of a restaurant, and the waitress keeps asking me “if everything's okay”. “¿Todo bien?  ¿Todo bien?” she says.  How ridiculous.

The Karavanistas descend from the mountain and desert into what locals call “the Matrix”—a sprawl of industry, traffic and the thick haze of pollution.  As we mill about our few nights’ home at the house of Dr. Margill, “andamos muy tristes, todos”, an adherente says.  We brought sadness to Monterrey.

I wash dishes after a meal, away from the others. Ana is slender and tall, and her small breasts peer from her shirt as she bends over the washbasin to help me.  She talks with me in Spanish that I don’t understand.  I try to respond and the words choke up in my throat.  Ana leaves for a moment and returns with the diminutive healer, Giitanjali, four and half feet of braids and smile.  “We are going to steal you,” she says.  “Would you like to be stolen?”  The Sup has given us specific instructions not to leave the house.  “I am going to take you to a temascal,” Giitanjali says, but I don’t know what a temascal is.  I leave without a word to the others.

Ana walks me to the back of Giitanjali’s clinic.  “Take off your clothes here,” she says, closing the door behind her.  I disrobe and exit trembling, in a towel. Giitanjali is there to greet me.  She demands that I follow and leads me outside, to a cement-block sweat lodge. 

“Get in and try not to think,” she says.  I sit on a bench, and she bolts the door from the outside.  I wipe my face dry with my forearms and lick at the salt, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Giitanjali bursts into the temascal and directs me to lie upon my stomach.  She stands upon my back, the heels of her feet probing at first, and then depressing to several cracks.  She drops to the floor and holds my head in her hands.  She pops my neck to one side and then the other.  “There,” she says.  “Now it’s gone.”

Giitanjali exits and returns minutes later.  She orders me out.  I stand bare and smoldering in an open court.  She throws a bucket of water upon me, and I draw my knee to my stomach, in a perch.  She empties another bucket and then another and another and another.  I straighten.  She tosses me a towel. 

Ana.  I see Ana.  “And do you feel better?” she asks. 

“Yes, yes, I think I do.” 

But as we make our way back to the house, I still feel the weight within me. 

People warned me that I could go into a community and unknowingly tear open old wounds, exposing memories that some are trying to erase.  But the more I see, the more I am disgusted with the world around me and the more I feel my own scars forming.   

Bit by bit, I lose my sense of humor.  At times I want to vomit.  The world just isn’t as funny as it once was.  It can be crippling, and this is a day-to-day affair: some days, I can hardly speak.  I don’t want to speak because I know how little solace my words will bring.  But I know that I have to, if not only to bring others along this story with me.   

Maybe that’s the reason why I’m here: I’ve read enough garbage in the news and in books, and I hate everyone around me.  I see no hope, I read no hope, and I think that humanity is destined to run itself into the ground.  I have to believe that there is more our society than death and murder and chemical contaminations, and the miasma of industry and intolerance that hangs over all our heads.

Vicente gets the girl in the end, but the path isn’t so easy.  Someone helps him.  Anyone.  

dateland, sample chapter

Not for wider distribution.  Just a draft.  Comment freely.
--Riedel

[one of two] new old stuff. minutemanland, day 5 on

[#] “Looks like the wheels of justice will keep on grinding.” 

Cyclist for Social Change, “The Undocumented”. Three Points, Arizona, April 2006. 

[Day Five] While observing the arrest of the eleven migrants, I left behind a bag containing my wallet and passport—a lapse in judgment spurred on by the excitement of the scene.  The next day, Ray and I venture into the Minuteman of One base at the Veteran of Foreign Wars campground, in the hopes that they might have recovered my identification.  An angry volunteer approaches us.  “Fucking ACLU,” he mutters, shaking his head.  Fred greets us and the volunteer leaves, returning with an automatic rifle.  He points the gun at our faces.  Another volunteer grabs the rifle’s muzzle, puts his arm around the man, and leads him away.   Fred continues talking.  Ray and I leave soon thereafter, without the identification.

As a tribute to the Minutemen, legal observers also have their own radio handles.  Ironically, Ray now refers to me as “the Undocumented”.  Just miles from the border, I lack papers.

[Day Six] “They have their sidearms and camouflage,” the Israeli-American graduate student says of his time in the Minuteman camp.  “But for the most part they are normal people.  One guy I met was eating an apple, just like anybody else.  He was just using a big knife.”

[Day Eight] The Kings maintain a closed gate to non-Minutemen.  Legal observers respond by staging a roadside dance party, led by Arizona State Representative Kyrsten Sinema, also Ray’s partner.  99 Luft Balloons and California Love blare in an absurd and brazen attempt to alert immigrants of the Minutemen’s presence. 

[Day Nine] A Minuteman in an H2 Hummer whips by at 50 miles an hour.  The driver pops the emergency brake, skids to a rolling sweep of smoking tire, hits the gas, and takes off in the other direction. 

“Must have something to prove,” Ray says, laughing.

[Day Ten] “We found Javier hobbling around the desert, carrying a jug of his own urine from which he had been drinking for the day,” writes a colleague of the legal observers. “Only raw skin remained on his blistered feet. He was wandering about 100 yards from an encampment of Minutemen—an armed vigilante group on the lookout for migrants. We quickly helped Javier into a car and took him to a nearby migrant shelter for treatment.”

“I think I’m traumatized,” says Javier.  “I almost died out there.”

A native to the state of Guerrero, Mexico, he arrived in the United States at three and half months of age.  Fluent in English, he grew up in Chicago.  Javier was in his mid-20s when he was arrested, incarcerated, and deported for a domestic violence charge.  Had he been detained by Border Patrol, he would have faced a lengthy prison sentence. 

“It’s not our place to judge,” Ray says.  It’s not our place to judge.  Javier is one of dozens whom we will not report.

[Day Twelve] His name is elegant, crisp.  I want to remember it, but I don’t.  The most important details fade, even in the short term. 

Inocencio.

Inocencio knocks at the door of our two-room bungalow looking for water.  “Please,” he says, “I don’t come to bother you, but I need water.”  His eyes roll from the ceiling to the floor, from the ceiling to the floor.  Were I to push him ever so slightly, he would fall over and collapse upon the ground. 

He stays for the afternoon, although he’s welcome for much longer.  We give him fresh socks, food, a bed upon which to rest.  He calls a relative in Tucson, he says, for a ride. 

Four hours later, he smiles for the first time.  “Listo,” Inocencio says.  Ready.  And he walks off just as he came, back into the desert.

[Day Fourteen]  “You’re still on my property,” Pat (not King) says.  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”  He was a little drunk when I told him that the Minutemen had parked upon his land, adjacent to the blue flag of a Humane Borders water station on Coleman Road. 

Pat’s cell phone rings.  “Yeah,” he says to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.  “I got people on my property carrying guns.”

Stacey O’Connell and a Minuteman volunteer kick up dirt by their pickup trucks.  They had intended to stake out the water station for migrants passing through.  “That guy’s a real asshole,” O’Connell says.

“Move it.  Move it off my fucking property,” Pat reiterates.  “See that fucking flag down there, asshole?”  The man owns everything north of it.  “I’ve been here for fucking thirty-three years.  Get the fuck off my property!”

“I am!” shouts the volunteer, from across the street.

“Now.”

“No, no, not now.” He’s waiting on the police.

“Fuck the police.  And you.”

“We don’t even know if it’s this guy’s property.”

“I’ve paid taxes for thirty-two years, jerk tird fuckhead.”  Pat gets in the volunteer’s face.  “I want to cold-clock your fucking ass.  You fuckers are standing in Mexico, 1853!”

Stacey O’Connell goes to his truck and straps a firearm to his thigh. The Pima County Sheriff arrives, and the Minutemen finally leave the property.

[Day Fifteen] The Border Patrol detains three men along the roadside.  The Minutemen had called them in, and at that point, there’s not much we can do for them anyway.  If they’re along the road, they’re ready to go home.

A brown-skinned, Latino Border Patrol agent starts up his “perrero”, euphemistically named for its likeness to a dogcatcher’s vehicle.  “Make sure that you take care of them,” I tell him, thinking myself an idiot for such a naïve statement.

“Of course,” he says.  “They’re my people too.”  He raps twice at his driver’s side door, and rumbles off for the Department of Homeland Security bus stationed at Robles Junction, where the 86 meets the 286. 

“Do you believe him?” asks one of the legal observers.

“Yeah.  I believe him.”

[Day Sixteen] The dude sits outside of his trailer next to Minuteman camp.  He hasn’t shaved in a while, and his white mustache hangs low on both ends.  He wears a black, sleeveless t-shirt and blue jeans. 

He brings out his banjo and plays, not for us, the only people around, but for the breeze and the ocotillo and the jackrabbits. 

He nods to Ray and me.  We nod back.

[Day Seventeen] At approximately 6 p.m., a Range Resource Area Manager for the Arizona State Land Department informs the Minutemen that they need permits to be on state trust land.  Legal observers overhear reports on a Minuteman radio frequency that they had been informed by “someone from the state” to leave the land.  Chris “Too Tough” Simcox responds.  He has a permit but he’s not sure about everyone else.  The Minutemen refuse to leave.

A half hour later, the Range Resource Manager again informs the Minutemen of their unlawful presence.  He reported to legal observers that the lease holder, presumably Mrs. Pat King, is upset and that she is going to allow the Minutemen to stay on her private property. 

The Range Resource Manager remains on the land until midnight, when Simcox relays the following: “We are going to ignore them.  We are going to ignore them just like all the other idiots.”

[Day Eighteen] According to local reporter, O'Connell denies that an agent from the State Land Department told them to leave.

[Day Nineteen] The Arizona State Land Department now says that it was a mistake to send one of their employees out to inform the Minutemen they needed permits.  According the leaseholders, John and Pat King, the Minutemen have a contract to “work” on the state trust land.

One volunteer whom we refer to as “Chatty” brought out three bags of trash from King’s Anvil Ranch.  “You guys are sure trying hard to get us out of here,” he said.  “See, we’re doing our part.”

The state trust land still closed to everyone except for the Minutemen. The Minutemen continue with their immigrant watch.

“Looks like the wheels of justice will keep on grinding,” I tell Ray.

[Day Twenty-Three] I’m infatuated with one of our legal observers.  I’m young, but she’s younger.  The students of Prescott College choose to camp outside of a friend’s camper.  Inside the camper, I forgot my sleeping bag.  But she remembered hers.  “Wouldn’t we be warmer if we just put your sleeping bag over the top of us both?” I ask her.  My scruff bristles against her lips.  The coyotes yip in the distance.

[Day Twenty-Seven] At three o’clock on a sunny afternoon, legal observers overhear reports that Minutemen are attempting to block in a young married couple and their seven-month-old child.  “There’s a green sedan heading your way, posts eight through thirteen,” says a Minuteman, after the couple enters the state trust land.  “Whoever sees them, try to block them in.”

The reports continue: “To whoever pulled into the middle of the road to block that car in, pop open your hood.  Pretend like you’re experiencing vehicular difficulties.”  Minutemen, legal observers and the couple call the Sheriff’s Department.  A half-hour later, with no indication that the Sheriff’s Department would arrive soon, the Minutemen break the blockage.  The couple exit soon thereafter.

Both in their late 20s, the two tell legal observers that they initially came upon a Minuteman who demanded to know what they were doing and why.  They were on the state trust land to hike, they said.  The Minuteman told them that they were trespassing and that they must leave immediately.  The couple refused, and the Minuteman berated them as terrible parents for bringing their child out there”.  The two turned their car around to leave, only to confront another vehicle positioned in the middle of the road. 

When the Sheriff’s Department rolls in an hour later, the couple describes the event to the deputy.  The Minutemen could not block them from entering or exiting the land, the deputy tells them.  He offers to escort them back onto the land.  They decline. 

Legal observers offer the deputy pictures, recordings and written testimony for future investigations.  He declines.

“I know what the Minutemen are up to,” he says.

[two of two] new old stuff. minutemanland, final day

[#] “There’s no reason to be scared.” 

Cyclist for Social Change, “The Undocumented”. Three Points, Arizona, April 2006. 

[Day Twenty-Nine] On the last day of their April campaign, the Minutemen pull a quarter mile off their “Alpha Line”, Elkhorn Ranch Road, into the desert.  Legal observers arrive as a group of migrants approaches two Minutemen and their vehicles.  “We were trying to get to Arizona,” they tell legal observers, “but we got lost.  Is the highway close to here?”  The 86 is fifteen miles away.

“You have the right to keep walking,” Ray says, “but they’ve already called the Border Patrol…” One woman weeps.  Two men stare into the dirt, not saying a word. “Here’s more food and water,” Ray says.  “There’s no reason to be scared.”

“Why did you call them?” one of the migrants asks a Minuteman, perched on top of his SUV.  

“Because it’s our job.”

A mother carries her infant child swathed on her back.  The baby starts crying, perhaps dehydrated, and certainly agitated upon the arrival of a Border Patrol helicopter.  Repeatedly, the Minuteman directs Ray to "impress upon the mother" that, for the sake of the child, she should not cross the desert again. 

“How’s this baby going to make it?” ask the Minuteman.

“I imagine the way they make it every day,” Ray says.  “Why did you come to the United States?” he asks the group.

“For work.”

“Out of necessity.”

“To move forward.”

“Oh, I sympathize,” says the Minuteman.  “You can tell I speak a little bit of Spanish.  I didn’t get it from sitting around on my butt.  I worked with Hispanics all my life.  Toda mi vida.  I’m just concerned that a terrorist might cross the border.”

Ray shakes his head.  “Does this baby look like a terrorist to you?”

On their final evening shift, the Minutemen set up their Bravo Line out on King's Anvil Ranch, and another seven cars take off for their Charlie Line, Coleman Road.  When they set up at their usual position, three cars leave for a second location—“Charlie Two”.  Legal observers follow them until the lead cars turn down a narrow wash.  Pineapple Six and Scorpion, two of the Minutemen leaders, are in the third car.  They stop in the middle of the road and prop the truck’s hood.  “Oh dear,” giggles Pineapple Six.  “I don't know how to fix this.  I'm not a mechanic.”  He circumambulates his vehicle.  “Oh dear.”

After several minutes, the lead cars return empty of their passengers, and Pineapple Six’s vehicle starts once again.  The Minutemen leave, and we continue along the backroads just north of King’s land.  One legal observer hears the squawk of a walkie-talkie off in the distance.  He exits the car and mounts the hood of the vehicle, as though a tracker in the bush.  He spots footprints.  We ditch our vehicle and follow them under a barb-wire fence.  We’ve just crossed a line, and we know it. 

We hear a walkie-talkie at full volume and return to the north side of the line.  We scamper up the adjacent mountains for a better vantage point, and we sight four Minutemen in full camouflage.  We hear on their radios that they’ve detained four migrants.  We watch them until nightfall, but the foothills block much of our view.  We can’t see any migrants.  We can’t do anything.

A sheriff’s deputy waves us down from the mountain and tells us that we’re trespassing.  We have to leave immediately, he says. We know that we’re on the right side of the line, but Ray arrives and tells us to go home.  For a month, we hadn’t stepped foot on King’s property, but now…

“Go home,” Ray says.  “Go home.”

A Border Patrol vehicle entered the area but left soon thereafter, Ray tells us later, unable to find either Minutemen or migrants.  

The pepenador

The "Relleno Sanitario", or the "Sanitary Landfill", in Matamoros. There is a pepenador (garbage picker) standing about twenty-five yards away from me in this picture, and you can only barely see him. 

beta launch

[two of two] the eyes behind the mask

In the first couple of days of my time in Oventik, the few people who were there were busy preparing for the week to come.    Structures still needed to be erected, food had to be hauled in, and spaces needed to be cleared for the thousands of guests soon to arrive.

The chango and I, on the other hand, didn’t have shit to do.  The Zapatistas turned down our offers to help.  Emphatically.  They had their own way of working, and it sure as hell was a lot faster than if we had tried to help and had gotten in the way.  So we did what our group is used to doing: we sat around, drank coffee, and talked.  One by one, the usual suspects arrived: the Chilanga and her English boyfriend, the Tia, and many of the Karavanistas. 

As we munched on avocado, cheese and sweet bread, the caracol grew from quiet pueblo to bustling town.  Three days before the start of the Encuentro, Comandantes Zebedeo and Tacho, in their pasamontañas and trademark caps, hurried around the caracol before everyone arrived, without the swirling crowd of security.  The next day, we played with the young daughter of one of the comandantas.  And while we finished off the last of the avocados on the day before the Encuentro, the rest of the Zapatistas put on the final touches and the famed pasamontañas.

Something changes when they put on their masks.  I don’t exactly know how to describe it, but my first reaction was to say that wasn’t fair. 

It was different with the Subcomandante.  I had spent enough time at his feet to learn his expressions.  But these Zapatatistas…  you can’t see their mouths.  Words appear as ephemeral.  Their eyes float unanchored, detached from their faces.  Everyone looks the same.

How do you speak with a person without a mouth?  With whom would you be speaking?  With one person, or with thousands, simulataneously?

Maybe the most thorough answer is “both”.  The pasamontañas is a symbol of what the Zapatistas are, as a community—as a whole of individuals forced to wear masks to protect themselves against retaliation, in a struggle with a world that would rather see them gone.  The pasamontañas are “para todos todo, y nostros nada” incarnate—“For everybody everything, and nothing for ourselves.”  The individual becomes the community, and the community the individual. 

It was difficult to see the people behind the masks, but it helps now to see the Zapatistas take them off again.

[one of two] the eyes behind the mask

Oventik, Jan 3

I can’t sleep.  Most of the caracol is gone except for us, the few, the ones who stay up until the wee hours playing guitar and singing along to the music.  I tried to fall asleep before my companeros started playing, but I’ve been rolling around in my sleeping bag for the last two hours instead.  The music is really good.

I arrived in Oventik by myself, by way of Puebla, after being stranded by holiday traffic, Palenque, where I met up with two good friends from Arizona, and San Cristobal, where my meandering relationship with a woman from Mexico City deteriorated unto death.  I was upset and unhappy when I stepped off the combi, and I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Across the entrance to the caracol, a sign read “You are entering Zapatista territory, where the people command and the government obeys”.   And at the caracol’s gate were the people themselves:  two women in pasamontanas guarding the gate to rows of buildings, one the left and the right, along a street that pitched down the mountainside.

I had arrived to the International Encounter of the Zapatatistas with the People of the World (the Encuentro Internacional) days early, the scene looked relatively desolate, and for a moment I didn’t know what to say to the Zapatistas.  For a moment.  And then I saw the chango.

God, I was so happy to see him.  I had spent weeks at his side in Mexico City and later, in San Cristóbal.  He had warned me about the girl.  I should have known better.  But it didn’t matter as I handed my passport over to a masked man in Bruce Lee t-shirt.  The women opened the gate, (Comandante?) Brus Li took my name and number, and the chango and I walked from building to building, cooperative to cooperative, mural to mural, in an arms-flailing-above-the-head “wow”. 

Descending into the caracol was like entering into a womb, or re-entering, I suppose.  It’s an activist-revolutionary wonderland, and it’s easy to get caught up in.  I’ve been here for a week, I think.  Maybe more.  I’m not quite sure.  There has been a lot to take in.

[three of three] Posadas

I think about Emiliana’s grandmother and aunts, and one of her aunt’s sons.  Her grandmother is a monolingual Nahuatl speaker who understands Spanish.  The family asked her to join them in Cuernavaca, but she doesn’t want to leave.  The aunts speak Nahuatl and Spanish, but sticks almost entirely to her mother tongue.  I imagine that they will stay as long as the grandmother will.  Her son is just learning to speak.  He is at the beginning of it all. 

Emiliana’s second cousin will probably grow up like a lot of the Oapaneco boys that I know—bilingual, but with a preference for Nahautl.  I wonder what will happen when he is older and his grandmother perhaps isn’t around.  Will he join Hugo and the rest of his family in Cuernavaca or Oapanecos in other parts?  Will his mother and his aunt come with him?  Will he make the trip up north? 

I just don’t know.

I have so much respect for people in Oapan—how generous they are, how hard they work, and the extent to which they center their lives on food and family.  Xmotlali, they say when you enter a home.  Xmotlali.  Sit, eat, get fat.  I remember the Sunday morning after I first arrived in Oapan, years ago.  I woke up to firecrackers and roosters.  When the first went off, I almost shit my pants.  I thought that someone was firing a gun at the house.  Now, in some ways, Oapan is a paradise for me. 

There are people on the periphery of Oapanecos’ lives who would rather wash them away from the face of the earth—from the land that they work and the river in which they fish.  The Mexican government’s position has been that they would be good laborers in other areas of Mexico—a little post-colonial “fuck you” to one of the relatively few indigenous communities that remained after the arrival of the Spanish.  Even in their own community, there are people who steal from them, with no right or recourse. 

Perhaps this is convoluted, but I see Oapanecos as real people with real fights and real issues.  Many are just trying to get by.  I have respect for them, I identify with them, and almost involuntarily, I tell people that Oapan is where I am from. 

Oapan is home.

[two of three] Posadas

Posada #2: Oapan, a stop-in at Jeremias’ aunt’s house.

After the Attack on Ameyaltepec, the second Posada was considerably more peaceful.  Jeremias, Emiliana and I stopped in at Jeremias’ aunt’s house, where the scene was similar to the day before:  

Jesus, the Virgin, and some other saint were on a platform with shoulder mounts, with lanky candles at each corner.  The three figures wore flower wreaths, and offerings of food lay at their feet.  Someone had clipped pesos and dollar bills to the saint.  Probably a dozen people sat around the scene, praying in a drone and a shrill.  They were coughing on the smoke from the komal in the center of the room, until someone brought in fans and opened windows.  We left after a few minutes.

Jeremias.  Jeremias is my age, 25, and has become a good friend.  He says that he’s going to give himself three years in Oapan.  He wants to do something about the trash and pigs in the street.  These seem like simple issues to take care of—create a landfill and resources for trash-pickup, pen in the pigs and clean up the shit.  But no one has taken the chore realistically.  The roads are disjointed and full of potholes, where filthy gray water sits in pools, along with the pigs.  Oapanecos are accustomed to a culture of waste—they throw their garbage in the street or, worse, the river.  The water supply is extremely contaminated.  According to a water specialist whom Jonathan brought in, the water shouldn’t even be potable.  But it is.

The quality of public health in Oapan isn’t good, and people know it.   

I get the feeling that Oapanecos are waiting for the local government to do something about the situation, but I imagine that they already know that the government never will.  The idea that the government will provide trucks to haul trash, for example, is far-fetched, to say the least.  There is really no infrastructure in the town, other than a community health center. 

It’s common knowledge that local officials have extravagant homes in both Oapan and the more uban Iguala, and there are perennial questions regarding the allocation of town funds.  What perplexes me is that some of these leaders apparently arose in the early 1990 enfrentamiento with the federal government, when the government attempted to build a dam and that would have effectively wiped out the indigenous communities in the Balsas River Valley, including Oapan.  The same people who once brought hope are now quietly extinguishing it.

Jeremias and some of his friends are going to make a presentation to municipal authorities to try and create some awareness of the contamination.  They are going to try to educate.  Oapanecos should be able to enjoy their own resources, a greater standard in public health, and a higher quality of life.  To that extent, Jeremias’ work is important, here and now.  But the cynical part of me wonders what San Agustin will be like in fifty years—if anyone will be around to enjoy a healthier Oapan, or if they’ll just be travelers passing through, house to house, enjoying the respite of another posada.  

[one of three] Posadas

12-26

Christmas came and went, as did not one but two posadas. 

Posada #1: The Attack on Ameyaltepec

Jonathan is off talking with a 107-year-old woman, leaving Jeremias, myself and the anciano behind, at the house of a friend.  Fortino, I think.  We eat.  We spend an hour drawing fake tattoos on the arms of legions of six-year-old boys.  The Posada begins and we all scatter off, marching behind the procession.  Men carry a mounted Jesus and Virgin Mary at the front.  In the back, a man launches homemade fireworks—gun powder attached to tree limbs that zoom into the air and explode with a crack.  The procession chants in prayers, accompanied by the electronic chirping of Christmas jingles from Christmas lights.

We walk down the mountain, and the procession enters another home.  We are in what amounts to a callejon—an alleyway wedged in between two single-story, flat-roofed houses. 

Upon the roof of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, children toss candy and sweets down to the kids and the three of us in the callejon. 

It starts nice enough.  Cute little girls in their mandils sprinkle down small, hard candies—the equivalent of jolly ranchers.  The callejon kids squirm around, squealing in delight.  Even Jeremias joins in the action, scooping up handfuls of candy.  The anciano slowly pegs his way back up the alley with his cane.

The stakes get a little bit higher.  The rooftop kids stop lofting the candy, instead peppering the callejon kids with a bit of zip.  Then the candy becomes oranges, and unsuspecting grapplers begin to get pelted in the face.  We all become a little bit more wary in the callejon.  I am watching the girls, and I see that they are smiling as a child below rubs his head frantically, an orange at his side.  I also see kids scuttle up to the rooftop across the callejon. They are now armed with oranges.  I inch my way back up the hill to the anciano.

Candy and oranges rain down a few moments longer, and then some genius introduces jicama—sweet, fist sized, and really hard. 

All hell breaks loose.

I see flashes of white jicama and green oranges dart from rooftop to rooftop.  Boys join the girls on the roof of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and vice-versa on the other side.  Kids are ducking, running about the rooftops.  The callejon kids launch their own counter-offensive from below, chucking fruit and vegetables skyward.  The height has the advantage, however.  The callejon kids are pounded in the fervor.

The three of us have long since gone before the Posada-turned onslaught of edibles ends.  The kids are red with laughter and welts.  As we scurry past the houses to the street, I see dozens of jicama on the ground.  These armaments will not be eaten.

where the language is, the people are

12-18, Dec. 2006

I didn’t see Moises or go fishing with Pepe yesterday.  I went to Ameyaltepec instead, with Jonathan (my former instructor), Jeremias (another good friend), and an anciano (whose name I don’t recall).  

The town sits at the head of a mountain spring, to the north of San Agustin.  We made our way up the winding, dirt-pack road, and immediately upon arriving, Jonathan’s role in the community became clear.  Children ran up to him, and smiling residents greeted him as he walked from house to house.  His face lit up.  I’ll have to write about the posada and the “Attack on Ameyaltepec” later, but Jonathan was as welcome a traveler as any other this holiday season.

Ameyaltepacanos are drawn to Jonathan. If I were to guess, I would say that some see him as a source of money and others an object of curiosity.  Here he is, a white man from New York who comes into their village speaking fluent Nahuatl.  He lives in Oapan, and he speaks, in their tongue, of building community centers, investing in computers, and saving a dying language. 

In the late 1970s, Jonathan spent two and half years in Ameyaltepec.  To many, he is a brother, a son and a godfather.  A part of the community, he will forever be apart from it.  Villagers look at him with what I can only describe as strangeness, not unlike they do me.  This isn’t irreconcilable.  It’s just a fact.  If anything, I think that it indicates that Jonathan lives in more than one world.  Perhaps he needs to be all the more considerate in his responsibilities to both.

Jonathan knows more Nahuatl than many of the people of Ameyaltepec and Oapan.  He learned from the elders, and the collective memory of their words exists in Jonathan’s dictionary, a contemporary resource for the language that he has been developing over the last thirty years.  More and more, the younger generations are speaking Spanish.  They are forgetting their Mexicano.

Jonathan says that Nahuatl will effectively become extinct within two generations.  Roughly one million people speak Nahuatl in Central America, although “speaking”, Jonathan says, is a term used by governments that tend to inflate numbers.  “Speaking” could mean to say a working knowledge of the language—knowing it, but as a little-used second tongue. 

Hugo, Emiliana’s seven-year-old brother, for example, “speaks” Nahuatl.  He lives in Cuernavaca, and his Oapan-born mothers and sisters speak to him in their Mexicano.  He can respond in the language as well, but by his admission he doesn’t want to.

There are many others like Hugo in and around San Agustin.  Let’s say that there are approximately a thousand families in Oapan and that each family has five people.   Jeremias says that, on average, one person in every Guerrero family lives and works in the United States.  This leaves us a 1000 stateside, 4000 in Mexico.  Let’s also say that half of the families native to Oapan don’t actually live in Oapan, or that some family members move back and forth to a neighboring city like Taxco while the rest stay.   This leaves us with 2000 people in Oapan at any given time, and another 2000 people living and working in other parts of Mexico. 

My former host family is fairly representative of this sort of movement.  Their immediate family is nine: the parents, Sixto and Eulalia, and their seven children, Olga, Ulyses, Edith, Sonia, Daniela and Anayali.  And of course Pepe.   Sixto has worked in the States.  The oldest, Olga, lives in Guanajuato.   This last trip to Oapan she took Anayali with her.  Ulyses and Edith currently live with an uncle in Puerto Escondido. 

I know that they have family in other parts as well: the tourist hub of San Miguel Allende, for example.  I’ve met other Oapanecos in Cuernavaca, selling their famed neon-colored amate art in a Cuernavaca church square.  Emiliana said that she recognizes many locals there as well.  The mandil, or apron, common to the women of the area is a big tip-off, as is their art. 

The last time that I had seen Ulyses, he was set to finish secondaria (the equivalent of middle school in the U.S.) in a year, although he spent the majority of his time painting ceramic pieces that their family would distribute to vendors or sell themselves for a pittance.   Those pieces are easily recognizable.  Most often they include some sort of animal, are brightly colored, and are accented by clusters of painted dots.  I’ve seen the pottery in Acapulco, Mexico City, Nogales, Tijuana: you name it.  And where the art is, the people are.

Like Sixto and Eulalia’s family, like Jonathan, like me, it’s important to remember that the people come back as well.  Oapan is becoming increasingly permeable.  Within a year, the road into town will be almost fully paved, and Oapanecos will come and go with greater ease. 

The community is already changing.  Some families have X-Boxes.  Others watch American movies on television.  My friends adapted my name, “Power”, from the “Mighty Morphing Power Rangers”, a Japanese action series repackaged in the States and redubbed in Mexico. 

Two generations ago, people spent their entire lives along the river next to San Agustin and upon the mountain in Ameyaltepec, and everyone spoke Nahuatl.   But times are changing, and there’s a new language for it. 

six big pigs, 12/16/06

12-16, Saturday

I have forgotten most, if not all, of my Nahuatl, but it doesn’t matter.  My friends and family are as happy to see me as I am them. 

Oapan is as I remember it: the same bumpy dirt roads, the pigs sauntering through the streets, the komal smoke lingering in the air.  It smells the same.  The tortillas are as thick as they were before, warm and inviting.   They taste good. 

Pepe hasn’t grown so much up as he has out. He has filled in.  I almost didn’t recognize Daniela.  She had grown so much that I thought she was her older sister.  It was a memory of her a foot shorter and entirely quiet that put her out of my frame of reference.  She existed once again.

Eulalia looks older.  You can see it in her face.  Sixto looks the same.  He greeted me with a bare chest, in his athletic shorts and huaraches. He knows me as “Power” here, as does everybody.  Of the few things that I understand in our conversations at times, I understand my name.

When I arrived at the house of my former host family, I tried to give Eulalia a hug.  That didn’t really work.  They don’t really give hugs here.  She pointed to Sonia and said, I was told later, that “when she marries, the family is going to slaughter six pigs at the wedding.”  I understood things a bit differently, however:

“Sonia’s a pig?”

“Sonia’s a pig.”

“Why is Sonia a pig?”

“She’s not a pig.”  Eulalia flashed her digits in indication. She’s six pigs.”  And her eyes grew wide.  “Six big pigs.”

Later I went to see Moises and his family, but he wasn’t there at first, so his sons and I mumbled through a quiet conversation.  When Moises arrived later from work, he spoke of Pablo, my former classmate and friend.  He had returned earlier that summer and had learned to speak Nahuatl extremely well.  Moises told me that Pablo wasn’t like me: he was smarter than me.

“Well,” I said in Spanish.  “Pablo has been studying Nahuatl since we left.”  I had spoken only words and phrases in random encounters since.  “That must have helped.”

“No,” he responded.  “He’s just smarter than you.”  Moises is a good man.  He invited me across the river tomorrow to watch him work.  I will also go fishing with Pepe.

The women have gone to bed here at Emiliana’s home.  I need to sleep as well.  Lights out.

to oapan, 12/15/06

Dec. 15, 2006

I’ve left Mexico City.  After two weeks, Ursula’s has become a home away from home, and I’m off to another: San Agustin Oapan, where I had spent a summer studying Nahuatl.

I’m in Cuernavaca now, with my good friend Emiliana.  We’ve kept in contact on and off over the last two and a half years over email.  She met me at the church today, and I barely recognized her.  With her hair cut short and streaked with blond, she had evolved.  Her smile stayed the same, though.  I will always be able to recognize Mili by her smile.

I’ll be sleeping in the bed, alone, that she and her sister usually share.  Tomorrow I’ll have a space in her grandmother’s house in Oapan, and there I’ll share in their food as I did here today.  I am so fortunate, so humbled by these people, my friends.  I can only hope to be so good to my guests in the future.

They remind me of so many people I met with the Otra and vice-versa.  They are of little means but invite you to their beds, dinner tables and lives.  They ask for nothing in return, except to enjoy their company.  Anything less (and especially more) is an insult.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow.  I am excited to go home and not the least bit nervous about speaking Nahuatl.  Sometimes words don’t matter as much as presence, showing up, and being human.

To Oapan.  To people who understand struggle, land, good food, how to treat and take care of each other… to my Oapanecos.

about this caracol, 12/12/06

Dec 12, 2006

“Creo que su modo es mirar con los oidos y escuchar con la mirada.”

“I believe that our way is to see our ears and listen with our eyes.”

“Yo camino contigo de la mano y te muestro lo que ve mi oido y escucha mi mirada.  Y veo y escucho un caracol, el ‘pu’y’…”

“I walk with you hand in hand, and I show you what my ears see and my eyes hear.  I see and hear a snail, a ‘pu’y’…”

--La Treceava estela, 2003, El Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos

I was wrong.  I wrote one time that the Subcomandante speaks with his eyes, rather than with his words.  I didn’t consider that his look was an act of listening, rather than speaking.

This isn’t just a case of nonverbal communication.  This is an example of conversation on a profoundly human level.  Marcos’ eyes search not only for information or understanding, but for soul—for the humanity behind the gaze that encounters his own.

We are all involved in this act of discovery, although many of us do not know it, or forget.  We are dynamic and interconnected beings.  Some prefer to see the self as individuated, but I do not know how they go about living.  What does it mean to live when your senses are already dead?  What is a life without a soul? 

For now, I think that it’s enough to live, to listen and, at times, to speak.  And perhaps I’ll let this great teacher of a Zapatista bring me along for a while longer, hand in hand.  It sounds like a good start.  About this caracol…