People by Inside Mexico

Carol Shapiro on how moving to Mexico changed her life

Shauna — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:22:19 -0700

Carol Shapiro talks about her decision to stay in Mexico

Shauna — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:43:19 -0700

The US dilemma

sue-ellen — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:43:29 -0700

“Reason is what will win in the end. We are tired of so much blood. It’s time for something different.”

There’s a little Cuban bodega on the sunny side of Calle Guanajuato in Colonia Roma. Two plastic tables, the kind you sit at when you’re eating fried fish beside the ocean, rest under the shade of red, white and blue "Pepsi Cola" beach umbrellas. The fronds of a small palm tree flutter beside the door to the little shop jammed with cigars, rum and paintings of roosters. With the artistry of minimalist stage directors, Willy Gallardo and his wife Maria have conjured a place far away from urban Mexico City: caribeño, beach, son, mojitos…Cuba…Miami.

“Ayyyy. Mi hermano. ¿Como e’ta’? ¿Quiere’ un café?” says Willy when I come to see him. He’s decidedly not Mexican in accent or affect and swoons when he talks about Miami. "I have friends in the Cuban Embassy here. And I do work in Miami. Do you know Canal 41 in Miami?” Apart from running his store, Willy interviews singers, actors and comedians for a television variety show broadcast in Miami. “Nadie me escapa,” he says with a gleam in his eye, “Nobody escapes me!” When he puts on his husky, come-hither broadcast voice, you know Willy's a pro.

If, like Willy, you’re a 63-year-old Cuban, then you've lived through a lot. Willy was born eight years before Fulgencio Batista interrupted Cuba’s nascent democracy with a military coup and 15 years before Cuban Rebels led by Fidel Castro took power away from Batista. His whole life, which is more representative than unique, has been about surving ing dramatic change. As a youth he was a rock and roll singer and teen idol, as well as as baseball player who threw “with as much inspiration as speed.” When Castro came to power he helped defend Cuba against the Bay of Pigs invasion, became an expert in anti-aircraft artillery, fought for communism in Angola as part of a huge Cuban contingent, and ended up back in Cuba working in military counter-intelligence.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Willy was in Mexico, working on a project. He decided to stay, took Mexican citizenship and, since 1992, has lived here, with frequent trips back and forth to the island. “Life seems to short to me. I've got too many ideas,” he explains. “I’m too impulsive. I needed to do things that were more relevant."

If you are Cuban, there’s an advantage to living Mexico rather than the United States. The American government restricts visits to Cuba by Cuban residents in the US, Mexico doesn’t. It’s easier to maintain the connection from here, to live between your family there and your life here, between strict socialism and capitalism.

Finding patches of middle ground in the Cuba debate have interested me since I first began chasing down the story of an American who, for a moment, was a Cuban revolutionary hero.

Willy, at 15 or 16 years of age, between 1959 and 1961, might have known about this American rebel comandante. On out second meeting, I said to him, “I wrote a book about William Morgan. Do you know who he is?” (see sidebar).

Willy stared at me. “I saw William Morgan executed. I was 16. [A friend of mine] said, they’re going to shoot Morgan. We climbed the wall of La Cabana [the 18th century fortress across the bay from Havana]. The wall was old and rough so we could climb it. And [we] looked over. Morgan marched out, like this.” Willy marched for a few paces, perfectly straight. “They tied his hands to a post.” He gestured, indicating a post a little more than waist high. “He stood there: crack! The six men in the firing squad bolted their guns. They fired. Morgan fell like this.” Willy slumps at the waist, but does not fall. “And then they gave him the coupe de grace" He puts his index finger behind his ear, snaps his middle finger back, shooting. “He stood right there. He didn’t fall over."

There are a number of version of Morgan’s execution and Morgan dies bravely in all of them. In one, Fidel Castro himself commands the execution. In another (more credible) version, Morgan, as a high-ranking rebel soldier, is allowed to command the firing squad himself. Willy's account offers a new variation.

“Willy,” I asked, “how did you feel about the execution?”

“Pues….” He drew out the “well” as only a Cuban can. “I was a revolutionary. But I loved Elvis Presley and baseball and Coca-Cola. There were always questions inside me.

“The thing that made Cuba sick was Batista. If it hadn’t been for Batista, Fidel Castro never would have disembarked from the Granma, the yacht that carried Fidel and his fellow insurrectionists from exile in Mexico to Cuba.

“All the amazing things Cuba can do – the doctors, the baseball players, the musicians…they were there before the revolution too. They aren’t a product of Castro. They are products of Cubans.

"It's easy to say I believe in the American way of life.’ It’s such a high order to say 'I'm a communist.' I've learned to be a socialist. But communism is a fiction. It's too abstract. Too perfect. Not even Lenin could have been a communist. [The US and Cuban governments] try to make you decide between the two. but I don't earn money from the US government, nor from the Cuban government.

"Cubans have always loved the United States. It's not black and white. I love the United States and I love Cuba," says Willy. "Without being a traitor.”

As we talked over cups of Cuban coffee, I almost forgot I was in Mexico. But in some ways, it’s Mexico’s more neutral territory, its space between the US-Cuban face-off, that made the conversation with Willy possible.

Santos in Mexico

sue-ellen — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:36:20 -0700

In May of 2006, scuba divers dove into the ocean near Acapulco to clean the underwater altar to the Virgen Reina de los Mares - the virgin patron of the seas. They found a strange assortment of objects in the sunken shrine. Anchored near the virgin’s statue were a watermelon, a bag stuffed with herbs and another containing an unknown oil. Photos of the Mexican presidential candidates -- Madrazo, López Obrador, Calderón – were pinned to the sandia, laid to rest at the bottom of the sea.

To national media, the signs were clear: “black magic”, “witchcraft”, or a “santería ritual meant to harm the country’s next leader.”

They were only partially correct.

In his deep Cuban accent, Osvaldo Shangó, a santería priest who leads a group of devotees in Puebla explains that what was discovered was surely evidence of santería ritual. What the media got wrong and, according to Shangó, “usually does”, was to suggest that the offering was meant to harm the contending politicos.

“On the contrary, whoever did the ritual had knowledge of and respect for our traditions. A watermelon is the favorite offering to Olokun, the queen of the ocean, so that she would give strength and good judgement to whoever ended up leading the country.”

Misconceptions and misrepresentations are nothing new to the history of santería in Mexico. The sensationalist coverage has done little to generate understanding of the tradition. The Cuban strand of Yoruba (santería) was confined, until recently, to backrooms and secret meetings throughout the country. Popular culture representations evoke horrific ceremonies with hints of "evil".

The true beginnings of santería date back to the Yoruba people, a large ethnic group from Nigeria and West Africa who practiced what was then called Orisha, a set of complex mythologies similar in many ways to those of the ancient Greek and Romans. The religion came to the New World with slavery, and here the traditions were preserved by masking the ritual in Catholic iconography, a practice that began in Cuba.

The basic theology seeks to maintain a balance with nature. If a person makes a choice that brings imbalance to his life or the world around him, a priest must help him achieve realignment using natural elements (water, fruits, sticks, stones and, very rarely, animal sacrifices).

According to Dr. Yololt González, former President of the Mexican Society for the Study of Religions (part of UNAM’s anthropology department), santería came to Mexico “when…entertainers from Cuba started arriving here in the 40s and 50s due to the film boom. [Film star] Ninón Sevilla was a santera, and so was boxer Ultimillo Ramos.”

To find out about santería, I got in touch with Carlos Sousa, a padrino (godfather) whose father (currently in Cuba performing santería ceremonies) leads a congregation in the south part of Mexico City. Sousa was relatively secretive on the phone and when I asked if there would be drum beatings, chantings and chicken sacrifices, I felt like a tourist seeking the exotic.

According to doctoral candidate Nahayeilli Juárez, santería in Mexico is gaining up to 5000 new adepts per year. “The reasons many people make first contact with santería are related to everyday problems and uncertainties -- illness, love, work, finances," says Juárez, who attributes the increased interest in santería to greater openness toward religion in Cuba and the increasing distance between young Mexicans and the Catholic Church.

I arrived at Sousa’s on Sunday and was welcomed into a small room where 20 people (mostly Mexican women) sat beside a rectangular table that served as an altar. Sousa was dressed in white, his long hair tied in a pony tail and his neck adorned with necklaces, beads and amulets. The attendees sat on plastic chairs sharing jokes and thin Cuban cigars.

A statue of Oshum (the Yoruba equivalent of Greek Venus, the goddess of love, beauty and all things sweet) and those of other African deities shared space with dozens of offerings in various stages of decay: California apples, Cuban cigars, limes, money, bottles of rum, a Milky Way and a large package of Ferrero Rocher chocolates.

“My patron saint is Oshum”, says Santa, a 50-something-year-old Mexican woman. “There have been several times when she has performed miracles for me.” She recalls the days when Oshum saved her house from certain fire and burglary.

“We don’t see santería as a religion everyone should practice… and I have heard of cases where priests, with the instruction from oracles, are asked to reject people… usually because they are seeing this as a fashion or some modern thing to attach themselves to, rather than have a real spiritual affinity to," says Shangó.

Mysticism and the occult are everywhere in Mexico: the cult of the dead, the reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary, the recurring altars to Guadalupe, the many elements of superstition. Santería is Africa’s contribution to this hodgepodge, one that, as seen in Cuba, has managed to amalgamate the ancient traditions of the old world with those of the new.

Peter "Pedro" Gellert

sue-ellen — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:27:14 -0700

Pedro Gellert sits in front of a poster of the revolutionary icon Che Guevara. Midmorning light, filtering through the leaves of a potted shrub set beside his living room window, dapples his face. He takes a sip of strong, sweet coffee.

"[The socialist communist movement had] a vision of a society where anyone has an equal right from the word "go". We used to think that a Marxist social revolution in and of itself would eliminate racism, sexism, etcetera. It's more complex than that. Marxism may lay the basis for it, but it's not enough by itself."

You might say that Gellert, who was born in Brooklyn, New York (around 1950 by my math), came into this world a Marxist-Leninist. His parents were communists, as were his grandparents. He was twelve when the Boy Scouts kicked him out for refusing to parrot that his "duty" was to God and for the stash of communist newspapers his grandparents had smuggled into camp for him to read.

Effusive about his political coming of age, Gellert doesn't talk much about the personal details of his adult life. He's been in Mexico "for a long time" but won't say when he came or why. He became a Mexican citizen before Mexico allowed dual citizenship (1998) and is unsure of his status with respect to the US, where he hasn't been in decades.

"I feel completely integrated into Mexican life," he says in English, in an accent that never left Brooklyn. But his accent in Spanish, as well as his taste for coffee -- he drinks 2 liters of syrupy coffee a day -- is Cuban.

That Cuban coffee powers Gellert's hectic schedule: through the activist group Movimiento Urbano Popular, he advocates for Mexico's urban poor; he's the national coordinator for the Movimiento Mexicano de Solidaridad con Cuba; and he files news reports from Mexico for Radio Habana. He's been supporting Cuba, where he's spent considerable time, since at least the early 1990s.

"Cuba is moving ahead," he says. "It's no paradise on Earth, but it's no hell on Earth either." He admires this society that he believes focuses on human need, not profit.

To be a communist in 2007, according to Gellert, is to dedicate oneself full time to the struggle. "There may be hundreds of thousands of [these people]. There may be millions...people who want to fundamentally change society. "Marxism," he asserts, "is still an important reference point in a world full of racial, class and ethnic divides."

Gellert is optimistic about the prospects for the left in the 21st century. "Cuba's isolation has been broken down. Basic social change is back on the agenda," he says, referencing the leftist leaders winning elections in South and Central America.

Gellert has organizing to do, and he gently brings our interview to a close. Today's mission includes a rush hour schlep to Coyoacan for a meeting with representatives from Mexico's leftist political party, the PRD. This is one communist who's in demand.

Shari Dawn Rettig (1941-2007)

sue-ellen — Thu, 21 May 2009 07:21:31 -0700

Shari was kind, good-hearted and unbelievably tolerant of personality quirks. It made her a kind of “den mother” as the late Joe Nash used to describe her, to the lost, the loony, and the lonesome. –Friend Debra Anthony, from a blog remembering Shari Dawn Rettig.

Her friends knew the Christmas party would be at Shari’s house and that she would have the turkey and the stuffing ready. In April they would dye Easter eggs together. They knew she would be available to chat online, well into the pre-dawn hours. And she always knew exactly what to say, even if it was to “mind your own business.”

She was the kind of friend -- loyal and fearless -- who would take turns sleeping in your car to keep it from being stolen.

Shari Dawn Rettig, newswoman, confidante, straight-shooter, died in Mexico City on May 21 after she had been admitted to the hospital with a lung condition. She was 66.

She was born and raised in Ft. Worth, Texas where she grew up with her doting little sister, Dianne. She went away to Washington, DC for college, and, afterwards, took a job as a loan teller in a bank, said her sister, because the building was air-conditioned.

Then in the late 1960s, or early 1970s, Shari and her pal Dolores Anne Smith quit their jobs in Washington, jumped in a car with their dogs and took off. They were cruising the Texas coast after Christmas. It was growing cold; dust and ice storms on the Texas panhandle blocked the way to California. So they drove south into the Sierra Madres.

They had no place they had to be. “We were free,” Dolores Anne said.

Mexico and Shari suited each other. She loved earthquakes, “thought they were a joyride”, her friend Gladys Rodríguez said. She believed in the Virgin of Guadalupe, and several times walked pilgrimages to the Basílica, handing out money to needy people she passed along the way. She addressed the city’s idiosyncrasies with practicality. For example, she hung flags out her window to signal to the gas man and the water man if she needed them to stop by.

Shari’s career as a journalist spanned nearly the entire library of English-language publications based in Mexico City. At The News she became a managing editor, and when she left there, she worked at The Sun, The Mexico City Times, and then took the helm of El Universal’s English section called The Journal. When El Universal scratched plans to launch The Journal as a full-fledged daily, Shari founded a news website about Mexico called Mr.News.Mx.

When it launched in 1999, people in Mexico were asking “What’s a banner? What’s a button?,” recalled Gladys Rodríguez, who was also Shari’s business associate.

Although the business never brought commercial success, Shari tended it until she entered the hospital. Radios hummed throughout her house, her ears to the world. She culled headlines about her adopted country from the Web.

A night owl, Shari’s friends knew not to bother her from 9 to 10 pm every evening. That hour was set aside for her sister; the two would sign onto messenger and play electronic games of chess, checkers, poker and billiards. They also rehashed their childhoods, and spent years moving through the past until they caught up to the present. “We cleared things up, we talked, we joked, we played,” said Dianne Brocker, who lives in Ft. Worth. “We did everything like we were 9-years-old again.”

Since Shari died, decades-worth of friends have emailed her sister and brother-in-law, written about her in the newspaper, and on the blog established in her memory, recalling her patience, her wry humor, the sweatpants she wore around the house.

Dolores Anne, who lives in Ohio, has wondered who she’ll tell things to now at the end of the day.

“There are more than a few people who considered her their best friend,” Dolores Anne said. “I don’t know who she considered her best friend, but I know she was my best friend.”

A memorial service was held for Shari Rettig May 24, 2007 by the American Benevolent Society at Union Church. Her ashes will be buried in East Texas.

Tsukasa Takahashi: El Sensei

sue-ellen — Sat, 16 May 2009 07:51:20 -0700

Tsukasa (pronounced "su casa") Takahashi is dressed international b-boy style: he sports an oversized t-shirt and long baggy shorts, and a color bandana printed with Japanese characters peeks out from under his baseball cap. He is only 24 years old but commands respect in the lively breakfast room of Fundacion Pro Niños de la Calle, a non profit dedicated to sheltering Mexico City street kids.

18 months ago, Tsukasa left his comfortable life in Fukushima (a city north of Tokyo) to volunteer overseas with JICA, the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, similar to the Peace Corps in the US. He was hoping to be placed in Africa, and was surprised when he was assigned to Mexico.

“All I knew about Mexico was [soccer], tequila, mariachis and cactus. I didn’t know Mexico was a country that had such extreme poverty, that the gap between rich and poor was so wide”, he says.

He arrived with little Spanish and immediately plunged into the difficult work of walking the around the DF, seeking out the children who live on the streets —their lives marred by drugs, violence and abandonment— and convincing them to step toward a better life through Pro Niños. The foundation tries to return kids to school and reunite them with their families, and gives then a safe place where they can eat and bathe during the day.

“It’s very hard. Sometimes they’re like, ‘What do you know about me, about my life?’ In the beginning I wanted to be as Mexican as possible, to try to gain their confidence. Eventually I realized that I’m Japanese, and that won’t change. But they’ve accepted me, and I have a lot of friends here.”

Now, Tsukasa’s rapid fire chatter is spliced with the chilango slang of his charges. He’s taught them origami, and how to write their names in Japanese. They call him Tsukasa sensei (teacher).

In December, when his two year stint is up, Tsukasa plans to return to Japan, to work in the kindergarten founded by his grandfather, and currently run by his father. “I’m the oldest son, and in Japan the tradition is that the oldest son has to follow in the father’s footprints. I guess I could just leave, but…” his voice trails off, the pause indicating the complications created by pushing against such strong customs. He says he’ll carry Mexico and his work with Pro Niños back with him, though he’s puzzling through exactly how to keep the link alive, and is aware of the challenges posed by distance.

“When I go back, I could forget; the chavos won’t be in front of me then. I could just think of my things, and my life.” Still, the passion he evinces for the work shows no sign of burning out, and he says that helping those in need will always be a part of his life. “Each of us has a little bit of power,” he says, “but together we can do lots.”

For more information on Pro Ninos, go to proninosdelacalle.org.mx or call (55) 5782-0619

25 Mexicans: Sonia Ortiz, guardian

sue-ellen — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:29:03 -0700

Eleven years ago, Sonia Ortiz took a trip with her young son down the Usumacinta River, which forms the border between Chiapas and Guatemala. Toucans flew overhead, howler monkeys roared, and she and the other travelers dined nightly at well-appointed, candlelit tables as fireflies flashed around them.

One day when hiking, Ortiz saw a poor family beside a trail, the children emaciated with distended bellies. Is this my country? she wondered. Then, as they returned upriver, the group was ambushed by young boys with machine guns. Ortiz doesn’t know if they were Mexican or Guatemalan; all she knows is that they did it because they were poor. They took everything the tourists had, and Ortiz and her son arrived in Palenque barefoot and shaken.

“Who is going to give these people jobs?” she wondered. It’s not fair, she thought, that a few in Mexico have so much and the rest almost nothing.

Ortiz realized that in order for tourism to help rural people, they must be providing the services, but she could help initiate the projects. She met a woman named Patricia Luevano, who shared her vision of saving land and improving people’s lives within Tamaulipas’ magnificent El Cielo cloud forest.

Javier Villareal, who had been working in local villages, joined them, along with renowned ornithologist Hector Gomez de Silva. Together they have trained local men as bird guides, organized the El Cielo Festival for birders and butterfly aficionados, and improved the local economy, following what Sonia calls the “three C’s”: conservation, consciousness and community.

De Silva has determined that to protect all of Mexico’s bird species, 42 sites around the country must be preserved. Now, Sonia Ortiz and her team are gearing up to apply the El Cielo conservation and development model around Mexico.

Note: This article was originally published in our November, 2007 issue.

25 Mexicans: Juan Enriquez Cabot, innovator

sue-ellen — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:19:44 -0700

Juan Enriquez Cabot – economist, author, lecturer, venture capitalist, and entrepreneur– focuses on two subjects that represent potentially dramatic change: the inherent fragility of the nation state and the power of the map of the human genome.

Enriquez was born in Mexico, but since grammar school, this former Harvard Business School professor has moved back and forth between Mexico and the US. “[Moving a lot] taught me not to take things for granted,” he says. He currently lives in Boston.

Nations are strengthened, says Enriquez, who helped negotiate a cease fire with the Zapatistas, when diversity and plurality are valued. Dividing people along ethnic, gender and religious lines endangers nations.

“Three-quarters of the countries in the UN didn’t exist in 1950. You can’t assume that no matter what you do your country will always be there.”

Enriquez calls the map of the human genome the scientific equivalent of Columbus sailing to the New World. He has formed a research and venture capital company, Biotechonomy, to take advantage of this new-found land of opportunity, and works closely with Craig Venter, the scientist who won the race to map the genome.

Will he return to Mexico? Someday, he says. But when Enriquez talks about Mexico you hear both his worry for the nation’s survival and his faith in the power of technology as an economic engine.

“Mexico can compete with anyone in art, poetry, humor, textiles…but not in science and technology…Education is absolutely essential. The only way to integrate rich and poor is to give the poor a chance to climb up. 40% of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are Indian and Chinese, and most of them were poor to begin with.

“If you are born poor in Mexico today, you don’t become an entrepreneur as a way out.” That, Enriquez hopes, will change.

Note: This article was originally published in our November, 2007 issue.

25 Mexicans: Alfredo Harp Helu, invisible hand

sue-ellen — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:48:09 -0700

Alfredo Harp Helú’s touch is everywhere in Oaxaca. There’s the restoration of the cathedral Santo Domingo , the cultural centerpiece of this southern city; the cultural center Casa de la Ciudad; Museo de Filatelia, created from Harp’s personal stamp collection; and countless other projects dedicated to the economic, environmental, cultural and physical well-being of Oaxacans and Mexicans in general. The Alfredo Harp Helú Foundation has assets of $400 million USD, and in 2006 gave more than $20 million to 261 different organizations.

Critics of Harp’s cousin, fellow billionaire (and world’s richest man) Carlos Slim Helú, have little beef with Harp’s charitable bona fides. Born in Oaxaca to a Lebanese immigrant family, the industrious Harp did well in school, studied accounting at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and embarked upon a storied career in investment banking, culminating with the purchase and success of what would eventually become financial giant Banamex, bought by Citigroup in 2001 for $12.5 billion USD.

He’s said that his interest in philanthropy didn’t begin with his 1994 kidnapping, which lasted more than three months and ended with a $30 million ransom, though in the years after the globally-reported event, he turned the reins of corporate power over to his colleague, current Banamex CEO Roberto Hernández, and focused on putting the corporation’s capital (through Fomento Banamex), and his own, to work for the greater good.

These days, Harp is a familiar figure in Oaxaca, usually casual in jeans, button-down oxford and a leather jacket, ceding the limelight to the leaders of the projects he funds. “I’m very clear that helping others is what makes me most proud,” he said in a recent Líderes Mexicanos profile. “I hope that I can inspire others to do the same.”

Note: This article was originally published in our November, 2007 issue.

25 Mexicans: Carlos Marin, pioneer

sue-ellen — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:51:16 -0700

Carlos Marín experienced an entrepreneur’s epiphany about 10 years ago, while exploring some of the more isolated areas of the Yucatán Peninsula.

He and some adventurous friends articulated a vision of a different kind of tourism, one that would protect ecosystems and benefit the economic and social development of local Mayan communities. Today, Marín, an industrial engineer who loves nature, is known as an innovator in the field.

After working for other people, Marín and his friends-cum-partners, decided to embark on a new path. Armed with a passion for Mayan culture, a smart business plan and the dream of a better life for himself and his family, Marín decided to start Alltournative.

“The desire to try something new was there. So was the need for a project like Alltournative. It was the right place and the right time. And it was the right decision,” he says.

He never imagined the effect the ecotourism and adventure outfit would have on his life and the lives of hundreds of people in the Playa del Carmen and Cancun region. The company employs 300 people, and has had a positive impact in the small communities where Alltournative works, where migration to the US, previously as high as 30 or 40%, has dropped to almost zero.

“I think the secret to succeeding with a new business is to offer something different…to find a market that isn’t being targeted by other businesses,” says Marín.

Any new venture faces challenges, and in Marín’s case, these include hurricanes, but the ecological and social impact of Alltournative motivates him to try and be the best option for adventure expeditions in the Mayan region. He believes he has achieved this goal, with a company that many are looking to as a model for sustainable business practices.

Note: This article was originally published in our November, 2007 issue.

25 Mexicans: Lorena Ochoa, champion

sue-ellen — Wed, 13 May 2009 02:36:45 -0700

Look up at the leader board and you will see the name Lorena Ochoa.

The LPGA’s number one ranked golfer became the first Mexican to win a major tournament this year, at St. Andrew’s, Scotland, and is the first woman to win on golf’s most storied course.

In this soccer-mad country, the 5-foot-6 Ochoa, who turns 26 this month, has become an icon; she’s the first golfer, and youngest athlete, to have received Mexico’s National Sports Award.

Like Tiger Woods in the men’s game, she leads a crop of fresh LPGA talent drawing new fans to the women’s links, and also heads the pack in earning power, becoming the first woman to earn more than $3,000,000 in prize money for a single season and inking endorsement deals from Audi, Rolex and Lacoste.

Ochoa grew up beside the Guadalajara Country Club, where her family putted after dinner and on Christmas mornings. She turned pro after her sophomore year at the University of Arizona after setting NCAA scoring records.

A self-described perfectionist, she didn’t dethrone Annika Sorenstam overnight. Ochoa is a multi-talented athlete – a climber, a cycler, and runner too – who chose golf for its combination of physical and mental precision. Her 2007 success follows five years of developing her game on the tour.

The affable golfer excels off the course too. The Lorena Ochoa Foundation runs a school for disadvantaged kids in Guadalajara, and she sponsors a golf school for the children of caddies and groundskeepers.

“I’m going to make sure I do things right… When I grew up it was probably only me and two other girls, and right now there are so many little girls and boys [playing golf in Mexico], and I love that,” Ochoa told the LPGA in October.

Note: This article was originally published in our November, 2007 issue.

25 Mexicans: Raul Padilla Lopez, crusader

sue-ellen — Tue, 12 May 2009 22:12:24 -0700

“The printed word is synonymous with civilization and the hope for change…for the betterment of mankind,” says Raúl Padilla López, the head and co-founder of the Guadalajara Book Fair.

Over the course of its 21-year history, the fair has grown to become the Spanish speaking world’s biggest gathering of authors, editors, distributors, booksellers, literary agents, translators, librarians, and more than half a million attendees.

In 2004, the Nobel Prize winner was presented by José Saramago. This year’s line-up includes a ceremony honoring Colombian author Álvaro Mutis (author of The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll and regularly rumored as Colombia’s next Nobel winner). Gabriel García Márquez and former Colombian president Belisario Betancur also are expected to participate.

Prior to running the Book Fair, Padilla led the Universidad de Guadalajara and served the PRD as congressional deputy. Last year he was awarded Catalonia’s most prestigious cultural award, the Cross of Saint George.

His ideas for cultural promotion are based on inclusion, tolerance and eclecticism. In a recent speech, he expressed his opinion that Latin America should balance its push to join the developed world with efforts to maintain strong cultural identities.

“It’s imperative to support cultural policies [that] give space to every people’s symbolic expressions, which in turn should be considered of equal value and with full rights…” he states. It is easy to hear echoes of post-Marxist theory, yet Padilla’s governmental and academic positions have given him an equal interest in practical policy solutions.

Padilla’s a bee in the bonnet, constantly challenging the Mexican government to do more to preserve and enrich its culture.

“The majority of developed countries give 2 to 3% of their GDP to culture, and UNESCO suggests a minimum investment of 1%. Mexico gives only 0.07%.”

More money for culture, he believes, will improve the plight of man. And that’s a goal that has no political or cultural opposition.

Note: This article was originally published in our November, 2007 issue.

25 Mexicans: Pablo Cruz, maestro

sue-ellen — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:55:29 -0700

Outside the frame, unknown to the public, 35-year-old Pablo Cruz is the brains behind Canana Films, the production company he created in 2003 with two of Mexico's most famous actors: Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna.

After years of living in Europe, where he studied art and worked with British director Ken Loach, Cruz returned to Mexico to start Canana and launch a documentary film festival with Luna and García Bernal. If film is a pilgrim's art (with the filmmaker as evangelist, traveling between film festivals in search of believers), then launching a documentary film festival that travels the country, screening cutting edge and important national and international works, seems fitting. Ambulante, which will begin its third season in January of 2008, is getting the world's attention.

Canana is also beginning to produce commercial projects on a scale far beyond the average production house in Mexico. The company's first films include Gerardo Naranjo's Dramamex (presented at Critics' Week in Cannes), JC Chavez by Luna, Déficit by García Bernal, and Cochochi, set in a Rarámuri community of Chihuahua, by Israel Cardenas and Amelia Guzmán.

Earlier this year, when no one dared to distribute Francisco Vargas' acclaimed film El Violín in Mexico, Canana bought the rights. Cruz launched the Vargas film, which tells the story of a courageous old musician during Mexico's "Dirty War", and it quickly became an audience hit. For weeks, bridges and balconies around Mexico City were draped with banners reading: "I already saw El Violín. Did you?"

Variety Magazine has tagged Cruz as a producer to watch, and his work is coming into focus. Hopefully Canana will continue to strike a balance between the box office draw of Luna and García Bernal, and the artistic quality and social content of Cruz's projects.

25 Mexicans: Alberto Ruy Sanchez, encyclopedist

sue-ellen — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:45:13 -0700

In museums and bookshops around the country, you’ve seen Artes de México, the beautiful and informative art magazine that editor Alberto Ruy Sánchez describes as “an encyclopedia in installments”.

The publication, founded in 1953 by Miguel Salas and the artist Vicente Rojo, had been the most recognized magazine in Mexico, but it ceased publication in 1980.

In 1987, a former subscriber bought the brand and invited Ruy Sánchez to resurrect Artes de México. “I thought, if a magazine can generate that kind of passion in readers, this must be a great project,” he says.

The first step was to redevelop Artes de México, taking the best of the original concept. The first new issue “revealed the majesty of [Mexico] city’s architecture.” Since then, the business has become self-sustaining and over the past 20 years they have won more than 120 national and international prizes. Ruy Sánchez describes it as the “Encyclopedia of things Mexican,” which “is actually very cheap. Each one is $187 pesos, less than the average price of a book.”

Artes de México addresses five main areas: cities as art; cultural relationships with other countries; handicrafts; Mexican symbols; and Mexico’s baroque cultural history. Their mission is “To add to the pleasure of contemplation, the pleasure of understanding (Sumar al placer de contemplar, el placer de comprender).” Ruy Sánchez regrets that many advertisers would rather buy a page in gossip magazines than invest in culture. “My wife and I are passionate about Mexico. We spent many years in Europe and when we returned, we felt motivated to make a profound study of Mexico.”

Back in 1987, they made a list of 200 themes for the magazine, and have only published about twenty percent. They have years and years of ideas still to come.

25 Mexicans: Sonia Arias, prodigy

sue-ellen — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:24:57 -0700

“My life is Jaso, and my mission in life is to make people enjoy what we cook.”

Since Sonia Arias was 14 years old, pastry has been her passion. That’s when she was accepted on merit – she started baking at age 10 – to participate in the summer workshop at New York’s prestigious Culinary Institute of America (CIA). The CIA never checked the “age” field in the application: “I was so young that I became friends with the professors, [as it was] impossible to join my classmates at the bar!”

In her free time, she assisted her mentors, picking up knowledge and insight from the star chefs at the Institute. For Sonia, the experience confirmed that cooking should be her profession. After completing her studies and working at a number of famous New York eateries, she returned to Mexico City, bringing with her husband and fellow CIA alumnus Jared Reardon.

Jaso is the restaurant they established just over a year ago in a converted house in Polanco. The husband-and-wife team works to create a unique experience for diners: “This is a place for true foodies; we want to offer the best for people who want a culinary experience. Our customers understand our cooking concept.” The past year has been the hardest of their lives, but also the most rewarding. Sonia and Jared spend 16 hours a day, six days a week at Jaso: “This is our home; we are here all the time”.

Sonia says of Jared: “He always supports me, and he encouraged me to join the World Cup Pastry Team.” She will be the first Mexican to participate in the elite annual gathering, leading the way for the rising generation of young Mexican chefs.

Note: This article was originally published in our November, 2007 issue.

25 Mexicans: Patrica Mercado, alternative

sue-ellen — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:02:03 -0700

No newcomer to public life in Mexico, Patricia Mercado made headlines and won votes during last year's presidential race with her pro-feminist stance and her liberal views on issues ranging from gay rights to abortion.

Born and raised in Sonora, Mercado knew from an early age she wanted to grow up "to make a difference in Mexico." Her commitment to social work began in 1975, when, at 18, she moved to Mexico City to study economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and get involved in the feminist movement. In the early 80s, she became a union leader while quietly nurturing her political aspirations.

"Men are more willing now to see women through a different lens-and there is no going back," she says. While there are prominent women in just about every facet of Mexico's public life today (not the case 30 years ago), Mercado notes that there's still a long way to go to achieve gender equality.

This happily married mother of two draws inspiration from Liberation Theology, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, and the efforts of feminists around the world. She was the 2006 presidential candidate from the Social Democratic and Peasant Alternative Party (PSD)(known as Alternativa in Spanish), which she helped found.

Mercado believes that change happens when people persevere in working together. Her political goals include running for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies in the 2009 federal elections and organizing an alliance of leftist movements and parties to contest the 2012 presidential election, regardless of whether or not she becomes a candidate.

Asked to describe herself, Mercado needs just four words: a persevering, optimistic, responsible feminist. Had she not been an activist and politician, she thinks she would have made good executive at the helm of, not surprisingly, her own business.

25 Mexicans: Hector Mijangos, indie king

sue-ellen — Tue, 12 May 2009 06:54:12 -0700

A hundred sweaty, dancing adolescents – beers in hand, sporting dark glasses, ripped jeans, sweatshirts and sneakers – face the stage at a club in Mexico City’s Centro, where Los Dynamite are rocking it. A group of adults watch from the wings: editors of rock magazines, radio personalities, a record company executive and Héctor Mijangos, the czar of Mexico’s proliferating indie scene.

Mijangos, a large, 45-year-old capitalino with grey hair and a preference for geek-chic glasses, figures prominently in Mexico’s changing music industry. In 2000, Mijangos convened a group of DJ friends and started a company to produce and promote dance music. When he sensed that the indie scene was on the verge of exploding, he steered the new company, Noiselab, towards rock.

Mexican rock used to mean bands glorifying Mexican nationalism. Now a group from Guadalajara could just as well be from Glasgow, Newark or Amsterdam. Los Dynamite is a good example: one of the most popular new bands, these four chilangos sing in English. Before 2000, it would have been almost impossible for them to release an album in Mexico or get play on the radio. Last year, Mijangos and Noiselab launched the band’s first album – Greatest Hits.

Noiselab produces and represents top indie bands such as Instituto Mexicano del Sonido, Los Fancy Free, Réplica, Sonido Lasser, Sub-Division, Chikita Violenta and Zoé. In addition to homegrown talent, Mijangos promotes foreign bands in Mexico, including Interpol, Arcade Fire, Belle & Sebastian, Delays, Yo La Tengo and Cat Power .

Saying Mijangos is solely responsible for revolutionizing alternative rock in Mexico would ignore the importance of specialized media, concert promoters, a receptive public and the bands that played in garages for years before Noiselab existed. But who said visionaries have to do everything?

Note: This article was originally published in our November, 2007 issue.

25 Mexicans: Dario Ramirez, straight shooter

sue-ellen — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:56:04 -0700

Darío Ramírez is no naïve idealist. The 35-year-old head of Article 19’s Mexico chapter – an organization that defends and promotes freedom of expression — has been a human rights activist for more than a decade. He bluntly describes the United Nations as a “slow elephant,” Mexico’s NGO sector as ”unprofessional at times” and the country’s Access to Information Law – the “Ley Federal de Acceso a la Información Pública” – as limited at best.

Referring to a six-month stint with the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, he says, “I’m not the sort of person for Geneva – it’s way too high up and I felt suffocated. [T]hey don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s more about what looks good…”

Back in Mexico, Ramírez helped draft the Mexican Government’s first Human Rights Program at the Ministry of the Interior. Although most of his work has been dismantled, he was proud that the program received international praise.

Like most committed humanitarians, Ramírez is full of contradictions; he’s cynical, skeptical, hopeful and optimistic in equal parts. He will need to draw on all those qualities along the road ahead. With violence against journalists in Mexico at an all-time high, and the right to freedom of expression in what he calls “grave danger” as the transition to democracy continues, Ramírez’s work at Article19 – where he has been for two years – is vital, and often frustrating.

What has he achieved since joining the organization? “Nothing, really. Nothing,” he says as he laughs sheepishly and runs his hands through his short, brown hair. That’s unfair. Article 19 is now the reference point for issues regarding freedom of expression in the country and an important voice challenging repression, censorship and corruption in Mexican political and social life. A belligerent cynic like Ramírez is just what the organization needs.

East to the Americas

sue-ellen — Sun, 10 May 2009 23:34:47 -0700

When they sailed across the world in 1897, Asahiro Yamamoto and Saburo Kiyono were in their early 20s. In May of that year, they and their fellow sailors landed in a place of searing sun and jungle fever. They walked for more than a week into the interior, settling in Acacoyagua, Chiapas. Their dream of growing coffee there failed. Only one member of the group returned to Japan. The rest, including Yamamoto and Kiyono, stayed. As many as 20,000 more Japanese followed Ashahiro and Saburo to Mexico in the ensuing decades. They overcame cultural and language divides, unforgiving living conditions and, in some cases, roaming bands of armed guerrillas. They set down roots and prospered. Along the way, they became increasingly Mexicanized, marrying into Mexican families and giving their children Spanish names.

Asahiro Yamamoto had been dead for years by the time the youngest of his eight children, Francisco Rokuro Yamamoto Cruz, married Kiyono’s granddaughter, Martha Kiyono Sanchez, in 1956. The newlyweds spoke little Japanese and settled in Mexico City to raise four children. Today, their 16-year-old granddaughter, Harumi Quezada Yamamoto, proudly calls herself both Mexican and Nikkei -- descended from Japanese. She studies the Japanese language. She loves mole and sushi.

These family histories encapsulate the little-known story of the Japanese migration to Mexico that began 110 years ago. Over the past century, the Japanese migrants and their offspring have seen their culture ebb and flow in their adopted patria. For decades they were largely forgotten as they dispersed and assimilated into Mexican society. During World War II many hid their Japanese heritage or, at the behest of the United States government, were transplanted by Mexican authorities from rural homes to metropolitan centers. Now, many of the descendants are looking back and celebrating their Japanese ancestry.

“My upbringing at home inculcated Japanese values, like discipline, honor and loyalty,” says Harumi. “But you must adapt to the country where you live and take the best from each culture. Mexican people are hard-working, warm, spontaneous. One can share these different approaches to life.”

The Enomoto Migration

Toward the end of the 19th Century, Mexican President Porfirio Diaz looked to draw immigrants and foreign investment to modernize his poor and largely indigenous nation. Diaz was the first foreign leader to sign a friendship and trade pact with Japan in 1888 and the first Latin American leader to encourage Japanese emigration.

“Mexico had pretty much given up on the Indians, saying the Indians are holding back modernization so we have to take land away from them and give it to immigrants, especially white immigrants,” says Michigan State University historian Jerry Garcia, a specialist in the migration.

Nine years later, the Enomoto migration was launched. The Japanese government purchased 65,000 hectares of land in Mexico’s Soconusco region near the Guatemalan border, and sent 36 young men, including Ashahiro and Saburo, off to farm coffee there.

“They were promised land to plant and grow coffee, but when they arrived they were given the worst land possible to grow coffee and they lacked proper equipment,” says Garcia. “Their inexperience played a part, but essentially the best coffee land was already taken up by Germans who had come a little bit earlier. The Japanese and Mexican governments are both culprits. Mexico promised land and resources, the Japanese government promised to help them with start-up funds through the consulate in Mexico City, but the consulate pretty much turned a blind eye to the situation.”

Desperate, a handful of the colonists walked from Chiapas to Mexico City to confront Japanese officials. They arrived on the consul’s doorstep in tattered clothes, sunburned and hungry after a 30 day walk, Garcia says. They were returned to Chiapas. But the arrival of a group of Japanese Christians revived the colony. The newcomers started cattle ranches and introduced other successful businesses into the community.

“They were not just farmers, there were cattle ranchers and really prominent people from Japan,” Isao Toda, president of the Mexico Japanese Association in Mexico City, says of the early immigrants. “It’s said that some were trained as Samurai warriors. That’s the only way they could have survived as they did.”

Toda comments that the impact of the Japanese on the Chiapas locals “must have been something like when the Aztecs first saw the conquistadors, with their elaborate clothing and their formal ways.” Still he and descendants of the first immigrants emphasize that the local people welcomed the strangers and likely saved them from perishing altogether.

Revolution in Acacoyagua

By 1910, the immigrants’ new homeland was engulfed in the first revolution of the 20th Century, which ended the autocratic three-decade rule of Porfirio Diaz. The civil war touched virtually all sectors of Mexican society. The Japanese immigrants were not exempt from the struggle and the changes, though by remaining neutral they perhaps were spared the worst of the conflict’s atrocities.

Jose Martin Nomura Hernandez, 31, is municipal president of Acacoyagua. It’s still a farming town and counts among its 15,000 residents, what is probably country’s largest concentration of Japanese descendants. It is no doubt one of the few towns in Mexico where white rice is a dietary staple.

“[During the revolution] there were rebels in Acacoyagua, the townspeople were fighting among themselves, and my great-grandfather was a mediator,” Nomura says. “They sought him out to intervene [and make peace].”

The youngest son of Asahiro Yamamoto, Francisco Yamamoto, tells how his father single- handedly defended the homestead from revolutionaries who came to town in search of weapons.

“They came shooting, and it might have been a Sunday because everyone was away,” Yamamoto says. “My father was home alone with my mother and the children. He shut the door and started firing out the window. My mother passed him the guns -- he had an arsenal. Then he went out the back door and started shooting. The rebels ran. He saved our family and home that day.”

Over the years, some Japanese immigrants traveled north from Chiapas, mainly to Mexico City and coastal fishing areas where they began making a mark as businessmen, doctors and dentists, educators and scientists.

World War II

As they prospered, some Japanese families sent their Mexican-born children to Japan to study and to learn to read and write Japanese. These young Mexicans arrived in a nation preparing for war.

When he began his schooling in Japan in 1938, Yoshiya Nishimura, born in Veracruz, was 11 years old. By the time he started high school, he and his classmates were being trained to handle weapons and meet an American invasion.

“They told us, ‘on such a day and at such an hour, you will become a soldier of the Japanese Empire,’” says Nishimura, now 80 and retired from a 30-year career in Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government was pressuring their Mexican counterpart to round up Japanese nationals and citizens of Japanese descent into US style internment camps. For the most part, Mexico resisted the US demands, agreeing only to move Japanese Mexicans away from coastal and border areas. Most were relocated to Mexico City and Guadalajara, where they were monitored but not detained (a small number of “high risk” Japanese citizens and Germans were put in a camp in Veracruz, according Isao Toda). Only the lives of the Japanese Mexicans in Chiapas continued uninterrupted, thanks to a petition by the state governor who cited their critical contribution to the local economy.

Those who were moved stayed in cheap hotels or with other Japanese Mexican families until they could start over in the new place.

Francisca Ono de Takemura was 14 and the eldest of seven children when her father was forced to sell his Mexican restaurant in Tepic, Nayarit, and move his family to Mexico City.

“All of us who lived in Tepic left; we were six families. Each one looked for a place to live,” says Takemura, now 79. “My mother was very sad. But she kept it to herself.”

A delicate, gracious woman with a ready laugh, Takemura hesitates when asked about the relocation. It was traumatic, she admits, but she now believes it was for the best that her family moved to the city. Like other Japanese descendants, she is quick to point out the generosity that Mexico has shown the Japanese community over the years.

“They say that in some countries in South America the Japanese were not treated well. In Mexico we are held in high esteem. I am Mexican by birth and it is an honor because Mexico is a very worthy country. We are happy our parents came to Mexico, because here we have lived contentedly.”

Meanwhile, Nishimura, who spent years trying to get out of Japan, finally got home in 1948, a decade after he was sent away.

“A week after I got back [to Mexico] they sent a messenger from the National Palace,” he recalls. Nishimura was informed he was being drafted into the Mexican army. “Again I picked up a gun,” he says. But before he was dispatched to the northern city of Monterrey, the draft ended and he was excused from service. In his early 20s, he repeated primary and secondary school in Mexico. He finished his engineering degree at the UNAM when he was 31 and went to work for the electric utility.

In 1957, the Mexican government paid 700,000 pesos in reparations to the Japanese Mexican community for their suffering and loss of property during WWII. A matching gift from Japanese businessmen led to the founding of the Mexico Japanese Association, created to bring the two cultures closer together. The association’s luxurious compound-- complete with restaurant, language school, meeting center and swimming pool-- provides a haven for the community in the south of Mexico City

Proud to be Japanese, in Mexico

The nationalist fervor that followed the 1910 revolution changed Mexico’s immigrant policies. Unlike other Latin American countries, such as Peru and Brazil, that encourage Japanese to emigrate, Mexico basically closed the door. Today, an estimated 15,000 Japanese Mexicans live among a national population of more than 100 million.

In some ways, theirs has been more a story of successful blending than those of other immigrant groups. The Chinese, for example, also came to Chiapas around the turn of the previous century, but their history in Mexico is more painful.

“The Chinese did not completely assimilate into Mexican society during the early part of the 20th Century,” says the Michigan State historian, Garcia. “A lot of Chinese men brought their wives with them. Japanese men primarily came single and married Mexican women. In the Chinese experience, there were harsh atrocities during the early part of Mexican revolution. They were massacred and expelled. That didn’t happen to the Japanese. Assimilation protected them. But this assimilation also explains why it’s kind of a forgotten past in Mexico.

“This invisibility gives rise to an identity question that troubles many Japanese Mexicans. A few years ago Patricia Murakami was visiting New York when she was robbed and her Mexican passport stolen. She went to the Mexican consulate and was turned away. “They told me, ‘this is not the place, you’re Asian,’” says Mexican-born Murakami, 41. “In Japan we are not Japanese, and in Mexico we are not Mexican.”

But like Harumi Quezada Yamamoto, Murakami says she takes the best of both worlds and values them equally. When a Japanese woman won the Miss Universe pageant – held in Mexico this past June – Murakami cheered. In the World Cup soccer tournament, she has two teams to root for. She teaches Japanese language and studies Japanese dance.

Nikkei in Mexico hold dear what they see as Japanese commitment to hard work and education. According to Carlos Kasuga Osaka, the CEO of Yakult Mexico, 74% of Nikkei are university educated.

Francisco Yamamoto proudly relates that his four children are all successful professionals. He and other Nikkei say they are grateful to Mexico for opening its arms to their ancestors and giving them a new country in which to live, build families and prosper. Francisca Ono de Takemura helped found the Enomoto Association in Acacoyagua, where she has lived since marrying into one of the original immigrant families in 1950. The organization does small community projects as a way of giving something back to the people who first welcomed the Japanese, she says.

Nishimura, who was almost drafted into armies on opposite sides of the Pacific and now collects a modest Mexican government pension, has no doubt about where he will end up. “I was born in Mexico. I am 80 years old and the end is nearing,” he says with a chuckle. “Yes, I go to Japan to visit. But where to live day to day, where to die and be buried, well, it’s Mexico.”

25 Mexicans: Minerva Cuevas, conceptualist

sue-ellen — Sun, 10 May 2009 13:19:21 -0700

Minerva Cuevas’ work, Concierto para Lavapies, “happened” in the barrio Lavapies in Madrid. The DF-born artist distributed flyers around the mostly immigrant neighborhood, inviting anyone with a musical instrument to meet and play for 30 minutes.

The 50 or so people that turned up included Cuban son musicians, punk rockers, men with accordions, Spanish classical performers, Brazilians with guitars, Africans and many more. “I expected the result to be a cacophony of orchestral proportions,” says Cuevas on the phone from Mérida where she teaches art. “[I]t was actually quite a beautiful sound and some of the people who met [there] formed bands…together.”

The video and photographs of the project can be read in different ways: a testament to the possibility of racial harmony, a validation of migrant musical traditions, a great jam session among strangers.

In 2003 Cuevas made a mural that resembled a can of tomatoes. On it, the logos and words were changed to reference the United Fruit Company’s troubling intervention in Guatemala during the 1950s. In pieces like Donald McRonald (2003) and Melate (2000), she challenges, with simple culture-jamming techniques, McDonalds and the local lottery system.

Critics may argue that her socio-political work belongs on t-shirts for the Che Guevara crowd.

But the art world is more than happy to showcase her contributions. This year alone, Cuevas has exhibited in Switzerland, France and Los Angeles, and there is a show in the works for the prestigious San Ildefonso in 2009.

The barrio, an ever-present sense of protest, and a concern for the demise of indigenous cultures are recurring themes that identify her vision as particularly Mexican.

“Every cultural manifestation has a social impact and has the possibility of detonating change,” she says. “I am just another voice within all this.”

25 Mexicans: Andrés Rozental, counselor

sue-ellen — Sun, 10 May 2009 13:10:39 -0700

When Andrés Rozental retired from the Mexican Foreign Service ten years ago, he didn’t take it easy.

He started a consulting firm that advises corporations such as Toyota and EADS on their Latin America business strategy. The former ambassador and Deputy Foreign Minister also founded the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, the first think tank in Mexico to convene members of the private sector, civil society, academia and government to share ideas and initiate public policy.

“I wanted to prove to myself that I could do something different in life before I got too old,” says Rozental, who represented Mexico in Sweden, Great Britain, and at the United Nations.

Equally critical of the United States and Mexico, he’d like to see a more “rational” approach to immigration reform in the US: “What happens with a new [presidential] administration? God knows,” he says. “I think a lot of the candidates are outdoing themselves with their anti-immigrant rhetoric.”

As for Mexico? “We have to move to the next stage of competitiveness” – that is, forming a knowledge-based economy with more opportunity for higher education and specialization, “rather than relying on cheaper labor, cheap energy and proximity to the United States.”

Rozental thinks Mexico’s domestic agenda should be President Felipe Calderón’s top priority.

“There are many people in this country who have not benefited at all from Mexico’s economic progress in the last 20 years,” he says, citing the wealth gap and poverty levels in a country that is also the world’s eighth largest trading power.

On Rozental’s personal agenda: “I’d like to see Mexico continue on the road to democracy.” He advocates a two-round presidential election so the winner has a majority, a stronger rule of law vis-à-vis the judicial branch, and greater individual rights and equality. “We still have a long way to go.”

25 Mexicans: Carmen Correa, virtuousa

sue-ellen — Sat, 09 May 2009 16:28:30 -0700

Long lashes veil Carmen Correa’s large dark eyes, and her features are tiny and delicate. But when she begins talking about dance, energy pours from a body that seems too small to contain it.

One of Mexico’s finest ballerinas, Correa came to dancing by accident. The youngest of seven children, Carmen was nine when she enrolled in the free dance lessons offered at her public school as a way to fill her afternoons. By the time she was 13, however, she was dancing with the Bellas Artes National Dance Company.

For 23 years, Correa traveled the globe, interpreting principal roles in both classic and contemporary works. Her signature role, which she danced for 18 seasons, was “Black Swan” in Swan Lake.

Correa ended her professional career as Carmen, in the ballet adaptation of the opera. She shares a name and heritage with the Spanish gypsy character and identifies closely with that flawed woman’s “fortitude, drive and honesty.”

In 2006, when she walked off the stage to a standing ovation at Bellas Artes, Correa felt she had more to give. She founded Arte en V, a space where practitioners of diverse artistic and scientific disciplines come together. There, Correa trains the bodies and minds of tomorrow’s ballerinas as well as those retired from the stage, incorporating anatomy, physiology and psychology into her classes. Correa says that in Mexico, appreciation and financial support for the arts comes and goes, so she also offers a workshop on arts marketing.

What does dancing mean to Carmen? A year ago she would have told you it was her life’s work. Then, after coming out of retirement to make a special presentation, she realized that “dancing is more than just my work, it is my fountain, the source for my everything.”

25 Mexicans: Jessy Bulbo, rockstar

sue-ellen — Sat, 09 May 2009 16:17:33 -0700

Jessy Bulbo wears fluorescent nail polish – mostly chipped – and a massive belt buckle. A wild set of curls springs and bounces as she speaks, surrounding her fine features.

Jessy began her career with the iconic girl garage band, Las Ultrasonicas (the Mexican version of Peaches). After breaking up due to differences that made the Cold War seem like a hissy-fit, Jessy began collaborating with drummer Galaxis. Now she’s riding the leading edge of the Mexican indie music wave.

“For some reason we seem to be speaking to an 18-to-25-year-old crowd of mostly women who just want to go nuts at our concerts, jump around and throw themselves against walls!” Her first solo album, Saga Mama, was released in February by Nuevos Ricos. “The thing with recording with an independent label is that the audience… want[s] something unique… and they want to associate with people who like that same unique sound...”

She speaks softly and quickly in a tone so sweet it drips honey. But this affable “suicide girl” has a bloodcurdling scream and her lyrics can be sexually explicit, full of angst and regularly twisted.

“People get what they want from my lyrics, but yeah, they have been deemed controversial.” The Madrid leg of her recent Spanish tour was stopped by police (“it was not at all our fault,” she swears). She has been called a man-hater and even “feminazi.”

Her sound is imperfect and aggressive and boasts simple yet intoxicating melodies.

She confesses that she is after the pegajoso (sticky) element in music. The result is a punk/garage sound with mosh-pit sensibilities and lots of pop bubble gum holding it all together. So what’s next for this cantina-lady of the indie scene? “Oh, not sure. A bit of tropical music, maybe collaborate with [traditional European interpreters] Paté de Fuá and do a tango album....”

25 Mexicans: Subcomandante Marcos, spokesman

sue-ellen — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:45:01 -0700

Of all the Mexicans one might have recognized prior to arriving here, Subcomandante Marcos – or Delegado Cero as he now prefers to be known – is definitely one of them. His image abroad as the mask-wearing, pipe-smoking mestizo who fights for the indigenous cause rivals that of another Latin American icon, Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

That it is hard to nail down the facts about Marcos adds to his enigma. It’s generally accepted that he is (or was) Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, born in Mexico to Spanish immigrants and educated in a Jesuit school in Tampico, Tamaulipas. Marcos denies this.

Guillén, a middle-class academic who graduated from the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), went on to earn a master’s degree in philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he worked briefly as a professor before, allegedly, leaving Mexico City to embrace the indigenous cause.

The seductive persona of the jungle-dwelling revolutionary clad in combats and battered brown cap lends itself to the romantic idolatry often favored by Latin America. His abilities as both speechmaker and raconteur are legendary. This verbosity has resulted in stacks of both children’s books and ‘adult’ novels.

In a recent interview with British newspaper The Guardian, Marcos confessed to occasionally letting the fame go to his head. But those who know him say his intelligence and sense of humor keep his ego in check.

Some say his mask is a strategy for anonymity though it has achieved something of the opposite. “Todos Somos Marcos” – the Zapatista slogan – signals the sense of solidarity generated within the movement; behind their masks the Zapatistas are no one and everyone.

But the powerful image may exaggerate Marcos’ relevance, which is a matter of opinion and debate. His importance is rumored to be waning.

25 Mexicans: Clara Gonzalez, fashionista

sue-ellen — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:28:17 -0700

Clara González appears to embody what she strives to convey in her creations, a "fresh, young, happy woman that feels confident with who she is."

Though only 23, González is fast emerging as a star in Mexican fashion design. González left home at 17 to study at the Parsons School of Design in New York and continued her studies in design at the Universidad de la Comunidad in Guadalajara.

In New York, the young designer identified with Holly Golightly, the quirky and naïve socialite imagined by Truman Capote in Breakfast at Tiffany's and immortalized on celluloid by Audrey Hepburn. Golightly inspired González' early designs and the whimsical icon continues to influence her creations.

González got her break in 2006 when she won the "México Diseña" fashion competition, with a nod of approval from Carolina Herrera. Since then her professional career has taken flight.

She has dressed Julieta Venegas, Lorena Ochoa and Liv Tyler. Despite her fast-track rise to fame, she continues to receive industry awards and praise from critics.

With all the nationalism befitting the daughter of former presidential candidate Víctor González Torres, whose family also founded Farmacias Similares, González identifies herself as a Mexican designer with strong ties to her roots. Even so, she describes her sensibilities as more international and eschews the overly decorated fashions that so often dominate the Mexican runways. Instead, she embraces Mexico's vibrant colors and luxurious textiles, raving recently about some gorgeous indigenous fabrics that she discovered in the state of Quintana Roo.

Currently González is focusing on her ready-to-wear women's line. She aspires to the international stage but is working hard to first establish herself firmly in Mexico, where the burgeoning national fashion scene creates the space for new talent to capture people's attention.

25 Mexicans: Hector Rivero Borrell, trustee

sue-ellen — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:03:12 -0700

Attentive and gentlemanly, Héctor Rivero Borrell welcomes guests into the Franz Mayer Museum as though he were inviting them into his home.

In a way he is. Rivero Borrell has devoted 25 years to this decorative and fine arts museum, which has become one of the most highly regarded, best-known and funded museums in Latin America. He began work on the museum four years before it opened its doors, a time he jokingly refers to as “when I worked for the ghost museum.”

In addition to hosting visiting exhibitions, Franz Mayer houses one of the most impressive collections of colonial-period silverware, ceramics, furniture, textiles, sculpture and paintings in the world.

Rivero Borrell views Mexican history as unique and broad: “People too often generalize the contributions of Mexican art and culture with the pre-Hispanic, and then jump to the era of Frida and Diego. Unfortunately, they are missing the large and important colonial period that was rich with important developments.

“Mestizaje happens when two parts join and something totally different emerges… it is not only racial, it is also cultural,” says Rivero Borrell, who sees some of the best evidence of this cultural combination in the “useful objects which, because of their form or expression, become everyday works of art.”

“As intelligent creatures,” Rivero Borrell continues, emphasizing the significance of the decorative arts, “humans have tried to make objects more special than their simple use requires. A personal mark is bestowed on these objects and, in turn, they improve our quality of life.”

Passionate about education, Rivero Borrell has developed educational programs for the Franz Mayer, and staunchly asserts that “a museum should not limit itself to what is done within its walls.”

Visitors come to Franz Mayer and find a place that’s evolving with the times, defining new roles for 21st century museums.

25 Mexicans: Elisa Miller, ingenue

sue-ellen — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:59:04 -0700

At the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, one of Mexico’s top film schools, directing student Elisa Miller is a hot commodity. One minute she’s talking with the school’s director, the next a small crowd hovers around her as if to catch words of wisdom or maybe just to bask in Miller’s newfound glory.

Only 24, this second-generation Mexican (her grandparents were Jews from Hungary) recently received the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme D’Or for a short film. She won for her school project, Ver Llover (Watching it Rain), which tells the story of two lovers debating whether or not to leave their village.

“It was a surreal experience,” she says. “When I had to climb up to the stage to receive my statue, I was holding onto the arm of the man closest to me, only to realize I was hanging from Gus Van Sant [Oscar-winning director of Elephant and Good Will Hunting, among others]. Then I was seated almost in the front seat as [director Quentin] Tarantino showed us his latest film and I realized…wow, all my heroes are actually human!”

The early diagnosis of her success? “Simplicity. I wanted to tell a simple love story and tell it simply. I also surrounded myself with friends while filming, not people I could boss around, and it seems to work.”

Post-Cannes and the subsequent world tour, Miller’s life is moving faster. “Suddenly I believe in myself a lot more. Suddenly I have more resources. Suddenly I sleep little and write lots.”

Miller says Mexican filmmakers are learning that they don’t need permission to tell good stories. “We have no need for lots of money, no need for insane post-production tricks or distribution deals. We live in a country full of great stories, surrounded by gorgeous scenery and with massive amounts of talented people. It’s simple, really.”

25 Mexicans: Deyanira Aquino, ethnologist

sue-ellen — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:24:39 -0700

From September 23-27, La Teca will be preparing a special tasting menu for the Polanco restaurant Vinomio. Click here for more information.

“I always wanted to be an anthropologist,”says Deyanira Aquino. La Teca– short for la juchiteca, a woman from Juchitán, Oaxaca – is blessed with the kind of beauty that renders her age both mysterious and irrelevant. Her eponymous restaurant, five minutes north of the bustling center of Oaxaca City, is neither fancy nor expensive; six small tables cram the dining room and the big table in the garden behind the house seats ten.

Oaxaca’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec – inspiration for one artist (Frida Kahlo), birthplace of another (Francisco Toledo), famed for its matriarchal society– is rich in arts, culture and food. Aquino apprenticed in the kitchen ofher grandmother, a woman with culinary skills renowned in her village, but it wasn’t until 1994, after a 30-year career as a school administrator, that she decided to cook full time.

The food at La Teca has nothing to do with fusion. Rather, Aquino brings regional, largely pre-Hispanic recipes and cooking techniques into the 21st century. Garnachas (slow roasted tortillas filled with chopped meat), tamales with yellow mole and plantain stew tantalize patrons (including the famous singer Luis Miguel) while La Teca herself, stunning in typical Isthmus attire, coquets about the room.

These days, her inner anthropologist is on a mission to recover traditional Isthmus recipes. She is currently working on a book that will present the cuisine of her childhood to a new generation of istmeños and oaxaqueños, as well as to the rest of Mexico and the world. She dreams of opening branches of La Teca in Mexico City, Puebla and Monterrey.

“Preserving our customs is the most important thing to me,” she says. “Young people need to know their traditions. If we don’t take care of the past, we’ll lose it.”

25 Mexicans: Eduardo García, prognosticator

sue-ellen — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:16:37 -0700

Last summer, Sentido Común, a Mexican financial news website, broke the story that Carlos Slim had surpassed Bill Gates as the wealthiest person on the planet.

“Once a reporter, always a reporter,” says the site’s founder, Eduardo García, who was interviewed about Slim’s vast wealth by media outlets around the world.

When García graduated from the ITAM University (Mexico City) with a degree in economics, he felt that “Mexican journalists writing about the economy weren’t doing a good job.”

García applied for and won a Fulbright scholarship to study journalism at New York University. There, he fell in love with journalism and American-style reporting.

He returned to Mexico City and eventually was hired by Bloomberg News to open its Mexico City bureau.

"It was an incredible experience with lots of opportunities and professional growth. First they believed in me, a Mexican national, to set up everything in the country. Then, they made me chief of correspondents. I couldn’t have asked for more at the time," says García.

García proposed a Spanish-language version of Bloomberg News, feeling that the Mexican press still wasn’t doing the job. The idea was turned down, so he decided to call it quits after 10 years and become an entrepreneur.

He started Sentido Común as "an online financial newspaper that aims to provide business, financial and economic information that is necessary in order to make decisions."

“I never expected the project to be a walk in the park, but I certainly didn’t think it would be as difficult as it has been. I have never worked as hard in my life for so little. But I’m very satisfied I’m doing what I love doing. That is priceless.”

Now, executives and journalists who care about Mexico begin their day with a cuppa joe and García’s reporting.

25 Mexicans: Amalia Garcia, beacon

sue-ellen — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:18:22 -0700

Amalia García is one of two woman governors in a country with 31 states and a Federal District. She leads Zacatecas, and a state population divided by national boundaries; half of Zacatecans have migrated to the United States.

This reality puts migrant rights at the top of her political agenda. The daughter of a politician and former diplomat, she grew up traveling the world, living in Switzerland, Guatemala, the Philippines, Poland and the Dominican Republic. Eventually, she followed her father into politics and to the governorship of Zacatecas.

As a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, García became involved with the Communist Youth and then with the Socialist Student Movement. Later, she was a member of the Central Committee of the Mexican Communist Party.

“Those were difficult times. People in Mexico were persecuted for their leftist ideals. The left didn’t have much of a right, so to speak,” she says.

She helped launch the National Liberation Front in 1979, becoming a prominent figure in Mexican politics. Two years later, she was a founding member of the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico and sat on its National Political Committee.

García entered elected politics in 1988 as a federal representative from the Revolution Party (PRD), which she also helped establish. From 1991 to 1994, she was an assembly member in the Federal District (Mexico City). In 1997 she was elected senator. She served, once again, as federal deputy in 2003 before Zacatecans elected her governor in 2004.

“[Migration is] one of the pillars of my cultural, social and political activities, though I also advocate gender equity and, especially, democracy and ethical politics,” says García.

García’s consistency, and her commitment to the causes she embraces, makes hers one of the most respected voices in Mexican politics.

Note: This article was originally published in our November, 2007 issue.

CloseUp: Robert Straub

catherine — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:09:28 -0700

Nearly 10 years ago a gangly American from Delaware flew to Mexico City with his binoculars and a passion for birds. No one he asked in Mexico City had heard of the town he was headed for, but a day later he found a bus to Veracruz and eventually to Ciudad Cardel.

Robert Straub caught what he calls “the migration bug” years earlier, while working as a bird researcher in national parks around the United States. He studied migratory birds in New Mexico and Utah. “When you are in that world,” he explains, “you hear about Veracruz.”

Unless you are birder you probably don’t know that the small, coastal town of Cardel (pop. 8,000) is one of the best places in the world to see migrating raptors -- birds of prey that hunt primarily with their talons -- like hawks, eagles, falcons, kites, ospreys, and vultures.

Each year between mid-August and mid-November, from the top of the Hotel Bienvenido in downtown Cardel, one can observe up to 500,000 birds a day as they sail by, riding the coastal thermals south for the winter.

“It’s a natural phenomenon,” Straub said over coffee in Xalapa. In fact, this “River of Raptors” is one of the last great bird migrations in the world.

When Straub showed up in 1997 he planned to visit for just three months, but it wasn’t long before he decided to stay. He gave himself three goals: learn Spanish, learn the tropical birds, and find out if he liked guiding birding groups. The key to the last, he says, is whether or not you “can handle ten strangers for two weeks.”

“The fantasy of any birder,” says Straub, “is to have someone else pay for you to travel the world and look at birds.” Making that dream come true usually involves becoming a guide.

“There’s a certain trait you have to have which is that you have to really want people to see this thing you see. And,” he adds with a half smile, “there’s probably an ego gratification thing. You are the expert.”

Straub loves sharing his bird knowledge with strangers. He also came to believe that by igniting and nurturing a love of birds in others, he might also spread his desire to preserve bird habitat.

In addition, birds are good business. A 2002 study by the US Fish and Wildlife Service reports that the estimated 46 million birders in the United States spend 32 billion dollars a year tailing their feathered friends.

Straub set himself up in Xalapa teaching English. Eventually, he got work with Pronatura, the Mexican conservation organization, as coordinator of their Tourism for Conservation program. In 2003, he helped found the Club de Observadores de Aves de Xalapa to foster local interest in birds. And, last year with Pronatura, he published the Site Guide to the Birds of Veracruz.

His next venture is as a Mexican distributor for top binocular manufacturer Eagle Optics. Straub sees his new job as just one more way to raise awareness of the importance of birds in Mexico. Can they save wild land in Veracruz? If he can create a river of birders, Straub believes they can.

Farewells: S. Huntington Hobbs III

catherine — Wed, 06 May 2009 11:45:54 -0700

He went by Hunt – with his wife of 57 years, as a company president and vice-president, and on the tennis court where he racked up numerous trophies.

S. Huntington Hobbs III died July 10, 2006 in Fairfax, Virginia after having lived in Mexico City for nearly six decades. A North Carolina native, Hunt earned Phi Beta Kappa honors from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He worked in military intelligence in Europe during World War II, and went on to work in Washington, DC, and pre-Castro Cuba.

His wife, Carmen, recalled how she and her sister used to write letters to each other in code, a habit since girlhood. Hunt’s intelligence background showed through once when he saw one of the letters and deciphered it immediately. “He had a special talent for translation,” Carmen said.

Hunt and Carmen met on a plane from Mérida to Mexico City; he was moving to Mexico from Cuba to become president of Burlington Industries, a textile company.

Carmen Guerra Gesseniues had grown up in small Baja California town, where she voiced roles on radio soap operas. In Mexico City she worked as an airline stewardess, studied acting, and later painting. They married in 1948.

The couple had three children; S. Huntington Hobbs IV, an accomplished agriculture specialist in Virginia, and twin girls, Mary Carmen Hobbs Guerra of Mexico City and Adriana, who died 10 years ago of Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Hunt was a dedicated businessman, first at Burlington and later as vice-president of Anderson, Clayton & Company, which was acquired by Unilever. Detail-oriented, hands-on and exacting, “the man was a genius,” said Ron Nicholas, who worked for Hunt at Anderson, Clayton.

Nicholas said Unilever is renowned for not keeping on foreign executives, “but they kept Hunt on even much longer than the president,” who was also American. “I think that spoke to the knowledge he had.”

When he wasn’t at work, Hunt devoted his free time to playing tennis. He coached the Mexican Davis Cup team and won several National Seniors championships.

He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, US.

Black in Mexico

catherine — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:36:12 -0700

Where do we come from?
What are we?
Where are we going?
– Paul Gauguin

I sat in the shade under a palapa and waited for the boat taxi to carry me from the small town of Zapotalito across Lagunas Chacahua to the even smaller town of Chacahua, which sprawls among the mangroves at the edge of Mexico’s Pacific coast. Just off the rickety wooden pier, frigate birds dive-bombed pelicans, hoping to scare a fish loose.

The boat came into sight and moments later the whir of the engine reached my ears. About 30 feet from shore the pilot cut the power, lifted the prop, and coasted to the beach. A man hopped out, barefoot, wearing old yellow surf shorts and a t-shirt. A full afro ballooned from beneath his baseball cap.

I tossed my backpack into the boat and centered myself on the cross thwart as my chauffer polled us toward deeper water. Turning to look back at Zapotalito, I watched him lower the outboard into murky water.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Cuba.”

“Cuba? How did you end up here?”

The man laughed. “A slave ship was wrecked off the coast. Some of the slaves made it ashore. We’ve been here ever since.”

He pulled the cord, the motor roared, and I held my hat as the boat picked up speed and headed into the lagoon’s labyrinthine channels, leaving me to wonder how a Cuban slave ship had arrived along Mexico’s west coast.

A little known population Few people, including most Mexicans, realize that a significant black Mexican population lives along Mexico’s “Costa Chica” which runs just east of Acapulco down to Huatulco, in the state of Oaxaca.

If one does think of African-Mexicans it tends to be of Veracruz on the country’s Gulf Coast.

Mexico’s Caribbean port of call, Veracruz is known for its carnival, Cuban danzón, and a 16th century African freedom fighter named Yanga who established a free black town in the mountains there.

And yet, the black population on the west coast is significantly larger, though less well researched or understood due, at least in part, to its geographic isolation.

According to American scholar Bobby Vaughn, “While the population of contemporary black Mexicans is very small in Veracruz as compared with the Costa Chica, the discourse on blackness in Veracruz is pervasive. Veracruz is envisioned in the popular Mexican imagination as a black state, and while this is due in part to the slave legacy in Veracruz, this imagination stems more from a nineteenth century Cuban cultural exchange.”

Spanish Mexico’s history as an importer of slaves is often overshadowed by the vast numbers of Africans sold as laborers in the Caribbean, the United States and Brazil.

Until 1650, however, there were more African slaves in Mexico than anywhere else in the Americas. More surprising still, Vaughn claims that the population of Spaniards living in Mexico didn’t surpass that of Africans until 1810.

This history is studied by only a handful of amateur and professional scholars curious about the part Africans have played in Mexico. Many Mexicans know that the country’s second president, Vincente Guerrero, was of African descent. So too was José María Morelos, the national hero who fought and died for independence from Spain. Even so, the every day reality of what it means to be black along the Costa Chica goes largely unexamined by non-black Mexicans, and by many black Mexicans as well.

Unacknowledged roots

As I wandered the paths of Chacahua, I saw people of all shades, from light tan to dark chocolate. I saw straight hair and afros and everything in between. Nearly all, however, even those who could pass as mestizo (the most common term for the mix of indigenous Mexican and Spanish) identified themselves as “moreno” or “negro.”

When I asked about the history of the town and its people I was told, “You have to talk to the old timers.”

As dusk settled, I spotted an old woman sitting in a chair in her neatly raked dirt yard. Her simple, stick house stood behind her and off to one side a cook fire smoldered.

“Where did the people of Chacahua come from?” I asked her.

“Well, there was a plane crash in the 1950s,” she said.

Was this answer a non-sequitur, or a modern version of the slave ship story?

“But why is your hair like it is?”

She reached up and touched the white ends of her afro. “I don’t know why my hair is like this. I am Mexican.”

A matter of consciousness

When Father Glyn Jeemott listens to these stories told by black Mexicans to explain (or not explain) their presence in Mexico, a pained look crosses his face.

“It’s not only ignorance,” he says. “They are holding onto a myth that was handed down to them as a way of rationalizing and reshaping the past. The sick joke is that they accept it. But,” and here he concedes a possible subversive quality to the myths, “when a black man shrugs his shoulders, how much is indifference and how much is survival?”

Jeemott is from Trinidad. He was ordained a Roman Catholic Priest in 1977. He came to Oaxaca City in the early 1980s and shortly thereafter visited Pinotepa Nacional, a municipal capital in the southwest corner of Oaxaca State.

When he saw all the black people living there, he realized that it was where he was meant to minister. “I had to be here,” he says.

Padre Glyn, as he is known to his parishioners, was sent to be the parish priest in the tiny, dusty village of Ciruelo. He brought not only his faith, but a belief in pan-African identity and social justice. He has committed the last 22 years of his life to the spiritual needs of his parishioners and to nurturing incipient calls for economic justice in these impoverished, isolated, rural communities.

To further these last two objectives, and to raise general awareness about Mexico’s black population, he created an organization called México Negro or, Black Mexico. The moniker emphasizes the “Africanness” of the people, rather than their blending. “Blackness” it asserts, exists in Mexico.

“The question of justice is basic in this. Mexico cannot deny equality and recognition,” he says. He explains that there are no government statistics for the black population, no option to claim this identity in the census (and therefore no way to determine, with any real accuracy, the size of the population). This, he says, is a, “judgment on Africa and ‘Africanness’ that is not being reconciled [with the Mexican identity].”

The conventional story of modern Mexico’s founding emphasizes the mix of Spaniards and indigenous Mexicans that forged the “mestizo” identity. Father Jeemott believes that the duality of this myth makes it easier to exclude all those who do not fit the model; to make them invisible, sometimes even to themselves.

A wry smile curls the corner of his mouth as he wisecracks about national hero José María Morelos, “[he] can’t take off his bandana because it will show his curly hair.”

“The indigenous people of Mexico have said, ‘There is no Mexico without us.’ The blacks haven’t been able to say that.” Jeemott believes that there is an internal cohesion to the indigenous cultures that develops internal leadership.

Jeemott hopes México Negro will help create the kind of unity that produces leaders who will continue and extend the work he has started. Every March the organization puts on an encuentro of the pueblos negros. People from the area are invited to celebrate their heritage and to spend three days discussing local problems such as health care, education and garbage collection.

“There is a future”

Gerardo Carranza has six brothers and sister and all of them slipped across the US border to find work. “No me gusta irme de mojado. Nunca. –I don’t want to be a wetback. Not ever–” he says, by way of explaining why at twenty-two he still lives in the town of Huehuetan, Guerrero where he was born.

Carranza was accepted to Morehouse College (a historically black college) in Atlanta, Georgia, but it seems the scholarship he received has been rescinded. He says he’s not interested in “awakening that dream” again.

Instead Carranza, who is the local president of México Negro, focuses his energy and attention on his small Guerrerense pueblo where he says, “you can see there is a future.”

For an outsider the hopeful signs are not easy to identify. The streets are narrow, lined by crumbling stick and mud constructions.

An old woman squats in an open door, a small display of old carrots on sale before her. The few modern houses are clearly the fruits of relatives laboring north of the border. In fact, Carranza’s family home is one of the nicest in town. Even so, his parents still work the fields every day.

One of the signs of hope Carranza sees is a small arrangement of cinderblocks. The walls stand about four feet high and vines are beginning to crawl over them from the inside.

“That’s the library,” he says, noting that for about $700 dollars more he could get it finished. Then he would have to fill it with books and computers.

It’s a difficult battle, he says. There are no jobs, so the kids don’t see the point in studying. The town’s resources are controlled by the municipal seat, a mestizo town that, according to Gerardo, has no interest in Huehuetan’s
future.

So he’s trying to organize a sort of secession that would allow his town and a couple of others to form their own municipality and govern themselves. He believes that if Yanga could create an autonomous town for black people in Mexico, why can’t the citizens of Huehuetan do the same?

“There are a lot of things this town can do,” says Gerardo. “In ten years, I’ll still be here organizing the people.”

Mexican first

Not everyone agrees with Father Glyn’s efforts to develop his parishioners’ identification with their black roots. Some Mexican academics argue that he’s “inventing identity.” What they are suggesting, it seems, is that the “Africanness” of the people is purely historical, and that today everyone is mixed and should identify as Mexican.

Near Ciruelo, across the Oaxaca state line in Guerrero, is the town of Cuajinicuilapa. There brothers Eduardo and Jorge Añorve Zapata counter Father Glyn’s pan-African approach, identifying themselves as “afromestizo.” This term, rather than drawing attention first to being black, instead locates identity in the Mexican “mestizo” model. We are but one more ingredient in the Mexican mix, it asserts. But first, we are Mexican.

These critiques of Father Glyn’s approach are, at least in part, a rejection of “foreign” ideas. Even after nearly a quarter of a century in Mexico, he’s still an outsider and his worldview challenges the way some Mexicans – and even some of the Mexicans he hopes to help – see themselves.

A practical approach Back in Ciruelo, Elena Ruiz has little patience for abstract discussions about identity. There’s a more urgent problem to solve: local employment.

A striking, dark-skinned woman with straight hair, Elena grew up in Pinotepa Nacional and experienced her share of discrimination. Her worry now is that without any new local industry many of the black towns might just disappear.

There’s a steely determination in her eyes when she says, “This is our country too. We were born here. We feel completely Mexican.”

At 52, she has five children, two of whom are working in Los Angeles. Here, as it does all over Mexico, immigration tears at the town’s social fabric. More and more young men and women leave. The money they send back builds nice houses for relatives and introduces flashy US styles, but it does little to create a permanent source of employment.

To her mind, there’s no time to wait for government help or recognition. Elena started a sewing workshop with the hope that she and other women could make blouses and purses to sell at the market in Pinotepa. Unfortunately, they have run out of the minimal resources needed to keep the project going.

Each year on International Women’s Day Elena organizes a road race for the women of the town. They go out to the highway and run the three kilometers back to the center.

It’s almost as if the race is a kind of homecoming. Go out to the road and instead of running away, run back to who you are and where you are from.

Farewells: Marilyn Greenwald

catherine — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:48:10 -0700

“She loved jokes, loved to travel. She was a real fabulous companion.”
– Friend Katharine Miller

Vicky Sylvan met Marilyn Greenwald in 1951 or 52. Marilyn was modeling French designer clothes for a charity fashion show at El Patio, the it social spot in the Centro. Marilyn, says Vicky, was gorgeous and glamorous.

The two developed a friendship that lasted until Marilyn died Dec. 2, 2006 in Mexico City.

Marilyn’s uncle was a man named Mart in Temple, a vegetarian who started a fur business in the Mexico City. Martin’s brother, Jack, brought his wife, and two young daughters, Marilyn and Elaine, here from New York after the 1929 stock market crash.

The Temples lived next to Parque México in Hipodromo. The colonia’s secular ambience (it had only two Catholic churches) attracted many Jewish immigrants, like the Temples, as well as refugees from the Spanish Civil War. The Temple sisters went to the American School, then on the corner of Insurgentes and San Luis Potosi.

After high school, Marilyn went off to New York. She became a hat model -- “it sounds terribly oldfashioned,” says her sister Elaine Menassé -- and posed for magazines, including True Confessions. She also worked for a commission focusing on Latin America issues that was chaired by Nelson Rockefeller.

Marilyn fell in love with a co-worker at a New York department store. She and Jack Greenwald, World War II vet and Bronx native, eloped and ended up, after a few years, in Mexico City where Jack went to work in the Temple family’s fur and tannery business. The couple had two sons, Steven, an anesthesiologist who lives in Chicago, and Mauricio, an industrial psychologist who lives in Mexico City.

Marilyn made friends wherever she went. “People enjoyed her,” Elaine says. “That’s an enormous thing -- to be entertained, amused, comfortable.” Vicky Sylvan echoes Elaine’s assessment. “She was just fun to be around… she had flair.”

Together, Vicky and Marilyn created the Art Corner, a charity fundraiser at Beth Israel synagogue. Forget jams and jellies, they thought. Instead the two recruited artists to donate works to a good cause. The Art Corner was a big success and a precursor to the American School Art Fair.

Ever elegant, and a consummate shopper, Marilyn loved to buy things and loved to give presents. For kicks, Marilyn and her friend Katharine Miller liked to watch a home shopping show that auctioned semi-precious gems. The pals would call the show to bid on a jewel, and crack up laughing to hear one another’s voices on the TV.

After her husband died in the early 1980s, Marilyn globetrotted on numerous group tours and cruises. China, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore. Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Russia. She convinced her sister to accompany her to India, a country that overwhelmed and affected Marilyn. The place got a hold of her, Elaine says, and she came back more spiritual.

Later, the sisters went to Egypt, where they floated down the Nile. On that trip they visited Jordan and the magnificent carved city of Petra. In Turkey, they toured the ruins of Troy.

Marilyn would always say, “Let’s go, let’s go,” Katharine Miller recalls. “She wouldn’t even think twice.”

Marilyn celebrated her 80th birthday with her family, including her two sons and two grandsons, by taking a cruise that passed through the locks of the Panama Canal.

“She wasn’t a sweet old lady one bit,” Elaine said. “You don’t have to be sweet to be kind.”

Ancient dogs

catherine — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:09:28 -0700

A woman looks once at the small, pink-skinned, hairless dog, and then looks again. Fidel Giménez smiles. He’s used to double, even triple, takes. In a sunny park full of golden-haired retrievers and fluffy spaniels, his xoloitzcuintli (pronounced sho-lo-itz-CWINT-leh) stands out.

“The first time you see them maybe you don’t know what to think,” he chuckles. “You don’t know if they’re pretty or ugly or what.”

Not hard to see why Sholos, as they’re called, might be considered ugly. Small-boned and delicate, they have large bat-like ears, narrow faces, and long bony tails. Many are completely bald, but if they do have any hair it’s on their toes, the end of their tails, and the tops of their heads. Because they have no fur, their bodies are hot to the touch.

Seven-months-old Cualli (Giménez gives all his dogs Nahuatl names) doesn’t shy away when I run my hand over her soft skin. They’re smart dogs, says Giménez, loyal, and very affectionate. Cualli gives my calf a good sniff, then curls around it, eyeing the bigger, hairier dogs trotting past.

Cualli looks exactly like her ancestors did some 3,500 years ago. Sholos were first raised by the Aztecs for companionship, comfort, and, according to archeologists, food. They also played a crucial role in religion, believed to have the ability to guide their owners safely across the great river and into Mictlán, the afterlife.

“It’s our nation’s breed,” says Giménez proudly. His father started breeding the dogs more than 40 years ago. “My father’s a patriot, a man very interested in Mexican culture and everything Mexican,” he explains. “And it’s the same way with me.”

When Giménez’s father started breeding Sholos in the late 1960s there were just a few hundred left in the world. The remaining dogs were kept by Mexican nationalists, artists and intellectuals, and in isolated villages in the Sierras where the Aztec nobility had fled to escape the conquest, taking their Sholos with them.

Now in a kennel outside Mexico City, Giménez and his family breed the dogs carefully, working hard to maintain the ancient characteristics. They are among the handful of committed breeders who have brought Sholos back from near extinction, to a worldwide population of 5,000.

“Ten or 15 years ago it was very rare to have somebody asking for a puppy,” says Giménez. “Now I get inquiries every day, from Mexico and also from different countries.” He’s sent dogs as far afield as Finland and Israel. And last year, one of his dogs was a champion at the World Dog Show in Poland.

Giménez puppies start at $1000 USD, but he takes pains to point out that his family is not getting rich; raising Sholos is not a business for them, but a passion. “You just have to love these dogs,” he says, bending down to give Cualli an affectionate pat. “Once you get one you most likely won’t have own any other breed again.”

Canine chic

catherine — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:02:46 -0700

Hizashi peers down his regal, wet nose as the camera bulb flashes. Today the champion Siberian Husky is starring in his own birthday celebration, a classy production at a small, swank cafe on an gentrifying block in Roma Norte.

Hizashi conducts himself with a dignity befitting his Old World bloodline… until the cake arrives. It is shaped like a giant dog bone, and the ostrich liver biscuit on top sends Hizashi’s practiced poise flying out the window. He shoves his face into the mashed potato and lamb’s liver icing.

Woof.

Welcome to the Bow-Wow Deli. People are warmly accepted here, but dogs are catered to with love. Inspired by similar establishments in Japan, the Bow-Wow may be the surest sign yet that this developing nation of more than 100 million people (and countless dogs) has one paw firmly in the First World.

The decor is understated chic, with a whiff of Paris Hilton. Whimsical displays hold $1000 peso hand-woven collars imported from Germany and rhinestone-covered leash grips. The menu offers gourmet coffee, green tea and, for fourlegged foodies, those homemade ostrich liver biscuits.

On a typical afternoon some patrons smoke and gossip and sip lattes. Others pant and drool and lick the floor. All are valued customers for owner Miki Nikai, a 36-year-old dog lover from Nara, Japan.

“I want people without doggies, people with doggies, all to share a nice atmosphere,” says Nikai, who greets all customers with a shy smile, and sometimes a scratch behind the ears. But no matter your pedigree, the rules apply: no leash, no service. Fighting and excessive barking are prohibited.

Mexican society is changing, and that is true for dogs as well. If Birthday pooch Hizashi exemplifies a class of canine that is increasingly popular here, then his master, 22-year-old Adriana Alvarez, represents a new breed of pet owner. Especially in a nation where dogs have traditionally subsisted on leftover tortillas. Once a week, Hizashi eats raw tuna or salmon with his dry croquettes.

Alvarez, a university student in graphic design, made place cards for Hizashi’s party guests. And there was the $150 peso lamb and vegetable cake. Seems like a lot of luxury for a dog, but Alvarez has no doubt her pet is worth it.

“He helps keep me in contact with nature, with my equilibrium,” she says, her dark sweater bristling with white dog hair. “This city is stressful. I brush him, we play, and I forget everything. We are very good friends.”

Bow-Wow owner Nikai moved here six years ago with her husband, a Mexican chef (who cooks for humans) whom she met while working and studying in New York.

They adopted a skittish African greyhound with a sensitive stomach and Nikai began cooking for him. She researched dog nutrition on the internet and bought books on the subject.

“It’s the same thing as when you have your first baby; you become very sensitive to food,” she says.

On his birthday she baked her dog a cake. Then she started baking them for her friends’ dogs. Soon she was making them to order. She uses flour, egg and pureed liver for flavor. No milk, sugar or chocolate, all of which are tough on canine digestive tracts. Following her chef-husband’s lead, Nikai is strict about the freshness and quality of the food she serves.

In a crowded city brimming with neighborhood eateries, the Bow-Wow may be the only one where a man’s best friend is not just tolerated but honored.

“For me it’s very gratifying to serve dogs as if they were people,” says Ivan Galindo, 20, who worked as a Bow-Wow waiter until starting veterinary school in January. “It shows they’re appreciated.”

Until recently, Nikai saw little demand in Mexico for an establishment like hers. But since she opened the cafe in September customers have, well, lapped it up.

“In the past couple of years I see peoples’ customs toward dogs changing drastically,” she says.

Still, she is not insensitive to the notion that her shop reeks of First World decadence. Dog treats sell for about $50 pesos per bag, a few cents more than the average daily minimum wage in Mexico City. But Nikai aims to perform a service for dogs and their devoted masters.

“Sometimes I feel so guilty. In Mexico there are people who cannot afford food,” she says. “But at the same time, there are people like me who are not rich, but they want to do something special for their doggie, even if it is just one day a year.”

Bow-Wow Deli

Located at Medellin #40-A, Colonia Roma, Mexico City.

Tel: (55) 5208 4171

Web: bowwowdeli.com

Email: info@bowwowdeli.com

Open Monday through Friday, 9:30am- 8:00pm, Saturday 9:30am-3:30pm, closed Sunday

Dog tales

catherine — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:35:59 -0700

Kena stands trembling on the surgery table as two vets carefully tend to the multiple burns and scabs on her body, covering them with ointment and gauze and then bandaging her carefully. When they are finished she looks more bandage than dog, but she never cries or complains.

Kena was brought to the Presencia Animal pet shelter in January after a reporter who was called to a warehouse fire found her tied up inside the burning building. She is just one of 75 dogs and 34 cats that, after being abandoned, lost or mistreated, currently live at this haven run by Dr. Jose Luis Genis.

“I like this work because it is more varied than simply working in a veterinary clinic,” says Dr. Genis, a soft spoken man who has worked at the shelter for 10 years. As we go from room to room in this house that serves as a pet orphanage, he talks to the animals, strokes one, and then picks up another for a cuddle.

“Not all the animals that arrive here are mistreated, but many of them are. We also get dogs and cats that have been rescued from the street. Some have been abandoned and some are merely lost,” Dr. Genis explains.

Presencia Animal opened its doors to the waifs and strays of the animal kingdom 20 years ago. Since then it has worked not only to care for these abandoned creatures, but to educate people on how to be better pet owners.

From the street, the shelter looks like just another house. There’s no sign and it doesn’t publicise the address so that people don’t abandon animals on the doorstep. Instead, there’s an answering service where people can leave questions about adopting a pet, or information about a rescued animal. The staff return all calls, and will arrange to pick up an animal if necessary.

From the moment I walk in, the Presencia Animal shelter feels more like a home than a shelter. In the kitchen, small dogs romp freely, while others sun themselves on the front and back patios. Dr. Genis explains that where each dog is kept depends largely on size, temperament and the type of attention required.

“For example, the dogs that are here [on the back patio within sight of the surgery] tend to be the more timid animals. They need attention because most of them have been mistreated, and here they have more direct contact with us throughout the day,” he says.

Of course, many of the dogs are caged because they are aggressive or overly energetic, but even these cages are spread throughout the rooms of the house. The place is light and airy and people come and go constantly.

The cat kingdom -- one large room dedicated to the three dozen feline residents -- is at the back of the house. There are scratching poles, cubby holes for chilling out, toys and bells scattered over the floor, and a huge wooden playhouse for climbing.

Tiny, fluffy kittens purr and street-wise toms, veterans of one too many brawls, stalk. As he surveys the scene, Dr. Genis notes that some of these cats will never be adopted because they are simply too wild and won’t even let people touch them. He’s a pragmatist, realizing that he will never be able to save each and every animal that arrives at the shelter.

It is too late for the shelter to help one scrawny little black-and-white cat with a lopsided expression. “This one will have to be put down today because his body is not absorbing nutrients any more. There’s nothing more we can do for him,” Dr. Genis says as he places the tiny cat in a cage so that the others can’t steal his food.

For the dogs and cats that Dr. Genis deems adoptable, Presencia works hard to find them homes. On the shelter’s website you can browse photos of the animals and fill-in an online adoptio application form. All the animals are guaranteed to be healthy, sterilized and fully vaccinated.

There are strict conditions for the adoptive family as well. A prospective pet owner must answer questions about past pets and why he no longer has them, his reasons for adopting a new pet, and the conditions in which it will live (e.g. inside or outside the house).

Once its high standards have been met, the shelter delivers the adopted pet to its new home. But their responsibility doesn’t end there. The adoptive family must agree to a follow-up visit to check on the animal’s health and wellbeing.

“Our aim is to get five dogs adopted per week,” says Dr. Genis, adding that so far this year (to mid-February) 31 dogs have been adopted. In 2006, Presencia found new homes for 246 dogs. “Normally people hear about us through our website or through advertisements that we place in newspapers,” he adds.

Virtual Adoption

Presencia also has a “virtual adoption” program for the animals that are old, disabled or in need of constant medical care, and as such have little or no chance of being taken into someone’s home. Donations to the program ensure these animals will live out their lives on the secure and peaceful grounds of a large farm outside of Mexico City with 24 hours care and all the love and freedom they need.

In return for an annual donation of $1,200 pesos the sponsor receives a photo of her adopted pet, as well as monthly updates on how it is getting on. Presencia arranges annual visits to the farm. At the moment, about 130 dogs and 50 cats are being cared for by sponsors who have signed on through the virtual adoptions program.

Then there is the nursery assistance program for kittens and puppies recuperating from starting life on the street and that are still too young to be adopted. Donations help care for them until they have grown up a bit, received all their vaccines and medical treatments, and been sterilized. At that point they are ready to go to a good home.

Volunteer Work

The shelter is open every day from 9am-4pm for official business, but there is always someone there taking care of the animals. The four regular staff members are helped by about six volunteers In addition to Dr. Genis, there is another vet that visits three days a week and performs the more complicated surgical procedures.

Although the shelter welcomes volunteers, they want to be sure they’re getting the right people. “We have a person who is dedicated to interviewing potential volunteers,” Dr. Genis explains.

Sylvia has been volunteering at Presencia Animal for about two years now. “I decided to volunteer after I rescued a dog from the street and a friend told me about the adoption programs they run here. I love animals -- I have a dog and six cats at home -- so I am just glad to be able to help,” she says.

Presencia Animal promotes sterilization -- “Sterilize and Save Lives” -- something that some Mexicans are often loath to do. “People here are less likely to sterilize their pets because they want puppies or kittens,” says Sylvia. “But then they just end up throwing them out on the street because they can’t find homes for them.”

The shelter sterilizes all its animals and encourages pet owners to do the same. As well as preventing animal overpopulation, Presencia says it can help animals lead longer, healthier lives by preventing uterine, ovarian, breast and testicular cancer.

Meanwhile, my visit ends on a happy note when Dr. Genis discovers that a French poodle named Nacho who was brought in to the shelter is wearing identification tags. He probably has an anxious owner who is looking for him.

A quick phone call confirms Dr. Genis’ suspicions and arrangements are made to return the mop-headed pooch to his rightful home. You can almost see Nacho smile when Dr. Genis says, “You’re going home boy! You’re one of the lucky ones.”

Farewells: Joe Nash

catherine — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:31:26 -0700

Joe Nash, traveler, writer, penned these words:

"The Paseo de la Reforma is no longer the country lane leading to the slaughterhouse. The foundry too is gone. The remnants of Porfirian elegance stand diminishingly beside the sheer cliffs of modern architecture. It was the bottom land between the west edge of the old Tenochtitlan and the east foot of the Chapultepec bluff.”

That paragraph appeared in Nash’s small book El Paseo de la Reforma: A Guide, first published in 1959.

“Joe was a travel writer, a travel editor,” says Shari Rettig, a close friend. “That was his strength.”

Nash, who grew up in Rockford, Illinois, died Jan. 6 at age 93. Mexico was his home for more than 60 years. A great friend and feisty character, Nash hosted game days for his “bingo gals” and also supported three unofficially adopted sons.

Nash’s wanderings began at age 5. He told Rettig that he followed a circus parade for 10 miles until he was spotted by a neighbor at a railway station.

As a 19-year-old Nash hopped freight trains to Los Angeles to see the 1932 Olympics. In 1938, he cycled from Chicago to Mexico. He served in the Air Force during World War II and studied at the Latin American Institute in New York.

After returning to Mexico, Nash joined the English-language daily The News, working there from 1951 to 1990. He founded the weekly travel section “Vistas”, recruiting volunteer correspondents from across the country to chronicle tales of colonial towns and seaside escapes.

As editor of Vistas and the organizer of a seminal Society of American Travel Writers conference to Mexico in 1962, Nash was a goodwill ambassador for tourism. Given the prickly history of US-Mexico relations, says Michael Schuessler, a professor a Columbia University, “he represented a side of the US that, on the contrary, showed a wonderful appreciation for Mexico.”

Crusty and frank -- “Joe did not tolerate fools,” according to Rettig -- Nash’s criticisms at hotels, restaurants, and the office, didn’t win friends who couldn’t take the heat. But, Rettig says, “There are a lot of people who are heads of hotels here -- whole chains -- and they listened to Joe.”

Recalling a photo of Nash with Josephine Baker, friend Debra Anthony says Nash was horrified to see Baker performing to empty houses during her Mexico tour. He took charge of her publicity campaign and drew in the crowds.

“He came storming up one day, raising hell about something someone had changed in an article,” says Rettig, recounting how they became friends. She was acting editor of The News at the time, and she told him “‘I’m not going to talk to you if you’re cursing.’ I think that shocked him.”

At The News, Nash worked with Alma Reed, the celebrated former New York Times reporter who had an intense affair with the murdered governor of Yucatán in the 1920s. Together they co-founded Mexico City’s Democrats Abroad in 1952. Nash was hoping to attend the US National Democratic Convention as a delegate in 2008.

Nash and Reed, who died in 1966, were “dear friends,” says Schuessler. Nash was one of two people Reed allowed to proof her work at The News. His later stories about her spoke to two Nash trademarks: fierce loyalty and an archival memory for the 20th century history he lived, witnessed and recorded.

“I called him in jest, ‘the original gringo viejo,’” says Schuessler. “He was a bridge to a world that no longer exists.”

A community memorial will be held for Joe Nash Tuesday, Feb. 6 at 7 p.m., Union Church, Av. Paseo de la Reforma 1870, Col. Lomas de Chapultepec. His ashes were placed in the American Cemetery.

Farewells: Herbert Wallace

catherine — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:17:33 -0700

He was the shy industrial engineer from Hermon, New York who always carried nail clippers and a handkerchief in his pocket. She was the flamboyant Spanish actress who lit up a room.

It was 1949. Herbert L. Wallace Jr. was on a business trip when he met Pituka de Foronda at a party in Mexico City. They were married at Union Church here less than a year later.

Wallace died Dec. 31, 2006 in Mexico City. He is survived by his four children, Herbert, Edgar and Robert, of Mexico City, Elizabeth Wallace Duarte, of San Antonio, Texas, and five grandchildren. His wife died in 1999.

Though they never became Mexican citizens, Wallace and de Foronda worked, raised their family and learned each other’s mother tongue in Mexico. “They held hands to the last day,” Elizabeth said.

Westinghouse transferred Wallace to its subsidiary Industria Eléctrica de México. After that, he was general manager of Heinz Mexico and, when that company closed in the early 1970s, he ran a clothing company out of his children’s playroom to support the family. Wallace later built a successful market research company.

A devoted member of Union Church, “he taught us that the first thing in life was Jesus Christ,” Elizabeth said. He tucked his four kids into bed every night and as he drove them to the American School every morning they would recite the Lord’s Prayer.

Friends and family said Wallace, witty and ever the gentleman, didn’t criticize, never held grudges and prized honesty and reflection. When Elizabeth wanted to leave home as a teenager, her dad told her to sleep on it and that he would support her decision in the morning.

Wallace was both personal counselor and public volunteer. His posts included President of the Board of Deacons at Union Church, President of the Salvation Army and Vice President Emeritus of the American Benevolent Society, among others. The ABS honored Wallace with its first lifetime community service award in 2006.

“I think I know very few people who live their beliefs the way that man lived his beliefs,” said friend Frances Hutanus. When the two worked on refurbishing the American Cemetery, Wallace insisted on a policy for burying needy veterans. Wallace showed Hutanus that “you can’t be off-hand about human beings.”

“Total opposites,” but always a team, Elizabeth said that her father encouraged her mother to balance her acting career with volunteerism, as well. The couple routinely hosted huge parties and once they invited inmates from a women’s prison to put on a dance performance in their backyard. That evening jail guards surrounded their home.

Wallace was well known for the graceful way he supported his two sons with physical disabilities.

“To him, it made no difference,” said friend Bill Biese, citing Wallace as a role model for dealing with adversity. “He cultivated love around him,” Elizabeth said.

Herbert Wallace is buried with his wife and father at the American Cemetery in Mexico City.

Loving across cultures

catherine — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:37:16 -0700

Luisa Ortíz reaches across the table in a smoky café in Condesa and runs her fingers through Ulysses de la Torre's hair. It is a sweet, unconscious gesture.

"His nationality is our necessary evil," says Ortíz, a university professor. "In my life, and with the people I hang out with, I have found myself making excuses for it. I sometimes cover up and don't say it outright."

Ortíz is Mexican, de la Torre is American. Like so many couples in Mexico, they are doing their best to find common ground between different cultures, nationalities and languages. It's a dizzying endeavour with extraordinary highs and some pretty low-lows, and all the more rewarding because of the great effort it sometimes requires. What are these couples up against, and how do they make it work?

But wait -- we need to begin at the beginning. When eyes meet across a crowded room. What do they see?

"For many Mexicans, foreigners are very attractive," says Mónica Bautista, a vivacious economist-turned-Spanish teacher who is a regular at clubs and parties in Mexico City. "But it's a two-edged sword. It's the spell of Malinche."

Malinche, you will remember, was the Aztec mistress of Hernán Cortez. Given to him as a slave, she became the mother of his son and his most trusted interpreter. For her intimate relationship with outsiders she has been awarded a troubled place in the hearts of contemporary Mexicans, painted as either a traitor for aiding the Spanish conquistadores, or a heroine for preventing even more bloodshed through her negotiations with the Aztec tribes. Even today, in some quarters, a malinchista is considered the worst kind of traitor.

"I know many Mexicans who really want to marry foreigners because they want to escape the reality of life in Mexico. They believe it will be better for them," says Bautista, a single mother of a young boy.

She has dated several extranjeros, one from as far away as Ireland. She likes how they don't think of her as a quedada (an old maid) for being in her late thirties and as yet unmarried. "For foreigners it's normal to see a woman with a past. Mexican men want me to be free, no past, no children." And in her experience, foreign men are not into playing romantic games. “They are direct and honest.”

Carmen Roman, editor of a woman’s magazine in Mexico City, doesn’t necessarily agree. “I find it hard to read foreign men,” she says.

She’s accustomed to the lavish romantic declarations of a typical Mexican courtship, even if at times there’s more smoke than fire. It’s not unusual to have someone look deeply into your eyes on a first date and murmur something like, “I think I’m looking at the future mother of my children.”

I know this because I seriously dated a Mexican man who made me swoon, weakkneed, with such extravagant avowals of adoration. I was romanced in a way no Canadian has ever done, before or since.

And that’s the problem for Roman. Foreign men tend to be more reserved with their feelings, she says. “And so you tend to think they just don’t care about you.”

Getting past such differences can begin with the simple recognition of those differences.

* * *

Peter Orsi, an American editor who works for an international company, is experienced in dating women from countries other than his own. Tall and slender, with boyish good looks, he is quick to praise the richness and insight such romances give to living in another culture. But for them to be successful, he believes, some sort of lingua franca is necessary.

“The women I tend to find myself interested in usually have some sort of expat experience themselves. Either having lived elsewhere or at least speaking another language,” he says. “Someone who has gone through that is perhaps better equipped to understand my life and what I go through living in an unfamiliar culture.”

Roberto Charvel knew something of what his wife, South African-born Georgina Enthoven, would go through when she moved to Mexico with him three years ago.

The two met in business school in the United States and Charvel’s own experience as a stranger in a strange land gives him that little extra degree of empathy that helps smooth out misunderstandings. Like when it comes to how long they lunch with friends and family.

“I have had to explain that lunch in Mexico is an event,” says Charvel.

“You don’t just eat and leave. You go to someone’s house and stay maybe four hours with them. But Georgi isn’t used to that. So we’re changing things a bit to make it shorter.”

Charvel’s family loves his wife and their new four-month-old daughter, Sienna.

Even so, when you get up to leave a family event long before anyone else, it can raise some eyebrows.

“I need to understand that I’m still Mexican and living in Mexico,” he says. “But I also know that my wife and baby come first, and I have to respect them.”

It’s a balance that Enthoven and Charvel are learning to strike on their own terms. “But we have a lot of communication,” he says. “And we’re completely in love, so it doesn’t make it hard to adapt to what the other person wants.”

But even making the effort to be understood doesn’t always translate into understanding, as Luisa Ortíz and Ulysses de la Torre can tell you. They are in the springtime of their romance, just a year in.

“I think most of our problems are a result of my misinterpretation,” says Ortíz. “I read what he does into a cultural context that is different, and I generally get it wrong.” De la Torre chuckles, and nods. They are a handsome couple; his steady gaze and calm demeanor are a good match for her bright smile and quick, expressive gestures.

“For example,” says Ortíz, “he likes to say, ‘in a minute’.” She looks sideways at de la Torre; it’s clear they’ve talked about it before. “Why don’t we just put a pot with water on the stove to make pasta, I’ll say. And his answer will be, ‘in a minute’.”

“And it will happen,” says de la Torre. “In a minute.”

“But my Mexican understanding of ‘in a minute’ is that it’s never going to happen,” says Ortíz. “‘In a minute’ is a very frustrating answer. It means nothing to me.”

They look at each other and de la Torre chases the frustration off her face with an affectionate smile. I have a feeling this isn’t the last time they’re going to talk about this.

This kind of conversation is old hat for Mariana and Jamie Rosen, married now more than three years and with a young son, Alex. She’s a Mexican from a strong Catholic family, and he’s a Jewish American. From the very beginning they have had to put a lot of effort into explaining and translating to each other, and to their families. Their wedding was a good example.

“We didn’t want to offend anyone,” says Mariana. “We talked to his side of the family and mine. We wrote a program for the ceremony in English and Spanish, explaining all the traditions we’d included. We tried to focus on what we have in common, not the differences.” Both a priest and a rabbi officiated.

“We thought some of our more conservative relatives would be unhappy,” she says. “But everyone was delighted.”

Merging two such strong cultural and religious traditions requires immense love and patience, and -- most important of all -- selfexamination.

“You have to challenge yourself to question what you were taught. And many times you are going to say ‘I think that’s a better idea’. Or you can merge two into one and create a new way of your own…a middle ground that’s better for both of you.”

And the rewards? “We celebrate everything,” says Marianna with a laugh. “Hanukah, Christmas, Día de Reyes, Easter, Passover…..we pretty much celebrate all year long.”

* * *

Architect Fernando Sandoval and his partner, an American journalist, live in a beautiful home in the southern part of Mexico City. It has soaring ceilings, tile floors and a huge stone fireplace. The back garden is lush and fragrant, sheltered by the broad leaves of old grandfather trees.

At the end of December, the two celebrated their 19th anniversary. They’ve ironed out a lot of misunderstandings over the years, but even after all this time, says Sandoval, they still find cultural differences cropping up between them.

“Nothing is taken for granted, nothing is ‘just because’. There are issues that you just don’t think about it until you have to face them.” This is especially true for them when it comes to family.

Sandoval’s partner has a “three-day rule” for visiting relatives which is familiar, no doubt, to many extranjeros: family are welcome for three days, and then they are expected to move on. So when Sandoval’s family would show up unannounced for a visit, as was their custom, and without any mention of when they were leaving, tensions mounted quickly.

“The first time my mother came to visit he asked her, ‘so, when are you leaving?’” says Sandoval with a horrified look. “You don’t do that. It’s a sin. You assume it’s going to be a short visit but you just don’t ask. So at the beginning my family had the impression he was very rude. But now they think, oh, he’s just a Gringo. He’s different.”

Over the years the Gringo has relaxed some, and Sandoval’s family has also changed. It helps that two of his brothers now live in Canada, and are married to Canadians.

“Now they ask, ‘is it okay if we come next week? Is it okay if we stay for one week?’ You will never say no, but now they ask if it’s okay because on the third day, no matter who it is, he starts feeling nervous.”

Sandoval’s voice fills with affection when he talks about his partner, the distance they’ve come toward really understanding each other, and the fact that they’ve arrived here together.

“Year by year he gets it more and more,” he says, “though there are times when he’s still got to ask what’s okay and what’s not okay.”

He scoffs at my question of whether the rewards measure up to all the extra work and frustration over the years.

“When you are measuring love you don’t measure in gains because love is not about that,” he says. “Love is about giving, not about how much you are going to receive.”

Time for love

catherine — Mon, 04 May 2009 06:39:19 -0700

To hear them tell the story, it's hard to separate Jim Johnston and Nick Gilman's love for each other, from their love for Mexico.

The two met in New York in 1990 and soon started vacationing together in San Miguel de Allende.

"Nick already owned a property there which was not quite finished and so we kept coming down for a weekend here and a few days there to work on it," says Johnston.

Pooling their creative energy and skills -- both men are artists, Johnston is a printmaker and Gilman an oil painter -- together they built a home that they soon wanted to live in fulltime.

"We kept coming back from trips to Mexico and realizing that we were happier here," says Johnston.

Ten years ago they finally decided to follow their hearts and move south.

"Part of the decision was financial," allows Johnston. "I had a rent controlled loft and my landlord offered me a considerable amount of money to leave, and so I did."

No small matter for those who make their living as artists. The money provided a cushion until they figured out how to make ends meet here.

In addition to showing their work in Mexico, the United States, and Japan, Johnston started offering art classes in the large expat community in San Miguel.

They have been so happy here, that they eventually naturalized and are now both dual citizens.

Every time they go back to visit the United States they are reminded why they're here. "The first words out of my friends' mouths are ‘I'm so busy!'," says Johnston. "One thing I remember saying to myself before we moved here, was that when we are in Mexico we have more time to feel love toward each other."

A year ago, the pair pulled up stakes again, this time for a move to the big city.

"I love the mess of Mexico City," says Johnston, his voice bright with enthusiasm. "And the oldness, the history. Even though this place is totally chaotic, the history makes it feel somehow cozy and reassuring."

"When I go back to New York it seems too orderly. We had a friend who visited there with Nick. He started to light up a cigarette in the wrong place and people were yelling at him. He said to Nick, ‘And this is the land of the free!?'"

Johnston and Gilman's love for their adopted home has opened up a new direction in Johnston's career; he's added author to his titles of artist and teacher.

Mexico City: An Opinionated Guide for the Curious Traveler is a "love letter" to a city he believes is bashed unfairly by both foreigners and Mexicans.

"This city ends up being a punching bag for all Third World problems," says Johnston. "People who haven't even been here have terrible impressions of it. I wanted to counter that."

It's a gesture of affection toward a country that has nurtured the love of Johnston's life. To paraphrase the poet Kahlil Gibran: love, when it finds you worthy, sets your course.

Jim Johnston's webstie is jimjohnstonart.com, and Nick Gilman's website is nicholasgilman.com.

In a flash, Guadalupe appears

catherine — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:38:57 -0700

The second Sunday in November, a gray, rain-sputtering day, brought a couple hundred fireworks craftsmen to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It was the annual pilgrimage for the pirotécnicos who come to pay homage to the Virgin with the chemistry and architecture of their trade: 80-foot wooden scaffolds bearing the weight of hundreds of handcrafted rockets.

This year marks the 475th anniversary of the Virgin of Guadalupe’s apparition on the hill of Tepeyac, where an Aztec-turned-Catholic named Juan Diego saw her hovering above the snow. A shrine was built on what had been the site of an Aztec virgin goddess.

Today the Basilica’s schedule is packed year round. Three to five thousand pilgrims from all walks of life -- balloon vendors, mariachis, clowns and motorcyclists, entire unions, neighborhoods and churches, street vendors and Sabritas employees -- visit each day of the year. But on December 11th and the 12th which is the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, six to seven million devoted peregrinos arrive from all over the country on foot, riding bicycles, and by the busload.

A national as much as a religious symbol, soldiers brandished her image in both Mexican revolutions. Popes have called her the “Queen of Mexico” and “Mother of the Americas.” As one Mexican friend put it, for many people “there’s Jesus, then God, then,” raising his hand as high as he could, “there’s Guadalupe.”

Her earthbound incarnations watch over street corners, parking lots, bus stations, living rooms, office lobbies and elevators. She adorns purses, key chains, earrings, bracelets and t-shirts. A moving walkway in the Basilica shuttles visitors past San Juan Diego’s mantel emblazoned, miraculously, with the turquoise-robed archetype.

But nowhere does she look more heaven sent than when the pirotécnicos tack her likeness, sketched with cardboard tubes full of gunpowder, to a lofty castillo and light a fuse. Then, for a few moments, she glows, brilliant.

On December 12, all the pirotécnicos will be working; for them, it’s one of the busiest days of the year. So the second Sunday in November is their moment to celebrate, to venerate, to say thank you, to ask her -- Lupita Reina, Empatriz, Virgencita -- for another year of protection as they make the stuff that explodes in the sky.

II. A Visit to San Mateo Tlalchichilpa

The ejido of San Mateo Tlalchichilpa nestles in the soft hills between a local jail and the notorious federal penitentiary, La Palma. It’s one of several places in the Estado de México where fireworks are made by hand, and where about 75 legally registered pirotécnicos have set up shop in a patchwork of cornfields.

José Fuentes Martínez, 58, began learning to make fireworks here when he was 10.

He and the others have carved clearings in the corn for their polvorines, the cinderblock sheds where they fashion cohetes, bombas, and luces. José Fuentes’ workshop is set back from town, off a rutted dirt road, past grazing sheep and cows, and up the side of a hill. His polvorines are painted bright yellow with red trim, stamped with “no smoking” and “danger” warnings.

Don José, with gray-green eyes and a mop of a white hair, declines to shake hands because his are contaminated with pólvora–- the gunpowder that makes fireworks explode.

“Every pirotécnico has his own way of doing things,” he explains. His first step is to work the colors, mixing sulfur, magnesium and nitrate compounds to create the basic palette: red, green, white, blue and pink. He blends the colors with his hands in two red plastic tubs.

While bombas will fill the horizon with chrysanthemum-shaped showers and the smaller cohetes whistle and pop, castillos, or castles, generally top the hierarchy of Mexican pyrotechnics. These miniature skyscrapers support the dibujos, or detailed figures that appear in lights. The dibujos are formed by first bending the plant stalks into the desired shape.

For any dibujo to be clearly seen it has to be big and outlined carefully in cardboard tubes full of color and gunpowder which are tied to the frame and threaded with a long fuse. When this fuse is lit words appear, or a dove, a crucifix, or Guadalupe in all her orange, yellow, pink and blue glory.

Don José keeps about 2000 dibujos stacked on the floor and against the walls of his sheds. To the naked eye, they are almost indistinguishable. But if you look closely you can make out Jesus on the cross, Guadalupe, and many more. Once, a priest in Puebla gave him a hard time for making a spinning Virgin, saying her image was blurred in the whirl of lights. Don José took heed and since then his Guadalupes don’t twirl.

Many pirotécnicos pick up the trade as youngsters, but it takes years of apprenticeship before you can launch your own workshop. Don José learned from his grandparents and uncle. His sons learned from him. Now his grandkids are learning, too.

He keeps an image of the Holy Family in his home because here in San Mateo “most people work with family from the time they’re small.”

Ipolito Espindola Victoria, 37, began learning the craft as a 10-year-old. He was the first in his family to make fireworks. Eleven years later, after having studied with 15 maestros, he at last felt ready to open his own workshop. This is the only work he knows. “Pirotécnico y nada,” Ipolito says.

“Little by little we learned from the first ones. Now there are a lot us,” he says. Three of Ipolito’s apprentices have gone independent.

“Gunpowder is very pretty, but honestly, very dangerous,” Ipolito adds. “Thanks to la Virgencita” he has never had an accident.

Job hazards include explosions, burns and death. Two people died in explosions in San Mateo during January 2005. Explosions in Tultepec, another pueblo in Estado de México, sparked a rash of headlines when two years in a row the town’s fireworks market blew up. (Ipolito says they work with “very fast fuses” there.)

Ipolito considers himself a believer, though not “Catholic-Catholic.” For him, Guadalupe bestows protection, both physical and financial.

A castillo, of which he makes 20 a year, is worth $25,000 pesos. This year he donated one to her. “Hopefully she’ll double [the number of orders] for us,” he says.

III. November 12, at the Basilica

The Basilica plaza looks like Spider-Man's playground. On this, their special pilgrimage day, the pirotécnicos stack wood-frame blocks, tie them together with twine, and tether the growing castillos with thick rope to keep them from tipping.

The pirotécnicos, most from Estado de México, achieve the impressive 25-meter heights by adding from the bottom. They use a handcranked jack to raise a castillo high enough to slide the next block underneath. As the stack grows, the men ornament them with dibujos: a crown, a chalice, a crucifixion.

Javier Picaso, 25, leads the group from Villa Nicolas Romero, an hour-and-a-half outside of Mexico City. He started working in the family trade at seven- or eight-years-old and opened his own business when his father passed away six years ago.

Picaso been making this pilgrimage since he was a kid. “Es como una manda que tenemos.” In other words, Guadalupe will protect Picaso on the job in exchange for his devotion.

As Aztec-costumed dancers coil through the plaza accompanied by a thundering drum beat, Melitón Casteñeda Castelar, another pirotécnico explains that Guadalupe is “the mother of everything.” Four years ago, an explosion landed Casteñeda in the hospital for a month. When he recovered from the burns on his upper thigh and hip, he made the journey to the Basilica.

“I ask her for many things,” he says.

IV. The show

Don José says the air is blowing in a good direction. If it were blowing toward us, the smoke would cover all the fireworks and we wouldn’t see a thing. Watching the show with him is like touring a gallery with an artist. Those orange flower stalks shooting from a vase are cohetes de luz. Those colossal blossoms are bombas tipo crisantemo con centro. Practical names for pretty things.

Voices in the crowd try to identify the dibujos: “butterfly… bell… crown.”

A Mickey Mouse dibujo, the Pope, and San Juan Diego appear. Cohetes corredizos, little white corkscrews twist off into the night.

Guadalupe lights up in rose, then green, then twinkling flashes. White showers spout from her side.

Nuns in white habits hurry through the crowd to watch.

But what’s that?

Peering at one fuzzy dibujo, Don José says, “You can’t understand that picture very well. It’s not well outlined.”

It’s a single, noticeable blip in the parade of dibujos and it’s soon eclipsed by a host of Guadalupes coupled with petitions:

Mother Mary, cover us with your mantle.

Queen of México, beg for us.

Bless la pirotecnia, Lupita.

The pirotécnicos kindle their icon, Mexico’s Virgin sent to Juan Diego, and reflect her back toward the heavens.

The US election in fuzzy pink slippers

catherine — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:01:58 -0700

It's the Day After and President Bush has that look. It's the I'd-rather-not-be-here look. The look he gets when things aren't going his way and his staff has insisted he march out in front of the cameras.

Rumsfeld is out. Hastert's history. A couple dozen Republican chairmen have been deposed, and Bush is stuck explaining his party's blow-out to my old pals in the White House press corps.

Yep, his Republican Party took a "thumpin" in the midterm elections, Bush acknowledges, his faced screwed into the look that is part grin, part grimace. The best joke he can muster is to offer Nancy Pelosi an interior decorator to help choose new drapes for the Speaker's Office. (That's right, a liberal woman from San Francisco is about to become the third in line of succession, just behind Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.)

Overnight, the entire political world turned upside down. It's the sort of electoral earthquake that makes a political reporter salivate.

So where am I? Sitting in Mexico City in my jammies and pink fuzzy slippers, 1,900 miles from the action. I'm watching it all unfold on television as I surf the web for any juicy tidbit.

I've covered every US election since 1984. I was there in the Nashville rain when Al Gore refused to concede. I was sitting on a freezing Fox News set two years ago when the exit polls were saying President Kerry but the voters were telling us Bush II. For me, elections are all about that adrenaline rush that comes from a lack of sleep, greasy pizza, editors barking for copy and, if we're lucky, an unexpected outcome.

This year, for the first time in my adult life, I'm a long-distance spectator of the US. elections. Our television only gets two US cable stations (no networks) and until November 8th the Mexican newspapers had scant mention of the barnburner back home. For a junkie like me, it's been tough to get a fix.

But, gracias a Dios, there's high speed Internet and there's nothing like a change of venue to give one a fresh perspective.

Watching from Mexico, I've been spared the bulk of the vitriol that my fellow countrymen have endured. No slick pamphlets in the mailbox alert me that congressman so-and-so had an illegitimate child with a Martian. No gauzy TV spots with the loyal spouse standing by the husband who's been running around with an intern for the past three years.

It sounds sappy, but from where I'm sitting, the US electoral system looks pretty vibrant--and thankfully nonviolent. Simply put: American voters didn't like how things were going, so they voted in a new bunch of leaders. Like the outcome or not, that's democratic representation.

For the most part, the races were run on big, serious issues, like Iraq, the economy and prescription drug prices. Republicans suffered some self-inflicted wounds--powerful men such as Tom DeLay and Bob Ney lost their jobs because of investigations surrounding the lobbyist Jack Abramoff--and the party lost Mark Foley's seat in Florida after his 11th hour confession he'd sent naughty emails to underage congressional pages.

Female candidates performed well. In addition to Pelosi, women on both sides of the aisle (Senators Olympia Snowe in Maine, Maria Cantwell in Washington, Debbie Stabenow in Michigan, Kay Bailey Hutchison in Texas) won re-election.

Here's a television image a woman can love: powerful anchorwoman Katie Couric interviewing powerful speaker-in-waiting Pelosi. Alaska picked up a new female governor, Republican Sarah Palin, while Governors Jennifer Granholm (Michigan) and Janet Napolitano (Arizona) won second terms. And in Missouri, Claire McCaskill walked away with the Senate seat.

A few women had bad nights, namely Senator Elizabeth Dole, who presided over the GOP's Senate campaign committee, and Representative Nancy Johnson, a veteran House Republican who lost her seat in Connecticut. Less clear is whether women in the House will have many--or any?--committee chairs.

And with the exception of Florida Senator Bill Nelson's son, who was arrested on battery charges election night, the US elections were injury free--unlike politics elsewhere in the world.

Who knows if American voters will be any happier with the new crowd. But give them credit, a near-record number of them got up off their butts and made their opinions felt. Who can complain with that?

Ceci Connolly is a reformed political reporter, on a leave of absence from the Washington Post.

Published with permission from mediamogirl.com.

Anabel Ochoa: Mexico's sexologist

catherine — Sat, 02 May 2009 11:53:58 -0700

Anabel Ochoa goes on the air every day at 1 pm, the lisp in her husky smoker's patter betraying her Spanish roots. After the break, she'll invite calls, from the frustrated bride, the pregnant teenager, the curious dowager. She'll address their issues with the understanding of a sister and the clinical accuracy of a gynecologist.

For now, however, she takes her time with the words. Today's meander is about the delights and displeasures of surprise. "Sorpresa...me sorprendes...from the Latin root ‘sur' and ‘prendere', meaning ‘to overtake'..."

"Mexico's Sexologist" arrived in Mexico 20 years ago, with her husband, writer Josu Iturbe, seeking a rest from her psychiatry practice and wanting to "live, dream, and write in Spanish." What a shock it was, then, to realize she didn't speak the language.

"I came here and it felt like the Tower of Babel. I felt more like a foreigner here than I'd felt in other places I'd lived, like India or Morocco. I was hearing the same words but the meaning and the emotions were completely different."

So different that Ochoa soon penned La Palabra Común, an erotic dictionary of words meaning one thing in Mexico, and something different in Spain.

Her credentials are impressive-a degree from the University of Bilbao in social psychology and sexology, a PhD in Eastern Medicine from the University of Peking at Sri Lanka--but it's clear that her exceptional communications skills, her Nabokovian love of wordplay, the thrill of teasing text from subtext and clarity from confusion have been just as important to her success in becoming the intimate voice of authority for millions of Mexican women (and men). "Since I started doing this there's been a big change in the way people talk about sex."

Ochoa is a fierce feminist, frank about machismo, oppression and the importance of pleasure. She's penned best-selling books on sexuality and has written for virtually every newspaper and magazine in Mexico. Since 2000, she's been an actress in the Mexican version of Eve Ensler's acclaimed play "The Vagina Monologues," and in 2002 was awarded a Best Actress prize by the Asociación de Críticos Teatrales de México.

Asked if she's the reason Mexican woman have grown more open in their attitudes about sex, she says, "No, I just happened to come along at a time when Mexican woman were changing."

So, I say to her, you're a midwife of sorts?

She takes a drag on her cigarette, pauses to think.

"A comadrona? "More of a comadre, a word that exists here but not in Spain. A comadre is your best female friend, the godmother of your children, your closest confidante. She's the colaborador de la madre. It's really such a beautiful word.

Editor's note: Anabel Ochoa passed away November 19, 2008.

The face of millions: Elvira Arellano

sue-ellen — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:41:17 -0700

Elvira Arellano slipped over the US border 10 years ago, becoming one among millions of anonymous Mexican immigrants. She found work doing laundry, as a housekeeper, and eventually cleaning airplanes at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. By the time she was deported to her homeland this past August, the 32-year-old from rural Michoacán had become a powerful symbol for undocumented workers facing deportation and separation from their families north of the border, "We are all Elvira" became their rallying cry.

The key to her transformation from laborer to activist is her wide-eyed 8-year-old son. Saul was born and raised in Chicago; US citizenship is his birthright. As authorities aggressively pursued undocumented workers, Arellano, a single mother, faced an increasingly common dilemma for illegal migrants: She could take her child back to Mexico, denying him the schools and opportunities available in the United States, or she could leave him behind.

Instead, she chose to defy a deportation orer in 2006, taking refuge in a Chicago church. During her year-long asylum, she emerged as the face of a campaign to legalize some 12 million undocumented migrants in the US and keep families like hers together. In August, she left the sanctuary of the church to campaign for immigration reform in Los Angeles, and was quickly arrested and deported.

Now mother and son fight from Mexico for migrants rights. "We will never give up on [Saul's] rights as a US citizen and his right as a human being to have his mother with him," she says at press conferences, her son at her side. "He knows I need him, he is my strength, and he needs me, too."

Arellano began a hunger strike in mid-November, vowing to forgo food until Dec. 12, the day Mexico marks the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Arellano says she wants to press both the United States and Mexico to take action toward resolving the immigrants' plight.

A devout Christian, solemn and reticent before the cameras that follow her around Mexico, she has galvanized a movement of church leaders, rights groups and lawmakers on both sides of the border who call the US immigration system flawed and unjust. They credit here with forcing politicians to revive the immigration debate in Congress after a comprehensive reform bill died earlier this year. Barred from returning for 20 years, Arellano sent Saul to Washington for congressional hearings in September. He helped lead a Capitol Hill protest representing some 4 to 5 million children -- US citizens -- who are threatened with having one or both parents deported.

In many quarters of El Norte, however, they find little sympathy: "I don't think because she comes here and has a child that she somehow deserves to be treated any differently from anybody else who has broken the law," says Congressman Brian P. Bilbray (R-CA), head of the Immigration Reform Caucus. "What part of illegal don't people understand?" Bilbray won his seat in 2006 by campaigning for tougher border controls.

Arellano has a love-hate relationship with the nation that rejects her as a criminal, yet offers the dream of a better life for her son: "I am not a terrorist," she says. "We went looking for work in a country that wasn't ours, but we are not criminals. What is the crime in wanting a better future for our families?"

Note: As of May, 2009, Arellano is the candidate for Congressional District #4 in Tijuana on the ticket of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

Not born in the USA

sue-ellen — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:42:13 -0700

Patricia Gregori’s dream lives in a binder thick with birth certificates, school records, and faded photos. She hopes that these bits of family history will eventually win her American citizenship.

“This is my father,” she says, holding a picture of a brown-haired man with a mustache and a big smile. “Come on, you can just look at him and tell he’s American!”

Gregori, 46, born to an American father and a Mexican mother, has spent years documenting her father’s life in the US and his family background, all so she can offer an American life to her 10 year old son, Andrés.
Most people are aware of the premise of jus soli (“right of the soil”), which confers citizenship on those born on American land, regardless of their parents’ origins. Jus sanguinis (“right of the blood”) is less clear, and transmission of American citizenship to people born outside of US territory is determined by a matrix
involving geography, bloodlines, gender, and time. It is so complicated that even US Consular officials need a chart to determine eligibility.

To receive citizenship, a child born abroad must have at least one American parent who can prove that they lived in the US for a minimum of five years, two of them after the age of 14. In order to receive a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA) documenting the child’s American citizenship, parents must bring the child to the American Embassy and present the birth certificate, parents passport(s) and US residency information, and photos of the mother during pregnancy and of the child from birth.

However, the parent’s immigration and marital status and the date of the child's birth can affect the qualifications needed and the eventual outcome. Additionally, citizenship laws may change to reflect changing realities, but are not retroactive.

Edward McKeon, Minister Counselor for Consular Affairs at the US Embassy in Mexico City, says the intent is to foster US citizenship. “We think American citizenship’s pretty great,” he says. “We do what we can to encourage it, and to make it as expansive as possible.”

Some expat groups, though, want to change laws they feel are unfair to overseas citizens. “Citizenship transmission rights have been at the core of the work of the Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO) since its inception almost 35 years ago,” says AARO President Kathleen de Carbuccia. “Today the
US is in the paradoxical position of having taken away some fundamental human rights from its overseas citizens…. not all US citizen parents are now equal.”

Patricia Gregori must prove that her father lived in the US for at least ten years, five after the age of 14 (the qualification for children born before November 14, 1986). Unfortunately, her father led a tumbleweed life, and some of his records were destroyed in a fire. Relatives who could vouch for his whereabouts have died. However, the fact that she received Social Security payments after her father’s death in 1965 may provide the paper trail.

McKeon allows that many situations require sophisticated sleuthing skills: “Cases [like Gregori’s] can be like solving a murder mystery.”

Jimm Budd’s story reads like a history of immigration law. Budd, 73, came to Mexico in 1958, married Victoria, a Mexican citizen, and together they had three daughters. He registered each birth at the American Embassy, and the girls’ CRBAs documented their citizenship and also functioned as a passport. When they turned 18, the laws of the time required them to choose between Mexican and American passports.

“We were born and raised here, and went to school here,” says Jessica Budd, 44, Jimm’s middle daughter. “Of course we decided to be Mexican.” In 2000, when Mexico changed its laws to allow dual citizenship, Jessica and her sisters reclaimed their American status. However, since she had never lived in the US, Jessica wasn’t able to transmit citizenship to her daughter Isabela, now 10. Enter Grandpa Budd.

Under current immigration law, American grandparents who meet the residency requirements can transmit citizenship to their foreign born grandchildren. As a result, Jimm and Victoria, along with Jessica, sister Alexis, and their children went to the US naturalization center in Phoenix, Arizona in 2002 to pass the torch of citizenship. The process, says Jimm, was straightforward.

“I got [the records] and delivered them and that was it -- all done! We got the passports and went to Disneyworld,” he says.

A recent Wall Street Journal article (“Citizenship via Grandparents: Israeli Parents Make Use Of U.S. Clause That Lets Kids Become Americans”, October 16, 2007) highlights the trend of citizenship transmission through grandparents, particularly among Americans who migrated to Israel in the 1960s and 70s. According to the article, there were almost 4,000 such cases from October 1, 2006 through June 30, 2007, an increase of about 100% from the entire fiscal year 2003-2004.

Jimm, like many parents and grandparents of all nationalities, sees American citizenship as a way to guarantee a bright future for his progeny. “It was more of a practical thing, he says, “knowing what people go through in other parts of the world.” Patricia Gregori, for one, vows that she won’t be deterred from her quest: “I’m the daughter of an American,” she says. “I have a right to be an American.”

Next month: The deal on dual citizenship. Got questions about how the US citizenship rules apply to you? Call the US Embassy at (55) 5080 2000 or go to http://www.travel.state.gov/law/info/info_609.html.

Power tools for justice

sue-ellen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:47:05 -0700

Power drills are normally used for making holes, not Ph.D. dissertations; that’s what I thought six months ago, before I learned to appreciate the fluidity and torque that an 18V electrical screwdriver can bring to a research project. As a graduate student in geography at the University of Arizona, I had been instructed in the fine art of the scientific method: using research tools like surveys to measure opinions, or satellite imagery to examine watersheds. Power tools were left off the syllabus.

Before I left Arizona for twelve months of dissertation fieldwork in Tijuana, my Ph.D. advisor Paul sat me down. “Just use the wrong methods for the right questions,” he assured me. “Don’t get shot. And send a postcard!”

The main goal of my work is to understand how the informal water sector operates. In Tijuana, as in many places throughout Mexico, collecting rainwater or recycling washing machine suds are routine habits, yet the nature and impacts of these “off-grid” systems is poorly understood, especially in cities. In an unregulated sector, how are the rules set for greywater reuse? Who rigs the rainwater cisterns? What kinds of household economies does water harvesting create, and does it follow the logic of global capitalism, or Mom’s list of chores? What impacts might these mundane strategies have for solving urban storm water runoff and creating alternative sources of water supply?

Six months into my fieldwork, my only success had been in using every wrong method. A quantitative survey to gauge the role of the Mexican government in informal water use? A debacle. A complex hydrologic model to assess the effects of household water institutions? A disaster. Dissertating was starting to feel like trying to swat a fly with a ball-peen hammer.

Last month, in the spirit of last-ditch efforts, my research partner Oscar and I visited Home Depot to spend part of my equipment budget on tools. Not research tools, but real tools—the kind you plug into a socket.

We bought the works: drills, nail guns, battery packs, square shovels, and enough work gloves to outfit a small army. This equipment will be used in one of my study sites, San Bernardo, a poor neighborhood in Tijuana practicing self-help urban development through water harvesting.

Like many areas along the fast-growing frontera, the streets of San Bernardo are unpaved, water supply is uneven, and winter rains create hazardous stormwater flows that pick up speed, sediment, and waste and dump them downstream into the Tijuana River and Estuary. Aided by bi-national volunteer efforts and donated funds, San Bernardo residents are making “pervious pavers,” out of porous concrete, that will carpet their streets to slow and absorb runoff for alternative uses.

My involvement in San Bernardo falls under the guise of “ethnography,” a research approach used in social science. Ethnography is dirty business, but the idea behind the technique is simple: muddy boots beget wisdom. To understand complex social and environmental forces at work, one has to get to work.

So in Tijuana, I sweat and eat a lot of dust. I’ve learned how to hammer a nail more effectively and the secrets of avoiding splinters. I follow people around and ask about their histories, knowledge, hopes, and dreams. They often invite me into their homes, where we talk water issues over Nescafé; about the politics of city supply and the great ability of a secondhand washing machine to make graywater reuse possible.

Tijuana has taught me that the right questions are often hidden in plain view. San Bernardo is not a “social movement” in the formal sense, but the experience has pointed me to more powerful questions that tug at the strings of social justice: given the hurdles to future water supply and sustainable urban growth in the borderlands, what difference does one road make? If water harvesting creates alternative economies and development strategies in the middle of a desert, so what? Besides using cement, how can we make real change stick?

A few weeks back, I interviewed a US volunteer. Bright-eyed and 18, he accompanied eighty students from the University of California, San Diego to spend the day repairing broken molds, mixing concrete, and casting pavers. I asked him why he sacrificed his Saturdays for hard labor in Tijuana, and what motivated him to work on a tiny project that faced such great odds. The whine of power drills hung in the air around us.

He thought for a few seconds, then looked me squarely in the eye. “Look around us,” he said, “This is where it’s happening. I just want to be here.”

Love, labor, and a power drill are some of the best tools for change.

M i x by Katie Meehan Power Tools for Justice Katie Meehan is a PhD student in Geography at the University of Arizona. In her spare time, she surfs the Baja coast and hunts for the holy grail of fish tacos.

Setting an example

sue-ellen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:44:57 -0700

Two public buildings in Morelos — the Xochicalco pyramids museum and El Limón biological station — are examples of rainwater collection in action, and incorporate other eco-friendly practices. Underlying the museum, thirty-two kilometers south of Cuernavaca, is a 500,000-liter cistern.

“Bathrooms use the most water, about four liters per flush,” says museum director Marco Antonio Santos. With 800,000 yearly visitors, it adds up. Outside Morelos’ June through October rainy season, water is trucked from a nearby dam.

Water-cooled air keeps the museum’s interior between 20 and 25 degrees Celsius even when it reaches 42 degrees outside, thanks to a system designed by Cuernavaca architect Rolando J. Dada y Lemus.

The exterior and interior walls are separated by 20cm of space: cool air inside this void prevents the sun-bathed outer wall from transmitting absorbed heat into the museum.

Prevailing breezes are cooled while passing over shallow outdoor pools and channels along perimeter walls: this air enters the building through screened openings along its base and exits through openings in the skylights. Breezes also enter higher openings to evacuate warm air between a false ceiling and the roof.

Skylights illuminate the exhibit halls, housing some six hundred artifacts, and solar panels power computers, lights, and the cistern pump. Santos says there were no other options for water and power, the site being four kilometers uphill from the nearest town.

Flushing out waste

In remote El Limón, water consumption is curbed through the use of composting toilets. “Contamination is zero,” says Oscar Dorado, a Ph.D. biologist who helps oversee the 59,000-hectare Sierra de Huautla reserve, a tropical dry forest along the Morelos-Guerrero border. The station houses scientists and also hosts ecotourists: it can handle over one hundred guests at a time in fifteen guestrooms, each with two to five beds.

Dorado says the rain-collecting system is simple: inclined roofs, drains, and pipes carry water to the subterranean cistern, and drains collect rain that falls on the patio. Solar panels heat water for the kitchen and showers.

Dorado says the composting toilets in the bathrooms are odorless, and require only a cup of sand dumped in the bowl after use. The waste, composted with sand, lime, and ash, is removed every few months and disposed of on-site.

Schools can arrange one-day visits for $75 per student, plus $2,800 for transportation from Cuernavaca, with lunch available for $60 per person. Family tourism is $510 per person for weekend stays, including transportation and meals.

Activities include a thirty-minute introductory talk about the reserve and current research; a 1.5 kilometer walk to observe plants while a guide provides information; visits to an abandoned silver mine; trips to the nearby town of El Limón; environmentally- themed games; and campfires.

Information and reservations are available by phone through the Sierra de Huautla Environmental Education and Research Center (CEAMISH) in Cuernavaca at (777) 329-7019 ext. 3278 or through e-mail, educam@uaem.mx.

Getting there

To get to Xochicalco, drive south from Cuernavaca through Alpuyeca, then towards Miacatlán. Follow the signs to Xochicalco. General admission: $48 pesos. A nighttime light and sound show held October through May costs $160 pesos.

Rolf Olsen is a freelance journalist born in Mexico City and now based in Cuernavaca. He can be reached by email at olsen.rafa@gmail.com.

Salvation from the sky

sue-ellen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:31:38 -0700

SAN FELIPE DEL PROGRESO, Estado de México - The first time Celia Cayo's six-year-old son asked for purified water instead of Coca-Cola, she couldn't stop smiling. In the northwestern corner of the Estado de México, where the Mazahua people live without potable water, soft drinks mean survival. Like other mothers here, Cayo fears her three children will become sick with the gastrointestinal diseases that plague the region if they drink contaminated water from the tap or a nearby polluted river.

Turning to soda isn't a healthy solution either. Doctors have diagnosed Cayo's elderly mother, Gloria, with a kidney infection and gastritis because she relies too much on sweetened sodas for nourishment.

When a rainwater purification plant was built in the arid, mountainous Mazahua region in 2006, mothers felt a burden lifted.

"We suffer so much without water," Cayo, 31, says. "At least now we have some, and I notice a difference in the health of my children. They want to drink water now, and that's how I know things are going to be different for them."

Today, the $1.5 million USD rainwater harvesting and purification plant supplies drinking water for 6,000 residents and twenty area schools. For the Mazahua, who believe water is sacred and honor it with traditional ceremonies, the plant is especially significant since rivers that once provided them with water were diverted years ago to supply a thirsty Mexico City.

Rainwater -- a possible solution?

The Mazahua's predicament is not unusual. In Mexico, an estimated 11 million people live without access to drinking water and another 25 million have only limited access. That's despite the fact that an estimated 1,500 cubic kilometers of rain pours across the country annually.

It's no wonder then that rainwater collection and purification projects like the one in San Felipe are now in growing demand throughout the country. The International Center for Demonstration and Training in Rainwater (CIDECALLI) has 1,800 similar projects planned this year for marginalized cities across Oaxaca, Guerrero, Puebla, Chiapas, Sinaloa, Nuevo León, and Veracruz, according to a Rainwater Harvesting report by Fulbright scholar Femke Oldham.

"We've already contaminated our rivers, depleted our aquifers," says CIDECALLI coordinator Manuel Anaya Garduño. "Now we have to stop looking down for a solution and start looking up."

According to CIDECALLI, just 3% of Mexico's annual rainfall could supply 13 million people with clean water and irrigate 18 million hectares of crops.

Rainfall both savior and enemy in Mexico City

Mexico City gets almost thirty inches of rain each year, enough to supply its own needs and ship the rest to other states. Yet water shortages have become critical, since most of the rainfall is funneled out of the city and into the ocean through massive drainage systems.

Meanwhile, the city spends millions on an elaborate network of pumps and treatment plants to import water from other states. Water from the mountainous forests of Michoacán, for example, is pushed for miles uphill. Pumping this water into Mexico City eats up as much energy as the cities of Querétaro or Puebla use annually, according to a report by Ilán Adler, general director for the International Renewable Resources Institute (IRRI-Mexico). Even with this complex process, 40% of this water is reportedly lost along the way because of leaky pipes.

"We do not have the ethical or moral right to ask other zones for their water until we have repaired every leak...captured every raindrop and recycled 100% of our city water," Adler's report concludes.

While some see rainfall as a possible salvation for the city's water woes, rainfall in the megalopolis is often portrayed as an enemy because it floods streets and adds pressure to an already weak drainage system.

The situation has become so dire in the capital that the National Water Commission warns that a catastrophic flood could submerge the city under five meters of water for several weeks. The city has had several close calls as heavy rainfalls caused the drainage system to almost overflow.

Mexico City's main water supply -- about 70% -- comes from pumping underground aquifers that are not refilling fast enough to keep the water supply at a constant level. At this rate, experts have said they don't expect the city's aquifers to last more than fifty years. The result? The sponge-like clay underneath the megalopolis dries out and sinks.

Lopsided buildings and fissure-lined streets now pepper the former Aztec city that was once an island surrounded by five interconnected lakes. The Aztecs created intricate canal and dike systems to hold back floodwaters without changing the courses of the waters, but when the Spaniards conquered the Aztec Empire they began to drain the water, leaving a gelatin-like foundation for a city of 20 million people.

The unstable foundation caused tragedy last July in the borough of Iztapalapa. Heavy rainfall burst open an 8-yearold street crack near the parked car of 19-year-old Jorge Ramirez. When Ramirez peered into the widening sinkhole, he plunged 60 feet to his death.

Even though Iztapalapa residents run the risk of being swallowed up by sinkholes, they still suffer water shortages and must truck in their water.

Turning rainwater into tasty bottled water

So can reusing rainwater change situations in places like Iztapalapa? Right now the costs are high, (about $3,800 USD per single family home, according to CIDECALLI) but as with solar energy, new technologies are expected to bring costs down. The initial $1.5 million USD investment for the San Felipe plant took a combination of funds from corporate, academic, non-profit, and local donors.

The rainwater-purification plant was modeled after a test plant at CIDECALLI in the Colegio de Posgraduados (COLPOS) campus near Texcoco. The COLPOS model, built by a team of engineers and professors, converts the rainwater into a tasty, odorless, and clean drink for humans.

The San Felipe plant collects rainwater on the rural countryside's downhill slopes, takes it through a downspout pipe, and into a storage tank. Rainwater pumped out of the storage area flows into an indoor purification center. Purification methods include ultraviolet rays to zap any germs, algae, or viruses.

Currently 20-liter jugs of this water sell under the brand name "Mazahua-Más Agua", a reference to the native Mazahua people of the region. Community leaders help promote the water, participate in plant maintenance, and distribute it to family-run stores and area schools for $10 a jug.

Though profits are not the focus in San Felipe, these plants have the capability to generate income. According to an economic evaluation of the original COLPOS model, "within five years the plant would need to operate at only 20.5 percent of its total capacity in order to break even." Currently, the San Felipe plant operates at about 60 percent, according to project partner Pro Zona Mazahua.

Could something like this work in Mexico City? CIDECALLI director Anaya says it's possible. Not every DF rooftop would be covered with rain capturing gizmos. What would make sense, Anaya says, would be to take advantage of industrial zones with large warehouses that could serve as rainwater collection areas. He also suggested using abandoned spaces outside the city.

"We've been treating rainfall as a problem," says Mexico City urban planner Valente Souza, "not an opportunity."

Replenishing aquifers using concrete

While the COLPOS rainwater purification plant took a team of experts, years of research, and careful engineering to give positive results, some Mexico City entrepreneurs stumbled upon what they believe could be a solution to replenishing aquifers.

In 1996, architect Nestor de Buen visited the lab of chemist Jaime Grau to check out new paints and paving tiles Grau was developing. Grau told de Buen about a piece that didn't work because water seeped right through it. He put the piece under the sink and demonstrated.

"I felt like ... my soul was going everywhere around the world," de Buen said in a radio interview. "Jaime...discovered something that everyone around the world is looking for."

The men discovered a water permeable concrete, now patented as Ecocreto. The gravel sticks together in a sturdy block through a special additive. Unlike regular concrete it has no sand.

When used for parking lots or highways, the water that permeates Ecocreto seeps back into depleted aquifers. In a city almost entirely paved over, Mexico City can't rely on parks or forests to recharge them.

Although Ecocreto now sells in the US, Korea, Colombia, and Europe and has received several environmental recognitions, Mexico City has not become a big user.

"There's hardly enough environmental consciousness here," says Alfredo Borgaro, general director of High Tech Concretes, Ecocreto's Mexico distributor. "Officials have not wanted to break the norm."

Borgaro says Ecocreto is cheaper in the long run since asphalt and concrete requires more maintenance. "It's sad that we have generated more interest abroad than in our own country," he says.

Capturing raindrops on rooftops

In Mexico City, an estimated 1.5 million residents do not have access to water, and another 8 million residents have tap water once or twice a week or get their water trucked in, according to Adler of IRRI-Mexico.

"Hydrologic engineering efforts might work for a while, but until we find more sustainable solutions the problem is not going away," Adler says. "A combination of reusing rainwater and better water management can solve or definitely mitigate the problem."

IRRI has worked on several rainwater harvesting projects over the years. Their largest-scale project has been collecting rainwater on the office rooftop of Mexico's Environment Ministry (SEMARNAT).

The project, which began as a pilot program in 2004, mixes rainwater with municipal water for plumbing throughout the building's six floors. During heavy rains, a monitor detects if enough of the stored rainwater can be used without municipal water. If so, the city water that trickles from the street shuts off.

The project, which stores about 500 cubic meters of water, has been turned over to SEMARNAT to manage and maintain.

Rainwater Forecast

"It's still (striking) to me when I bring up rainwater harvesting and some people are still shocked," Adler of IRRI-Mexico says. "They say, ‘Oh, but that's polluted.'"

Although rainwater harvesting systems are currently in use from the US to Bangladesh, in some communities it is still taboo. But overall, Adler says, collecting, purifying, and reusing rainwater is on the rise.

"Thanks to all these little projects, every year there is more awareness and people saying that it is possible, he said. "This is one of the major solutions."

DF Mayor Marcelo Ebrard's administration has taken bold action recently by raising the cost of water by up to 35% and proposing strict new water use laws that would fine and even arrest wasteful residents.

During a March World Water Day event, the capital city announced it will propose a series of bills to the city council allowing Sistema de Aguas to shut water off to those with outstanding water bills. Price adjustments, based on water usage, are also planned.

Though these are steps in the right direction, urban planner Souza says the efforts can't be "stop and go." "The agenda of every politician changes," he says. "If you stop during the next six years then all the effort is lost."

A group of rainwater harvesting proponents is currently trying to push nationwide legislation that would mandate all new construction include some form of rainwater capturing system, but facing the challenges ahead won't be easy.

"We have to compensate for what we haven't done in years," Souza says. "It's only now that we are talking about water, now that all the water we have left is rain."

Nancy Flores profiled the founder of a Mexico City association of female taxi drivers in the March, 2008 issue of Inside México. She can be reached at nancyflores15@yahoo.com.

Pedro Mendez: chinampero

sue-ellen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:55:50 -0700

“I have apocalyptic dreams,” Pedro Méndez begins. “One night I dreamt that a flood swept away all of Xochimilco. Everything drowned. Then mighty green pyramids arose from the water. People were reborn and began to revere the pyramids. The next morning I realized that those pyramids are our chinampas, our livelihood and our strength. In a different form, people began to value the power of the tierra.”

Pedro is a chinampero, a Xochimilco farmer practicing the techniques of his ancestors in the southernmost section of Mexico City. He dreams of a Mexico where integrity is returned to the earth and those who work it; where people value the bounty of the land; and where young people don’t have to choose between poverty and leaving the lands of their ancestors.

A stalwart guardian of tradition, Pedro feels a communion with his ancestors through the land. Hundreds of years ago his Xochimilca ancestors began building the intricate web of chinampas (man-made islands used for farming) in Lake Xochimilco. Every morning Pedro canoes the broad Canal de Cuemanco to reach the same garden plots that abundantly fed the people of Tenochtitlan at its pinnacle.

He grows many kinds of vegetables, flowers, and cacti, but each year the decision of what the primary crop will be “comes from the heart,” Pedro explains, tapping his chest. “This year I felt it would be maize.”

His chinampa is just off what was once the Canal Nacional that long ago stretched all the way to the Zócalo. Across the canal from his gardens, on lands that were expropriated and drained for the 1968 Olympics, Pedro can hear raucous soccer and peewee football games. Trajineras, flat-bottom tourist boats, litter the canal with sightseers and tequila bottles.

Esteem for the chinampero is slipping in Mexico, and even in Xochimilco. “Farmers struggle to make ends meet and the city lures the youth with its vices. We think our children have succeeded if they leave their family lands to be an accountant in the city.” Young people ask him to teach them the ways of the chinampa, but are quickly disillusioned by the sacrifices involved.

He believes government programs have failed farmers in cycles of paternalistic appeasement. “We don’t want charity. We just need people to buy our goods and value our work with fair prices.”

“What we need is a shift in mentality. People need to realize that the maize we grow isn’t just a piece of maize. It is a living part of the ancient culture of Xochimilco.”

Everyday Pedro works his chinampa from sunup to sundown, but Saturdays he steals away to his Classical Náhuatl class. He’s learning to write the language of his grandfather’s legends that kept him rapt as a little boy. He is as passionate about recording those stories as he is steady on the water, headed for the island farm. “Working the land is life itself. A chinampero’s way of living is working.”

For more information, visit www.delachinampa.com and this related article.

The greening of the Mixteca

sue-ellen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:52:56 -0700

In the 15th century, the Mixtec region of Oaxaca boasted a phonetic writing system, the best goldsmiths in Mesoamerica, and an army able to challenge the Aztecs. By the 1980s it held a less envious distinction: Área de Desastre Ecológico [ecological disaster area]. In the previous two decades, erosion had swept away one-third of the fertile soil, and heavy use of chemical fertilizer had ravaged the already nutrient-deficient earth. It was a semi-temperate region but it looked like a desert.

At a time when young Mixtec men were emigrating in droves, Jesús León Santos came back. It was 1983, and the seventeen-year-old León ascended the cattle paths back to his home in San Isidro Tilantongo, Oaxaca, after “working like a peon” in Mexico City.

Three exiled Guatemalans were in the Mixteca teaching farming methods to local campesinos. León liked how they spoke of La Madre Tierra with respect, and he joined them. Their primary goal was to raise the productivity of the farmland, but they soon realized the most pressing problem was the region’s ecological degradation. “We said ‘we need to see a greener Mixteca!’ without knowing how to go about it, but we had the energy to try,” León says.

On April 13, 2008, twenty-five years since León first took up his environmental cause, this Mixteco with a sixth-grade education was one of six people worldwide to win the Goldman Environmental Prize (Green Guide, March 2008). Every year since 1990, the $150,000 prize is given to grassroots leaders for their “sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment.”

Phil Dahl-Bredine, an American colleague of León for the past seven years and now his neighbor, points to the hills across the silent valley under San Isidro. Bright red, yellow, white, and even purple soil is exposed on the slopes and makes a beautiful show of erosion -- but that is now changing.

“That hill used to be eroded like the others, now it’s light green,” Dahl-Bredine says. “That’s trees and vegetation growing. That’s CEDICAM’s influence.”

In 1997, León and other campesinos founded the non-governmental organization CEDICAM, the Center for Integral Development of the Mixtec Campesinos. CEDICAM’s hallmark work is an ancient method of erosion control called contour ditches: trenches measuring half a meter deep, half a meter wide, and forty-five meters long, dug in parallel series on the hillsides like terraces.

Each trench holds 15,000 liters of water that would otherwise wash away the hillside’s soil during heavy rains. A welcome secondary effect of the trenches has been the retention of groundwater—locals are discovering the birth of springs where the contour ditches are present.

The region’s hills are now traced by 160 kilometers of contour ditches, lined by trees planted at a rate of 200,000 per year. That is all the direct work of CEDICAM and the municipal governments and federal agencies that have been adopting CEDICAM’s methods since 1996.

“The best way to confront the Mixteca’s challenges is to support grassroots organizations like CEDICAM,” says Salvador Anta, the Oaxaca head of the National Forest Commission. Anta recently solicited CEDICAM to train campesinos around the state of Oaxaca in reforestation and soil maintenance.

Run by a team of eight full-time and thirty volunteer Mixtec campesinos, CEDICAM now promotes a variety of sustainable practices to over 400 farmers through workshops in fifteen communities. These demonstrations include using natural composts and pesticides; growing native grains and vegetables; preserving local corn seeds; and collecting and storing rainwater for home use.

Campesinos Francisco and Rosario Ruiz, both in their fifties, sell alfalfa in the weekly Jaltepec market. Two years ago, a neighbor invited them to a CEDICAM workshop: they were composts, but set aside a parcel of corn and gave it a try.

Sra. Ruiz, sounding like a recent agronomy graduate, explained the worm and human urine formula they are using to replace chemicals. Three years ago they spread twenty-five sacks of chemical fertilizers over their crops: next year they plan to buy only six sacks.

“Productivity is the same, and our crops are healthier,” Sr. Ruiz says. His wife agrees: “It’s tough work, this new stuff, but it works.”

León is proudest when describing CEDICAM projects that have passed fully into local hands, like the community nursery that grows and then replants 40,000 trees a year. “Teaching people to care about, and why they should care about, the fundamental elements in their lives -- water, soil, trees -- this is CEDICAM’s most important work,” he says.

Phil Dahl-Bredine believes CEDICAM has a lot to teach citizens in richer countries as well. Dahl-Bredine and his wife recently installed a rainwater collection system in their New Mexico home that is similar to the one in León’s house. Dahl-Bredine recently documented the lessons from his Mixtec experience in the book The Other Game.

Convincing fellow Mixtecs to revalue campesino identity and work the land instead of migrating may be the most difficult challenge ahead for León’s team. At a recent meeting Eleazar Jiménez, head of the project to promote agriculture among youth, could not think of one success story. “We want to show them that farming is still a viable option,” León says.

For two weeks in April, León visited San Francisco and Washington, DC for the awards ceremony, news conferences, and meetings with other environmentalists. “The prize doesn’t change anything for me,” he says. “Now I just need to fight even harder.”

León remembers his first trips to the US to give talks at universities: “Back then I didn’t know how to communicate the knowledge I’ve gained. How could people have even believed what I said?”

León now articulates a clear message, and we all have good reason to listen.

Jesús León Santos can be contacted at jls_jesus@yahoo.com. The email address for CEDICAM is itanoni@hotmail.com. Nathan Paluck has lived in southern Mexico and Honduras the past three years. He works for Innovations for Poverty Action.

Laura Carlsen: trade mission

sue-ellen — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:30:54 -0700

"Trade is designed to improve living standards," says Laura Carlsen, "and if it's not doing that, then we will not necessarily recognize increased trade figures as a benefit."

Carlsen, Director of the Americas Policy Program at the Center for International Policy think tank, came to Mexico City from California in 1986 on a Fulbright scholarship to study the impact of the 1982 economic crisis on women. When NAFTA was being negotiated in the early 1990s, she was editor of the American Chamber of Commerce's magazine Business Mexico, and wrote extensively about Mexico's agricultural sector.

Though many of her colleagues thought that NAFTA would be Mexico's ticket to economic success, Carlsen, in close contact with small farmers and grassroots organizations throughout Mexico, was skeptical. Fifteen years later, she's one of the most outspoken critics of what she views as the disproportionate benefits NAFTA has bestowed on transnational corporations like Cargill and JP Morgan, at the expense of Mexican agriculture and vulnerable national industries.

"There were huge asymmetries between the US and Mexican economies when they entered into NAFTA, and they weren't dealt with at all in the agreement," she says.

Carlsen is on message with the policy points -- she speaks fluently about econometric models, industrial corridors, and fidosanitary barriers -- but it's clear that her passion is to advocate for the faces behind the economic figures, and to get at the heart of what really makes trade free or fair.

"Globalization is inevitable," she says, "but this kind is not. It's unfair; it strengthens the hand of the strong, and weakens the weak, and there comes a point in many countries when people are going to say no. You saw it here in Mexico with the [January 31 farmer] demonstrations."

She's not unwilling to give NAFTA-fueled trade credit for certain advances, such as a greater number of consumer goods in the market, more efficient services, and even a higher percentage of meat protein in the Mexican diet. But she cites disappointing job growth statistics, a decrease in the real wage, and increased immigration to the US as examples of NAFTA failing to deliver the development promised at its inception.

One of the biggest shortcomings, she argues, is that governments lose "policy space", the ability to make decisions in the national interest, such as distributing low-cost generic drugs that undercut formulas patented by pharmaceutical companies. She also favors the protection of strategic products such as corn, critical to Mexicans' livelihoods and identity.

Though Carlsen fears for the toll the international market will take on society's most powerless members, she's ultimately hopeful that some of these vulnerable groups will offer the most viable long-term solutions to the increasingly difficult economic and cultural challenges faced by citizens and governments around the world.

"The religion, the diet, the culture, the skills, the ways of making a living...there's a whole series of values that are tied up in that relationship between communities and the land, that is not just broken because some technocrat at a planning table decides it's time to break it."

An activist's view

sue-ellen — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:48:15 -0700

On January 31, a broad alliance of Mexicans demanding the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) occupied the Zócalo. Some of the 300,000-plus protesters marched against increasing prices for corn, pesticides, and fertilizer. Some marched against the Secretary of Agriculture. There were marchers against genetically modified (GMO) seeds, even though some of the tractors that had arrived from around the country to take part in the dramatic procession down Reforma were sporting pro-GMO stickers from Monsanto.

What ties these groups together isn’t so much NAFTA as anger about government neglect of their well-being. Speaking with marchers, I learned that they were motivated by a range of issues: tensions about the legitimacy of the government, lack of attention to farmers’ needs, and for some even abortion rights. Each block of people was yelling different slogans, and carrying different signs, but what they share is resentment against the government.

In a display of solidarity with the country’s agricultural producers, some marchers adopted the slogan “without corn, there is no Mexico.”

One corn and beans farmer from Campeche asked, “What is this ‘free trade’? Supposedly it’s for everyone, right? But ‘they’ control it and use it for whatever they want.”

It’s the boost his US competitors receive that really hurts this farmer. If he lived in the US, he could receive direct or indirect subsidies equaling $150 USD per hectare, but because he’s on the Mexican side of the border, his subsidies amount to only about $45 USD per hectare.

One Mexico City native observing the march said, “Free Trade Agreements don’t benefit producers, the people that really work. Obviously, the subsidies that the United States has on grains and agriculture can’t compare with the state of abandonment of the Mexican countryside. Clearly we are at a disadvantage.”

That disadvantage is why I was marching along with them. The least I can give them is a little solidarity.

Katie Kohlstedt is a Program Associate at the Americas Policy Program (www.americaspolicy.org) in Mexico City. She can be reached at kkohlstedt@ciponline.org.

Looking for a cause

sue-ellen — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:33:28 -0700

“I’ve been to just about all the marches,” says Marioliva González, 24, activist and National Coordinator of the Global Youth Action Network in Mexico City. Over coffee at The Green Corner café in La Condesa, she reels off a list: “Three against the Iraq war, one against hunger, every year against bullfi ghting, against NAFTA…” She pauses: there are too many to remember.

“I love going,” she says. “You can get really depressed in this job, when it seems like you’re all alone, and you can’t see the results. And then you go to the marches and you see all these people together, fighting for the same thing: you feel full of energy.”

At the marches, she says, many of Mexico’s disparate activist movements come together. There’s a sense of solidarity, even if the groups are not all fighting for the same cause.

The anti-globalization movement encompasses a huge range of groups, ranging from single-issue campaigners to umbrella organizations: some fight for the environment, labor rights, feminism, freedom of migration, biodiversity, and cultural diversity. Others struggle against NAFTA, logging, and sweatshops, or in favor of higher minimum wages: there is a near-infinite number of hybrid combinations and permutations amongst them.

While the stereotype may be of tree-hugging hippies who eat granola and tofu, the demographic reality is more varied. Among the activists I spoke with, many have day jobs, while others live almost completely outside “the system”.

Katie Kohlstedt, a self-confessed “cause-shopper”, has worked for an environmental NGO, a microfinance company, and researched the impact of remittances on a community in Zacatecas during her four years living in Mexico. She now works for a Washington-based foreign policy NGO.

“I swing between wanting to make a global impact, and wanting to help fewer people in a more tangible way,” says the 28-year-old committed vegetarian and avid bicyclist. “Now I’m on the big issue cycle again, educating people, getting the word out, and of course I want to go back to work at the grass roots level!”

An overwhelming lament among many I spoke to is the challenge of living in accordance with their beliefs.

Carlos García-Robles, a Mexican who now lives in Denmark near the commune of Christiania (Europe’s “Free Town”), says that most of the activists he knows are no longer involved in alternative living. “Most of them have ‘normal’ jobs, got involved in political parties, or left the country a long time ago,” he says. “The sad part about many people is that a lot of them are becoming part of what they were fighting against.”

At the same time, he admits, “it can be very hard to know what are people fighting against and for what. Is the enemy a person? A company? The system? What is the system? We are the system. So it is hard to go against oneself when suddenly you have a family to support, or when social pressure finally gets too much.”

“The system doesn’t allow people to actually run a different alternative life even if they try. For example, we still are dependent on oil and gasoline- based transportation for food, so if a friend has an organic farm, they still have to use… the system to support themselves.”

“This does not mean I’m giving up or that I’m saying that keeping on going against the corporate monopolization of the planet is futile, I’m just saying it’s damn hard to be coherent.”

Mara Lemus (who requested that her real name not be used) never considered herself an activist. The bright-eyed, 32-year-old Canadian describes herself, rather, as “a gentle anarchist.”

“I’ve always avoided governments – I don’t like them and I don’t think we need them. I’ve often lived in squatted buildings and houses in Canada and in the US. I’ve never paid taxes. I’ve never had an over-the-table job. I try to stay outside of the system as much as I can.”

After a job managing an eco-farm in Chiapas ended in 2003, she was invited to live in the local village, about an hour from San Cristóbal. With the local women she made tortillas, carried firewood, and hand-washed clothes in the river. She taught the villagers to read Spanish.

At first she didn’t realize the people she lived with were Zapatistas, but the men kept going off for days at a time, coming back exhausted, and she began asking questions. She started reading about the movement, and going to rallies where other foreigners were present. Not long after, she found herself marching with the Zapatistas, disguised as a boy: carrying a machete and wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, and a pasamontana (balaclava) to hide her identity.

“It was so far out of my context, so far from anything I’d ever encountered,” she says. “I can’t say that I related. Instinctually, I related to a lot of indigenous people coming together to fight for their land, to get clean water, to better their standard of living. That much I understood. But the politics of Mexico is a deep, dark abyss.”

In the end, she reasoned that the lifestyle wasn’t one she could sustain. “I was always really nervous. I was sick a lot of the time. I ate a lot of skunk and squirrel meat that gave me salmonella.”

She returned to Canada in 2004 to nurse her dying grandfather, and now lives in Guatemala, where she works as a masseuse in exchange for food and board. When she sees people from her past, they say, “Wow, that’s unbelievable, you’re still living this way!”

“I just say, yeah well, how’s that desk job going?”

Vivienne Stanton wrote about Central American migrants in the December/January issue of Inside México.

Shock, sisterhood and survival

sue-ellen — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:15:24 -0700

I am a Brit, probably in name only these days, since after nearly thirty years in Mexico I don’t really feel like one. I am also a Mexican, as proved by naturalization document number seven thousand and something, but don’t feel much like one of those either, until another foreigner is rude about my adoptive country. I have had two Mexican husbands, which makes me not only an expert but also a slow learner; one was terrible, one is still a work in progress, and each has helped, in a not tremendously hands-on way, to produce four beautiful Anglo-Mexican offspring. That was the rule: one marriage per decade, two kids per marriage. The rule doesn’t apply any more!

I arrived in Mexico in the disco 70s, an optimistic graduate of a privileged European education, a fervent student, and a fan of feminist literature (other than the bits about being smelly and unshaven). I had absolutely no idea that in Mexico, as a very young, blonde, and foreign wife, I wasn’t only not equal, but a third class citizen—or worse. Little can prepare you for this particular sort of culture shock. The realization creeps up slowly and sneakily, and by the time you finally get it there is no going back.

The constant assurances that “nice girls” don’t go out on their own, don’t work, don’t tell dirty jokes, don’t talk to men at parties, and certainly don’t drink either Corona or Tequila (both reserved for workmen) started out being faintly amusing, but rapidly escalated into a nightmare of unforeseen proportions. The Mexican macho pig was all very well in jokes but not so great as a husband. Virtual imprisonment, violence, and crippling loneliness totally removed all possibility of continuing the budding love affair with the country, at least for the time. Many friends snuck back over the border in the dead of night, clutching babies to their terrified breasts. I stole away to Acapulco to revel in a belated adolescence and the heyday of disco, lubricated by the previously proscribed but now thankfully available Corona and Tequila, and to rediscover the love of a country to which nobody can remain indifferent.

Having suddenly achieved unexpected autonomy, and naively entered the Mexican workplace assuming that doors were banging open due to my enormous charm and intelligence (nothing to do with micro-mini-skirts and cleavage and that awful word ‘divorcée’, then and maybe even still synonymous with ‘whore’), another readjustment was necessary. Women had suddenly become the new enemy, socially and at work, showing a level of malice and venom quite unexpected in an international party town, which left me wondering about the much dreamed-of sisterhood of feminist literature.

Decades later, after having learned my own hard lessons, I can only feel huge sympathy and respect for Mexican women who, because of a corrupt and misogynous legal system, are assured little or no justice in a divorce. They further face the prospect of becoming social pariahs in a country where male infidelity is still very much the norm. It is no wonder that other women, especially single ones, are seen as a constant threat, and that marriages are guarded with bared teeth. With age, remarriage, and a good dose of humility, I feel blessed to finally be surrounded by that initially illusive sisterhood of women, both Mexican and foreign. I now understand that they were there all along, but just like the female of most species they were defending their nest against a perceived enemy.

My love-hate relationship with men here has paralleled my love-hate relationship with the country, and the two are now far too badly tangled for me to even want to try to separate them. After years of plotting my escape, even if only a partial one, to a second home somewhere “civilized”, I recently had the shocking realization that I could never ever completely leave this place. I am who I am today because of it: outgoing, sociable, cynical, distrustful, family oriented, and expert at getting out of speeding tickets. I am, finally, eternally grateful.

It has been up hill for me all the way, often kicking and screaming, frequently rolling back down again. Now, as I reach what I hope and assume is the top, the view is pretty damn good, and as I look down over the snowy volcanoes, the endless palm groves, the ridiculously-colored houses, and the majestic ruins, what is that I hear in the background? No, it can’t be! My theme tune echoing down the decades: “I Will Survive…”

Anna Francesca Archdale can be reached at archibalda@yahoo.com. She is presidenta del patronato of the HIV support network Grupo de Amigos con VIH, A.C. in Acapulco: www.gavih.org.

The cosmic mothers

sue-ellen — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:59:00 -0700

For many moms, having a child in Mexico makes them feel like they belong. For others, it has emphasized their relative privilege. They all say motherhood changes how they see themselves and their adopted home. Passers-by tell you your baby is cold when you go for a stroll on a warm sunny day; mothers-in-law go into shock when you refuse to give in to your screaming toddler's every whim; and perfect strangers congratulate you for improving the nation's bloodlines. There are the exorbitant prices for baby accessories available cheaply back home; the common disregard for car seats; and the notion that Coca-Cola cures all ills. These are just some of the cultural surprises reported by expat mothers in Mexico. If a mom and her kids remain here they'll also face big differences in schooling and dating, on top of all the normal complications of growing up.

In a patriarchal -- many might say macho -- society such as Mexico's, being a mother means living one of the culture's most enduring contradictions. You don't need to have seen Libertad Lamarque's famous soap-opera portrayals of the long-suffering mother, or wondered about the use of the word madre in phrases like "me vale madre" ("I don't give a damn"), to realize as much. For women who come to Mexico from cultures with different gender roles, motherhood -- while different for every individual --offers a glimpse into these contradictions, and maybe even into this nation's heart.

"People don't look at you as much anymore as a foreigner," says new mother, Marion Lloyd, who's taking a break from her job as a correspondent for The Houston Chronicle and a 14-year career in the newspaper business to look after 6-month-old Aitana. "Suddenly you are sort of part of this cosmic club of mothers; you have this commonality with half of the Mexican population."

For that half of the population, the role of motherhood has often been defined narrowly. A mother who has a job is supposed to help out the family financially, not contribute to her own independence, says Celia Ruiz, a psychologist who has treated women for decades. "A mother is a mother, someone who has children," she explains. "Having her own activities, getting an education, going out to work, whatever it is, none of this is included in the term ‘mother.'"

Dr. Ruiz lives just a few blocks away from Mexico City's Monument to the Mother, and the old-fashioned park behind it with its cement benches and low curving walls painted in beachball colors. The monument itself sets in stone the way Mexican mothers have always been idealized -- and inhibited.

The monument features a woman gazing downward at the baby she holds in her arms. On either side are statues of kneeling men, one holding a sheaf of corn representing the sphere of production, and the other a book representing the sphere of knowledge. "Both of these spheres are held away from the woman in the center, because it is her destiny to be a mother," writes Lisa Davies of Cardiff University in an article on Rosario Castellanos, the most famous Mexican critic of the status of women. While there may be the impression of male reverence, the message to women is that the most important and valued work they can do is to have babies and not threaten the dominant order.

Guilt, says Dr. Ruiz, is the main sentiment most of her patients feel when they long for a life beyond the marital and maternal sphere. Women in Mexico, she says, "debate with themselves, struggle internally to express themselves in both places,"-- inside the home and out. "They feel guilt because they carry within all that ideology: that they should stay at home, dedicated to the children, and if they go out to work, it is to help [the family] and the husbands, but not themselves."

In the United States and Europe, women began to question their roles in the 1960s, and their daughters and granddaughters now take women's liberation pretty much for granted. In Mexico this is only beginning to happen. As a result, the manner in which many Mexican mothers raise their children can seem like something out of the 1950s: June Cleaver ratcheted up several degrees of complication. Mexican mothers can be "very caring, but repressive and very possessive," says Dr. Ruiz. "Daughters are not stimulated to go out into the world, and sons are very spoiled. In other words, [the Mexican mother] reproduces the whole system."

Marguerite Pajot, director of the Canadian Education Centre and mother of two teenagers, agrees: her Mexican in-laws raised their eyebrows at her more hands-off parenting style. "Mexicans tend to be a bit overprotective, I find," she says.

For a society that prizes motherhood so highly, however, "Mexico City is not a particularly child-friendly place," notes Jo Tuckman, a British journalist with The Guardian and mother of four-year-old Natasha and two-year-old Oliver. "I mean try pushing a buggy around, or getting on a bus with a child in your arms. There's not enough parks or playgrounds. You go to London and the place is full of parks, and every single park has a playground."

Photographer Sarah Megan Lee, who with husband Morgan moved to Mexico from the US six years ago, considered using a local nursery in Roma for their baby daughter Colette, until she noticed that the cribs were placed against open windows on the second floor.

Marion Lloyd adds, "Here nobody's hung up on car seats. The obsession with food allergies, what shots you have, that whole scene in the States? Here it's just way more laissez-faire."

Another big shock for mothers is the lack of enthusiasm for that most intimate of maternal activities: breastfeeding. While its benefits are widely promoted in room with her so that none of the nurses would be tempted to feed the baby formula. "You almost had to fight to do it," she remembers. "Every day the nurses would ask, ‘don't you want any supplement or formula?'"

Marguerite Pajot recalls a doctor suggesting that she start giving her babies eggs to eat, instead of breastfeeding, when they were only six weeks old: "I just told him I wasn't going to do that."

Lloyd agrees: the day after giving birth to Aitana, "we were the only people in the maternity ward who had the baby in there with us, and we were probably the only ones being so adamant about breastfeeding. Everyone thought we were freaks.

To me, one of the surprising things about being a mother in Mexico has been the issues of breastfeeding and Caesareans. On the one hand, you're supposed to be this completely devoted mother, and on the other hand nobody wants to breastfeed. Everyone wants a baby but nobody wants to give birth."

Is the role of motherhood, that ironclad vision of self-abnegating maternity, finally changing here? Caesarean section rates in Mexico are at 40%, more than double the World Health Organization's recommended rate. Considering that they are more common in city hospitals than rural areas, this may reflect how affluent urban women regard them as a sign of modernity and status. What's more, 38% of Mexican mothers work outside the home, and the divorce rate has risen from 3.2%in 1970 to 11.8% in 2005. According to 2006 figures from INEGI (Mexico's statistics institute), six million women are the sole heads of their households. While these trends tend to agree with rising levels of education and income, Rose Mary Espinoza, editor of BBMundo magazine, says: "when we talk about the urban population, where women have more job opportunities, yes, there have been changes in this role. It's [no longer] only to fulfill the machista model, or remain married, but to have much more say-so, more choices."

Alma Romo, of the Mexico City Institute for Women, agrees. The stereotypical image of the mother who does everything for her children "is still the general image for the majority of the population," she says. "But this way of seeing women has begun to change."

When Barbara Kastelein goes to pick up her ten-year-old daughter Sofia from school, a self-possessed little girl emerges in her plaid-skirted school uniform, saying good-bye to her schoolmates in Spanish and greeting her mother in English. Born in Eindhoven, Holland, Kastelein may be a travel writer who is at home in many cultures, but Sofia is growing up in a world quite different from her mother's.

While pregnant with Sofia, the elder of her two children, Kastelein says she thought to herself, "‘imagine bringing up a girl in this culture'...I realized that my own relative freedom as a foreigner and a correspondent in her early thirties was so divorced from the reality of the country."

Never mind getting unsolicited advice on wrapping up your baby warmly; when traveling outside of Mexico City, Kastelein has been told to attach the eye of a deer to her baby girl's wrist, put little gold earrings in her ears, or tie a piece of red thread to her, all to keep away the evil eye, "because people would be envious". Others have suggested she bring the blonde child to a modeling agency or Televisa for acting roles. "That worried me," she says. While she admits that she had romanticized and even exoticized Mexico, becoming a mother brought her "back to reality," as she puts it. "I saw women's oppression in black and white." Now she feels there may be a danger of Mexicans exoticizing her daughter. Sofia's fair hair and blue eyes make her a rarity as she walks home with her mother, talking about school. "What kind of messages is she going to get?"

Sometimes Mexican fathers can perpetuate that difference in gender roles as well, even subconsciously. When Sofia was old enough to go to school, Kastelein's husband, from whom she is now separated, made it clear that picking up children after class was women's work. Nonetheless, says Rose Mary Espinoza, the attitude of Mexican parents toward daughters is also evolving: "The father is impressing upon his daughter not so much to find Prince Charming and depend on him for the rest of her life, but [instead] providing her with the tools she'll need to look after herself and to value herself for what she is. It's a very gradual change, but a positive one.

"Educating a child in Mexico can underline social or class differences as well. In their mothers' home countries, many children would attend public school, even taking a school bus or riding their bikes there; in Mexico, private schools are not so much a choice as a necessity. Mexico's underfunded public service systems reinforce for some expat mothers what Jo Tuckman calls "the bubble." Back in England, she says, "I'd never dream of being in the private sector. I'd be using public sector health care, education, and transport. But here I send my little girl to a private nursery school. I go to a private doctor, and we go around in the car or take taxis, not the metro. The bubble that you are in necessarily as a foreigner with relatively privileged status and economic standing becomes that much more accentuated when you have children." As a result, they can miss out on a broader range of friends from different social backgrounds. "I don't know how judgmental she'll be when she's older," she says of Natasha. "You know, I don't want her to grow up thinking everybody has a car,"-- or a nanny who is eager to do the child's bidding.

For some, like Sarah Megan Lee, the relatively low cost of living in Mexico means a young family can get by on a single salary instead of two, and she can stay home with Colette. Many other expat mothers in Mexico work, relying on child care. If parents aren't there to set them straight, children can grow up thinking there will always be someone else to make their beds or to get them a juice from the fridge. Such mollycoddling, as Barbara Kastelein puts it, "is really destructive to children. I don't think that's a benefit at all."

She can perhaps take comfort from Marguerite Pajot's experience with her children, eighteen-year-old Nicolas and sixteen-year-old Marie Claire, who are now old enough to go to Canada on their own for holidays and family visits. While their working mother has had to depend on hired help in the home, and both attend private school, they are anything but spoiled. Pajot has noticed that her teenage children can be more helpful and respectful than their Canadian cousins. "These kids are definitely more Mexican than Canadian," she notes, listing qualities she describes as "typically Mexican": warmth, friendliness, and flexibility. She is convinced that the country's cultural emphasis on family and getting along with others trumps any tendencies her kids may have to let others pick up after them.

As children grow up and start attending secondary school and university, mothers face a new set of challenges. For Pajot, choosing a school for Nicolas and Marie Claire was simple, if expensive. As francophones in the English-speaking province of Ontario, her parents and grandparents had made a point of preserving their language. Marguerite continued those efforts by sending her children to Mexico City's Lycée Francaise. Eventually she wants them to go to university in Canada and have the experience of living there, "but it's their decision". When it comes to their futures, she says, "They'll live wherever they feel most comfortable. They've got the whole world open to them."

For Cindy Hawes, whose daughters Nayeli and Ixchel are in their early twenties, local public universities have been a good option. While her elder daughter did consider the possibility of going to a US college, she says: "[given] the paperwork and everything that was involved, along with the costs -- it just didn't seem realistic. So it seemed like a much better plan to get into a good public university here. And then if they want to go on from there and do graduate work, there are often scholarships available."

Hawes has been living in Mexico for over twenty years, working as a journalist and newspaper editor, and recalls the days the days when she sat at a typewriter working, rocking Nayeli's baby chair with one foot. She admits that she often worried about her girls once they were old enough to start going out. Teenage life in Mexico City was vastly different than it had been for her growing up in small-town California. “You know, we had curfews. You had to be home by 12 o’clock,” she says. “Well, things start here at 11 o’clock. It was always a concern.”

Being a mother in Mexico presents unique challenges and benefits to women whose own upbringing has taken place in different cultures and countries. For Sarah Megan Lee, the vaunted devotion to child rearing typical of Mexican women has released her inner June Cleaver. While she doesn’t want to sound like a throwback, she says: “since I’ve had Colette, I totally understand the idea of someone just dedicating themselves to the house and to their children. I totally get that now.”

For Marion Lloyd, spending time with her baby instead of letting an all-consuming career run her life has opened new personal horizons. She joins many women from abroad, even those with Mexican husbands and inlaws, who find that having children here increases integration into the complex weave of Mexico’s social fabric – and that of their Mexican families as well. “Before I felt like I was a little bit the oddball, this workaholic American, sort of the outsider. They respected me, but didn’t really get me,” she says. “But now I feel like I’m in this club. Suddenly I make sense. I’m a mother.” Barbara Kastelein noticed that people treated her better when she became a mom. “And I felt like I’d become them; I’d become more Mexican,” she says.

Along with the challenges and idiosyncrasies facing mothers in Mexico come an abundance of special moments. The average Mexican seems to find babies and little children almost magical. “In the States, people can be sweet if you have a child, but here, they’re just really effusive,” says Lloyd.

Lee has also noticed that her plump blue-eyed baby in her cotton sunhat is a magnet for admirers. “Everyone stops and talks to us,” she says. “It’s wonderful. And it’s nice the way people take their babies everywhere here.”

As Mexican women confront their country’s sometimes arduous economic, political, and cultural evolution and negotiate their status within it, foreign mothers have become part of the picture. Some will see their children grow into adulthood here; others will move to other countries and cultures, or back to where they originally called home; it’s likely, though, that no parent will forget when their child was a baby in Mexico and people on the street would stop to admire her—and point out that she must be chilly.

Frances Toor and "Mexican Folkways"

sue-ellen — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:54:15 -0700

Frances Toor (1890-1956) came to Mexico City in 1922 to study anthropology at the National University’s “escuela de verano” (summer school). Like other North Americans, she was attracted by the political and cultural effervescence that defined the country in general, and the capital in particular, in the years immediately following the violence of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). In the words of Patricia Albers, Tina Modotti’s biographer:

Mexico City teemed with fanatics, bohemians, idealists, radicals, and visionaries. Intellectuals who had once looked to Europe for cultural revelation now turned their backs upon the old continent, embracing instead the genius of peasants and indigenous peoples whose inclusion in the Mexican community promised to bring forth the ‘regeneration and exaltation of the national spirit.’”

Toor became interested in Mexico’s indigenous cultures while writing her Master’s thesis, and traveled to Mexico shortly after completing her degree. Three years after her arrival in Mexico City, Toor founded the bilingual cultural magazine Mexican Folkways (1925- 1937), the first publication of its kind in Mexico. In a 1932 issue, she explains the nature of her enterprise and the importance of its bilingual format:

I did not take existing folk-lore magazines for models. As I wanted Mexican Folkways to express the Mexico that interested me so keenly, it has not only described customs, but has touched upon art, music, archaeology, and the Indian himself as part of the new social trends, thus presenting him as a complete human being. And in order that the magazine might mean something to the Mexicans as well as to outsiders, everything has been published in both English and Spanish… Because of my own joy in the discovery of an art and civilization different from any I had previously known, I thought it would interest others as well. Thus I conceived the idea of the magazine.

From 1925 to 1927, the magazine was published bimonthly, and then every three months from 1928 to 1933 (with a pause in 1932). During its last four years, only three issues were published, but they were dedicated to such masters as José Guadalupe Posada and Diego Rivera (Rivera was listed on the masthead as the magazine’s artistic director and he designed most of the covers). While it is true that the magazine lasted longer and published more issues than other similar publications like Vida Mexicana (1922-1923), Nuestro México (1932), and Mexican Art and Life (1938-1939), Toor and her periodical were always on the verge of bankruptcy. In a 1926 issue, she states that if she “personally didn’t carry out all the labors from distributor to editor, only for the pleasure of seeing that the magazine continues publication, it wouldn’t exist.” Toor’s persistence was recognized when President Calles said of Mexican Folkways: “…besides being a very original publication, it gives us and others knowledge about the real spirit of our aboriginal races and the expressive sentiment of our people in general, rich in beautiful traditions.”

Towards the end of the magazine’s lifespan, Toor reflected that: “Mexican Folkways has played a very important role in the formation of the new Mexican attitude towards the Indian by presenting his customs and art; for the same reason it has had an important influence on modern art.” Indeed, Toor was one of the first people to grasp the significance of José Guadalupe Posada, whose work would be so influential to artists like Rivera.

At her studios on Calle Manchester in Colonia Juárez, in a building designed by prominent architect Juan O’Gorman, she edited several tourist guides, including a Motorist Guide to Mexico (1938), as well as a first-of-its-kind volume dedicated exclusively to Mexican Popular Arts (1939). The culmination of her ethnographic work is found in A Treasury of Mexican Folkways, first edited by Crown Publishers in 1947: it is a veritable encyclopedia of traditional Mexican rituals, dances, fiestas, and ceremonies.

Although the cultural and political activities of North American men in post-revolutionary Mexico are well documented-- Carlton Beals, Bertram Wolfe, and Edward Weston come to mind—the smaller female contingent is hardly ever mentioned, much less recorded and studied. Toor wasn’t the only American woman to set up shop in Mexico during the early 1920s: an entire faction of gringas, each with her own cultural enterprise, established themselves in Mexico for extended sojourns. Some never left.

Among the most extraordinary of these American women was Alma Reed (“Life and Times of an Extraordinary Expat”, September 2007). “La Peregrina” arrived in 1922 as a reporter for the New York Times and became romantically involved with Yucatán governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto, who was assassinated in 1924 by counter-revolutionaries. Katherine Anne Porter, who would base a short story on this tragic romance, was also in Mexico, along with actress, photographer, and communist agent Tina Modotti. Born in Italy and brought up in San Francisco, Modotti accompanied photographer Edward Weston to Mexico. Though born in Aguascalientes, Anita Brenner is often included in this group, having spent her teens in San Antonio, where her parents fled during the Revolution. She later wrote extensively on Mexico and its history; her groundbreaking work on religious and artistic syncretism, Idols Behind Altars (1929), illustrated with Modotti’s photographs, is still celebrated today, as is her book on the Mexican Revolution, The Wind that Swept Mexico (1943).

Frances “Paca” Toor died of peritonitis in Manhattan on June 16, 1956, less than a month before she was to return to Mexico to lecture on folklore at the National University. In her obituary in the New York Times, she is remembered as “a leading ambassador to the rest of the world for Mexican crafts, art and culture… Although she was a popular writer, her works on Mexican folkways became sourcebooks for anthropologists.” She was cremated and buried in the Beth Olam Mausoleum in the Hollywood Forever cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

Michael K. Schuessler is at work on an anthology of Mexican Folkways, to be published by Siglo XXI Editores later this year. He can be reached at mschuess@gmail.com.

Close up: Susana Sanchez, taxista

sue-ellen — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:23:23 -0700

It started as a routine pickup for Susana Sánchez: a man hopped into the backseat of her taxi and gave directions. When the customer began changing the route, she started to worry. In a narrow alley, he demanded all her money at knifepoint. Frustrated that she only had 30 pesos, he repeatedly stabbed her right leg, leaving her unable to work for three months.

“I was scared, but I knew it was time to get organized, get protection,” she says of that night in 1995. Sánchez started contacting other female taxi drivers and began her thirteen-year struggle for the rights of female taxistas. Although only 70 women taxi drivers are officially registered in the DF, Sánchez says there are actually about 5000. With their support, she founded the Asociación de Taxistas y Transportistas Femeninas Protegiéndose entre Mujeres (Mutual Protection Association of Women Taxi Drivers, or PROEM) in 1998.

Each year hundreds of taxi crimes against women are reported, from robberies to male drivers using hidden mirrors to spy on female passengers. PROEM attempted to launch an all-female taxi service to reduce taxi crimes, but city and delegation officials showed little interest. “No one believed in us,” Sánchez says. “They thought it would never work.”

Last year, when PRD lawmakers proposed to import the UK-based female taxi service Pink Ladies, she was furious: “That was our proposal—we made it years ago.” PROEM sent officials a letter of protest. The Pink Ladies proposal was rejected, but PROEM’s plan still hasn’t garnered government support. “I’m not sad, because [they] saw that an all-female taxi service does work,” Sánchez says. “We’re not going to stop fighting.”

Confronting discrimination is a daily struggle for women taxistas. As one of the first in the city, Sánchez, 45, remembers being teased by male colleagues when she picked up her credentials. Some customers refuse service from a woman, leading some drivers to cut their hair short and dress like men in order to get fares.

Sánchez never imagined that being a taxi driver would transform her life. After her divorce in 1994, she looked for a fresh career, but employers didn’t want to hire the mother of three. After many rejections, Sánchez turned to her brother, who owned three taxis and often had no-show drivers. “It made sense,” she said. “I knew how to drive, and there was an empty car.”

Today, PROEM has a taxi stand at the Tlatelolco metro station with about forty female drivers. They carry both men and women, and they’ve also had to incorporate male drivers because of assault threats. For now, PROEM is raising funds for a permanent base with an office and bathroom, and to provide housing assistance for its members.

“I started this journey a submissive woman, and now I’m a leader.” Sanchez said. “I have created jobs and security for these women, so I’m happy.”

Nancy Flores, a native of the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, is a freelance journalist living with her husband in Mexico City. She can be reached at nancyflores15@yahoo.com.

Close up: Noemi Gomez, firebrand

sue-ellen — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:49:24 -0700

Village patriarchs jailed Noemi Gomez when she was seventeen. Her crime was asking the Mexican government to pay for a corn mill so that the women of San Marcos Moctum wouldn't have to walk seven kilometers every day to grind corn for tortillas. The all-male council of this Mixe village in Oaxaca's Sierra Madre questioned Noemi's motives, and accused her of misusing funds even before the money arrived.

She spent a day in jail while village women kept vigil outside, but eventually the mill was built with about $30,000 pesos in federal funds. Gomez then successfully fought Moctum's traditional patriarchal government for land and voting rights for women, causing many of her neighbors to ostracize her.

Now 30, the activist, poet, and subsistence farmer continues to stir things up in an indigenous region where women have been second-class citizens for centuries. In 1996 she founded the group Mujeres Olvidadas del Rincon Mixe (Forgotten Women of the Mixe Enclave) to work for their rights.

Feminist paradigms do not fit neatly into indigenous worlds, where repression of women is often part of the entrenched cultural context and economic reality: "To apply feminist proposals means tearing up many cultural beliefs and practices," Gomez says. "It can cause serious conflict and division within the community."

Many indigenous communities, whose customs are protected under Mexican law, bar women from speaking or voting at public meetings, running for office, and participating in other civic activities. As a girl, Gomez attended village assemblies with her father and bristled at the sight of women hiding behind their shawls. Even widows who had inherited land from their husbands were not allowed to vote or voice their opinions.

Thanks to her struggle, Moctum women now have full citizenship--the right to vote, address public meetings, and farm their own parcels of land. Two years ago Gomez married Rene Orozco, a village musician and teacher. Local authorities wanted her to give up her land, since her husband already had a plot to farm, but she fought to keep her own parcel.

Orozco's grandmother told Gomez: "now you'll have to work to care for him." Instead, she travels throughout Mexico and abroad promoting indigenous women's rights. "[When] talking about human rights in indigenous communities, people have the idea that the woman is selfsufficient. That is not the case...[they suffer] three times more: for being women, for being poor, and indigenous."

International advocacy seems far removed from Moctum, where many people, particularly women, speak only the Mixe language. Her husband calls her a pioneer: "Since she was a child she's had this vision: to overcome," he says.

When she was jailed, her mother pleaded with her to "leave this mess... it's fine if you want to work for yourself, but forget about all this." Gomez is still ignoring her mother's advice.

Lorraine Orlandi is a freelance reporter who has lived and worked in Latin America for the past 15 years, including several years as a Reuters correspondent. She can be reached at lorraineorlandi@gmail.com

Close up: Aline Cerdán, totally relevant

sue-ellen — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:27:33 -0700

There’s no point in pretending not to notice Aline Cerdán’s dark-lined eyes, nose ring, and lip piercing.

“People usually expect you to be this heavy metal fan or this goth, but I’m not,” she says one evening over coffee and Camels at the El Péndulo café in Polanco. “The people who know you and matter know who you really are.”

Cerdán grew up in the comfortable Las Joyas de Pedregal neighborhood in south Mexico City. Her parents, both doctors, divorced when she was four. She coasted academically until she was seventeen, when a stint studying in England made her re-evaluate her priorities. Before leaving Mexico she got her nose pierced and her first of six tattoos done—the one you get when you’re “not really sure what you’re doing, and you spend the next few years trying to fix it.” She finished high school, and went on to graduate from the prestigious Universidad Iberoamericana. Now twenty-four, she works for Internet giant Yahoo!.

She knows she’s privileged, and is glad to be able to spend a chunk of her salary on rock concerts and to have a mom who was “working her ass off” so that her daughter could live abroad.

To a large extent, music is the motor that drives Cerdán’s life. “My soundtrack would make me a schizophrenic,” she says, rattling off a diverse mix of favorites like Placebo, the Dead Kennedys, Café Tacuba, Damien Rice, Radiohead and “the usual suspects”—Bowie, the Beatles, the Cure. At the moment, she’s really into Irish buskers. “I started learning to play the piano, but I have a short attention span.” She took to writing.

One night during college, Aline and a friend went to a bar, ordered whiskeys, and came up with a list of characters. They each wrote seven short stories based on the idea that people don’t really get to know each other anymore, and portrayed the meetings of their characters from different perspectives. The resulting book, Encuentros Ausentes: Momentos incidentales y irrelevantes, completed their college theses and won an honorary mention from the university.

As a community manager for Yahoo!, Aline monitors groups and screens message board posts, rooting out offensive comments, like one about what kind of wallpaper to use in a torture chamber—she is becoming an expert when it comes to inappropriate questions:

Are you tough?

“No, not at all,” she laughs.

How would your best friend describe you?

“I have no idea.”

How would you describe you?

“I hate that question.”

She twirls a fork on the table and purses her lips. “I’m messy. I’m a control freak about things I really care about … and there’s order in my chaos.” The book is her proudest accomplishment, because “when you write you’re always afraid of showing what you write to other people. Or, I am… Putting it out there was risking someone telling you you cannot write.”

Under her watchband, a Gaelic tattoo reads: “Always remember.” She explains: “You hear all the time about people who used to love painting … they stopped doing something they really loved for money, or I don’t know.”

“I hope it still reminds me of me five years from now.”

Close up: Melba Pría, color and spirit

sue-ellen — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:40:07 -0700

Melba Pría, fifty, is an experienced public servant who has already occupied several important posts in Mexico's federal government. She has held senior positions in the SRE (Foreign Relations Ministry) and been posted to Israel as a consular attachée. Last October she arrived in Jakarta, Indonesia, as Mexico's newly-appointed ambassador to that country.

When she calls Mexico City it is a sunny Sunday morning here, but it's late at night in Jakarta.

What does being a Mexican woman mean to her? Pría takes her time to answer, and says that because she has only ever been a Mexican woman, she does not know what it means to be a woman from somewhere else. Possessing the certainty of her mexicanidad and her strong matrilineal roots, Pría relates with the spiritual and traditional elements of Mexican femininity. "Color and a spirit for struggle are what characterize us," she says. She embraces what she sees as the essential nurturing mission of being a Mexican woman, and has embodied this spirit of struggle throughout her career, working with and for indigenous people, women, children, and the poor. During her stint as chief of the SRE's Special Unit for Attention to NGOs, she focused on fostering dialogue between these groups and the government in the fields of human rights, poverty, and women's rights.

Although she does not have children of her own, she asserts: "I do not have to give birth to have children. There are children everywhere. The next generation is everywhere, and I care for them. I also care for the old." For Pría, who spent five years promoting the education of indigenous children in Chiapas as the head of a special delegation of the SEP (Public Education Ministry), everywhere can include Mexico or the streets of Jakarta, where she says there are many in need.

She describes a complex equation facing women, that seems difficult to solve: to be "out there" in the world; to be free in our bodies, our livelihoods, and our decision making; and at the same time to find the joy and motivation to nurture, to care, and to change what is not working well, whether within the family, society, or the State. It is an everlasting paradox that defines Mexican women's experience.

Ambassador Pría believes in "women helping women". She speaks of being a mentor and promoting groups of women working together in public service, something she has been doing since she was in school. When she took up her post at the Embassy in Jakarta she chose three women for her five-person team.

She tries to live joyfully, and in her own words, she "likes a mixed world, but a mixed world where femininity is not lost." A world where women are not separate from men, but a world where what makes us unique is not ignored, undermined, or overlooked: a world that gives women their due, and considers us to be as important as men.

Luisa Ortiz Pérez is a political scientist, ad hoc web content programmer, and Mexican to the bone.

From darkness into light

sue-ellen — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:44:31 -0700

Translated from the Spanish by Michael Parker-Stainback

Balkan history is filled with official writers, those bloody-handed “voices of the people”; it is also filled with those who were imprisoned, had to flee the country, were deported, or murdered. To fit all the tiles into the mosaic, I should mention that there were other writers who just died from sorrow—killed by life, or its absence. Kosovo is still cold in late April, but the bravest flowers dare to bloom, even during the war. That day, I saw not a single sparrow, but instead birds of prey atop burnt-out houses, indifferently picking the flesh from corpses: “…In a sky pierced by cries/The murdered are consoled/By those on earth yet alive”. That day I’d been arrested in the morning and released at night, and later ten guerrillas came to my house in Rahovec ("Death Valley", to the foreign journalists); they killed my dog, broke my cousin’s teeth, beat me, took what little money I had, and deported me. With nothing but two packs of cigarettes, I walked two days to the border, where I was stripped of my identity papers and sent over to Albania. For the third time during the war I was reunited with my wife and two children.

I took advantage of an International Parliament of Writers fellowship and came to Mexico. Our lives—mine, my wife’s, my children’s—were the only suitcases we carried. My feet were still swollen.

Wherever I go, I bring Kosovo with me, an open wound where poetry enters and where I flee when it’s hard to look at the world. I try not to think of the dark tombs where family, friends, and so many known and unknown people lie. What defeated me in my new country was the feeling of being buried alive, in a tomb I had dug myself, filled with light that never stopped hurting me.

Mexico City’s eternal spring—its daily life, colorful houses, music, street food, and the Mexicans themselves—made everything seem as if I were seeing the world from heaven.

Death writes poetry but the dead do not. I spent hours in front of my monitor, but in vain: I couldn’t write a single verse; I lost fifteen kilos in three months; memories consumed me from within.

The hardest part was learning to live with peace. During the war I’d learned how great it is to lose your job, to accidentally break an arm or leg, to be alone, or to be bored, because that showed you were alive.

A writer’s exile opens new paths. A potted plant in the Balkans becomes, in Mexico, a tree whose roots rupture water mains and crack asphalt. A bird that sang once just before dying in my poems there now sings here in four hundred voices, mocking death.

The brotherhood of crime offers a home, a room, and two or three passports to criminals in every nation on earth. I've seen writers humiliated, abandoned by God and man alike, on the riverbanks of sadness, waiting to cross to the other side of life, and on their foreheads you read: life hurts. I’ve seen lucky ones, myself included. I don’t know what you can read on my forehead, but my life hurts as well.

I give thanks to Phillippe Ollé-Laprune at the Casa Refugio Citlaltépetl in Mexico City, to my family and friends, and to the music of dozens of inspiring rock and blues bands. I’ve started to write as never before, first for my readers in Albanian, and now as I try to communicate with Mexican readers.

The thought that one day I might choose between returning or remaining in exile is too much for me. Everything could happen all over again.

I was born an Albanian, but it is as a Mexican that my life’s story will play itself out. Exile allowed me to adjust my life’s clock to another hour: now it keeps time in both Kosovo and Mexico.

Xhevdet Bajraj teaches poetry at the Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México. His published works in Spanish include Ruego albanés (Casa Refugio y Acróno) and El tamaño del dolor (Era, Conaculta y UACM).

Talking history: The American Benevolent Society turns 140

sue-ellen — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:03:27 -0700

In a far corner of the Panteón Americano, the grave markers are sunk like worn teeth beneath the pines and jacarandas. Names hint at the cemetery’s history: C.A. Ryan, Albert C. Osborne, Frank Duffy.

The groundskeepers tell of chain-rattling ghosts, and how Americans imported their tradition of cemeteries covered in grassy lawns, though now the graveyard is mostly dirt and concrete tombs.

Inside the cemetery office you’ll find the records for those who are buried here: some include provenance, last place of residence, and cause of death.

The American Benevolent Society took over responsibility for the Panteón in 1906. The Society itself was formed in Mexico City in 1868 by the US Consul and a board of wealthy American businessmen to look after their less fortunate brethren – the Civil War veterans, ne’er do wells, and hard-luck cases who needed a hand.

They gave loans, and assisted cases of abandonment, desertion, and illness They paid for return passage to the US, and they made sure Americans had, if nothing else, a decent burial.

The ABS continues reaching out to Americans in need.

“Most of our patients are a little nuts,” says ABS Executive Director Barbara Franco.

Franco, who has a Mary Poppins air of sense and sensibility, is as candid about the general eccentricities of her work as she is tightlipped on individual details. Cases generally involve financial support, cleaning services, and eventually, burial. But “every single [case] has a twist.”

Indeed, in the ABS records there once existed the detailed minutes kept by the Society’s first Secretary, a Major Gorsuch. When historian Bennie Mayes began to compile the society’s history from 1868-1968, Gorsuch’s “frank revelations” were deemed unfit for print, and it was recommended that the file remain sealed another hundred years.

Some colorful examples of the Society’s outreach are on the record, however. President Porfirio Díaz attended a “theatre circus” benefit for the American Hospital (now the ABC Medical Center), founded by the Society. A “Mrs. M.” needed a $7 USD loan from the ABS in 1946 to return to the States, after she had already pawned her gold teeth. A “Mr. K.,” once a “successful mining engineer,” was cared for in his final days before being buried for free at the cemetery.

When President John F. Kennedy visited Mexico City in 1962, a “Bill Z.” was held by the Secret Service for throwing a note into the Presidential car during a parade. The Embassy called the ABS. Turns out Bill had once “implored the ABS to help him” find a “missing sweetheart” and was asking the President for the same assistance.

***

Shauna Leff enters the basement to the nose-twitching smell of must and cool air. Before her lies a clutter of boxes, wheelchairs, computer hard drives, blue filing cabinets and bookshelves.

A 30-year-old with contagious energy and a tiny nose piercing, Leff is ABS’s youngest board member and the organization’s selfdescribed cheerleader. With the 140th birthday celebration fast approaching (to be celebrated February 20 at the US Ambassador’s residence), she’s digging for photos to use in the anniversary video.

Leff is spearheading the ABS’s Story Archive Project. Like NPR’s StoryCorps and the BBC’s digital Telling Lives project, Leff is recording expat interviews to preserve the stories of the older generation —stories she hopes will raise the institution’s profile and engage the new generation of Americans in Mexico. So far, Leff has recorded 10 interviews on professional audio quality equipment. It’s expat history as never heard before.

Former ABS president Vicky Silvan, 83, and her husband Len tell of how they met, painting the scene at the Hotel del Prado, the popular expat hangout that crumbled in the 1985 earthquake.

Author Diana Anhalt’s childhood memories of the 1950s take listeners through Polanco cornfields, down a Paseo de la Reforma still traveled by burros and horses, and to the Pyramids back when you could still dig in the rubble and take home pre-Colombian artifacts.

Leff asks how her life changed by moving here. Anhalt’s voice cracks on the recording: “It gave me another language, it gave me another culture … and it gave me the gift of life.” A pause. “You know it’s funny, Shauna, I never realized how much it moves me until I started talking about it.”

John Maxim, 73, writer, former actor, and a retired arts critic, will celebrate his 40th anniversary in Mexico this year. In his interview, he talks about his masterpiece: a novel forty-seven years in the making and not yet published. He gives thanks for the ABS Health Day and the bookshop at Union Church. He is writing volume fifteen of a journal that he’s been keeping since 1973: “it is a social record of my time in Mexico, when it became the largest city in the world.”

“I’m absolutely delighted [to be recorded for the Archive project] because as I say, I’m a nobody,” he says in his stage diction. “You know, words are forever, whether they are written or spoken.”

And so, the ABS forges into the 21st century, offering comfort, alleviating pain, and recording the normal and remarkable lives of the American community in Mexico.

For more information on the Story Archive Project, and on the ABS anniversary celebration, please call their office at (55) 5540 5123.

Coming up!: Holy Week "Semana Santa" celebrations

sue-ellen — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:28:59 -0700

This year's Roman Catholic Holy Week or Semana Santa takes place from April 5-12th, when most of Mexico has a few days of vacation time. If you're not basking on a beach, you may want to check out one of the religious celebrations and reenactments that Mexico is famous for.

Ajijic

A highly-regarded passion play has been staged since 1980 by a dedicated lay group in cooperation with the 16th century Parroquia de San Andrés. More than two hundred people act in the play and assist in its production. The reenactment begins with a Palm Sunday procession and concludes with the Crucifixion on Good Friday.

Join our Ajijic community here

Guanajuato

The Friday of Sorrows (one week before Good Friday), which commemorates Jesus’ death, is one of the city’s most important celebrations of the year. Altars to the Virgin, adorned with aromatic plants, blessed candles, and bitter oranges symbolizing her suffering, spring up everywhere, and the Jardín de la Unión is the site of the traditional Baile de las Flores (dance of the flowers).

Join our Guanajuato community here.

Mexico City

In Mexico City, the largest passion play in the country takes place at the Cerro de Estrella in the Iztapalapa district. It dates back to 1843 when locals performed the first play out of gratitude for the disappearance of a serious cholera epidemic. Today, more than a million (!) spectators throng the streets (there is no breathing room) while the performers reenact the last supper, the betrayal of Judas, the via crucis, the Crucifixion, and the resurrection of Christ. Reenactments take place on Sunday, April 5th, and then again from April 9-11th. For information, check http://www.iztapalapa.gob.mx/ss_2009/semanasanta2009.html.

Join our Mexico City community here.

Querétaro

On Holy Thursday (the day before Good Friday), devotees visit area churches and display their altars to the Virgin of Sorrows. Good Friday is interesting to observe not only in Querétaro, but also in the nearby indigenous villages of Tolimán and Huimilpan. The via crucis and Jesus’ three falls while carrying the cross are reenacted in the morning, and at 6pm, a silent procession takes place (in Tolimán, Huimilpan and Querétaro proper). It Querétaro, it departs from calle Felipe Luna wending its way to Convento de la Cruz. On Saturday, the vía matris -- the Virgin Mary's sorrowful journey to the 7 stations is reenacted and, later, the joyous burning of Judas figurines at 9pm at the Iglesia de San Francisco.

San Luis Potosí

Semana Santa is big business in SLP, with an onslaught of nearly 330,000 visitors who come to catch a glimpse of the famed Good Friday nocturnal silent procession. Different hooded religious orders shuffle along (some in ankle chains) to the beat of the drum, each carrying their parish crest and bearing a heavy cross, religious figure, or image representing a Station of the Cross. The silent procession leaves from Plaza del Carmen and makes its way to the main cathedral off the Zócalo. You can find the complete program at http://www.visitasanluispotosi.com/Principal/pdf/SemanaSanta09.pdf.

San Miguel de Allende

On the Friday of Sorrows, public spaces are adorned and many citizens (especially on Barranca, Hospicio, and Cuadrante streets) open their homes for viewings of their altars to the Virgin. A reenactment of Jesus’ trial and a procession representing the Stations of the Cross take place on Good Friday. See http://www.terra.com.mx/articulo.aspx?articuloId=599146 for more information.

Join our San Miguel community here.

San Cristóbal de las Casas

The city is enveloped in silence during the Good Friday processions, which begin in the morning

Join our Chiapas community here.

Taxco

Taxco’s reenactments begin a week before Easter Sunday: what makes them unique are the penitents. Taking on the role of a penitent is serious and must be solicited a year in advance. True suffering is in order—some penitents carry enormous heavy thorn-studded poles that are tied to their arms and back, others must walk hunched over, barefoot, and dragging heavy chains, while others carry heavy crosses and whip their backs with studded whips until they bleed. A detailed program of the festivities can be found at: www.taxcolandia.com.

Join our Guerrero community here.

The girly women's race

catherine — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:59:27 -0700

It easily could have been an illusion: the red carpet, the limousine, the men in tuxedos. After all, I was dizzy, dehydrated, and ready to vomit. Was I seeing things? Hallucinations, though, aren't likely to speak to you in a second language: "Felicidades," said one of the tux men, holding up a pouch. So this was happening: at the finish line of a 10k race, a man in Oscar attire handed me jewelry.

Happy Day of the Woman. Six thousand females, wearing identical aqua t-shirts, poured into Chapultepec Park to race. I coaxed a friend into entering in the spirit of female solidarity. But by the start line, something already felt wrong. The loudspeaker voice cued us to stretch and go through motions that felt as juvenile as jumping-jacks, turning the crowd into a mass aerobics class. I stood there, still as a statue, wondering why I felt embarrassed, and wishing someone would just fire the gun.

"You're way too competitive to enjoy this race," my friend said, pityingly. She was half-right. The only sport I've ever been competitive at is running, and after years of league and state meets, I can't enter any race without, well, racing.

I pushed through the crowd until my toes were touching the start-line, then looked around for the usual power-houses: women with veiny arms, long legs, expressions of stone. Instead, I noticed cosmetics. My competitors had applied makeup. The official race pacers were dressed in short, black skirts. Looking my fellow women up and down, I felt like a jerk. A jerk about to dominate.

But I'm far quicker in my memories than I was on March 9, 2009. My first kilometer was speedy, but it only set me up for 9K of deceleration. I couldn't even catch the Gatorade girl, a runner wrapped in a lycra dress sexier than all my swimsuits, let alone catch the spirit of this women's race.

What--other than getting trounced by women half my height--was my problem? I had a full fifty minutes of running to wonder, and my first clue came from the crowd: "ANIMO!" yelled spectators with deep voices. When six thousand women enter an event, that doesn't leave many of their sisters to cheer them on. Our race course was lined with men. "Venga! Venga!" yelled boyfriends, husbands, dads, cops. I started to feel like a woman on parade. A parade with too many patrons.

The last kilometer was excruciating. I was parched and trying to turn the cheering into motivation to sprint it out. I reminded myself that these men had gotten up early to support women, but still their animo's didn't translate into encouragement: instead, I felt patronized. To sprint, I'd have to find that will somewhere within.

I was a quiet, lanky freshman in high school the first time I entered a road race. If my teammates noticed me, it was only because of how loudly I panted on jogs. All of us entered the pre-season road race, and no one expected me to finish as quickly as I did. I ran so hard that I retched, and went on to win every race that season.

Americans accept as fact that sports empower women. Nothing brings out both the nationalist and feminist in me like running overseas. Of all the supposed advantages of the American way, I'm sure of just one: I'm a product of a society that takes women seriously. Women have earned that respect by exerting themselves on the court and field to gruelling and yes, often unattractive extremes. Separate leagues and single-sex conferences create spaces where it's not just okay to push that hard; it's expected. Even teenage girls I ran with in high school made it sacrilege to fuss about appearances on game day, as it distracted from what we were there to be: athletes.

I sort of wish I'd thrown up on one of the tuxedo guys. It might have clued them in that they didn't belong there. A table with water did. Only after a cruel walk across Chapultepec Desert did I see bins with bottles of clear liquid. At last, water... Sort of. "Fitline Water." I rehydrated from a six-mile race with a low-calorie, strawberry-flavored beverage. In the dry cavern of my stomach, it shocked as would champagne.

Assuming that my sore legs, if nothing else, would be met with respect, I lumbered over to the massage tent. But what I got was more of a jiggle. The male therapist shook my legs until the rest of me jiggled, including the fruity drink in my stomach. I could hear it, swishing, wondering what to make of all that Splenda. With a sneaky smile, the therapist concluded, "I could work your body for an hour."

That's about where I gave up on Mexico's race for womankind. Everywhere I wandered, things were fruity, pastel, flowery, tight, lite-none of which connote strength; some of which connote sweetness, the rest of which are just preoccupied with appearance.

I stand by the premise of a race for women: a space where females can sweat, excel, feel the strength of the single-sex pack. But for me, that spirit was trampled by the pink accents, the sexualized attire, the undertone of condescension. I've felt more solidarity with Mexican women on the Metro's female-only car, when the doors close and we look around to see it's just us. You can hear in that car every woman breathe the same long sigh of relief.

Colleen Kinder is a freelance writer living in Mexico City. Thanks to a Fulbright grant, she is interviewing Americans in Mexico for a nonfiction book about Americans who live overseas. To learn more about the project, visit colleenkinder.com. To share your thoughts on the Gringo life, email colleenkinder@gmail.com.

Nosey Parker gets a piece of the Cherry Pie Festival

catherine — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:32:38 -0700

I Cannot Tell a Lie-I Love the Cherry Pie Festival

Unpredictably, the American Benevolent Society's annual Cherry Pie Festival has become one of my favorite nights out (though I still can't forgive whoever eliminated the Martha Washington outfits) and this year's event, at the US Ambassadorial residence, was a real honey. Hostess and American Chargée d'Affaires Leslie Bassett, running things like a railroad till President Obama appoints a new ambassador, made it seem like a teenaged party when the parents are away, though with first-class cocktails, great bossa nova on the hi-fi, and vastly superior cherry pies (sorry Club Universitario). And when Roger Cudney belted out the national anthem-what a pair of lungs!-it made you proud to be an American again. Attendees ranged from the Newcomers' megawatt President Diana Colby (with affable husband Clark in tow), to charity-circuit heavy hitters Deborah San Román, Michele Beltrán, and Rogerio Casas Alatriste Urquiza, plus the adorable Shauna Leff and her man, Milton Jorge Reyes, as well as guides-on-the-go Jessica López and Martha Trava. Orange bow-tied paparazzo David Suárez couldn't have looked smarter, and mother-son cleanup act Carlos and Gloria de Ríos Braniff say stop littering! Finally, who was that woman of a certain age (and a certain amount of cosmetic surgery) who kept slipping party decorations into her late-model designer bag? Congratulations, ABS Executive Director Barbara Franco-you've done it again.

Quédese con los Mil, Señorita

Herding nervous gringo tour groups around the city's danger spots-like Sanborn's Azulejos-can be discombobulating for the steeliest guides. After one party cleared out of the restaurant, following no dearth of barked orders, separate checks requested, and queries regarding who owed for the jugo de betabel, the put-upon waitress nearly flipped her lacy kerchief to discover that she'd been left a 1000-peso tip! The large largesse could be considered an equitable recompense for the bother, but it turns out Miss Tourguide hadn't intended to be quite so generous-though she is a big fan of Mexico's flying culinary nuns-and approached the waitress with some trepidation a week later. The server had put the money aside for eventual return to its owner and the guide, moved to tears by the noble gesture, ended up letting the happy hash slinger keep the tip after all.

Not-So-Naco Nuptials

Mexicana fly-girl Claudia Rentería and National Democratic Institute director Julian Quibell, married in Puerto Escondido March 14, have the dubious distinction of being the first item ever reported in Nosey Parker. I recounted that the couple planned to dispense with bourgeois convention and host the naco-est possible nuptials. Repeated protestations about their intimate celebration clearly indicated I was not invited. Well, it seems J&C blew it: not only was I there (my virgin-white guayabera drenched in vino tinto by evening's end) but neither was there much in the way of naco, taste and generosity reigning supreme in everything from the gorgeous sunset over Carrilzalillo Beach to the ravishing bride, plus excellent food, music, and far too much drink. The ceremony, written and officiated by non-stop party "Padre" Alfonso Celestino, was so moving that the groom was weepy half the time. But how much longer before Alfonso breaks his vow of celibacy and makes an honest woman of Manhattan graduate student Ximena Maroto (who looked highly marriageable in a Pucci-esque Grecian goddess number, tan lines and all)? I suppose the party couldn't be that naco with all those progressive visitors from Northern California (the groom's parents, Charles and Catherine Quibell and Julian's boyhood buddy Marcus Clarke, among many), or with Claudia's hot mama Tiki Martínez and sweetheart daddy Jaime Rentería in from Tampico. LA journalists Miguel Medina y Cruz and Norma Roque-plus cute Ben Allen-added Hollywood glamour. And unflappable DF graphic designer Julieta Bracho always knows just how long a leash to put on hubby/artist Sergio Jamaica when the partying starts. I did hope for something creepy when a slew of long-haired relatives took the stage to sing, play pipes, and bang on a plastic trashcan, but even that Partridge Family redux came off sweet and loving, never tacky. I guess it's back to Las Lomas for the truly trashy affairs.

Got a hot tip? Email Mr. Parker-Stainback at nosey@insidemex.com.

Dinorah Isaak

catherine — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:03:29 -0700

Almost everything in Mexico City's Centro Histórico seems to sit atop the ruins of something else, and the beautifully renovated colonial building which houses the Instituto México-Israel is no exception. The fact that it is a former Catholic convent and hospital only adds dimension to its current function as the most important repository of Jewish culture in Mexico.

Dinorah Isaak, general director of the Institute, speaks animatedly about its work. A privately funded organization, the Institute has roots going back to 1947, when a group of prominent Jews formed an association to promote Jewish history and tradition. Working in the areas of art, music, literature, business, and science, the Institute mounts exhibits, concerts, conferences, and seminars all over Mexico. Their displays of Jewish culture, documentation of the immigration of Jews to Mexico, and a library of books and film are all open to the public; the Institute's premise is that knowledge is the enemy of prejudice, and its activities provide opportunities to put names and faces to Mexico's minority Jewish community.

Although her work at the Institute focuses on the public, I wanted to learn about Ms. Isaak's personal experiences as a Jew in Mexico.

Do you experience prejudice here?

"Not really. But since Mexico is more than 90 percent Catholic, there's a lot of ignorance and misinformation out there. Many people have never knowingly met a Jew. And yes, there are still people out there who think that Jews have horns, but [people are] generally tolerant. At worst, they see us as extranjeros, not real Mexicans."

How do you account for Mexicans' generally tolerant attitudes?

"The Catholic religion was imposed by force on the native population here.

I think there's a genetic memory of ancient beliefs and customs that creates empathy with other repressed groups."

If some ideas and attitudes about Jews are mistaken, are there others that are correct? Is there a world view that can be described as Jewish?

"Definitely. I see being a Jew as following certain ethical laws and living a certain lifestyle, which is more important than praying or religious practices. There's a strong sense of taking care of one another that's part of Jewish culture. You don't see many homeless or starving Jews. That's a point we have in common with Mexican family culture. Jews are often stigmatized as money lenders. In fact, for many centuries Jews were not permitted to own property, so they had more of their wealth in cash, and became the money-lenders by necessity. But making money for its own sake is not really a Jewish value. One of the most important uses of money is to create work for others. We have a dogma called tzadaka, the injunction to share impelled by justice, not pity."

I notice that you don't mention God or sin: How do you relate to these concepts?

"Praying to God for help for ourselves is not important to us. You ask for others, not for yourself."

After a career in the field of communications, including several years at Televisa, Dinorah Isaak decided to devote her efforts to her community. In 2007 she made a documentary film, Listening to Israel, and is currently working on another. She became director of the Institute last year. "I love Mexico, but my dream is to move to Israel one day and spend my last years there, promoting what I learned as a child, el amor al prójimo, love of my neighbor."

The Instituto Cultural Mexico-Israel is located in the centro histórico of Mexico City at República de El Salvador No. 41. Their website is mexico-israel.org.

Jim Johnston is author of Mexico City: an Opinionated Guide for the Curious Traveler. His blog is mexicocitydf.blogspot.com

Pat Bano on raising a Bengal tiger

Shauna — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:20:09 -0700

Rabbi David Cooper

catherine — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:17:34 -0700

Rabbi David A. Cooper considers himself "gifted to be here in San Miguel, semi-retired, in a diverse community."

As he prepares for his 70^th birthday, he explains: "I use myself as a guinea pig... exploring the question: ‘What are the real possibilities for someone who is seriously engaged in the adventure of opening his heart and mind to experience the true potential of the human species?'" But ask him to lead Shabbat prayers and he'll likely decline: "That's not my forte."

What interests Rabbi Cooper are transformational teachings, which he contrasts with translational teachings. "I respect the work that others do in making the spiritual more understandable and clear, but the way I teach is through creating an environment in which people can be directly affected by a spiritual experience."

Rabbi Cooper and his wife Shoshana first visited San Miguel de Allende in February 2008, and returned from Colorado in August of the same year as permanent residents. Shoshana is studying painting: a larger-than-life portrait of her husband rests on the mantelpiece, and newer works line the stairway. The support for artists and quality of instruction were among the reasons they chose San Miguel.

Together they guide workshops and week-long retreats for beginning and advanced meditators. He describes their silent retreats as a method for realizing "the extraordinary wonder of the possibility of a moment-to-moment connection with the magic and mystery of the unfolding Now."

The large English-speaking population was another draw. "Living in Israel for eight years made me realize that my language skills are not that great." He takes time for his writing-"Every idea becomes a book title," he says, smiling. "But not every book title becomes a book."-and is working on a sequel to his bestseller God is a Verb. "Most of us approach the idea of God as a thing or an old man in the sky. I don't believe in a separate God. ...But there is a discovery process and a need to peel away the veils that create the false sense of separation so that we are able to directly and deeply experience the ongoing Divine Presence. That discovery process requires being completely engaged in the moment, [in] the continuous unfolding of this creation."

Rabbi Cooper is planning a combined Passover and 70^th birthday celebration with friends visiting from the US. The dates this year also coincide with Easter. "I love the celebratory nature of the culture here, truly enjoyed New Year's, and have written my friends ‘just wait till you see what's happening at Easter!' There is a lot of vitality in the Now experience here in San Miguel, with so many opportunities for people to be together."

After learning of his plans for a Passover-Easter-Birthday event, it's not surprising to hear Rabbi Cooper describe himself as both post-denominational and post-ideological. "I think all the traditions have a lot to offer," he says. "My fundamental belief is that all people who are on a spiritual path are climbing the same mountain. Judaism is an extraordinary path for spiritual growth," he continues. "But no matter what path is taken, the highest peak is the same for all."

Rabbi Cooper can be reached at rabbidavidcooper@yahoo.com. His website is rabbidavidcooper.com.

Fran Schiavo is a communications consultant who escapes to non-corporate writing and design whenever she can. She has lived full-time in San Miguel de Allende since 2005. Her website is franschiavo.com.

Pat Bano talks about Oakie, her seal.

Shauna — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:10:08 -0700

Out of sight

catherine — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:28:58 -0700

A word used again and again by both Jews and non-Jews to describe the Jewish community in Mexico to me as I researched this story was cerrada--closed. "Wealthy" was another. "They live in Polanco," one taxi driver told me knowingly, speaking of the swanky Mexico City neighborhood where Orthodox Jews in black hats share park space with manicured Mexican mommies and synagogues share blocks with high-rise hotels and Hummer dealerships. "They help each other out," was another lay opinion. As with most stereotypes, I found elements of truth in all of the above. What I wanted to know was whether Jews have integrated into Mexican culture, or are just another group who happen to live here. More explicitly, what makes Mexican Jews different from Jews anywhere else in the world?

Mexico's 40,000-strong Jewish community is unique and varied, and made up of several communities, each with distinct flavors and traditions. They were also incredibly welcoming to me. As an Australian Jew living in the Distrito Federal, I was invited to eat cholent (a traditional slow-cooked stew served on Sabbath) at a Kiddush after a Saturday synagogue service; to join in several Shabbat dinners (which I regretfully had to turn down); and even attend a Jewish women's cooking class, a frenzied extravaganza in a Polanco synagogue where 300 religious women, most in long skirts and wigs, sat before a giant stage for a multimedia class on how to concoct kosher delights such as "Extraordinary Rice" and home-made challot, traditional plaited bread loaves. I'm not sure how much this welcome was because I was Jewish, and therefore accepted into the tribe, or was a Jewish adaptation of the Mexican standard "mi casa es tu casa." If the latter, it was one of many mexicanisms that the Jewish community has adopted, ranging from mariachis at weddings to gefilte fish a la Veracruzana.

"If you compare Mexico to any other place where Jews live it's a little paradise," says Jessica Kreimerman Lew over tea and banana bread at CasaLuna, an interfaith community center with a plant-filled courtyard, wind chimes, and a welcome sign on the door in Hebrew and Spanish. A self-described "insider/outsider" to the Jewish community, Kreimerman is a tall, slim woman with flowing, light brown hair and intense green eyes. "They came with the idea that anybody who works can do well, and they did very well, and they had the religious freedom many could only have dreamed of in the countries they came from." Before I leave, she wraps a piece of banana bread in a napkin for me to take home, just like my Jewish aunt would do.

Kreimerman's house is in La Condesa, where a small but still pulsing heart of Judaism persists. In the 1930s and 40s, the unofficial language of the Parque Mexico-today a bustling hub for the neighborhood's arty and international set-was Yiddish. The park still boasts a giant bronze sculpture of Albert Einstein's head with the inscription, "A gift from the Israeli community." A few blocks away at Acapulco 70, there's a Jewish museum, archives, and synagogue, with a kosher deli downstairs. Several more small orthodox synagogues hide inside houses on Amsterdam Street. On the corner of Montes de Oca Street and Parral, among the restaurants, boutiques, and Diego Luna's trendy new café, sits another synagogue, where Kreimerman takes me one sunny Saturday morning for the weekly Sabbath prayers.

From the street, the place looks closed, but Kreimerman punches a secret code into the door and it snaps open. Inside, before a blue-velvet curtained arc and brass menorahs, a man in a black and white prayer shawl stands swaying and praying, his soft voice running smoothly over the Hebrew words. The women sit in a small reserve of mostly empty seats at the back, closed in by curtains. In the final row, two old men sit mumbling and gossiping in Spanish, every now and then stopping to say "omein" (amen) in thick Yiddish accents. "Those two old men always sit in the corner making noise," Kreimerman laughs.

After, she takes me to the Kiddush, where two long trestle tables are set up with plastic tablecloths: one for the men, one for the women. On the table are kugguleh, traditional Jewish sweet bread marbled with chocolate; potato chips, eggplant dip, boiled eggs, sardines, a bottle of vodka, kosher wine, grape juice, and diet coke. "They usually have tequila," says Jessica. There's also lemon and chile, another example of the syncretism that sees Mexican Jews eating guacamole on their bagels and interchanging pozole for matzoh ball soup, blintzes for quesadillas. "I see us as seeds that take on characteristics of the soil," Kreimerman says, explaining the way Jewish life has taken on Mexican flavors.

"We have a double identity. We are Mexicans as well as Jews," says Emilio Betech, who, along with Enrique Chmelnik and Ricardo Silva, hosts "El Aleph," a weekly radio show about Jewish culture broadcast on Radio Red. He estimates that about 90 percent of his 30,000 listeners are non-Jewish. "There's a general sense that the Jewish community is very closed, meaning hermetic, meaning not open to the rest, which in some aspects might be true," he says. To be sure, the community has one of the lowest assimilation rates in the world: more than 85 percent of Mexican Jews marry other Jews, compared to less than 50 percent in Europe and the US. More than 90 percent of Mexican Jewish children attend Jewish schools, another statistic to make the rabbinates of other Diaspora communities drool. Growing up in Mexico City, Betech says his social circle was almost exclusively Jewish, as was the case for many Jews I spoke to. His program receives calls from listeners wanting to know about everything from the laws of kashrut (keeping kosher) to whether or not Jews are allowed to keep pets. "We found a large amount of the [Mexican] population who never had the opportunity to speak to Jewish people. There's a lot of curiosity. They seem to be very interested in religious practices, though that's not really our program's focus. They find them exotic."

"Jews are seen as an elite," says Karina Morales Martinez, a Spanish teacher who lives in Colonia Roma, which like Condesa was once a largely Jewish neighborhood. "It's a bit malinchista," she continues, referring to a Mexican tendency to revere outsiders, "but many Mexicans want to be Jewish because they're seen as foreigners. The classic idea of a Jew in Mexico is of someone blonde with blue eyes." Indeed, compared to many Mexicans, Jews are fair-skinned, and some who came from places like Turkey or Spain had red hair and blue eyes, while many who arrived from Russia or the Ukraine were blonde, a reversal of the traditional racial (and racist) stereotype of Jewish people having dark skin, dark eyes, and large noses. Several people I spoke to commented that the Jews have probably benefited from the stratification of Mexican society along lines of class and race, prejudices the Jewish community itself is often accused of reinforcing, though no one wanted to be quoted as saying so. Several times a source, alluding to an unspoken rule that Jews never speak badly of fellow Jews to the "outside world," leaned forward to whisper, "The Jewish community is very elitist, but please don't put that. I'm only telling you this because you're Jewish."

***

Monica Unikel is third-generation Mexican Jewish, with thick blonde hair that swings loose over her shoulders and pretty, pale blue eyes that blink out from behind a pair of metal-framed glasses. I met her on a recent morning in the Centro Historico, where she leads Jewish walking tours. "All this area was Jewish," says Monica, whose grandparents arrived from Russia and Poland in the 1920s and went into the sweater business. She points on a map of the Centro to a tight grid of streets several blocks north and east of the Zócalo. "Hundreds of Jewish families used to live here." She puts her finger on Calle Jesús María. "You can joke, how could the Jews be in a street called Jesus Mary? But this is the street where they had their Jewish grocery stores, where they sold dill pickles, herrings, where there were kosher butchers, bread shops where they sold European bread, boarding houses and cheap restaurants for immigrants."

The first Jews in Mexico arrived with Hernán Cortés, though they are believed to have been conversos-Spanish Jews forced to convert to Catholicism to escape the Inquisition. Most of them married into Mexican families, became devout Catholics, and lost their links with Judaism. The community today is mostly made up of descendents of immigrants who arrived in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, mainly from the Middle East (Sephardis) and Eastern Europe (Ashkenazis). Many were trying to get to America but forced to change course when the US tightened its borders in 1924. Some fled pogroms in Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe in the 1880s, others came as part of a large wave of immigration following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. Finally, another mass of immigrants fled the Nazis before and during World War II. While some migrants set up communities in smaller Mexican towns and cities-there are Jewish communities in Guadalajara, Monterrey and Tijuana-the vast majority went straight from the port of Veracruz to Mexico City.

Around us, Calle Justo Sierra bustles just like any other street in the Distrito's historic downtown. Bells from the domed Loreto church peal in competition with cumbia music blaring from pirate CD stalls. Clothing shops selling thong underwear, cheap t-shirts, and dresses displayed on mannequins hung from ceilings sit alongside haberdashery stores crammed with shoelaces, ribbons, buttons, and lace-remnants from a time when this was the heart of the textile trade, and home to the Jewish traders who lived and worked it.

Across the street, two old synagogues share a block. They look just like any of the other commercial buildings, save for a Star of David on the wall of one, built in 1918 by Sephardi Jews from Syria, and on the door of the other, built in 1941 by Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. The Syrian synagogue still comes alive each day at 2pm, when a group of Jews who work downtown say midday prayers and eat a kosher lunch. Inside, their phone numbers are penciled on a column, in case they lack the ten men to make a minyan-the quorum necessary to conduct Jewish prayers-and must call in extras.

We pass a storefront offering tortas, two for thirty pesos, and enter the Ashkenazi synagogue. The red brick neocolonial façade gives way unexpectedly to a courtyard, behind which a separate, grander building stands, with arched windows and a ceiling painted green and blue with stars and doves. On the back wall is a mural depicting the Garden of Eden. No longer an active synagogue, it is being restored, with plans to turn it into a museum. Mexican artists are busy at work restoring the marble-look finish on the columns and sanding down the woodwork carvings on the bimah, or platform. "I love this place," says Monica of the building originally copied from a photo of a Lithuanian synagogue. "You're not in Mexico. You're two blocks from the Zócalo, and you're in Lithuania."

When the Jews arrived, most of them went into selling, usually textiles, Monica explains. They would often go from door to door hawking stockings and socks from boxes worn across their chests, upgrading when they could to market stalls, then stores, and even factories. "The majority lived in tenement houses with a patio and rooms around the courtyard," says Monica. Jewish names were unpronounceable to Mexicans, so many changed them. Faeger became Fanny, Masha became Maria.

"Life in the Centro was very austere. People saved every centavo. Those who wanted to keep kosher used to go to the Merced and buy their chickens live. In the market there was a kosher butcher who killed the chickens. He charged 10 centavos. If they wanted the chicken [de]feathered, it cost another 5 centavos. But many didn't want to spend that extra 5 centavos, they wanted to save money, so they plucked them at home."

Many were able to prosper quickly in Mexico, Monica says. They expanded into other professions, with second, third and fourth generations represented in everything from politics to show business. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the center of the Jewish community shifted west as Jews moved to Polanco, Las Lomas, Interlomas, Bosques, and Tecamachalco, where the majority are now based.

***

In the hills of Mexico City's leafy, affluent northwest, Avenida de las Fuentes weaves through the suburb of Tecamachalco, closing around it in a loop. At a junction with Fuente de la Templanza (the Fountain of Restraint Street, sagely running parallel to the Fountain of Youth Street), surrounded by blocks of high-rise luxury apartments, a gymnasium, a hairdresser, a liquor mini-mart, and a Subway sandwich store, is what residents refer to as the Distrito Federal's Little Tel Aviv. "Come by on a Friday night or Saturday morning and the streets are filled with Jews, all walking to Temple," says Shauna Leff, an American Jew who's lived in Tecamachalco for the past two years with her non-Jewish Mexican husband, Milton Jorge Reyes. "You see all the religious types-the men in hats, the women in wigs. You wouldn't know you're in Mexico."

Across the avenue, the Kosher Palace gleams, with its white, grated storefront and blaring Israeli music. On its packed shelves you can find spices from Israel, halva, Israeli chocolate spread, New York pretzels, football-size jars of pickles, frozen schnitzel, falafel, and kosher everything, from Skippy peanut butter to baby food. A little further up Templanza is the Shuky Centre, a multi-story kosher food hall with schwarma, sushi, kosher Mexican food, and separate sections for meat and milk, in accordance with Jewish law. The deli stocks Syrian lavash bread, kosher chickens, and challot. A notice board advertises religious talks by a visiting rabbi, kosher cooking classes, and entertainment companies for bar mitzvahs and weddings.

As we drive around in Shauna's fire-engine-red Jeep, she cuts through the midday traffic like a formula one driver while talking a mile a minute, pointing out other Jewish landmarks-temples, schools, where to get the best falafel. "This is where Jewish people come to do their shopping," she says, as we pass the Sinai Deli and Bakery, Sastreria Saul, butcher shops with Hebrew kosher signs, and kosher taquerias among the Mexican main street staples: florists, grocery stores, and altars to the Virgin of Guadalupe. The schools are huge, gated compounds, with security guards, no signs and electric wire fences. The synagogues and temples-at least six in Tecamachalco-are unmarked.

"The Jewish community doesn't like to draw attention to itself," says Mauricio Lulka, director general of the Central Committee for the Jewish Community in Mexico, from its headquarters inside an unmarked, yellow-walled compound in Las Lomas. This probably says more about how Jews feel after centuries of persecution than about their experience of Mexico, though it is also a security measure; perceived as wealthy, Jews have in the past been targeted by kidnappers. Yet according to the Tribuna Israelita, the analysis and opinion branch of the Central Committee responsible for monitoring anti-semitism, the incidence of discrimination in Mexico is low compared to other countries (they were unable to provide figures). This is in stark contrast to other Latin American Catholic countries with large Jewish populations like Argentina, which has suffered several high-profile anti-semitic attacks, including the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992. As perceived by the Tribuna, the main expression of anti-semitism in Mexico takes the form of anti-Israel protests, such as those in newspaper op-eds and outside the Israeli embassy during Israel's strikes on Gaza earlier this year.

Another particularity of the Mexican Jewish community is its infrastructure, Lulka says. "In Mexico 95 percent of families are affiliated to a community. It doesn't matter if you're observant, or you're liberal, or you're secular, or even if you are atheist, you belong to a community in accordance with the origin of where your forebears came from." Within the Jewish population there are two Syrian communities, one from Aleppo and the other from Damascus, an Ashkenazi community from Eastern Europe, a Sephardi community from Turkey, Greece, and the Balkan States, and a conservative community started by immigrants from the US. Each one has its own synagogues, schools, traditions, and customs. For example, the Syrian community is known to be more religious, whereas the Sephardi community from Turkey is generally seen as less so, meaning different communities often don't mix, though this is thought to be changing.

Uniting the different communities are the Central Committee and the Jewish Sports Centre, an enclosed, 10,000 square meter mini-city that has provided tennis courts, football fields, dance studios, ball rooms, Olympic gym and swimming facilities, and classes and courses for Mexican Jews for over fifty years. The community's infrastructure is so complete it reaches into every area of members' lives, from ambulance services to cemeteries, scholarships to welfare assistance, and even anti-kidnap response. It's like a parallel universe co-existing alongside Mexico's mainstream one. It occurs to me that a Jewish person could live their entire life within the community's invisible walls, barely having to interact with Mexico proper, and no doubt some do. That said, Jews are increasingly taking prominent positions within the wider community: in politics, media, architecture, and the arts. They seem comfortable, well-off, and at ease in Mexico. Many I interviewed spoke of their love for this country.

Sitting in Lulka's office, I wonder out loud whether Mexico's infrastructure, often shaky and unreliable, is one reason Jews have built and strengthened their own institutions, and also whether a country like Mexico, where family ties are key, provides Jews with a perfect environment in which to foster community links. Lulka, a middle aged man with a thick moustache and gently graying hair, shrugs as he leans back in his chair, a framed picture of a Torah scroll on the wall behind him. "The Jewish community is completely integrated with the rest of Mexico," he says. "We don't have Jewish lawyers' associations, or doctors' associations, like in other countries. We just have lawyers, we just have doctors. It's got nothing to do with being Jewish. We're part of Mexican society in every way. We just don't marry with them."

Border walkabout

sue-ellen — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:10:57 -0700

As I round the corner towards the bridge over the Tijuana River, two cops yell at me to stop. I pick up my pace, gripping my passport and money inside my pockets with sweaty palms.

They yell again and I start running.

Looking back, I see them pursuing me. I surrender. The officers slam me against a building, hands in the air. The contents of my pockets disappear into their hands for inspection.

"Why did you run? Are you carrying drugs?” asks the larger cop in broken English.

"No,” I reply. "I had heard that many Tijuana cops extort foreigners. So when you asked me to stop, I ran.”

"Listen,” he says, "there are some bad people in Tijuana, but you need to remember that not everyone is bad police."

They let me go, the contents of my backpack in complete disarray after their hasty search, and I continue towards California.

MORE THAN JUST A LINE

For better or worse, Tijuana and San Diego are in a complex, co-dependent relationship that dates back to a simpler time. Early in the 19th century the two cities were both part of Mexico and Tijuana was a peaceful ranching village.

The Mexican-American War, which ended in 1848, would change the destinies of both cities, as well as countless towns, from the west coast to the southwest, which suddenly became part of a different country.

“Today, many southern Californians who live near large Latino communities do not realize that many people of Mexican descent have been US citizens for generations. The border passed over them,” explains Andrea Skorepa, CEO of Casa Familiar, a nonprofit organization that works with Latino communities in San Diego County.

Following the war, Tijuana grew relative to nearby California’s booming economy. Prohibition drew tourists to Tijuana’s cabarets and bars, and the population expanded in response to American spending on both sides of the border.

Today, Tijuana is home to 1.5 million people and is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Droves of immigrants from throughout Mexico arrive daily, seeking work in maquiladora factories on the Mexican side or as legal day laborers in the US, or looking to attempt to cross the border in hopes of joining America’s increasing illegal workforce.

As the police let me go, I cross the bridge over the Tijuana River, a murky stream of water flowing from Mexico into a sewage treatment plant in California, and take my place in the sprawling line of people waiting at the busiest overland border crossing in the world.

This is the point where America, that dominating entity that hovers at the nucleus of world affairs, physically collides with another nation.

An hour later, I get my brief interview with a US customs official and pass through a metal detector into the home of the brave.

The visual effect of passing from Tijuana into California is like cleaning a dusty window; suddenly the world seems healthy, flawless, and more efficient.

Stepping onto the Blue Line trolley headed towards downtown San Diego, away from Tijuana’s smog-billowing bus system, evokes a marvelous sense of convenience. As the train glides away, views of Tijuana’s crowded hillsides give way to neat American suburbs.

Days in north Mexico leave you dazzled when you rediscover the existence of glitzy American shopping malls, immaculate sidewalks, and the palm-lined avenues of downtown San Diego.

Crossing back into Mexico that afternoon, I pass through a turnstile gate. Nobody asks me to wait in line or even to show identification.

CITY OF IMMIGRANTS

“The best way of understanding the border is simply to remember that it is composed of a wide variety of people, each with their own hopes and dreams, which often come in conflict with an international boundary,” says Dr. Norma Iglesias, Professor of Chicano Studies at San Diego State University.

This statement rings true after visiting one of Tijuana’s shelters that offer aid to both migrants en route to the US and deportees.

Under the roof of the migrant shelter, one hears both the thick Chilango accent of Mexico City and the relaxed southern California drawl spoken by Mexicans who grew up in LA.

Despite their different origins, migrants remain united in the ways their lives have been complicated by a border which was once more of an abstract concept, but in some places has become a wall whose existence limits the mobility of residents on both sides.

My first visit to a shelter took me past lines of unemployed men sitting lackadaisically along the streets deep within the crowded barrio of Tijuana’s Colonia Postal.

Feeling vulnerable, I too experienced a sense of sanctuary as Mari Galván, director of the Casa Madre Asunta, an all-women’s migrant shelter, welcomed me into a new, modern building that stood in stark contrast with the sprawl of tin-roofed houses built on foundations of rubber tires.

“The situation in Tijuana has changed recently,” Galván explains. “Ten years ago most of the women who arrived here were waiting to cross into the US, now the majority who come have been deported.”

She opens her record book to demonstrate, the names scrolling down the page. Isabela: deported, Maria: deported, Andrea: deported, Martina: deported.

Outside Galván’s office, the names become faces, individual people who have risked everything to cross the border.

“I lived in the US for fifteen years,” says Inés Ferrera, a 27-year-old mother of six originally from Puebla. “Last week, my husband and I were gathering cardboard outside a restaurant to sell to a recycling center. A policeman stopped and accused us of robbery, then arrested us. At the police station, they asked me where I was born and I said Mexico. They deported us both. I think my kids are staying with my sister now. I’m not sure how I’m going to cross back,” she says, holding back tears.

Next to Inés are two young women, one whose journey to the US is just beginning and another whose time there has been interrupted.

“I’m going to the US with coyotes [people smugglers] to meet my mom and go to a good university,” says Estefani Guadalupe, a bright 16-year-old who traveled to Tijuana from Mexico City with her aunt.

“I crossed with coyotes sixteen years ago,” explains Elizabeth, a 25-year-old also from Puebla, sitting to Estefani’s right. “We moved to LA, I learned English, graduated high school, and had just finished two years of college. Then I was deported. I’m not sure I’ll be able to cross back.”

Outside Madre Asunta, a recent deportee named Alberto, originally from Cuernavaca, leads me to the Casa San Juan Diego, a shelter on the outskirts of Tijuana for both men and women that provides temporary assistance for migrants and the homeless.

“The police in Tijuana treat the dogs better than us,” he says as we walk along a busy highway. “I was deported into Tijuana carrying just $350 USD; the police here took everything and threw me into jail my first day back in Mexico.”

A haggard assortment of down-and-out people, cast in the autumnal light of the setting sun, greets us at the shelter’s entrance.

“You’ve got to know what time of day the cops come by. They will throw you in jail for anything,” explains Gabriel, a former LA gang member who did nine years in a California State Penitentiary before he was deported.

In the distance, we saw police officers throw two disheveled men into a truck.

As the shelter’s doors open for the night, a flow of men poured forth from the shadows of nearby buildings and the embankment of the Tijuana River.

“My parents brought me illegally into the US when I was a baby,” says Antonio, a former resident of Los Angeles, while slurping soup with a famished intensity. “I never became a naturalized citizen, and at the age of 33, US Immigration officials sent me to Mexico with nothing, not even money to call my family to tell them what happened. I was alone and my Spanish was horrible. Can you imagine what it’s like to be thrown into a country you don’t even know?” he asks.

Outside the shelters, my light skin and blonde hair broadcast my nationality to Tijuana residents. Deportees flock to me. Some beg for food, others simply want to speak English.

Their stories blur together.

Some had spent just a few months in the US, but many had left behind houses, jobs, spouses, and children. These had assimilated to US culture and now found themselves in a foreign world that was supposed to be theirs.

“Mexico is dirty and there are no opportunities here. I don’t know this place. This isn’t my country,” said one deportee named Luis.

My last day in Tijuana, I went to the beach. Standing with your back to the sea, one looks back at the steel fence cascading down the mountains into the frothy ocean. Mexican couples hold hands and point at the looming buildings of downtown San Diego.

From the shore, I watched several mischievous children squeeze through a hole in the fence, momentarily walking into the US, placing their feet abroad as if stepping gingerly into tepid bathwater.

Helicopters from the nearby Border Patrol facility circled in the sky.

BEYOND THE CITY LIMITS

From the Pacific Ocean, the US-Mexican border stretches nearly 2,000 miles through vast tracts of desert and along the Rio Grande to the Gulf coast.

Once, this stretch of mainly non-arable land was considered worthless, but today foreign investors have built factories in north Mexico, employing cheap labor and converting this former no-man’s land into a valuable region for both Mexico and the US.

Following Clinton-era security measures that sought to push illegal immigration away from cities to more remote areas, where in theory it would be more easily controlled, the desert regions of north Mexico have today become the primary routes for drug and human trafficking to the US.

The heaviest traffic passes through the Sonora desert into southern Arizona. Every day the stakes are raised on crossing the border into the US. Coyotes can now charge more than $3,000 USD a head to ensure safe passage over the border. Since 1994, 4,745 deaths of Mexican nationals have been recorded as they tried to cross into the US, more than the number of US soldiers killed in the current Iraq war.

“Recently, we’ve started finding dead bodies further away from the road,” says Reverend Robin Hoover, founder of Humane Borders, a non-profit organization based in Tucson, Arizona that provides assistance to migrants, “meaning that increased border security has pushed people further into the desert and into more dangerous conditions. There are a lot of ups and downs in desert terrain, and a mere twisted ankle can be a death sentence.”

INTRUDERS IN THE DUST

East of Highway 2 lies Altar, Mexico, which has doubled in size since becoming the main jumping off point for migrants stealing by foot into the US.

Much like the infamous city to its west, Altar too was once a quiet ranching town, nestled amidst swaths of the Saguaro cactuses which still dominate the Sonora desert horizon.

In Altar, everything the street vendors sell is black—clothing, backpacks, bandanas—so migrants will be less visible at night.

Outside of town, one dirt road leads 110 kilometers straight north to the Arizona border.

On any afternoon, hundreds of tired dark-clad men, women, and children can be seen packed like sardines into truck beds, heading towards the border where they will begin their trip into the US, either solo or with coyotes, many on foot.

Some will never make it, but those that do will step into southern Arizona, an area which has been converted into a virtual police state, where Border Patrol officers attempt to control a socio-economic immigration issue with surveillance and interrogation.

The combined presence of Border Patrol and the increasing number of illegal immigrants passing through the backyards of US citizens has eroded the quality of life for border residents on the US side. This problem is exacerbated because many border residents are descended from Mexicans who became Americans 150 years ago when the border moved south, or from immigrant ancestors who crossed generations ago, making the job of identifying Mexicans from Americans a tricky business.

Thousands of people enter the US illegally each day, but the vast majority will pass through two great expanses of land just north of Altar.

The first is Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a 330,000-acre National Park straddling thirty-one miles of the Mexican-US border and protecting one of the world’s most important and fragile desert ecosystems.

Organ Pipe has become such a hot spot for smugglers and migrants that over two-thirds of the Park is now closed to the public, and the National Parks Conservation Association has called Organ Pipe “the most dangerous National Park in the US.”

That said, people have been migrating through this area for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Organ Pipe’s Chief of Interpretation, Andy Fisher, sees migration trends within the Park as an extension of history.

“People have been moving through this area since the first humans arrived in Sonora,” she says. “There are many historic trails in Organ Pipe made by people who originally migrated north from the Sea of Cortez on trade routes.”

Those times remain just where they began: in the past.

The descendents of those ancient peoples who once freely roamed through the Sonora desert can be found adjacent to Organ Pipe on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation, the other popular route for undocumented migrants travelling north of Altar.

There, a tribe of 25,000 people lives on 2.8 million acres of desert land on the second largest Indian Reservation in the US.

The presence of the border has perhaps influenced the Tohono O’odham as much as anyone; in 1853 the border was redrawn, cutting the Indian Nation in two and leaving many tribal members in Mexico, while moving others to the United States. This fissure created extended families that bridge the borderland.

Until post 9-11 security measures were implemented, O’odham people living in Mexico were able to cross the border freely, using tribal ID cards as identification. New US border security measures separate some Mexican O’odham from family members in the US and deprive them of medical treatment not available in Mexico’s remote Sonora region.

“Now, we are not sure how people on the Mexican side will cross,” says Tohono O’odham member Yolanda Garcia. “Many of those people do not have the money to get passports, or they were born at home with midwives and never received birth certificates, making it difficult to prove their true nationality.”

Lying just north of Altar, the 75-mile border separating the Mexican and US sides of the Tohono O’odham Nation shapes everyday life in other ways too; an estimated 1,500 undocumented Mexicans cross the border into the Nation everyday, complicating the lives of those living in the US.

“I never used to lock my doors,” says Louie Johnson, a tribal elder. “But our house has been broken into three times now by hungry migrants looking for food. I understand most migrants are good people put in a desperate situation, but this is an invasion of our privacy.”

On my way to the Reservation, I crossed into the US late at night, arriving in Lukeville, Arizona, a town consisting of little more than a convenience store.

Stranded, I asked a grumpy customs agent where I could find a safe place to camp.

“Don’t go out in that desert,” he cautioned, “there’s a lot of illegal activity.”

“Can I pitch a tent near here?” I asked.

“Listen, son,” he said, “this is government property. You must leave as soon as you exit the building.”

“Welcome home,” I thought.

With no better option, I camped next to the Department of Homeland Security office.

The searchlights of a helicopter combing the desert floor for migrants woke me just as I was nodding off.

On the Reservation’s edge, at a diner in Why, Arizona, a waitress said, “I have illegals on my property day and night. They cut my fences and my horses get out. Or they turn on my hoses to get water and leave them running.”

“Sometimes, I think they’re vindictive,” she added.

Entering the impoverished Tohono O’odham Reservation for the first time, I stared at dilapidated trailer communities sprawling over the hillsides around junked cars and the stray dogs meandering through the streets. I wondered if I had made a wrong turn south and was back in Mexico.

Like the landscape that is indistinguishable on either side of the border, the concerns of American citizens on the Reservation mirrored those of the Tijuana deportees.

“There’s a virtual war between border patrol and drug smugglers happening on our tribal lands, and we’re caught in the middle of it,” said the pastor of a Baptist church.

In both countries, a sense of fear and concerns for the instability of the status quo permeated the words of border residents.

“I picked up a guy hitchhiking who I thought was from the Res,” a tribe member named Leon explained. “He was very quiet. Later, we were pulled over by Border Patrol and I found out he was an illegal immigrant. They interrogated me for hours. I’m lucky I didn’t go to jail.”

Incidents like these have left many tribal members fearful of the Border Patrol that is charged with the very difficult task of identifying illegal immigrants from O’odham Americans.

“My grandfather and I were pulled over by Border Patrol one day,” says Verlon Jose, Chairman of the Tohono O’odham Legislative Council, “and they asked us for our documents. My grandfather is deaf, so he made no action. I told them, ‘I’m sorry, he can’t hear you.’ And they said, ‘Yeah right, we’ve heard that one before, get out of the car.’”

Jose worries that many people who wield less influence than he won’t go to law enforcement when they need help because they fear harassment by the Border Patrol.

“I want to personally tell Secretary [of Homeland Security Michael] Chertoff what life on the southern districts of our Nation is like,” he said. “How you can hear gunshots and strangers passing by your house at night. How the homes of impoverished people are broken into and our beautiful tribal lands we’ve inhabited for five hundred years are covered in trash left by migrants.”

“These problems we’re experiencing on the Nation right now won’t go away until America stops wanting drugs and cheap labor,” he said.

THE BEAUTIFUL FRONTERA PODEROSA

The border is an obstacle as well as a bridge.

It creates an entirely unique Borderlands culture composed of diverse historical influences that transcend current international boundaries. In a schoolroom on the Tohono O’odham Nation, children who make up one of the last vestiges of Native culture in the United States sign their last names as Garcia or Ramirez and sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The border divides the same people and cultures it brings together. It’s a place where deportees in Tijuana make international phone calls to lovers, breathlessly whispering “Honey, I miss you.”

In recent years, the border has become more of a barrier and less of a bridge. It is the physical point where the developed and developing worlds meet and where joblessness, discrimination, violence, and crime can be seen in stark relief. These issues might be solved sooner if the two nations saw their proximity as an opportunity to work together instead of to build more barriers.

Moving through the Borderlands reveals what a powerful entity the border has become; a formality conceived at the end of a war that continues to foment war. As I observe the Mexican soldiers charged with battling drug cartels, just south of their US counterparts responsible for keeping immigrants out of a country that depends upon them, it is hard to remember that the border is a man-made creation, not a strange creature responsive only to violent forces.

The border is powerful. It changes those who cross from one side to the other, turning a hard working father into a beggar, a college student into a day laborer, a day laborer into a college student, an American into a Mexican, and vice versa. The definitions and the possibilities change, depending on which way you are going. Even as it blurs identities, the border itself is ephemeral and shape-shifting; it is at once a cold steel barrier separating families, a lazy river flowing along the Texas plains, and an invisible line hovering in the resplendence of the desert sun, unwavering in an afternoon breeze.

Levi Bridges wrote about the history and urban life of Ciudad Nezahualcóytl in the October 2007 issue of Inside México. He can be reached at ebbanflow@yahoo.com.

From wide-eyed tourist to citizen of the country

sue-ellen — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:19:02 -0700

There are decisive turning points in one's life. Often, you are unaware as it happens, but nothing from that time on will be the same. On a rainy July night in 1965, I deplaned at Mexico City Airport, not knowing what lay ahead in this unending sea of buildings and bright lights.

My self-imposed mission was to learn Spanish and assimilate into the culture. I'd been amply forewarned: others, supposedly better educated and wiser than I'd ever be, hadn't succeeded.

Who was I to think I could become part of a place so different from anything I'd ever known? I was no anthropologist, but a piano tuner and repairman. My experiences were limited to New York City, my Brooklyn origins obvious from the way I spoke. "I can" was the only answer I had. The feeling was in my gut.

Walking the streets, I thought maybe my detractors might be right. Everything looked strange and exotic, as if I had entered another dimension. A feeling of intense isolation crept over me: I had never been in a place where there was no chance of finding anything familiar.

There were two alternatives: returning to the airport and admitting failure, or moving forward into the unknown and seeing it through.

Since I was from a neighborhood in Brooklyn, I decided to look for similar areas in Mexico City. I rode back and forth on the trolley and got off in an area that seemed "typical," found a cheap restaurant (cocina económica) and ate. Spanish-English dictionary in hand, I looked up words, struck up conversations with customers--mostly about sports--and made my first friendships, some of which have lasted to this day.

By trip's end, I was conversant in the language, and the city had ceased to be a mystery. Its terrain and people were part of my life.

I returned the next two summers. With the ice broken, getting to know the country became much easier. My dictionary fell into disuse and I repeated my Mexico City experience in Veracruz, Oaxaca, and Chiapas. In San Cristóbal de las Casas, I met my future wife, Gloria Morales Paniagua, who had a lot to do with my decision to live in Mexico permanently after my third summer of traveling.

I moved in February 1968 after another sendoff from the skeptics: "You're as American as apple pie and that's all you'll ever be."

Well, it was true that living here was different from spending a few months. But the predicted disasters didn't happen.

My wife and I married six months after my arrival. I set up a piano tuning business in Mexico City and took to the road to reach customers in the southern states. Together, we raised a son.

Gradually, the country's folklore and happenings made their way into my state of being. My family celebrates the Day of the Dead, remembering our departed friends and relatives. We've been to many a quinceañera, dancing to harp music from Veracruz, marimba from Chiapas, and romantic popular songs.

I've tried to break the piñata during Noche Buena in vecindades, and I've celebrated Independence Night on September 15 around the country. I've grieved in bad times, and was part of the rescue effort during the 1985 earthquake.

April 9 of this year was the crowning moment: I became a proud citizen of this country. After feeling like part of the place for so long, it's now official! A good many years remain ahead of me, and what the future holds is anybody's guess. Sometimes I fear for Mexico's future, but I am confident the good will triumph over the bad.

Roberto Padow writes a monthly column, “Rinconcitos Mundiales,” in the newspaper Palestra in San Andrés Tuxtla, Veracruz. It can be read online at www.semanariopalestra.com. Padow can be reached by email at rinconmundo@hotmail.com.

Orfeo Quagliata: glass artist

sue-ellen — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:20:01 -0700

Orfeo Quagliata doesn’t simply blow glass.

In his hands, glassmaking requires new verbs: fuse, slump, boil, slice.

With these actions, he has invented a trinity of techniques he dubs “Jimiz Brainz,” “Cellz,” and “Sporz,” and which he uses to produce the hundreds of jewelry designs for which his studio in Naucalpan, Mexico City is best known, as well as bowls, glasses, and decorative pieces for the home.

He describes what he does as “the dumb glass technique. You put it in the oven—it’s just like cooking.”

But the effects are not easy to achieve. The studio is full of psychedelic glass plates with bright globules floating inside that look like, in the artist’s words, “boogers and brains.” He describes this “Jimiz Brainz” series as like peering inside rocker Jimi Hendrix’s cranium.

Quagliata achieves the effect by boiling different colors of glass together to “create a world trapped between the two sides of the glass—a lot like how Superman’s dad trapped the bad guys in a sheet of glass in Superman 2.”

He makes his “Cellz” by fusing together sheets of various colors and drilling out thick plugs of glass, which are then melted into big, striated rounds.

Workers gather up all the waste glass and heap them into molds to “slump” them (in the oven) into various forms.

Despite his passion for the medium, Orfeo Quagliata never fell head over heels for glass; the son of famous glass artist Narcissus Quagliata and grandson of Herta Jalkotzy, an award-winning jewelry designer, working with glass was just part of everyday life.

“I was the boy that would shave the lead,” he says, “at least until my mother found out!” Lead lends glass a sparkle, just one of various substances added to glass to change its properties.

His Austrian mother and Italian father met in Humboldt County, California, and Orfeo spent his early years living in classic hippie style at Project 1, an artist commune in San Francisco.

“I didn’t want to live in my father’s shadow,” he says. “But I thought I could give something back to glass. I have a ton of fun with it now.” He even lends a hand on his dad’s installations, like the recently completed 870-meter dome in the Central Metro Station in Taiwan, which took five years of work.

“We’re pretty much joined at the hip, as much as we might complain about it sometimes,” he says.

Orfeo has called Mexico home for nearly a decade. Although all his pieces are produced here, he sells almost everything abroad.

When he told one Mexican woman who was wearing his jewelry that it was made in Mexico, she accused him of piracy. She had bought the piece in New York City, at Henri Bendel on Fifth Avenue.

That attitude is slowly changing, Quagliata says. Mexico is already exporting architects and film directors, and he hopes design will be next.

“Someday Mexico will be a place where people come to buy design, not just craft,” says Quagliata.

To visit the studio in Naucalpan, call (55) 2451 7112 or go to www.phuzedesign.com for directions.

Thorny Robison is gone

sue-ellen — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:56:45 -0700

We grieve the loss of Thornton Robinson, fifteen-year resident of Oaxaca and good friend, who was snatched from us in an auto accident in Toluca in mid-May. Our hearts go out to his wife Jane, and their children Jean, Chris, and Amanda. Their loss, while incomparable, is nonetheless shared by scores of close friends; the staff of Casa Colonial, their bed and breakfast; the dozens of artisans whose works he and Jane promoted; the Oaxaca Lending Library which they strongly supported; the many charitable and cultural organizations in which they have been involved; and the entire expatriate community of his adopted city.

I could take the time (and space) to list his accomplishments, and all the wonderful things he did for so many people, but -- while pleased by having done them -- it would probably make Thorny uncomfortable. He didn’t do things to get his name on plaques or to build the “right” image, but rather because they seemed to him to be the right things to do. “Do”. That’s the key word. Thorny was not a talker (though he was a scholar), but rather a doer.

Right now, I can’t recall a single story about Thorny from our friendship, which spanned more than a decade, but I can tell you how it felt. It felt like being at home. In spite of our occasional (and sometimes heated) political disagreements, we were good to each other, and I never heard him utter a pejorative remark about anyone— except maybe George W. Bush.

I know that it is said that people are prone to forget the bad things about those who have died, and idealize their memories. I can only tell you I have done my best not to do that. Still, the overwhelming truth about Thorny Robinson is that he was a gentle, generous, caring person, the like of which we see all too rarely. Oaxaca will be poorer for his loss.

According to his wishes, Thorny is buried in the Panteón Generál, Oaxaca’s large municipal cemetery. Condolences can be sent to his family at oaxaca@casacolonial. com

José Sulaimán: gentle knockout

sue-ellen — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:30 -0700

Despite the fact that he's a Mexican celebrity and has spent thirty-three years as president of the World Boxing Council, where he’s sanctioned over one thousand world championship fights, José Sulaimán still cracks a fresh, simple smile at the slightest provocation.

His memories would fill several volumes, but he is not writing them down. He prefers to live one day at a time as head of an organization that boasts 164 member nations.

How did a gentle person--and gentleman --like Sulaimán become involved with pugilism’s largest and most influential sanctioning body? Since he was a child, he says he has loved boxing. He even became an amateur puncher in his native city of Valles, Tamaulipas, but when he got his nose and jaw busted in a couple of bouts, he retired.

Sulaimán comes from a notable family of Lebanese descent. Not surprisingly, his parents opposed his ambitions in the ring, so instead he became a boxing judge at age sixteen. He moved to Mexico City where he immediately got involved with the bustling boxing scene. In 1963, he helped found the World Boxing Council, a body created by eleven nations fed up with “the absolute monopoly” of the US National Boxing Association, which at the time controlled the sanctioning of world championship matches.

In 1975, Sulaimán, who makes his living manufacturing electronic gauges for labs and hospitals, became the WBC's fifth president. The first was a Brit who resigned within a week, followed by famous Mexican novelist Luis Spota. Spota, says Sulaimán, liked boxing but did not know much about organization. Justiniano Montano from the Philippines came next. After him, Sulaimán´s mentor and teacher Ramón Velázquez assumed the post. When Velázquez passed away, Sulaimán took over and that is really the beginning of the story.

"Velázquez was a great Mexican boxing man: most of what I know in boxing I learned from Mr. Velázquez," says Sulaiman.

The relevance of the WBC lies in its impressive history of championship fights, beginning with its glory days when it sanctioned the two controversial bouts between Cassius Clay (who would become Mohammed Ali) and Sonny Liston, up to the marquee matchups between Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather.

Between these extravaganzas, there have been fights in all divisions all over the world. For the record, Sulaimán always sits ringside. In Mexico City last June 17 he attended the Edgar Sosa- Takaishi Kunishige mini-flyweight world championship fight, which Sosa won in eight rounds.

But at his advanced age, which Don José won’t reveal but must be way over seventy, the question is whether he’s ready to throw in the towel.

“Well, maybe,” he says.

There will be another convention of the World Boxing Council next November when Sulaimán may or may not be re-elected.

“I have until then to think about it.”

An amazing ride

sue-ellen — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:34:01 -0700

General Humberto Mariles led Mexico’s equestrian team to Olympic glory in 1948. The Mexican team defeated supposedly superior European competitors, earning two golds, a silver, and a bronze.

But the path to the Olympic medals twisted with adventure, and the failure to follow a president’s command.

General Mariles and his riding team, members of the Mexican Army, trained to perfection in their military gear.

In 1935, they won gold and bronze medals in the Central American and Caribbean Games. Mariles prepared the team for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but in the end Mexico didn’t send them. His team won blue ribbons in 1939 at Madison Square Garden in New York and in several contests in South America. Their success continued through the 1940s, until it was time to get ready for the London games.

In early January 1948, at the Club Hípico Frances in Mexico City, Mariles met a sorrel-colored, one-eyed horse named “Arete” (earring). From the first ride, Mariles fell in love with the beast.

The team planned to participate in competitions all over Europe leading up to the Games, but in February, President Miguel Alemán summoned the general, telling him:

“You know, general, the tour is cancelled.”

“May I know why, Mister President?”

“Because you can’t win with those cart pulling horses and that one-eyed stallion.”

“But Señor Presidente…”

“That will be all, general.”

All the travel arrangements had been made. The team had the money to go and had been accepted to all the European competitions. In bold defiance of the Commander in Chief, Mariles and his team traveled to Galveston, Texas, and from there sailed to Italy.

In Rome, the Mexican ambassador met Mariles and his riders with a warrant to arrest them for disobeying military orders, squandering public funds, desertion, and embezzlement. Still, Mariles refused to return to Mexico. He warned his riders: “You too may go to jail so let’s win.” Their future may have been saved when Pope Pius XII accepted Mariles’ invitation to come watch the Mexicans ride the day after they arrived. The team finished third in the Concorso Ippico Internazionale. News of the success appeared to tame the wrath of President Alemán.

At the London Olympics, the team surprised everyone by winning bronze in the three-day “eventing” contest. Rider Raúl Uriza grabbed silver at the Grand Prix of Nations, and Mariles, riding the one-eyed “Arete,” took the gold. The Mexicans also took gold in the team jumping event.

As the medalists celebrated at the Preston Manor hotel, someone rushed up to Mariles.

“Go to the phone, quick, el Señor Presidente wants to talk to you.”

________________

With information from the 1990 edition of Mexican Olympic Medalists, authored by Ramón Márquez and Armando Satow.

A medalist’s mettle

sue-ellen — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:13:09 -0700

Daniel Aceves Villagrán has wrestling in his blood. He learned the sport from his father, legendary 1950s wrestler Bobby Bonales, and used all his knowledge, skill, and experience to win silver at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. “My trajectory is like that of many sports people. There are defeats and victories,” he says. As he tells his story, Aceves uses the word “perseverance” time and again. “I was a wrestler who was not born good, but was forged by training for battle and complete dedication. Thirty years ago when I began participating in Olympic wrestling, I inspired myself with the old Chinese proverb that says the true value of a man lies not in never falling, but in getting up every time he falls.”

His list of victories in international wrestling is impressive, and includes being World Youth Champion in 1983.

Aceves, however, resists the role of “hero from the past.” Since he retired from competition, he has worked to support Mexicans who have competed in the Olympic Games and to pass the older athletes’ experience on to rising stars in Mexican sports.

Three years after winning his Olympic medal, Aceves founded the Mexican Association of Olympic Medalists. He’s still president of that organization and also presides over the Olympic Contenders Association. Both are private, non-governmental organizations. His day job is as Director of corporate legal affairs for the government-sponsored National Professional Technical Education College (CONALEP).

Aceves worries that the Medalist’s Association is seen as a historical relic where the members are on exhibit, pleasant memories of past glories. “We don’t want to be a museum,” he says seriously.

Counseling young Olympians is a responsibility he and Raúl González (Los Angeles 1984, gold, 50 kilometer racewalk) assumed when they founded the Medalist’s Association in 1987. Aceves and the other medalists in his organization, like Carlos Mercenario (Barcelona 1992, silver, 50 kilometer racewalk) and Soraya Jiménez (Sydney 2000, gold, weightlifting) have been passing their experience on to the eighty-five competitors who will represent Mexico in Beijing this summer. They help prepare the athletes for what to expect on the ultimate world stage, telling them to endure, persevere, and hope for the best.

But some things have changed since he was cutting his teeth as an amateur athlete in Mexico in the 70s and 80s: “We have a better system today. There is a social consciousness about what Olympic sports are.”

He believes, however, that other parts of the Olympic experience transcend time, and his message to the upcoming competitors is clear:

“The most important thing in the life of any athlete is to nourish his or her vocation to make it to the Olympic Games. There are sports people who have won many glories but have not won a medal in the Olympic Games, and their careers are somewhat incomplete. When there is a medal, there is a vision of life, and that is something you never lose. I believe as a fact of life that if you are an Olympic medalist, you live and die differently”.

C.M. Mayo

sue-ellen — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 02:51:28 -0700

“The best literary translators are poets.” C.M. Mayo leans forward, her passion for her craft evident in her voice, her gestures. “Writing poetry forces you to focus on the details and the sounds of the words, the rhythm and meaning. It forces you to take out your microscope and look at your prose.”

The author of Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles Through Baja California, the Other Mexico and editor of Mexico: A Literary Companion, Mayo, a 20-year Mexico City resident, realized that there was a wealth of excellent but untranslated Mexican poetry, and began to do the translations herself. Her pursuit took on a life of its own as Tameme, a literary press devoted to publishing and promoting English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English literary translation of North American writers, particularly those whose work has not been previously translated.

Literary translation is an art, she says, a different animal from the rapid-fire interpreting that oils the gears of organizations like the United Nations.

“Some of the best literary translators don’t even speak the language that well. What you need is a good dictionary, access to a native speaker, and lots of patience.”

Mayo scoured the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia for the broadest possible pool of English translations of short fiction about Mexico, which she then pared down to the 24 pieces that appear in the literary companion.

“This book is about all of Mexico. It’s a portrait of Mexico seen through the eyes of its top literary writers. Not ‘These are the best writers in Mexico.’ It’s a different sociology.”

Catherine Mansell Mayo is the economist and former ITAM (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México) professor who penned a bestselling book on Mexico’s financial markets. As an investment banker at Banamex during the early 90s, Mayo was on the frontlines of Mexico’s move toward a more open economy.

Does she see a conflict between her career in economics, that most rational of sciences, and her current role in the world of literature?

“Economics is more literary than most people recognize, it involves a lot of storytelling. Economics is about people’s incentives, understanding why they do things, and that informs my writing.”

C.M. Mayo is in the process of completing a work of historical fiction (“Gone with the Wind, a la mexicana, she says”), set during the 1860s, when Austrian archduke Maximilian ruled Mexico. The book, an elaborate work of research which involved poring over stacks of historical documents in four languages (English, Spanish, French and German) is seven years in the making.

“What I do as an artist, I hope it makes money, but I don’t do it for the money. I believe there is something beyond the rational that tells you what to do and when to do it. What I do is a labor of love.”

To learn more about C.M. Mayo’s books, visit her website www.cmmayo.com. You can buy her books online in Mexico at Amate Books, www.amatebooks.com.

A "Trailing Spouse" figures out Mexico City

sue-ellen — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:58:45 -0800

"So you’re going to Mexico for a year? That’ll be fun. Do you have work lined up?”

“Oh, I’m sure something will come along. I’ll work for the Canadian Embassy or something.”

“How’s your Spanish?”

“Well, nonexistent really, but I’ll be immersed plus I already know French, so I’m sure I’ll pick it up no problem.”

It wasn’t quite that easy.

I didn’t come to Mexico of my own choosing, exactly. My wife Amie is a PhD student in Mexican history at the University of Arizona, and this past year she dedicated herself to archival research in the DF. Whether or not I would accompany her wasn’t much of a decision: we had spent one long year apart while she pursued her Master’s, and doing it again wasn’t a real option.

Though we arrived in Mexico City to a comfortable furnished apartment in the Zona Rosa, I experienced occasional bouts of pouty resentment during the first few weeks. My frustration was exacerbated by communication difficulties: despite knowing for years that this move was coming, I never bothered taking Spanish classes— nor had I planned anything useful to do with my time.

My peers back home in Toronto were all buying houses with backyards, having kids, and adopting all those routines that so many equate with growing up and making a success out of life. Meanwhile, here I was unemployed and living on a shoestring budget in Mexico City.

Luckily, my wife and I had a built-in support network. Other student researchers were always up for exploring the city with us, or just going out for a beer. This was important, as “trailing spouses” like me often face the risk of social isolation in an unfamiliar setting.

After that first doubt-ridden month, my Spanish started to improve, thanks to an excellent tutor who I was able to hire after landing some gainful employment, both as an English teacher and as a copyeditor at this magazine. Work colleagues broadened our social group, which meant fewer evenings spent gazing mindlessly at some bar-room TV while my wife and her colleagues droned on about grant applications and creepy archivists.

Phone conversations with friends back in Canada also helped. I like to think that I heard the occasional hint of envy in my friends’ voices as they listened from their nice houses, with their kids and their routines, to my tales of climbing thousand-year-old pyramids, dancing all night to Cuban salsa bands, and cheering on soccer teams with a hundred thousand other fans.

By the time our stay came to an end this past June, I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to leave. I had gotten to know the city from Azcapotzalco to Villa Coapa, and though it remained in turn captivating, frightening, and infuriating, it felt like home. It’s too early to tell, but the friendships I made there seem like they will last, and living there offered me some great opportunities and forced me to seize them. Whatever fleeting resentment I once felt towards my wife’s career for abducting us to Mexico City has been replaced by gratitude. Her work will bring us back often in the years to come.

Jonathan Jucker and Amie Kiddle lived in Mexico City from September 2007 to June 2008 while Amie researched Mexican-Latin American relations. Now back in Tucson, they are searching desperately for tacos al pastor.

Studying México

sue-ellen — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:01:33 -0800

Nearly three hundred thousand scholars have participated in the Fulbright program since its inception more than sixty years ago. Only about one third of these scholars originate from the United States; the rest come from countries all over the world, including Mexico. In fact, the Fulbright Program, which is run out of the US Department of State, operates in 155 countries, 55 of which are run in partnership with host governments. We interviewed five American Fulbright scholars whose fellowships brought them to Mexico. What became clear in our conversations with them was not only the amazing diversity of academic interest and creativity, but just how important the fellows´ interactions with their Mexican colleagues, friends, and acquaintances were to both their research and in-country experience. As Senator Fulbright suggested, the experience is not only academic: reason is often fueled by compassion and vice versa.

Pochos & Cholos: A man-on-the-street approach to attitudes toward assimilation

Adam Lewkowitz
• field of study: sociology
• degree: currently working toward MD
• project: Redefining Americanness: How the binational pocho identity affects Mexican assimilation in the United States
• where: Tijuana, Baja California, at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte,Mexico's premier institute of border studies
• time period: August 2006 to May 2007
• hometown: Phoenix, Arizona
• Spanish: adjusting from Chilean to Mexican Spanish.

* pocho: Term to describe USborn children of Mexican immigrants, but often highly derogatory in the American Southwest, meaning Mexicans who don’t teach their children Spanish or observe Mexican holidays, and who self-identify as American.
* cholo: Term -- often associated with gangs, drugs, and violence--for Mexican American who act in opposition to mainstream American culture. Stereotypically, cholos are identified by their baggy pants, white tank tops, thick silver chains, and tattoos.

How did you choose your topic?

My undergraduate thesis in Sociology examined how the pocho* and cholo* identities affect Mexican-American assimilation in the United States. My sample group of thirty participants stated that they would prefer that their children grow up to be neither pochos nor cholos. I was stunned to discover that if forced to choose, they would prefer unanimously that their children grow up to be gang-banging, tattooed cholos rather than monolingual English-speaking, entirely Americanized pochos. I wondered why there was such an anti-pocho attitude in the Mexican-American community and I wanted to determine if Mexican immigrants arrived on US soil with an anti-pocho prejudice or if it evolved in response to living in a hostile host society. So, my Fulbright project was born.

How does your project fit into the body of work on the subject?

Academics have proposed countless explanations for the Mexican-American population’s slow rates of assimilation into the American mainstream, but there are currently no published sociological studies analyzing how socially constructed identities like pochos and cholos affect this assimilation rate.

Describe your research methods.

I conducted interviews with a sample group of twenty-four people, each lasting between a half hour and an hour. Then, I typed up the transcripts, analyzed them for similarities and differences, and drew my conclusions. My weekly routine was not just research: I volunteered every Monday at La Casa YMCA de Menores Migrantes, which provides housing for newly repatriated teenagers, and helped them contact their families. On Wednesdays, I volunteered at El Hospital Infantil de las Californias, which provides care to the poorest families in northern Baja California. I love volunteering, and I learned so much about teenage migration and child healthcare. Volunteering twice a week also gave me access to communities that would not have been a part of my daily life otherwise.

Were there any particular moments that you considered to be turning points?

I really struggled to find interview subjects. People were wary. However, in January, after a long day of walking the streets of Tijuana that yielded not one single subject, I decided to treat myself to street tacos. As I was waiting, the man asked me why I was in Mexico, and as I explained my project he started piping in with his opinions, and agreed to be interviewed. That day, I learned that all I had to do was visit the small businesses lining the streets, buy something, and strike up conversations with the employees to get the interviews. Doing more than four interviews at a stretch was horrific for my poor stomach, but excellent for my research.

Did your hypothesis change during your time in Mexico?

Interestingly, my hypothesis did not change, but the evidenc e that supported it was not what I anticipated. I thought that the migratory histories of the participants—whether they had been born in the border region or southern Mexico—would determine their familiarity with and opinions of pochos. But what I found was that the migratory history of the participants proved to have no effect on the awareness of, and strong opinions ab out , pocho and cholo identities. Instead, the primary determinants proved to be the participants’ wealth, education, and documentation status.

If you were to do it again, what would you do differently?

I would dress more professionally. In hindsight, I was a 22-year-old American student traipsing into one of the most important Mexican institutions on border issues. I didn’t realize how it must have looked to the famous Mexican academics who worked there to have an American student—with unruly hair and wearing flipflops— in their midst. At the time, I was fresh out of college and didn’t even think of the image I was presenting when I rolled out of bed to go to work. What are you working on now? I jus t finished my first year at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. I have discovered that I am still able to use my sociology background while in medical school. I am doing a research project on the long-term effectiveness of a diabetes outreach program in Nogales, AZ.

Systemic Balance: Transpiration and cloud forest dynamics in Veracruz

Heidi Asbjornsen
• field of study: ecology
• degree: PhD
• project: Studying the Effects of Land Use Change on Water Resources in a Montane Cloud Forest Zone
• where: the highlands of Xalapa, Veracruz.
• university: Associate Professor at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa
• hometown: Southbury,Connecticut, USA
• Spanish: fluent

* Transpiration: the passage of water vapor from a living body (as of a plant) through a membrane or pores.

What was your hypothesis when you began your research?

My main hypothesis was that cloud forest deforestation will significantly alter the water balance by changing the amount of water lost from the ecosystem through plant transpiration*, as well as the amount of fog and cloud water captured by the forest canopy. I expected that these changes would eventually affect the amount and timing of stream-flow at the watershed scale.

How did you choose your topic?

I had already been working on this topic in Veracruz for a couple of years, and decided that continuing my research as a Fulbright Scholar would be a great opportunity to work more closely with my Mexican colleagues. I lived in Coatepec, Veracruz (near Xalapa) and my host institution was the Instituto de Ecología de Xalapa AC (INECOL).

How does your project fit into the body of work on related subjects?

Most past work on the ecohydrology of montane cloud forests has been conducted in very wet climatic zones (with rainfall exceeding 4000 mm annually) where there is no marked seasonality in rainfall. Additionally, very few studies have quantified plant transpiration in cloud forests. Our research is unique in being conducted in a relatively dry and seasonal cloud forest zone, and will provide estimates of how much water is being used, both by individual tree species and the entire ecosystem.

Describe some of the challenges you faced doing your research.

One of the greatest challenges was weather: heavy rains, lightning storms, and hurricane winds. Travel conditions—such as a dirt road that would get washed out —often made it difficult to get to our field site and carry out research.

What were the biggest surprises you encountered during your time in Mexico? How did you respond to them?

One of my greatest surprises were the findings of two of my collaborators on the project, Drs. Friso Holwerda and L.A. Sampurno Bruijnzeel, indicating that the amount of additional fog water captured by the cloud forest canopy in Central Veracruz—less than 5 percent of annual rainfall—was relatively small compared to other cloud forests worldwide (between 10-40 percent). This led us to consider the possibility that in the Veracruz seasonal cloud forests the indirect effects of fog on reducing plant transpiration may be more important for the ecosystem water balance than cloud water capture.

What were your “final” findings/conclusions in relation to your Fulbright grant?

My PhD student working on this project, Martin Gomez Cárdenas, found that transpiration rates of young, fast-growing species such as pines (used in reforestation) and alder (which becomes established after forest disturbance) are much greater than the transpiration rates of mature cloud forest species. This suggests that conversion of cloud forest to pine reforestation or young regenerating forest may increase total water use by the vegetation, at least in the short-term. However, we are still in the process of quantifying these effects on stream-flow at the watershed scale.

What was it like for you to be studying Mexico as a foreigner?

Mexicans with whom I interacted were extremely welcoming, open, and supportive, and really went out of their way to help me feel at home. There is a lot of interest about how forests and reforestations affect water supply and quality, because the Mexican government has several programs that pay communities and individual landowners to conserve forests and reforest degraded lands, with the goal of improving water resources. Unfortunately, science usually takes more time than a lot of people realize, so sometimes it was difficult for people to understand that we still don’t have all the answers.

What are you most proud of from your time in Mexico?

A conference I organized with Mexican colleagues on issues related to water, entitled “Linking Science and Policy for Enhancing Water Resource Management in Mexico,” was held at UNAM in March. Presenters talked about the social, policy, environmental, and economic aspects of water resources in Mexico. Attendees came from many different universities, government institutions, and NGOs in Mexico, so we had diverse perspectives and interesting discussions. More information about this conference can be found on the website www.aguaenmexico.org. We are hoping to organize similar conferences as part of the Fulbright program in the future.

Uncovering the guerrillas: How rural rebellion interrupted the telling of Mexico history

Alexander Aviña
• field of study: history
• degree: PhD student
• project: Studying the emergence of guerrilla groups in Mexico during the 1970s
• where: Mexico City/Guerrero
• university: University of Southern California, Los Angeles
• hometown: San Luis Obispo, California
• Spanish: fluent

How did you choose your topic?

In my last undergraduate year, I wrote a research paper on the infamous 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre. I learned that in the aftermath of that movement several armed groups emerged with th e int ent ion o f overthrowing the Mexican state. Aware that little research existed on those groups, combined with an interest in Mexican peasant movements (due to my family’s peasant origins in Michoacán, Mexico), I decided to research two peasant guerrilla groups that existed in Guerrero prior to the student massacre. They were The National Civic Revolutionary Association (ACNR) and Party of the Poor (PDLP).

What is your thesis?

I argue that violent state responses to (peaceful) popular demands for democracy and economic development provoked the emergence of revolutionary guerrilla movements. The majority of ACNR and PDLP guerrillas began their activism during the early 1960s. They sought to democratize state politics, reform the PRI, and rid Guerrero of localregional cacique strongmen that formed a nexus of political and socio-economic power. But, peaceful demonstrations were put down with a series of massacres. These massacres convinced a number of peasants, rural laborers, schoolteachers, and university students of the necessity for revolutionary change on a national scale.

How does your project fit into the work done on the subject?

In contrast to social science literature that represents the decades after 1940 as a stable “pax priísta” with unprecedented economic growth, my project proposes to explore an instance of rural rebellion that disrupts the traditional narration of post-1940 Mexican history. My work joins a small but growing scholarship that seeks to dismantle the myth of pax priísta and render visible the social movements that set the foundation for the end of PRI rule in 2000.

Describe your research methods.

To reconstruct the history of the ACNR and the PDLP, I drew extensively upon recently declassified intelligence and counter-insurgency documents; military records; manifestos, speeches, letters, and communiqués produced by the guerrillas; newspaper articles; testimonial literature; and oral histories. My methods included interviews with ex-guerrillas and their relatives.

Describe some of the challenges you faced doing your research.

Due to the sensitive nature of the recently declassified documents, certain archivists at the National Archive restricted my access to some documents using dubious, even illegal, arguments to justify their decision.

What were your conclusions?

I saw the breadth and extreme violence of methods used by the Mexican state to wipe out the ACNR and PDLP in 1970s Guerrero. Such violence was not only unconstitutional, it also savaged the social fabric of Guerrero’s communities—a phenomenon that poignantly lives on in the state. For instance, some 500- 1000 guerrerenses “disappeared” at the hands of the Mexican military remain unaccounted for. People continue to hope for the return of loved ones.

Were there any particular moments that you considered to be turning points for your research?

During the first week of April 2007, I was invited by a group of social activists on a weeklong bus tour from Mexico City to Chihuahua that retraced the histories of various guerrilla groups that emerged during the 1960s and 70s. I was able to converse with ex-guerrillas, and obtain crucial insights into the factors that provoked the rise of popular insurgent groups.

What was it like for you to be studying Mexico as a foreigner?

As a Mexican-American son of immigrant parents, with experiences in Mexico, I was often able to conceal my status as a foreigner. While riding in the back of a truck through the mountains of Chihuahua, a woman who participated in a 1970s guerrilla group openly disparaged the “mongrelized culture” of Mexican-Americans. After five or ten minutes she stopped, and I announced, “but I’m Mexican-American!” Laughter erupted and she apologized profusely. I think I was able to change her thinking.

What are you most proud of from your time in Mexico?

The amazing, lasting friendships I forged with Mexican social activists, former guerrillas, and several fellow Fulbrighters.

Patterns of Prevention Stopping the violence in Ciudad Juárez

Carliene S. Quist
• field of study: sociology
• degree: BA
• project: to evaluate the gender violence prevention programs run by the Casa Amiga Centro de Crisis
• where: Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua
• university: College of St. Benedict
• hometown: St. Cloud, MN
• Spanish: proficient, conversational

How did you choose your topic?

My Fulbright project flowed out of my undergraduate senior thesis, which looked at the femicide (high rates of female murders) in Ciudad Juárez. I had come across information about the Casa Amiga Centro de Crisis AC, a nonprofit community organization that offers free professional services for the prevention of gender violence. The Center provides psychological help, social work, and medical services, as well as community education programs including lectures, workshops, and children’s puppet theatre, all aimed at preventing violence. I contacted the internationally-respected director of Casa Amiga, Esther Chavez Cano, to propose a study, both quantitative and qualitative, of the consequences of prevention programs on the lives of participants.

Why is your project important?

National and especially international media picked up on the horrifying reality of femicide in Ciudad Juárez, which was in the midst of great economic, political, and social changes. Academic researchers began to investigate the ongoing gender violence in a systematic, scientific, multidisciplinary manner, resulting in a clearer understanding of the characteristics and locations of such violence. Scarce, however, was information about the prevention of violence, due in large part to the fact that prevention policies and programs lacked the structure and implementation strategies that would permit evaluation of their efficacy.

Were there any particular moments that you considered to be turning points in your research?

About a month into the project, a well-respected expert on femicide in Ciudad Juárez reviewed my research proposal. Her insightful question still rings in my ears: “And how long are you planning to work on this project? Twenty years?” I had grown my project into a lifetime of research about violence prevention that included NGOs, the government, and social change. She helped me narrow my focus back to the task at hand: Casa Amiga’s prevention services and their impact in the community.

Describe some of the challenges you faced doing your research.

I faced a number of challenges that resulted in significant changes to my work. For example, becoming familiar with the types of prevention programs at Casa Amiga took much longer than I expected. As I worked on developing a methodology, I came across some new obstacles. The prevention department experienced one hundred percent turnover at the beginning of 2008, and the health of the Executive Director declined. These factors resulted in a shift in priorities at Casa Amiga, and forced them to focus on stabilizing and strengthening their day-to-day administrative activities. About halfway through my time, I determined that pushing through with the research design that I proposed would be more of a burden than a benefit for Casa Amiga. However, I had skills that could help strengthen the organization, and during the last few months of the Fulbright I worked to analyze the organizational structures and processes at Casa Amiga, and proposed strategies to increase the efficiency of the delivery of services.

What were your “final” findings/conclusions in relation to your Fulbright grant?

Casa Amiga is at a critical juncture. After nine years of exponential growth, the center needs to expand its funding base. The founder and Executive Director, who has been the lifeblood of the organization, must foster leadership to ensure Casa Amiga’s success into the future. As Casa Amiga expands, both in Ciudad Juárez and as a model for new centers around Mexico, building evaluation tools into the program will be important to gauge their effectiveness in creating a healthier, safer community.

What were the biggest surprises you encountered during your time in Mexico? How did you respond to them?

A big “surprise,” if I can call it that, was feeling at home in a place so plagued by violence, organized crime, and a reputation that elicits fear in the minds of many Mexicans and people around the world. To paraphrase Esther Chavez Cano, by living in Juárez one realizes that violence is not everywhere, although it is a significant risk to many, and that violence and fear will not prevent many people from contributing positively to their community.

What future hopes do you have for Casa Amiga?

Ultimately, I would love for Casa Amiga to enter into a collaborative relationship with universities, both in Mexico and the United States, as a living laboratory for research in violence prevention.

Language Multiplicity: Safeguarding words before they’re lost

Michael Fillerup
• field of study: Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL)
• project: teacher training and program development.
• where: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores Antropologia Social (CIE SAS), Oaxaca City, Oaxaca
• when: August 2005 to May 2006
• current position: Director of Bilingual Education/ESL
for the Flagstaff Public Schools and part-time professor at Northern Arizona University
• Spanish: At first I understood maybe 60 percent of what was
being said. The elusive 40 percent usually determined whether or not I caught the bus, missed my plane, or bought a pig instead of a tamale.

What experience did you have with Mexico before coming?

In 1978 I finished my masters in Teaching English as a Second Language. I had work lined up in Mexico City, but at the last minute the job fell through, so I ended up taking a position on the Navajo Reservation. I always wondered about that detour that sent me north instead of south of the border.

What was your Fulbright project?

I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship as a lecturer, so the focus of my project was teacher training and program development. I have three primary areas of expertise in related fields: teacher training; program design; and curriculum/materials development in bilingual education, indigenous language education, and English as a second language (ESL) programs. Teacher training and program development in a culturally diverse state like Oaxaca seemed a natural fit for my skills and interests. Oaxaca has a very large indigenous population (38 percent) and lots of linguistic diversity: sixteen indigenous languages and hundreds of dialects. The concentration of indigenous people allowed me to have numerous conversations about language and culture. I talked with people from all walks of life—educators, taxi drivers, the woman in the bakery, the old man sweeping the street, the doctor. Wherever I traveled in the state of Oaxaca, everyone seemed to have an opinion about indigenous languages. I developed a series of seven workshops dealing with language teaching, language acquisition, program design, and materials development. However, my favorite workshop was one titled “Language Loss and Revitalization: Lessons from the Navajo, Warnings to Mexico.”

What did you learn about indigenous language preservation in Mexico?

Unlike in the US, indigenous languages in Mexico are hardly on the ropes. But in spite of the favorable numbers, Mexico should be on the alert. Here are some facts. Between 1950 and 2000, the percentage of monolingual speakers of indigenous languages dropped from 32.5 percent to 16.9 percent. The number of bilingual speakers (Spanish and their indigenous language) increased from 67.5 percent to 83.1 percent. On the positive side, this means more people are learning the national language, which can result in educational and employment opportunities. The statistics also suggest that indigenous parents and communities now have a choice: they can choose to speak the indigenous language, they can choose to speak the national language, or they can choose to speak both. It sounds very simplistic, but these choices will determine the ultimate survival of a language. If the parents don’t pass the language down to their children, within a generation it will be endangered; within two, it will be defunct. This is the sad lesson we learned in the US: indigenous language loss occurs quickly, almost stealthily.

Describe a challenge you faced in your work.

At my workshops hardly anyone spoke English, so I had to deliver my workshops in Spanish. It was a steep learning curve but exactly what I’d signed on for. I still miss that adrenaline rush when someone would ask me a question and I had absolutely no idea what they had said, and fifty pairs of eyes would be staring at me, anxiously waiting for my inspired response. Fortunately, my Spanish improved—fast.

What surprised you during your time in Mexico?

I have never seen a people who can do so much with so little. In the US we have lots of stuff—books, computers, technology. The Mexican people don’t have nearly as much. But they are amazingly resourceful with what they have. Nothing is thrown away; everything is used and re-used and re-re-used.

What advice would you give other researchers?

Get an introduction. My first few weeks I was going around like a Fuller Brush man trying to peddle my workshops. I guess word got out that this tall gringo was trying to get his foot in the door. Maggie Hug of COMEXUS called me from Mexico City and enlightened me: “We appreciate your initiative, but this is Mexico… you need an introduction.”

Will you continue to study indigenous languages in Mexico?

I will be retiring from the public school system in a year or two, after which I would like to pursue my research interests. I would love to return to Mexico and carry out formal research in the area of indigenous language preservation and be involved in the development of indigenous language preservation and revitalization programs.

Kathryn Blair

sue-ellen — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:17:31 -0800

Kathryn Skidmore Blair never met her husband’s mother. But if ever there has been a dutiful daughter-in-law, she is it.

Admittedly obsessed with her mother-inlaw’s story, she dug the details of Antonieta Rivas Mercado’s life out from the very back of the family closet, and spent over twenty years researching and writing her biography. At a ceremony in Bellas Artes on July 24, Blair watched as President Felipe Calderón called Rivas Mercado a national hero.

Her husband Donald’s family “had not talked about his mother in thirty years when I married him,” says Kathryn, 88. “It was taboo.”

Her book, In the Shadow of the Angel (Grupo Patria Cultural) was published in Spanish in 1995. The title makes reference to Antonieta’s father, who designed the most famous landmark in Mexico City, the Ángel de la Independencia on Reforma. Blair’s book chronicles the early 20th century life of a young woman who founded Mexico City’s symphony orchestra, opened an avant-garde theatre, promoted education through the arts, and was the de rigueur hostess among Mexico’s cultural elite.

She threw her support behind 1929 presidential candidate José Luis Vasconcelos, who was promising the vote to women. A divorced mother, Antonieta put her heart and her bank account on the line for Vasconcelos; he lost the presidency and rejected a romance with her. At 31, she was nearly broke, living in a boarding house in Bordeaux with son Donald, when she carried Vasconcelos’s pistol into Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral and took her own life.

“[Donald] felt as though I was writing a story about someone he didn’t really know,” says Kathryn, although she “really began to feel that I understood her.”

The lives of subject and author converge at points, though there is a sharp departure from the depression and despair that afflicted Antonieta.

Where her mother-in-law saw no way out, Kathryn recounts her life as a series of doors that led her down a path to Don, and to Antonieta. “When I think about the mess I could have made of my life at certain points, something always saved me,” she says.

She was born to American parents in Cuba and grew up in Mexico City. Her mother died when she was six, and her father, a director of the National Type & Paper Company, raised her until she left Mexico to study art history at UCLA .

After the war, Kathryn married and divorced. She was living in New Haven, Connecticut with her son, and had no intention of returning to Mexico: “divorcees didn’t have [their] own place in society.”

But an old friend coaxed her back to Mexico to open an interior decorating business. She met Don and fell for his quiet steadfastness, and they were married within six months. “In these curious, unfathomable, mysterious bits of destiny,” Kathryn says, “I think Don and I were meant to meet for me to write this story.”

Migrations South

catherine — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:18:16 -0800

We say Canada is God's country, but our long snowy winter is a cold tunnel from which everyone is looking for an escape route, many to Mexico. We try to plan our temporary exits carefully because for years they can only last a week or two: colonial cities or the beach? Culture, or just battery-charging hedonism? Canadian snowbirds strike out looking for a temporary defrost from which they will return sunburnt and starry-eyed, already planning the next one. That next one becomes longer and longer, until it settles into a migratory pattern, if not a full-on move "down there."

Geographically Mexico is an easy hop-skip-and-a-jump, but living here has been an adventure. Naomi and I have discovered a new country and a new language, a rich culture, and people who still practice courtesy and the art of social living. We have rediscovered the quality of "slow" and try to infuse our everyday life with appreciation of life on a human scale, at a human pace.

We live in a small town, San Miguel de Allende, a place that has charmed so many visitors so completely that they never left. They come for a few days and this maddening urge to nest overcomes them.

When we moved here we gravitated toward community work as "freelance volunteers," and then became more deeply engaged with the organizations that appealed to us (the library for me and the botanical garden for Naomi), eventually even geting involved with projects we didn't know much about (opera? I hated opera!). Now we are setting up a new organization that will help the nonprofit community with training seminars, conferences, fundraising support, and project coordination. There is personal satisfaction in giving back to the community where you live, but there is also a feeling of liberation that comes from doing volunteer work. It allows for creativity and passion; it gives a sense of identification with the place and its people; it gives meaning to one's life in a foreign land; and keeps boredom, the retiree's constant nightmare, at bay. People here, at least among those who get involved, have to try very hard to be bored.

While it is not Paris, London, or New York, we do appreciate the music, the plays, the lectures, and Mexico City, that fascinating magnet, just a few hours away. Mexico City, so feared yet so unknown, with its incredible museums and art galleries, archeological sites, and old world neighborhoods with top notch restaurants, and so many other little hidden treasures scattered over that huge metropolis.

Naomi and I have lived in the US, Canada, and Morocco (where I grew up), and have visited a number of countries in our search for our place "in the sun." Mexico has won us over with its strong dash of picante.

Ali Zerriffi served on the board of the library (bibliotecasma.com), and is currently on the board of Opera San Miguel (operasanmiguel.org) and The San Miguel Project (thesanmiguelproject.org). He and his wife Naomi work closely with the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and the University Of Texas Pan American to bring continuous education and academic exchange programs to San Miguel.

Naomi is a working member of the Board of El Charco del Ingenio, the local botanical garden (elcharco.org.mx).

RVs in paradise

catherine — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:55:35 -0800

1992: A tiny beach on the Sonora Coast, Mexico

We camped overnight in our VW Westphalia camper and woke up to the sound of waves lapping the shore ten meters away. Unfortunately, the van had sunk overnight and was belly deep in the sand. The tide was rising and there was no one around.

The kids were very young; Adam was about three and our daughter Dylan was still in diapers. My husband Bill grabbed a board and tried to dig us out while I scoured the beach with the kids looking for solid objects to put under the tires.

It didn't work. The VW was now in a three-foot-deep hole. While we were frantically trying to figure out what to do next, something magical happened: the turtles hatched.

Hundreds upon hundreds of tiny turtles suddenly emerged from the sand and started their trek to the water. It is a tenacious struggle to rise to the top of the sand and then walk a predator-ridden journey ten meters to the water. Our children waddled the beach amazed at nature and these tiny creatures.

Two kilometers down the road, we found a construction crew who pulled us out with a rusted marine chain and an old beat-up pickup just minutes before the VW was engulfed by the rising tide.

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2000: North Vancouver, Canada

We were working two jobs each. Besides owning a major government consulting business, Bill was elected to the North Vancouver City Council, and I to the North Vancouver School Board. Our lives were filled with meetings and a never-ending stream of nannies and babysitters. Weekends were spent at Home Depot and remodeling our heritage home. Adam and Dylan were shuffled from school to swimming lessons to soccer practice. We were socked in by the trappings of a successful Canadian lifestyle.

It seemed the only quality time we had as a family was on the six-to-eight week car vacations to Mexico that we began taking in 1990. We were fascinated with the differences between Mexico and Canada. We enjoyed the beaches and warm weather in the winters, the colonial cities and culture in the summers. Most of all, we liked the way Mexicans responded to our children. We were welcomed with open arms, as if part of the family. Family in Mexico is the most important thing in life.

We had snapshots of what our life could be: an album of family memories, from Chiapas to Baja, that tugged at us with the promise of a new life.

We can't pin down the exact day we decided to quit and sell our home and "stuff," but the idea first took hold when Bill's older bother Padraic died of a massive heart attack at 51. He didn't smoke or drink, and he worked out daily: he just went to bed one night feeling a bit off and never got up.

"Life is short" became our mantra, and we started fantasizing about selling everything and traveling as a family.

1997: Scammons Lagoon, Baja

We drove and drove through the Baja deserts, three kids in the back of the van complaining all the way. "There's no air conditioning." "Adam's pushing me." "When do we stop next?" "I'm hungry."

We turned up the radio to drown out the chatter. The desert felt therapeutic: hour after hour of sand, cactuses, and rock. Highway 1 down this amazing peninsula winds its way from the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Cortez, back and forth, back and forth, from the Pacific's trademark waves and deep blues to the turquoise waters of the Sea of Cortez.

We stopped one night in Guerrero Negro and took a panga boat to watch whales in Scammon's Lagoon. California Grey whales return annually to this spot every December to calve and raise their young before returning north up the coast in April. Dylan reached out to pet a mother whale that was as curious about us as we were about her.

2000: North Vancouver

I retired from the School Board and started an RV travel website to chronicle our journeys, provide a campground directory, and give advice to other adventurers. The website, ontheroadin.com, became the family hobby. We put up a huge 4x6 foot map of Mexico and stuck a pin on the spot of every campground we knew about. We planned trips to document and photograph each one.

Our life in North Vancouver was now all about Mexico.
July, 1998: Catemaco, Veracruz

The village of Catemaco is known for its brujas-witches. You can buy a magic potion here, have your palm read, or cast a spell on your enemy. It is taken fairly seriously by townsfolk and provides a small but consistent flock of tourists to this tiny lakeside town.

We explored the town and visited the quaint plaza. The following day we secured a map from the municipal offices and decided to take a day trip, looping down the road towards the Gulf of Mexico and then back. We estimated a five-hour journey.

As we drove, the road got worse and worse. At times it seemed we were driving over potholes linked by only the smallest bits of concrete. Then just gravel. The map showed a better road ahead so we kept going: our gas was low and we were concerned that we would run out if we turned around.

The road finally disappeared into a farmer's field. We showed the map to a passerby and he indicated that we should drive across the field towards what appeared to be construction. Indeed, a crew was working on what was to become a two-lane highway. We made our way around dump trucks and other heavy equipment for twenty minutes before arriving at the other end. The road that appeared was little more than a footpath. Driving slowly, we finally made it back to Catemaco.

When we returned to the municipal office and complained about the map, they told us that while there is no road there now, there will be soon.

2000: North Vancouver Canada

I approached the North Vancouver School Board with an idea for a course on RV Camping in Mexico. The five-hour course would cover everything from packing to safety concerns, from water issues to police and bribery. The School Board agreed and told me to expect about eight or ten students.

Over one hundred students signed up that first year, and we later held the course throughout BC, Alberta, Washington, and Oregon. The course evolved into a family show; Bill and I presented the material and the kids would tell anecdotes to liven it up.

July, 1999: Palenque

I didn't see it. I was avoiding a peacock at the RV park in Veracruz and made a quick turn. I heard a sharp sound that unmistakably meant I had scraped something.

"Mom," said Adam, "there's white stuff coming down from the ceiling." Upon examination I could see that I had pretty much wiped out the air conditioner on a low overhang.

Bill was in Canada working and I was with the kids researching RV parks in Mexico. "Dad's going to kill you," said Adam solemnly. "He liked that air conditioner just where it was."

I didn't know what else to do. I drove all the way to Palenque and thought about exactly how I would break the news. You can't buy RV parts in Mexico, and here we were in the dead of summer with no AC.

I drove into a mechanic's yard and they quickly assessed the damage. I am not sure where they found the parts, but they reconstructed the tiny metal pipes and completely fabricated the fan. The only thing they couldn't replace was the plastic cover. The price tag? $100 USD.

North Vancouver November 2002 Civic Elections

Bill told me that he wanted one last shot at life in Canada. He wanted to run for Mayor of our city, but knew he had only a slim chance against the incumbent. "If you lose," I told him, "we're moving to Mexico."

The race was close but Bill lost by 180 votes. When the final tally was in, Bill turned to me and said: "We didn't lose. We're going to Mexico."

2001: Chiapas

We were curious about an orphanage in Chiapas. Unusually, it had a campground, and we decided to explore it.

Of course the kids had other ideas. "Why do we want to go to an orphanage?" asked Adam. "That's boring." "We want to write a story," I said, adding that we would leave them there if there was any more complaining.

We arrived at the orphanage, Hogar Infantile, and were immediately led to a camping spot close to some buildings. We hooked up our electricity and water and got settled in. Soon children started to congregate outside our rig and invited our kids to come and play. They practiced their English and our kids practiced their Spanish.

Adam took out an American football and began throwing it to some of the older boys. Soon a number of them were tossing the ball back and forth and receiving instructions from Adam on how to grip it properly.

The girls were taken in hand by young Mexican girls who wanted to show them some pet animals. Later on Justine braided hair until her hands ached, with Dylan chatting alongside. Later that evening, from inside the RV, we watched our kids dance with the Mexican kids on the basketball court.

In the morning Adam sorted through his clothes and bedding. He left some of his prized possessions at the door just before we drove off. "They don't have much," he said.
June, 2003: North Vancouver

We had garage sale after garage sale as we prepared to move from a five-bedroom, three-bathroom house into a twenty-eight foot RV. The kids were left with a 14-inch TV and camping chairs. They didn't know what they were in for. Neither did we.

We sold the house, had parties, and said goodbye to colleagues and friends. They all thought we were crazy, but we knew we were more of a family on the road than we were sitting still. We enrolled the kids in online classes, purchased a large internet satellite dish for the RV, and were ready to go.

September 2001: Kohunlich

We weren't just travelling Mexico with two teenagers: we also traveled with our very large bearded collie CRASH. That is his name and it is spelled with all capitals. That is a great thing about RVing: you can travel with your pets.

We were driving the lonely highway from Chetumal to Campeche, a route that has one ancient Mayan site after another. At Kohunlich, we were the only vehicle in the parking lot. The attendant greeted us and invited us to take CRASH with us as we walked through the city and up and down the pyramids.

After an hour or so, the sky changed from light blue to dark grey. A sudden bolt of lightning struck, and thunder cracked in the air. We looked at each other and ran as the sky opened up and fat pellets of water pelted us.

We made it, laughing all the way to the RV, our wet T- shirts sticking to our bodies. CRASH huddled in a corner, terrified of the thunder.

October 2003: Baja to La Peñita

We were always falling in love with one part of the country or another. The kids would imitate our conversations.

"Oh Bill," Dylan would mock, "I just love this place. We could build something here."

We came to La Peñita by accident, literally. I was riding a motorcycle in Baja and was hit by a truck, suffering a concussion and losing much of my memory. I called my friend Carole Thacker, who operates the La Peñita RV Park, to chat and commiserate about my injuries. "I can hardly remember anything," I complained. "I'm feeling quite lost."

"Not to worry. Come here," replied Carole. "No one can remember anything here either. We're all retired!"

La Peñita is in the state of Nayarit, an hour's drive north of Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific Coast. La Peñita shares a corner of Jaltemba Bay with two other towns, Rincon de Guayabitos and Los Ayala. Both are Mexican-style tourist towns that are somehow more authentic than the American-style resort complexes of Cabo or Cancun. This is a retirement community, where folks in their mid-50's are considered young and dancing and partying is a lifestyle.

We came to recuperate and made it home. The area has near perfect weather eight months a year, and is near an international airport, good shopping, and health facilities. This small RV community, carved out of coastal jungle, is mainly made up of Canadians who drive down every year to join in the fun. Every year the Park opens on November 1 and closes six months later. All RV parks have rules: Rule Number 4 at La Peñita reads "It is mandatory to LAUGH OUT LOUD at least once per day."

2009: On the road again

We stayed at the RV Park for four years. Our kids were no longer small, and the RV was just too cramped to be fun anymore. They wanted a life that included other teenagers, not just 120 sets of grandparents. We rented a house in La Peñita, and sold the RV.

This summer Bill and I will venture south to Panama and explore Central America along the way. Good thing we kept the old VW Westphalia Van.

Dorothy and Bill Bell live in La Peñita, Mexico, with their son Adam (21) and daughter Dylan (18). Their daughter Justine and Mexican son-in-law Memo live in Ottawa. They left their former lives as municipal politicians and business owners for lives on the road in Mexico. They have brought hundreds of people down to their tiny corner of the country, and started an online newspaper for the area that is read by 51,000 people every week (jaltembasol.com). They have traveled all thirty-one Mexican states at least three times and say they couldn't have done it without their RV. Their only regret is that they didn't move to Mexico sooner.

Mexico to Canada for Work

catherine — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:17:55 -0800

Jesus Salazar confesses to knowing little about Canada, but this polite man with leathery skin and blackened hands, who shines shoes in a shady corner outside the Chamber of Deputies in Mexico City, wants to move there. In one of the ubiquitous tabloids that litter the country's shoe-shine stands-the ones notorious for photos of blood-soaked crime scenes and topless pin-up girls-he saw an ad about working in Canada and it piqued his curiosity.

Salazar's interest in Canada is economic. He used to make a decent livelihood driving a local bus, until the concession operator went bankrupt. Now, he shines about fifteen pairs of shoes daily for fifteen pesos each. Tips are scarce. "Four politicians will come by ... and maybe leave an extra five pesos between them," he says.

So, Salazar dreams of heading far north, where he figures, "The quality of life is so much better... a lot better than here."

He's hardly alone in expressing such sentiments. Mexican migration to Canada has surged in recent decades as people in this country-which has long bled citizens seeking opportunity in the United States-show increased interest in a place that is perceived to be both prosperous and welcoming to Latinos. As the US border becomes increasingly fortified and immigration reviews become more stringent, the interest grows even stronger.

The Canadian government has helped promote movement between the two countries by expanding its oft-lauded program for farm laborers and introducing another for unskilled workers designed to fill labor shortages in regions with (until recently) fast-growing economies. An estimated 17,000 temporary workers are expected to work in Canada this year through these programs, according to the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City. They have also eased the visa restrictions for students wishing to pursue studies in Canada. The overall numbers are still small compared to migration to the US, but over the past forty years, Mexican immigration to Canada has nearly doubled every decade. According to Statistics Canada, some 16,500 Mexicans moved to Canada between 2001 and 2006. Philippe de Varennes, Immigration Program Manager at the Canadian Embassy, estimates that 1,400 Mexicans will move to Canada in 2009 as permanent residents.

"Every year, we keep increasing our targets," he says.

Motives

Motives vary for going to Canada. De Varennes cites "push" factors for Mexicans, such as security and economic concerns at home, along with the "pull" of sponsoring relatives already living in Canada, who spread the word about their experiences.

"The more we have Mexicans in Canada ... the more they want to bring their families," he explains.

Others discover Canada through education: over the past ten years, Canada has become a fashionable destination for Mexican students wanting to learn English or French or pursue high school and university studies.

Miguel Cortines first went to Calgary through a student exchange sponsored by UNAM. A native of Cuautitlán, Estado de México, he was tired of the daily grind and insecurity of Mexico City, so he applied to emigrate to Calgary, where he works as a business consultant. "My shoes are always getting dirty," he says, joking about the winter weather, but over his nearly seven years in Calgary, "I've always felt comfortable here."

Making things even more comfortable is the influx of Spanish speakers into Alberta, drawn by the oil boom: Colombians fleeing instability at home, Venezuelan oil workers fired by the state petroleum company, and Mexicans accompanied by a spate of new Mexican businesses that provide a taste of home.

"You can find everything [Mexican] now," he says. "There's even a tortillería." About the only things he can't find are tamarind and chili candies for his children.

Temporary trips

Even with the growing number of skilled immigrants going to Canada-people who score well on a government points system that puts a premium on things like education and language abilities-most Mexicans go with shorter-term objectives, and sometimes in a less legal fashion. "Fito," a 24-year-old philosophy student in Xalapa, Veracruz, spent last summer picking apples, cherries, and tomatoes in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, despite traveling on a tourist visa. He declined to use his real name, but like many young Mexicans, he considers trips to Canada "the cool thing," and a good opportunity to pocket a little cash.

"Here in Mexico, the possibilities for a young person to make good money without being exploited are minimal," he said.

To avoid exploitation in Canada, Canadian and Mexican officials have been promoting a seasonal agricultural workers program since the mid-1970s. More recently, they added a new program for unskilled laborers. The agricultural workers are hired in Mexico through the Ministry of Labor, but receive Canadian salaries (usually the provincial minimum wage), housing, and social benefits. Only 200 campesinos went that first year, but the program has grown to the point that de Varennes says that 17,000 workers were expected to be hired in 2009.

"Everybody wins in the program," he says, explaining its enduring appeal for both governments and the roughly 80 percent of participants who return year after year.

Indeed, entire villages in Estado de México and Tlaxcala are now known for seasonal migration to Canada as opposed to the United States, according to UNAM professor Maria Teresa Gutierrez Haces. But she expresses concerns about the program, saying that while workers generally speak well of their experiences, upon deeper questioning problems surface, including denial of benefits, getting nickel-and-dimed by stingy employers, and culture clashes with the farmers, themselves often immigrants from Asian countries.

Chilly relations?

Other problems are also surfacing in the broader immigration relationship between Canada and Mexico that go beyond some allegations of abuses in the farm worker program. The number of Mexicans being denied entry into Canada has soared, according to Canadian Embassy officials. Border guards are putting Mexicans under tighter scrutiny as, over the past five years, Mexico has become Canada's primary source of refugee claimants. The Globe and Mail reported in October that 9,070 Mexican refugee claims were waiting to be dealt with. The claims were made for reasons that ranged from drug war persecution to alleged discrimination for homosexuality. The acceptance rate has been just 11 percent.

Jody Rosen Spearing, whose Guadalajara business Passportal helps send students and temporary workers to Canada, says that earlier this decade, "Maybe one in 50 would be turned back," but that number has skyrocketed. Nowadays, he declines to work with anyone that might raise a red flag with Canadian border officials-those perceived as having strong reasons to not return to Mexico. Rosen Spearing said that recent divorcés often encounter more problems at the border than students fresh out of university. Border officials, he adds, now routinely give his education clients visas for only the paid period of studies, as opposed to the six-month maximum previously the norm.

Scams have also surfaced with unscrupulous immigration advisors advertising "seminars" on immigrating to Canada-even though all of the information they dispense can be obtained from the Canadian Embassy free of charge. Some ads have even promised jobs at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games.

News of the increased scrutiny hasn't reached Jesus Salazar, the shoe shiner with Canadian dreams. And the opportunity still beckons. Some of his friends have gone to the United States, where he says, "The ‘migra' is always looking for Mexicans." In Canada, he says, "I'd be free as a bird."

David Agren wrote about US and Canadian politics among expats in Lake Chapala/Ajijic, Guadalajara in the September 2007 issue of Inside México. He is a reporter for The News, and can be reached at david.agren@gmail.com.

Stuart Graham

catherine — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:01:10 -0800

The sound of a Tosti aria booms from an open door at the Universidad Autónomo de Querétaro. Curious students peer in, looking for the source of the dramatic tenor voice.

Inside, Stuart Graham and Antonio Moreno Zúñiga duel with legato phrases. Graham, a tall redhead, pauses to give Zúñiga advice.

"Don't sing to the person you love!" says Graham, 42, a Canadian opera teacher. "Bring her to you!" To demonstrate, he leans back and sings softly.

Last year, Graham expanded his opera studio from Toronto to Querétaro, where he now works full-time. He trains five Mexican singers at a fraction of the cost he charges Canadians, and runs a summer opera program here. In a country with little opera education, Graham refines raw talent.

"People here think opera is this magical sound that comes out of someone." Graham seems to sing even when he's speaking: "They're taught arias, but they aren't taught why they exist. With the summer program, they're taught arias in the context of the story. They learn the process of putting together a sixty-minute show of life and death, blood and guts, and murder and love." He laughs and rocks back in his chair.

Zúñiga, 21, his star pupil, attended last summer's program for free, along with three other Mexican students. After a month of practice, they performed La Bohème and Così Fan Tutte with Canadian students who paid to attend the program. Zúñiga made his operatic debut-in the lead role of Rodolfo in La Bohème.

Graham says he wants to spotlight the large pool of talented Mexican singers, a result of "good genes, I guess," which he says grant many Mexican singers with rich, resonant instruments.

Teaching them, though, has tested his patience. With an opera performance certificate from McGill University in Montréal, Québec, Graham is prepared for advanced students, but he has had to teach remedial lessons in acting because Mexicans haven't been exposed to the theatrical side of opera. His method is to inspire students with his infectious passion.

"If I excite them, [in this] time of the Internet they can look up anything online," Graham says. "My students spend so much time on YouTube looking up artists, arias and excerpts. These students come in completely informed at their next lesson, and their learning curves are enormous. It's part of the culture, a very open-hearted culture. When they're excited, they move."

After a visit to Querétaro in 2004, Graham decided to move to Mexico, "out of purely selfish reasons. I said ‘I have to find a way to live here on a three-month paid vacation.'"

His vacation turned into a permanent relocation lasting eight months and counting. He developed the summer program in 2008 and also developed a one-to-two-week getaway package for Canadian singers who want to take lessons daily and immerse themselves in Mexican culture.

With his busy schedule, Graham doesn't have much time for his own performances, but after his years singing in Canada and Europe, he says he isn't struggling to establish a performance career.

"I'm too absorbed with my own curiosity with my art form," he says.

Visit Stuart Graham's opera studio online at atelier-s.org. Email him at atelier.s@sympatico.ca.

Nosey Parker goes to San Miguel

catherine — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 20:15:43 -0800

Who's Afraid of San Miguel?

This hard-boiled DF muckraker was maliciously gleeful on the way to San Miguel de Allende, determined to blow the lid off "Plaza Peytón" and expose its pristine poshiendas and Palm Springs gentility, its swinging spouses, liquid lunches and savage tans, brassy turquoise-encrusted Texans, and of course, the servants, alternately suffering and snickering at gringo folly. San Miguel denizen and traitress to her kind Patrice Wynne volunteered to play Virgil to my Dante and we hit Harry's Bar forthwith, immediately eyeballing Loi Geddes of Laguna Beach and German sister Marita Furman, two soignée blondes delicately pulling on tequila shots. Lamentably, their smarts about why we expats love Mexico interfered with my hatchet-job angle, and my search for additional provincial dilettantes was newly foiled by edgy, sexy mama Betty Lewis (with cutie-pie primogenitor Michael Turk visiting from San Fran), and Canadian-born bohemian Marcia Dworkin (hastily disavowing any relation to anti-porn party-pooper Andrea). Of course, there was palpable buzz when local celebrity hairdresser André Pascal came in for his Thursday aperitif-his costly coifs are considered a need rather than a luxury (and you can't argue the point looking at Loi and Marita)-but equally well-turned-out Diane Shields bragged her 'do costs a mere $25 pesos! Just before dinner, silver fox Michael Sudheer received me grandly (along with pooch Chula) in his spread, whose oriental exuberance rivals Barbara Hutton's Nipponese pile in Cuernavaca. Then it was on to a cocktail at Patrice's blindingly-hued, more-is-definitely-more casita overlooking downtown. Since guests assembled forwent the wonted chardonnays due to the unannounced arrival of a bottle of gin, I was sure I'd soon be shovelling copious party poop... But, no, the migueleños outflanked me yet again, with smart talk and worldly charm on the part of Kathleen Cummings, Silver Mangini, Suzanne Ludekens, Martin Darling, Maggie Sperling, and offshore secret bank accountholder Lois Dixon. San Miguel über-doyenne Barbara Porter held court on three party levels, and there was some grumbling about how Tony Cohan's On Mexican Time had expanded gringofication recently. But Cohan ex and world-renowned Mexican textile expert Masako Takahashi is clearly on the side of good and delightful to talk to as well. Other surprises? Well, talk of Anado McLauchlin and Richard Schultz's upcoming same-sex Wiccan nuptials in California was the last thing I expected to hear. And local wags can't stop talking about a well-known community fixture's falling out with the garden club à propos some marijuana brownies she served at a recent "native herbs" discussion. Some claim she was expelled; others say she quit. Though hand-wringing friends begged me to ignore the item-there's a reconciliation in the works-I say the San Miguel gardening public has a right to know!

Professional, Ahem, Hostess Exposed

Book parties are rarely as lively as the recent launch of Patricia Monge's new novel, Educán urbana (Ediciones Habitación 69), at Gandhi in Coyoacán the other night. But since the reading was from an entirely unexpurgated, latter-day Fanny Hill picaresque inspired by the author's own experience as an edecán-one of those knockout, glamazon hostesses-for-hire you ogle at Mexican corporate events...well, it brought a lot of issues to the fore. Among the throng were fellow edecán Claudia Ojeda, her cute boyfriend Édgar Morales, and Argentine artiste Carlos Angrigiani. Plus apparently, blue is now fun for the whole family: Patricia's dad didn't even blush, and Alexa Carughi got her seven-year-old daughter an autographed copy. If you read Spanish, it may be too hot to handle. If you don't, what better way to learn how to talk dirty?

Crêpe Suzette IED Defused at US Embassy

In these parlous times, rest assured the security crew at the US Embassy is leaving nothing to chance when it comes to legation safety. Vendors at an embassy craft fair, in line for their own exhaustive security shake-downs, were recently bumped from line by an incoming, code-orange-marmalade crêpe-making machine. Starting at approximately 8:40 am, the suspicious device, compatible with both sweet and savoury materiel, was dismantled and reassembled, poked, prodded, and otherwise warily eyed by a uniformed anti-terrorism detail. While officials concluded the weapon of mass confection harboured no al-Qaeda operatives, it was still blocking the checkpoint at 11.

Got a hot tip? Email nosey@insidemex.com.