Message in a Bottle: Re-visiting La Sexta...

Excerpts from La Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona 

"Ésta es nuestra palabra sencilla que busca tocar el corazón de la gente humilde y simple como nosotros, pero, también como nosotros, digna y rebelde. Ésta es nuestra palabra sencilla para contar de lo que ha sido nuestro paso y en donde estamos ahora, para explicar cómo vemos el mundo y nuestro país, para decir lo que pensamos hacer y cómo pensamos hacerlo, y para invitar a otras personas a que se caminan con nosotros en algo muy grande que se llama México y algo más grande que se llama mundo. ésta es nuestra palabra sensilla para dar cuenta a todos los corazones que son honestos y nobles, de lo que queremos en México y el mundo. Ésta es nuestra palabra sencilla, porque es nuestra idea el llamar a quienes como nosotros y unirnos a ellos, en todas partes donde viven y luchan..." 

"This is our simple word which seeks to touch the hearts of humble and simple people like ourselves, but who are also, like ourselves, dignified and rebel. This is our simple words for recounting what our path has been and where we are now, in order to explain how we see the world and our country, in order to say what we are thinking of doing and how we are thinking of doing it, and in order to invite other persons to walk with us in something very great which is called Mexico and something greater which is called the world. This is our simple word in order to inform all honest and noble hearts what it is we want in Mexico and the world. This is our simple word, because it is our idea to call on those who are like us and to join together with them, everywhere they are living and struggling..." 

Sometimes you just have to go back to those trusty old basics to make sense of it all. Como dicen por ahí 'mas sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.' And so I've decided to take a step back from the plethora of debates making the rounds out in the great bloggasphere. I'm taking a breather from the two or three posts I've been working on pero no mas no salen. Breathing deeply before diving into the dozen or so applications hanging on my head like esferitas on a Christmas tree. 

Coming back to la Sexta feels like landing on a deserted beach after a storm. You feel the sand underneath your feet, the sun caressing your skin, and when you  look out you can see clearly for miles and miles. Every time I read through it I feel like I've been standing in a dark room when suddenly a lightbulb turns on... 

No theoretical trabalenguas, no massive dictionary needed, no big road maps, just words sent out to the world in 2005 from deep down in the Lacandon Jungle. 

It wasn't always this way. I remember shunning most of the Zapatista declarations for a while, cuando se puso muy de moda, and all I could see were international activists wearing pantalones de manta y guaraches and those dreaded blond dreads snaking down or bee-hiving-up-high on their heads. The sudden catapulting of the Zapatista's into celebrity status by activist groups made me cringe, cover my ears up with my hands, close my eyes, and start humming 'blah blah blah' the same way Dorothy repeated "there's no place like home" in the Wizard of Oz.

Then there was grad-school... Talk about overkill. My graduate department was basically divided between the all hail the Zapatistas can do no wrong and the 'blah, blah blah'-humming contingency. As usual, I was stuck somewhere in the middle, but mostly tried to stay out of it as I tried to do with every other gone-awry battle in my department. No, this was not out of some sort of complacency, it was mostly out of the profound disconnection I felt between the graduate school battles, my life and the world at large. That disconnect became so heavy that at some point I lost my voice, but that's a story for another day. 

Re-reading through the Sexta and visiting a Zapatista Caracol while living in Oaxaca profoundly changed my relationship to words that had at one point become a burden. Reading la Sexta in the dry asphyxiating heat of a Spring in Oaxaca was like walking out into the drenching cooling rain of a Oaxacan summer evening. And so I turn to it again and again, on the eve of the 'rapture', when people around the world rise up and demand to be heard and our news channels run 20 minutes on the Billboard awards and debate who will replace Charlie Sheen on Two and a half men. I turn to it at a time when our digital acercamientos leave us more and more disconnected from one another tripping over words when how-do-you-do scripts are not followed. I turn to it feeling like I've experienced a small miracle, as if  I had just found a message in a bottle set out to sea. I turn to it with the hope that maybe just maybe others might also stop their "blah blah blahing" and find the message in the bottle stuck somewhere in the sand...

Oventic, Chiapas, 2010.

"Bueno, pues ahora les vamos a decir lo que queremos hacer en el mundo y en México, porque no podemos ver todo lo que pasa en nuestro planeta y quedarnos nomás callados, como si sólo nosotros estamos donde estamos..."

"We are now going to tell you what we want to do in the world and in Mexico, because we cannot watch everything that is happening on our planet and jut remain quiet, as if it were only we were where we are..."

Love Fest

I remember the names randomly popping up on my fb news feed months ago when I was still living la vida loca down in Oaxaca

 Mosquita y Mari

An old high school classmate randomly saying something about supporting the film and the film maker, a queer Latina from the bay area living down in LA. 

I let it pass by... didn't investigate any further... until one day out of the blue it practically slapped me across the face! A few days ago Colorlines made the film the subject of their daily Celebrate Love post. I checked out the films page, read the synopsis, and checked out the crew... and what a sight it was. Rainbow colored, from all walks of life. Made me miss LA, made me miss its gritty, concrete, norteño, mural plastered, orange selling freeway ramps... Reminded me of its magic... It filled me with joy to see their beautiful faces, to witness the effort of so many to try to get this story, our story told. It doesn't hurt they set it in my old stomping grounds. The same places I was around when I was the age of Mosquita y Mari... a quinseañera...

So I've decided to join the cyber space love for  M y M. Can't wait to see las mocosas up on the big screen uno de estos días soon. In the mean time check out the director's other short film bellow and click on this kickstarter link to support the film any small way you can. 

Rumores en el Blogosphere

OJO! I've UPDATED this post!

Taking a clue from a few other sites I follow, I've decided to give this a try. Some blog loving. A few posts I recommend for this week.

"Botas y disco ball," from the exhibit Milli es una histérica at Estación Cero, Oaxaca, Mexico, February 2011. 

On proving citizenship: check out the Unapologetic Mexican on the Obama Trump saga and what it means for the rest of us.

On May Day: photo essay, street vendors working on May day in L.A. at Multi-American.

On Cinco de Mayo: check out this short but sweet piece at Racialicious from a few years back. Also check out Alt.Latino's podcast on up-and-coming Mexican musicians with a little sprinkling of LA Mexican History.

On feminisms and intersectionality: check out What Tami Said on how to blog on race, feminisms and equality...  LOVED this piece! Also check out Feminism for Real, responding o the mainstream feminist blogosphere.

Anecdotes: from the trenches of the LA Book festival. A Chicano cuenta cuentos from the student movement and more at interections.

On the Borderlands: a book review, Making a Killing: Feminicide, Free rade, and La Frontera also published at Feminist Texican.

Reflections on violence: given the recent news, everything from the Royal Wedding, to the Marcha por la Paz in Mexico, and the killing of Osama Bin Ladden, Empezo a Volar's reflections are not only timely but beautiful.

Any blogs you suggest getting to this week? (Shameless self promotion is allowed and highly encouraged ;)

Lessons from bell hooks

I have been struggling with allergies and dehydration all day today. Bed-ridden and unable to really concentrate, write etc, and in the in-between of my delirios, I have been watching and listening to bell hooks in a series she taped years back. What more to lift one's spirit than to hear this woman talk... 

Here is Part 1, you can get to the following parts through youtube. I highly recommend you do just that. 

And a bonus lecture at UO a few years ago :)

Demos taller...

Lucio Cabañas instalación organica, Demos Taller Galería, Barrio de Jalatlaco, Oaxaca. Enero 2011.

The last few weeks here have been extra busy! Knowing that we will soon be leaving for an extended period of time is making my head spin with work, visits with friends, and mental re-organizing. Finally after months of uncertainty and confusion, it all seems a bit clearer, a bit more in place and little by little I've had the chance to put all those once retired skills to work! (and to think I will most likely be starting over when we leave... sigh)

One of the projects I've been working on has been a blog for a collective of artists from/or who were living in Oaxaca during the 2006 social uprising.  As a collection, the 15 woodcut and linoleum prints produced are titled "Dialectica para NO Olvidar". The original project grew from a collaboration between Demos Taller Gallery and a group of women, human rights activists and Demetrio Barrita who then invited 7 other local artists. Each artist was given the task of producing at least 1 piece, most produced 2,  for the series using their particular visual language and their personal reflections on the movement in an attempt to not forget their experiences, to keep the memory of that time and place alive as well as to leave a tangible rememberance. The pieces not only speak of that particular time and place from the perspective of each individual artist but also enter into a collective dialogue about their very particularities. The finished series also, I feel, invites the viewer to participate in a much larger reflection about the perpetual state of violence we live in here in México, but also engage in a more global reflection about the state of normalized everyday violence being experienced around the world. 

I've had a great time working on this project and spending time with Demos and the group of artists involved. After so many years of knowing Demetrio, the corner stone of Demos Taller, I have been more than happy to finally have someway of giving something back to him for the open arms of friendship he extended in the middle of so much chaos in 2006. While at the studio I have taken a few photos. Here is a little of what I've been surrounded by lately...

Portada "Dialectica para NO Olvidar," Demos Taller Galería, Barrio de Jalatlaco, Oaxaca. Enero 2011.

Detalle Zapatista, Virgen y niño instalación organica, Demos Taller Galería, Barrio de Jalatlaco, Oaxaca. Enero 2011.

"La barca del olvido" instalación organica de D. Barrita, Demos Taller Galería, Barrio de Jalatlaco, Oaxaca. Enero 2011.

"Niños Dios en proceso de restauración," Demos Taller Galería, Barrio de Jalatlaco, Oaxaca. Enero 2011.

On Women Aquí y Allá

Colectivo Raahuna - Tejiendo por el futuro de nuestros pueblos, Santo Tomas Jalietza, Oaxaca, July 2010.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how we relate to one another, in other words, been thinking a lot about Human Relations. Yep, here goes another curve ball in the all-encompassing slightly schitzo mexiroccan blog coming to you direct from deep down in the heart-of-southern Mexico. Bare with me...it's a bumpy ride but one I think worth taking ;]

Specifically I've been thinking about women and how we relate to one another. I think about these relationships constantly I suppose as a direct result of my own back and forth upbringing, the macho and machista-like tendencies in this upbringing (I urge you not to take my honesty under a US-centric microscope of Oooohs and Aaaaws exotification), my here and there state of mind, and the constant need to reconcile this aquí y alla syndrome in the most productive of ways possible. Mostly, I think, the strong female role models that have surrounded me, as I am sure many of you, throughout my life have led me to seek out other women, to listen, learn, and at times use that bridge on my back as a link between what I understand and what I don't get just yet. You gotta keep that bridge handy living the transborder lives we live these days, gotta bring it out to reach each other just as much as to cross to the other side. 

I've been more aware lately of these crossings, of the reaching, the seeking, the learning. For one, I recently had the opportunity and privilege to meet a grupo de artesanas from Santo Tomas Jalietza, a small rural pueblo in the central valley of Oaxaca, with two Xicanas from Califas who were visiting Oaxaca for a few weeks. The indigenous Zapoteca women from el Colectivo de Mujeres Raahuna originally came together to support each other in the working and sale of their weaved goods, which now includes computer bags and cell phone pouches (how's that for globalization). The experience was humbling as the women worked to organize packages to send back to the US with the two Xicanas. Final destination for the packages...the hands of an indigenous woman migrant who has been living under cover with the threat of deportation for a few years now, who despite her own situation has kept extending her hand out to help. 

Sharing time with the women in Santo Tomas and  the Califas Xicanas, and thinking about myself the pocha living in Oaxaca, and seeing how we all came together a darnos la mano was, at the risk of sounding conry, exilerating and nurturing. Don't get me wrong I am by no means naive enough to believe in some sort of universal sisterhood, hermanahood, or the like. And NO, I am by no means interested in engaging in some sort of we are women vs. machista men dialogue. On the contrary, what I am interested in is finding ways of relating despite or better said, THROUGH our differences. We already do this all the time! Let's leave that second wave feminism cochinadas, as much as they pop-up over and over, where they belong en el pasado. 

What I am interested in these days is finding spaces where we can learn, collaborate, and exchange ideas without leaving behind our differences, mas bien, spaces where we can put those differences to use. In other words instead of beginning from an assumed sisterhood, launching ourselves from difference towards building bridges, links, conversations...

Lately I've been more hopeful of the possibilities, mostly because of everyday experiences here, but also because of you I know personally, because of you I don't but who read, and because of you with whom I exchange brief "how do you do's" with virtually.

Here are just a few more mujeres, you might be interested in checking out what they do:

afrolicious  Fabmexicana  FloResiste   MonikaFabian

ModelMinority   SheBeganToFly   QuirkyBlackGirls

For more on Colectivo Raahuna in Oaxaca click here.

Las Oaxaqueñas

La Banda at the 1 of August women's march commemoration, Oaxaca 2010. 

It's been four years since las oaxaqueñas marched down the streets of city of Oaxaca banging on pots and pans with large spoons, chanting consignas, wearing rebozos and aprons; indigenous, mestizas, middle class, working class, young and old, demanding to be heard. The now famous marcha de las cacerolas, as the women's protest would be called, was organized by women in support of the ongoing social movement pumping through the streets of Oaxaca. What began as a women's march would turn into a spontaneous burst that would go down in the history of Oaxaca as the day the women spoke. This is what I heard happened after I left the zocalo where the women's march turned into a miting. 

Surrounded by what they felt was biased news media and especially tired of the Televisa, coverage of Oaxaca during the weeks of unrest, a group of women confronted a few cameramen and reporters about what they felt was an ongoing smear campaign directed at the Oaxacan movement. When the Televisa reporter deemed them lucky to get any coverage and threatened to stop covering their event, a few women in the group decided to head over to the local state TV station to ask for a few minutes of airtime... and so las oaxaqueñas would do what no one could have imagined. After being denied any airtime, the women, cocineras, housewives, street vendors, abuelitas, professionals, teachers, with no previous experienced would peacefully take over the state run TV and radio stations. Reclaiming the state run media as the stations of the people of Oaxaca as the official slogans claimed, became a key turning point for the movement. 

Four years later, if you're lucky and listen to the streets speak you can still find small waves of electricity from the lightning rod plunged deep into Oaxacan society by las guerreras oaxaqueñas on August 1, 2006. This past Sunday, on the day declared as the day of las oaxaqueñas four years ago, they marched again, led by a band of girls and boys from the Valles Centrales.

On Quesillo Politics

Quesillo in Oaxaca Market, author unknown.

Elections for governor were finally held in Oaxaca and in 11 other states in Mexico this past Sunday on the 4th of July. Six years after the 2004 elections that magically and over night, literally, had the trailing PRI candidate Ulises Ruiz Ortíz leading and declared the winner by morning, his mustache clone budy Eviel Perez Magaña and the same 2004 coalition candidate Gabino Cúe, fought long with over the top campaigns that left a see-it-to-believe-it circus act/mafia taste in my mouth. The outcome this time was "different" with Gabino Cúe, the mega coalition candidate declared the winner breaking an 81 year PRI hold on the state. The "change" is considered significant and although I have been out of the Oaxacan politics loop for the past two weeks, visiting family in northern Mexico, the chants of joy have reached me in these desert lands. I am happy for the "change" but not quite ready to rejoice with the crowds and here's why.

I believe having Cúe as governor will do little to change the current situation of thousands, tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of Oaxaca’s, and that on the contrary sometimes having the right face is misleading. What I mean by this is that having a more likable and less brutish person at the forefront with no actual structural or social change and who on the contrary continues to merely reinforce   the system can be more dangerous. I don't want to sound like dooms day here, or like I am expecting miracles to be performed, but something clearly needs to change so things don't continue to go downhill. Something has to be reversed or at the very least stopped because continuing on the same path with a prettier face is not good enough. It might be easy, less worrisome, more convenient and even make one feel like a good and responsible citizen to merely go out and cast a ballot, come home watch the polls and cross ones fingers wishing and hoping stepping right back into our daily routines the next morning, but what good is a vote without any civic responsibility. By this I mean, if we want true change we can't naively think it will come through a ballot. 

What is good about the "change" in Oaxaca is that with Cúe, there might be less politically motivated arrests, there might be less politically motivated disappearances, and there might be less politically motivated assassinations than there could have been with Eviel Perez Magaña. He will most likely meet with more civil organizations give in to token gestures to quell growing discontent as he continues on the same path the PRI has been following, which is not necessarily their path, or the path of any other party, but that of market interests outlined at a much higher level than just Oaxaca. 

There is however a very small opportunity in this "change" that must be seized so that real change might have a slight chance. Real and continued civic participation, genuine interest in what is happening, pressuring the new government to also seize this opportunity to at least take a good look at the possibility of turning the wheels of a run away train that might just be fleetingly at a crossroads. I admit it is hard to believe this is even possible given Cúe's first words of thanks to both Lopéz Obrador and Calderón... (the great irony of his success on a ticket put together by a coalition of the supposed ultra right wing and left wing parties which in itself offers this slight opening as the parties argue over control)... but we are going nowhere and are stuck on this train whether we want to or not. We might as well do something and stop (excuse the language) half assing it sitting around the next six years in hopes of another shot for change...

The Scream and Oventic, Chiapas

Caracol Resistencia y Rebeldía por la Humanidad, Oventic, Chiapas,
sabado 29 de mayo, 2010.

'Zapata,' Oventic, Chiapas, May 29, 2010.*

"In the beginning is the scream. WE SCREAM.

When we write or when we read, it is easy to forget that the beginning is not the word, but the scream. Faced with the mutilation of human lives by capitalism, a scream of sadness, a scream of horror, a scream of anger, a scream of refusal: NO.

... It is from rage that thought is born, not from the pose of reason, not from the reasoned-sitting-back-and-reflecting-on-the-mysteries-of-existence that is the conventional image of the thinker..." 

- from Change the World without taking power, by Josh Holloway.

Lately the scream has been building up inside of me. Lethal cocktail, chemical reaction between myself and the world apparently...

No soda POP f i z z i n g ,  j u s t   a   B I G   B A N G ! glass and fire flying   s l o w   m o t i o n  through the air...

Can't read the paper, can't hear the news, can't over hear conversations on the street without the SCREAM  b u b b l i n g  up like lava in a volcano...
YA BASTA!

Flotillas, oil, bullets, and tassers... not to mention the ball of quesillo** that gets bigger and BIGGER each day here in Oaxaca... YA BASTA! They screamed form the SOUTH!

Now their silence   e  c  h  o  e  s   like a pebble tossed in a calm lake.

So we went to that place called Chiapas to see for ourselves. Turns out the revolution will NOT be televised... but IT WILL be painted.

P a i n t e d  on  the muros y paredes of every building, in every corner, wherever the eye can see... s h i e l d s   o f   c o l o r   a n d   h o p e. 

Aquí, a few of the pictures I took while in Oventic. The second of two Zapata in Chiapas posts.

Los Zapatas de Oventic

* Click on the images to enlarge.
** Quesillo is a Oaxacan string cheese wrapped into a ball much like a ball of yarn. There is a saying in Oaxaca, that basically pokes fun at the fact that Oaxacans managed to even make cheese difficult by wrapping it into a ball. 

poetry

I woke up the last few days thinking about this poem. Me di cuenta que ya no lo tenía guardado. Afortunadamente lo encontre. Thought I would share.

The Bridge Poem

by Donna Kate Ruskin

I've had enough
I'm sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody
Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me

Right?

I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black church folks
To the ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists the
Black separatists to the artists the artists to the my friends' parents. .

Then I've got to explain myself

To everybody
I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.

Forget it
I'm sick of it

I'm sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against
The isolation of your self-imposed limitations
Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners
Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches
Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people

Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip
I will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your human-ness

I'm sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long

I'm sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf of your better selves

I am sick
Of having to remind you to breath
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self.

Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die
The bridge I must be
Is the Bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful.

Aurora y Antonio

'Y las paredes siguen hablando,' photo by Mauricio Magaña. Oaxaca, 2010.

I will try my best to be brief precisely because it is almost impossible to think of brevity after spending hours and hours listening to people weave stories into tapestries of esperanza. Last week was probably one of the hardest and most fruitful weeks of my life. I have had little time to think or wallow in 'foreigness' lately. I have been overwhelmed with emotions rushing gushing and spilling out of me; laughter, happiness, uncertainty, impotence, sadness, rage, and so, so much esperanza it poured out in tears several times. Too much has happened and I had been unable to write anything out of sheer exhaustion. This is my first attempt at reflecting on some of what was lived last week and I have chosen to begin by writing about Aurora and Antonio.

On Friday we went to a local university to hear two ex-commanders of a guerrilla group called the Insurgent People's Revolutionary Army (Éjercito Revolucionario del Pueblo Insurgente - ERPI). The ERPI grew out of another well known guerrilla group here in Mexico, the EPR with whom these two commanders broke from to form the ERPI in 1997. Both Gloria Arenas Agis and Jacobo Silva Nogales, known as Coronela Aurora and Comandante Antonio were political prisoners until late October of 2009 a little over ten years after being apprehended in late October 1999. Curiously the year before their arrests was the year the Mexican government formed the Federal Preventive Police (Policía Federal Preventive - PFP). The PFP was in fact the unit responsible for their arrests just as they were in charge of bringing order to Oaxaca in late 2006 during the APPO rebellion.

Both Gloria and Jacobo were arrested without warrants, both were severely tortured, and both were accused of a long list of crimes including rebellion, sabotage, murder, terrorism, etc. When apprehended neither denied their identities and both were presented to the public at a rueda de prensa in an effort to show the government's efficiency at dealing with crime. Finally both were sentenced to over 50 years in prison. 

Being accused of a crime in Mexico, especially if done for political reasons, means guilty until proven innocent, or to put it bluntly it means guilty with a stroke of a pen and regardless of a person's innocence. Piles of evidence in a person's favor will do nothing to reverse sentencing and will most likely, depending on the judge, never leave a person's file to be reviewed. A case in point here in Oaxaca is the case of Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno currently in prison accused of shooting the American Indymedia journalist Brad Will in 2006.

The talk on Friday was inspiring. Walking into the room I recognized Gloria. Something about her was so familiar to me I felt I knew her, I tried to recall why I felt this way while rationalizing in my mind the impossibility. I decided I must have seen her picture or seen a video of her somewhere at some point. Like Jacobo's, Gloria's face reflected an enormous sense of peace that made the idea of  them spending 10 years in a maximum federal state penitentiary seem unimaginable. The room was full and the conversation focused largely on how to conceptualize and live fundamental social change without 'taking power,' ( to recall Holloway's 'How to change the world without taking powers'). Gloria and Jacobo spoke quietly yet with resolution while answering questions, showing an unfledging support and speaking of their incorporation into the continuing lucha for fundamental social change.

What was most surprising however, to most of us listening and asking from the audience was how these two ex-guerrilleros, Aurora y Antonio, political prisoners just recently released, having endured torture, and ten years in a maximum security prison, were tremendously moved by the people of Oaxaca. Their respect for the Oaxacan movement was unprecedented. I have heard reporters, NGOs, people disappointed by the movement, and a slew of academics discuss, speculate, and make conclusions over what exactly happened in the southern Sate of Oaxaca in 2006. The controversies extend from the usual arguments over semantics, (was this a movement? was this a rebellion? was this an uprising? and does it even matter?), to the aloofness of many who decided to shock-it-all-up to a few power hungry individuals pulling their usual puppetry tricks in the name of social change, in other words the tendency to reduce peoples participation to merely political manipulation. Ah but if only it were that simple... If only we could homogenise real life like we do often in our minds or on paper... Pardon me as I celebrate the fact we can't!

Gloria and Jacobo spoke with great admiration about the many lessons Oaxaca had shown the rest of Mexico in 2006, despite the aftermath and the current apathy that seems to permeate the Oaxacan landscape. It was clear that they had taken much from what was experienced in Oaxaca, not in the defeatist sense that many seem to have taken, or in fruitless arguments over whether or not what happened can be considered a movement, but by focusing on the glimmer of esperanza the Oaxacan movement was able to reveal, simply put, by imagining the possibilities.

To them the Oaxacan movement is exemplary of what el pueblo can accomplish, how it can organize, and even how it can surpass more than one would-be leader.  Yes some people within the movement sold their soul to the devil, yes there was repression, yes the same governor is still in power in large part due to the Federal Government's complicity, but beyond the materially and academically measurable how did people move, react, defend, fight, or even understand their own process etc. There will always be those who take the route of politics, who are able to gain materially by taking advantage of movements, but at the same time there will also always be those who will not follow, who will make their own paths, who will challenge through their actions, and surpass movement structures. That was more than evident in 2006.

Yet in a sense those of us in that room needed to hear it, not from the countless NGOs, reporters, or academics who have tried to speculate, but from Aurora and Antonio who have spent a lifetime working, fighting, and believing in social change. Their voices echoed in those walls louder  and more clearly than the voices of those of us who spend a lifetime behind desks analyzing data, deconstructing and reconstructing Babylon. In a sense their presence here in Oaxaca served to re-ignite a lingering flame amongst many Oaxaqueños whose participation in 2006 has been either elevated to misunderstood heroics or diminished to an anomaly. And so the flame of esperanza shines bright in the torn up streets of Oaxaca.

Who Broke Your Lamp Vato?

 

'Lampara de los Recuerdos,' Oaxaca, 2010.

"Theory is abstraction. We should think of it as a lamp we can use to help us illuminate what is happening here, on the ground, in real life..." - Words spoken at a seminar, my own translation from Spanish to English.

We have been participating in a weekly seminar here in Oaxaca for a bit now. Conversations have ranged from what to do and how to organize outside official spaces in the mid's of the  worsening conditions for the average person and the current state of exception, to theoretical debates concerning the use of discourse. Somehow for the last 3 weeks, questions of identity have managed to poke their head out more often than not. And so I am compelled to write about the great intellectual identity quesillo (a Oaxacan string cheese that is wrapped around into what looks like a ball of yarn) as I currently understand it...

It seems lately 'identity' is OUT in intellectual circles.  It is especially out of fashion amongst those who study, are interested in, analyze or just follow social movements. Turns out to talk about identity is to confirm the state's hegemonic power over us, it is to talk about a 'western' philosophical construction  (unreal or made up in ones head) that is absent from REAL life. In other words, out with New Movement theory! In with the... 'we' the 'us' the 'collective' built around difference... So what exactly is difference these days?...

Glad you asked! Not 'identity' apparently! No Siree! Why not? Well apparently 'identity' can be reduced to the following equation: 1=1. Works nice mathematically doesn't it?! Ah but because in REAL life 1 (person) ≠ 1 (person), 'identity' is out the door. According to how identity is being defined in our particular seminar, the semantics and philosophical historical origins of 'identity' (which happen to of course originate in Western society according to this particular argument), clearly stipulate that one cannot identify oneself with another because to do so would mean to be 'identical' the 'same' 'equal.'

Ok, pause for a minute... The first thing that popped into my head was, WOW!!!!!!!!!... Then a million and one thoughts including: 1=1, 1≠1 REALLY?!!! How did you come up with the idea that Non-Western societies were not using 'identity' or that this idea somehow originated in the West? Who are you to tell people they can't 'identify' with one another in a group? or simply to tell them 'there is no such thing as identity?' 

Oh wait, you call yourself 'Zapoteco' guess what YOU'RE NOT because if you are you are giving into the great big Wizard of OZ pulling the strings behind the curtain. You are from so and so village so you call yourself BLANK... YOU CAN'T! you'd give in to hegemony. Oh you organize around your sexuality? WRONG AGAIN!...

There is this idea that 'identity' prevents you from making alliances, from organizing across or in difference that I just can't wrap my head around just yet. I think I can't understand it, because I don't see identity as a one-sided or the BIG ONE-EYED MONSTER. It is not a floating box waiting for the powers that be to come and grab their next victim to place him/her into their very own tiny identity box. Come on let's give people and ourselves a little more credit than that.

Yes identity can be dangerous, in the sense that it can be used from the top down, for example 'national identities,' but it is also constructed from the bottom up and that is what has been the most frustrating part of our conversations these past few weeks. It's more than a one way street just like the rest of life. People use identity, they change identity, they even have multiple identities precisely because they are complex beings, because complex social phenomena cannot be reduced to simple mathematical equations and simply arguing for weeks over semantics (identity = to identify oneself with) is useless when people give meaning through their everyday lives to the these modern hieroglyphics. 

I understand identity as something much more fluid, in constant construction and reconstruction. It does not hinder my ability to connect, organize, or build alliances, on the contrary, it is a tool I can use to do just that. We need to stop talking about identity as if it were static and all encompassing, and realize what feminists have been saying for years, we don't have to be the same, we can organize precisely through difference (see Andrea Smith 2008, Aida Hernandez, Chandra Mohanty, or ask me I have a long list of references).

I understand that lately there is a new turn towards some sort of 'humanism' 'internationalism' 'we are the world-ism' or plain 'intergalacticism,' or maybe there is simply the need to come up with the next ISM to define current social and cultural phenomena... This is what intellectuals live for and I do not want to deny them the opportunity to coin the next ISM. However, I am also not willing to have them throw out terms that are used in REAL LIFE by REAL PEOPLE simply because this year's new black is pink. In other words Vato I think your lamp broke!

Oaxaca Vive Vive

To be honest I hardly know where to begin...

Tonight I listened to many stories. Stories about deceit, loss, triumph, disappointments, love, and even hope. I spent the night talking and sharing experiences. The kind of sharing you can only do after a few beers on a Tuesday night in a cantina in the center of town.

Lately there have been so many things making my head spin I have had a hard time processing my surroundings or my very feelings but tonight things were brought back into perspective.

Since we arrived late last year the uprising of 2006 has almost seemed like a far away dream Oaxacan's woke up from maybe a bit too early. Life in Oaxaca is almost seamlessly familiar, usual, and unshattered. The Swiss, German, French, Italian, and American senior citizen tourists, ex-pats, 'profesional anthropologists,' college students and 'artists' continue to arrive in busloads. Yet at least part of the young European and American backpackers/philanthropic activists that came before 2006 have now been replaced with what has been known as Turismo Revolucionario (a term first used  in Mexico to name the flocks of European and American activists that arrived in Chiapas after the 1994 EZLN uprising), who now come to linger in what remains of the 2006 Oaxacan landscape. The city with its wide blue skies, cotton candy clouds, and touch of honey evening light continues to unleash its magical spell on more than one unsuspecting passerby.

Lately I have been questioning my place here. Mostly because I have made an effort to stop myself from falling into the middle-class 'intelectual' comfort that comes with being a highly educated, yet poor, Pocha/mestiza living in southern Mexico. Walking through a city once sown together by  a network of barricadas, now literally torn apart by the construction projects of an exiting governor desperately trying to gain a fleeting and unattainable legitimacy, I have made an extra effort to see, listen, and feel Oaxaca from where I stand.

Tonight I heard, felt and saw disappointment, failure, loss, guilt, anger, pride, enormous love and so much hope it seemed to pour out from the catina and flow like rivers onto the streets of Oaxaca. It is hard to find hope after hearing about so much repression. After hearing about the continued persecution experienced by people in their everyday lives, the enormous losses they have experienced on personal and professional levels, the shattered lives that bear witness to a time and place that might otherwise seem to no longer exist. I listened to stories filled with bravery, self sacrifice, and experiences remembered and lived whole heartedly. As I listened I remembered that time that place, my heart filled with angustia, fear, and sadness as I left Oaxaca that September  in 2006 knowing full well that my father's decision to migrate to the United States at age 17 had given me the privilege of crossing to el otro lado and the ability to leave while others could not.

I listened to the crumbling of marriages, to the loosing of children, to the nights of anguish, to the embracing of the wounded, to the battles of rocks and sticks against armour and guns, the victories,  the defeats, to the comradery between people, to the helping hand, to the need, to the want, to the willingness to fight for change at all costs, and to the what ifs...

And yet in between it all, despite so much loss, despite so much sarcasm by others who no longer believe, and despite the what ifs, they are here in Oaxaca as they are in Oregon, broken, beaten, and tortured but unwilling to take the easy way out, to settle into the status quo, knowing full well maybe others might not follow, others might not care or take the time to listen. Knowing what that means for themselves and their families but believing there is something much greater... and so you can almost hear their voices once by the thousands in the streets of Oaxaca now filled with the rattling of destruction and reconstruction...

Mujer que sabe Latín...

I was interrogated this week... It was long, tiring, pointless, and yet not surprising...

It all started when I saw a wanted-sign up at a coffee shop. A 'local' bookstore was looking for someone fluent in Spanish and English. Having decided to look for a part-time job in an effort to add more structure to my days and to break through the uncertainty of fieldwork, (a quasi New Years resolution), I decided to apply to my first job in Mexico as a citizen. After all I love books, and while they served as a place of refuge for me growing up in the inbetweens, and in anthropological terms, in the othernesses of society, they have become an integral part of my everyday life, no longer distracting my thoughts from the endless police stops and searches in the neighborhood but directing me towards them. I won't go into the peti details of applying to jobs in Mexico in this entry because what I feel is more important to deal with in this case is how I was interviewed, by whom, and why it became such a long and pointless interrogation that had nothing to do with the particular job I had originally thought of applying to.

Confident not only in my expertise but in my ability and willingness to learn, I headed with my stack of papers to apply for the bookstore attendant position. I was immediately taken up to the second floor of a colonial building, one of those buildings that revolves around a courtyard now converted into a dinning area, with high ceilings that make you feel you could fly if only you had wings. I was lead to one corner of the building where a heavy, dark, wooden door sat slightly opened. Inside at the far end of this long room was a tall medium sized man of European decent, white hair, white beard. He sat in front of a heavy dark wooden desk, the kind you see in hacienda offices in Mexican soap operas, telenovelas. He sat working on a computer with a large screen. Sunlight filtered into the room from the street through slightly opened balcony doors. I decide that the Mexican kitsch fairy must have visited this man's office as papel picado hung from the ceiling and I caught a glimpses of a human sized paper mache skeleton, walls covered in prints, skeleton scenes, lucha libre, Fridas, etc.

The man behind the desk did not turn his attention towards me immediately. He was apparently busy making car service arrangements and continued to do so, dialing numbers, talking as if  alone in the room. When he finally came towards me, he quickly glanced at my CV and proceeded to ask  one question after another, no, not about my ability to stack books, be organized, or anything that might be related to the duties involved in the job advertised. It seems my CV's list of academics enthralled him. He  proceeded to ask questions about a particular academic, is she nice, is she helpful, how do you know her, what kind of person is she?

I couldn't help feeling that this man's previous encounters with this woman might not have been good. By his line of questioning I got the feeling that this woman must not particularly like this man and that this man was trying desperately to dig into me in an effort to find out something new about this woman. Not only was I transformed into an encyclopedia of information (information I had no intention of disclosing), but as he continued to speak I became convinced that the set up in the room reflected an hacendado complex. That is to say, that as he spoke behind his large desk he seemed to speak about himself as some sort of benefactor of Oaxaca and therefore Oaxacans. This was not a good feeling and my head began to hurt... but he continued.

He shot question after question at me for what seemed like an eternity, in random order and without a coherent line leading back to the book store attendant position. It had been no less than 45min., when he asked, 'If one of your friends was coming to Mexico what book would you recommend they read? No not a travel book. Pick any other book.' As I sat there I felt the response he was waiting for in the air, yet it refused to leave my lips. One of the countless travel journals; or perhaps a book by an American traveler who settles in provincial Mexico, a kind of manifesto of self discovery and coming to grips through otherness. I have a difficult time with books like this and it was impossible for me out of conviction to give him what he wanted. All I could think of was what I think of every time I try to read such books: How do I find myself in a 'foreign' land  through the otherness that is felt by fellow Americans abroad when I have coexisted with otherness for a lifetime no matter where I am?... But he continued...

He explained how he likes to offer the job I was applying for to indigenous girls. He explained how they are not allowed to use their phone, receive messages, or have anyone that knows them talk to them at the shop.  He explained how they work 6 days a week, 8 hours a day for a set wage. He highlighted how the fact that he believes they appreciate the work given the wages in Oaxaca but admits the wage is not much.

He continued... He moved on to my legal status. 'Married or not? Children? Where were you born? So you are illegal. Do you have a passport. Age? So you are illegal?' It doesn't matter how many times I explain my dual citizenship, he repeats, 'So you are illegal?"... and on and on and on...

As I sat there I thought to myself about the irony of it all. Here I was in southern Mexico, a Chiacana, Meixacana, Pocha, being interrogated by a white American man who, with all of his hacendado grandeur, made sure to remind me before I left how lucky I am to be here. How lucky I am to be here...  as if he knew something about my life, about who I am, where I come from, what I have been through. A Chicana, Mexicana, American oldest of 5, hija de migrantes, whose father 2nd grade education led him to carry the scars of his labor on his hands and back. A Pocha whose desire to make something of herself has meant more sacrifices than are visible to the eye... And yet this man somehow thought it was his place to remind me of my luck...

And so this whole episode reminded me of something else that I have been reminded of often since we moved here. There is an ability for some people to accept what is foreign in a foreign land, but it is much harder to accept what they perceive as foreign in their own land. My presence here at times provides a bit of a schism to those who are comfortable with the foreignness that surrounds them and their foreignness here. I am what is both familiar and foreign and that is much more difficult to deal with than just plain foreign because it means dealing with what they in fact might not want to deal with at all. That which continues back home to be the elephant in the room despite our new found multicultural and multiracial society.