I think it is time to end the Oaxacan stories -- I have a bunch more and will likely come back to them someday, but for the moment I would like to move on to other things. But first, a bit of business.
I had been very comfortable in my apartment in the old thick-walled stables with the French doors looking down on the gardens, and had hung my clothes in the closet and spread out my books and things that now had to be packed for the return home and the place took on that sad, disordered, end-of-trip look. Of course Poosey Gato, the cat, immediately took it all in and saw that I was just one more unreliable foreigner, and did not hide her contempt.
My hostess, the Countess, was also, for her own reasons, preparing to return to Mexico City, or perhaps to France; her affairs were at the moment unsettled.
We were both concerned about Poosey Gato. I left an endowment that would keep her in canned cat food for several months but the Countess was concerned that when she left the Mexican help would abuse the cat and chase it off, as they did not like cats, so she described a campaign she had been subtly pursuing. For a number of weeks, when chatting with the Mexicans who worked around the hacienda, she had been mentioning the interesting fact that the reason Americans had so much money is that they kept cats and cats were very good luck. Everyone knew that Americans were unreasonably fond of cats, and also seemed to have more money than they deserved, so it all made perfect sense.
And this is probably a good place to end my stories about Oaxaca.
At least for now.
Showing posts with label Oaxaca. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oaxaca. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Thursday, June 30, 2011
the green scorpion
I stayed in Oaxaca in a large old building that had been a stable back in the days when the property had been a working hacienda. The walls were heavily plastered so I was never clear whether they were stone or adobe, but the walls were thick and held the night’s coolness through the heat of the day and gave no alarm during the occasional earthquakes that trembled up the Valley. I had a fine, sunny apartment on the second floor, with tall French doors looking out over a garden and across the lawn to the old great house, and my hostess had a large, airy apartment downstairs that opened onto the garden, which was utterly charming, though sometimes creatures wandered in.
Hearing a commotion one afternoon in my hostess' quarters, I went downstairs to see what had happened.
She had found a scorpion on her dressing table. It was green.
She was upset, but pulled herself together.
“It is good luck to find a green scorpion on Friday,” she said, calming herself and putting the matter into perspective.
I am glad I recorded her words at the time; otherwise, I might not have trusted my memory.
In my journal I go on to remark that I would have thought it good luck any day you found a scorpion before it found you and, in any event, it was not Friday.
Hearing a commotion one afternoon in my hostess' quarters, I went downstairs to see what had happened.
She had found a scorpion on her dressing table. It was green.
She was upset, but pulled herself together.
“It is good luck to find a green scorpion on Friday,” she said, calming herself and putting the matter into perspective.
I am glad I recorded her words at the time; otherwise, I might not have trusted my memory.
In my journal I go on to remark that I would have thought it good luck any day you found a scorpion before it found you and, in any event, it was not Friday.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
bursts of Association & Digression
A well-known author of interesting books on many subjects visited Oaxaca about the same time I did and published his Journal of his time there, which was favorably reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement: “Mexico past and present emerges from these bursts of association and digression with only a few pages of hard history needed. Luís, an Oaxacan who has joined the party, explains that the legacy of colonialism is to blame for the extremes of wealth and poverty which unsettle all but the most blinkered visitor to the country. The hopeless squalor which so many Mexicans appear to accept as their lot has resulted from a loss of self-respect, a condition perpetuated by today’s corrupt officials who have assumed the role of the conquistadors.”
How fortunate that Luís happened by to supply some of that helpful hard history. This is probably the point at which I ought quote from Evelyn Waugh’s introduction to his book on Mexico, Robbery Under Law, recently re-issued under the less-inflammatory title Mexico: An Object Lesson:
“Let me, then, warn the reader that I was a Conservative when I went to Mexico and that everything I saw there strengthened my opinions.”
Waugh’s observation was that Mexico’s backwardness was a post-Independence phenomenon. Before Independence, Mexico was culturally and economically a leading nation of the hemisphere and, since that time, it had experimented always with the most modern political arrangements, though always of the continental-left variety, and it is these political experiments -- not some natural, indigenous backwardness or historical bad luck -- which had brought Mexico down to its present low estate. Hence, the Mexican “object lesson”.
But whether Waugh is right or not about Mexico, why does the United States never get to plead its legacy of colonialism, particularly as one of its most intractable problems is clearly traceable to colonialism: the importation of African slaves and the settling of a slave economy on a number of the original colonies, such that their union after Independence required the toleration of the institution even by those who found it abhorrent?
~~~~~
On a happier matter, in an installment of “Nova,” archæologists excavate cliff tombs in Chiapas and find evidence of infant sacrifice to Tlaloc, the rain god. The practice was known from historical records. The priest would buy a child to sacrifice from his parents, and if the child cried it was a good sign. We are reminded that we have to understand the Indians’ practices as they saw them, and cut them more slack than we would Thomas Jefferson.
And while we are still on Chiapas, a bit of Progressive Tourism that I caught on CBC. The Usual Suspects, young and earnest and politically correct, visit the Zapatistas in the forest of Chiapas. As they waited for permission to meet with the comandantes they were permitted to visit the Zapatista gift shop. When I was in Chiapas a few years before them, even the shops in town were selling Subcomandante Marcos dolls with their little black ski masks and rifles, as well as Marcos key chains and postcards of rifle-wielding Indians in ski masks. I can only imagine what a line of merchandise is now available.
The Indians were playing their usual mind games, though their young visitors were so innocent and earnest it seemed almost unfair. The young people anguished over everything; they feared that the Indians might be offended and refuse the money they had collected back home in Canada, but at length the Indians set them at ease on this point and gave them receipts in triplicate. A young woman in the group of possibly Maoist leanings recommended that they engage in constant self-criticism of their own motives.
~~~~~
I don't think Mexico is any more failed now than it has ever been, though there have been times when that wasn’t saying much. When I was in Oaxaca in the late ‘Nineties there was a demonstration every day at noon in the square in front of the city offices. Such stability as the country had seemed to come either from corruption so extensive and institutionalized that almost everyone got -- or thought they were getting -- something, or the profound, conservative inertia of the Indians who thought any day you weren't murdered was a good day. Even when the Indians are bestirred to get guns things don't go very far, as the revolt in Chiapas has been simmering for as long as anyone can remember and a knowledgeable fellow in Oaxaca told me this was simply the latest manifestation of the Cristeros uprising of the 1920s. The Caste War, the Indian revolt in the Yucatán, kept going from 1847 to 1901. Maybe this time it is worse, but I have been warned about applying gringo logic to these things.
How fortunate that Luís happened by to supply some of that helpful hard history. This is probably the point at which I ought quote from Evelyn Waugh’s introduction to his book on Mexico, Robbery Under Law, recently re-issued under the less-inflammatory title Mexico: An Object Lesson:
“Let me, then, warn the reader that I was a Conservative when I went to Mexico and that everything I saw there strengthened my opinions.”
Waugh’s observation was that Mexico’s backwardness was a post-Independence phenomenon. Before Independence, Mexico was culturally and economically a leading nation of the hemisphere and, since that time, it had experimented always with the most modern political arrangements, though always of the continental-left variety, and it is these political experiments -- not some natural, indigenous backwardness or historical bad luck -- which had brought Mexico down to its present low estate. Hence, the Mexican “object lesson”.
But whether Waugh is right or not about Mexico, why does the United States never get to plead its legacy of colonialism, particularly as one of its most intractable problems is clearly traceable to colonialism: the importation of African slaves and the settling of a slave economy on a number of the original colonies, such that their union after Independence required the toleration of the institution even by those who found it abhorrent?
~~~~~
On a happier matter, in an installment of “Nova,” archæologists excavate cliff tombs in Chiapas and find evidence of infant sacrifice to Tlaloc, the rain god. The practice was known from historical records. The priest would buy a child to sacrifice from his parents, and if the child cried it was a good sign. We are reminded that we have to understand the Indians’ practices as they saw them, and cut them more slack than we would Thomas Jefferson.
And while we are still on Chiapas, a bit of Progressive Tourism that I caught on CBC. The Usual Suspects, young and earnest and politically correct, visit the Zapatistas in the forest of Chiapas. As they waited for permission to meet with the comandantes they were permitted to visit the Zapatista gift shop. When I was in Chiapas a few years before them, even the shops in town were selling Subcomandante Marcos dolls with their little black ski masks and rifles, as well as Marcos key chains and postcards of rifle-wielding Indians in ski masks. I can only imagine what a line of merchandise is now available.
The Indians were playing their usual mind games, though their young visitors were so innocent and earnest it seemed almost unfair. The young people anguished over everything; they feared that the Indians might be offended and refuse the money they had collected back home in Canada, but at length the Indians set them at ease on this point and gave them receipts in triplicate. A young woman in the group of possibly Maoist leanings recommended that they engage in constant self-criticism of their own motives.
~~~~~
I don't think Mexico is any more failed now than it has ever been, though there have been times when that wasn’t saying much. When I was in Oaxaca in the late ‘Nineties there was a demonstration every day at noon in the square in front of the city offices. Such stability as the country had seemed to come either from corruption so extensive and institutionalized that almost everyone got -- or thought they were getting -- something, or the profound, conservative inertia of the Indians who thought any day you weren't murdered was a good day. Even when the Indians are bestirred to get guns things don't go very far, as the revolt in Chiapas has been simmering for as long as anyone can remember and a knowledgeable fellow in Oaxaca told me this was simply the latest manifestation of the Cristeros uprising of the 1920s. The Caste War, the Indian revolt in the Yucatán, kept going from 1847 to 1901. Maybe this time it is worse, but I have been warned about applying gringo logic to these things.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
an evening in the Zocalo
One evening I was invited by the resident gringos to go downtown for a movie and a bite to eat. I was aware that I had not been very sociable and, as this seemed an easy enough way to make amends, I tagged along.
The feature film was American, dubbed in Spanish with a robust, if limited, vocabulary that I hadn’t heard since I attended the eighth grade in New Mexico. There were two previews: an American film featuring elaborate and violent special effects and a Mexican film featuring adolescent breasts and buttocks. If either film had a plot they did not belabor it in the preview.
Afterward, we walked a few blocks over to the Zocalo for supper and it dawned on me that, though I had been to the square often, that this was the first time I had been there at night.
The Zocalo was crowded with people -- Indian and Mexican and tourist -- moving in and out of pools of light from the scattered street lamps and spilling out from the shops and restaurants. We took a table inside the arcade where stark, artificial light made everyone look sickly and unpleasant and the loud noise contained by the hard walls made conversation difficult.
Our fellow diners were scruffy-looking young Europeans and grim-looking Mexicans. There was a dwarf sitting at the next table. There were aged and crippled beggars who moved between the tables and a blind musician being led by a little boy. There was an old man so bent that he could not raise his head above his waist, walking with two broomhandle canes that made a loud click on the tile floor as he shuffled from one table to another, begging. A shy, bedraggled little girl sold small packets of Chiclets. She said she was five years old. A little boy, ten or eleven, standing by the table singing in a voice so soft I could hardly hear, and then asking to be paid.
I assume the food was good. I may not have noticed.
If I found myself downtown in the early evening I would sit a while on one of the cast iron benches in the Zocalo and watch families out for a stroll in the first coolness of the day and lights come on in the arcade and restaurants set up for the evening trade, but otherwise I did not go out again in the evening, but was happier to sit at home with my journal and write about what I had done or thought about that day, or planned to do the next, and watch the shadows creep across the garden below my balcony and wonder if the cat was staying out of trouble.
The feature film was American, dubbed in Spanish with a robust, if limited, vocabulary that I hadn’t heard since I attended the eighth grade in New Mexico. There were two previews: an American film featuring elaborate and violent special effects and a Mexican film featuring adolescent breasts and buttocks. If either film had a plot they did not belabor it in the preview.
Afterward, we walked a few blocks over to the Zocalo for supper and it dawned on me that, though I had been to the square often, that this was the first time I had been there at night.
The Zocalo was crowded with people -- Indian and Mexican and tourist -- moving in and out of pools of light from the scattered street lamps and spilling out from the shops and restaurants. We took a table inside the arcade where stark, artificial light made everyone look sickly and unpleasant and the loud noise contained by the hard walls made conversation difficult.
Our fellow diners were scruffy-looking young Europeans and grim-looking Mexicans. There was a dwarf sitting at the next table. There were aged and crippled beggars who moved between the tables and a blind musician being led by a little boy. There was an old man so bent that he could not raise his head above his waist, walking with two broomhandle canes that made a loud click on the tile floor as he shuffled from one table to another, begging. A shy, bedraggled little girl sold small packets of Chiclets. She said she was five years old. A little boy, ten or eleven, standing by the table singing in a voice so soft I could hardly hear, and then asking to be paid.
I assume the food was good. I may not have noticed.
If I found myself downtown in the early evening I would sit a while on one of the cast iron benches in the Zocalo and watch families out for a stroll in the first coolness of the day and lights come on in the arcade and restaurants set up for the evening trade, but otherwise I did not go out again in the evening, but was happier to sit at home with my journal and write about what I had done or thought about that day, or planned to do the next, and watch the shadows creep across the garden below my balcony and wonder if the cat was staying out of trouble.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Gringo logic
I had just arrived back in Oaxaca and my hostess had just demonstrated how amazingly one could improve even the blandest beer with a dash of mescal when she began telling me all that had happened since my last visit.
A prominent portrait artist had been kidnapped, but was later released without ransom, and it was not what you might think. He had been taken blindfolded to a large house and put into a room and treated quite courteously. He was shown a door in the room with an old-fashioned latch and told to look through the keyhole where he saw in the adjoining room a beautiful woman, undressed and facing away from him. He was told that the lady was the wife of a prominent individual and had for some time wanted him to paint her picture, but this had not been possible, and so she had arranged for him to be brought there to paint her portrait secretly, though only from the back and only by seeing her through the keyhole. He was supplied with paints and carried out this most unusual commission, whereupon he was paid his fee and returned blindfolded to his home.
I told her that the story sounded like a piece of Edwardian gentleman’s literature, but she insisted that it was so; that it had happened in Oaxaca and while this was not the official story everyone knew it was the case. And that I should not apply gringo logic to things that happen in Mexico. And to drive home this point, she began another story.
Everyone knew, she said, that a certain prominent politician was responsible for the murder of one of his opponents, but the body was never found. Then recently the police, acting on the advice of a bruja -- a witch -- had dug up the garden of the politician’s brother where they found a body, but it was not the body of the murdered political opponent, but of the bruja’s missing husband.
At this point someone came to the door and we were called off on other business and my hostess never had the opportunity to finish her story, other than to repeat that I should not try to apply gringo logic to things I found in Mexico.
A prominent portrait artist had been kidnapped, but was later released without ransom, and it was not what you might think. He had been taken blindfolded to a large house and put into a room and treated quite courteously. He was shown a door in the room with an old-fashioned latch and told to look through the keyhole where he saw in the adjoining room a beautiful woman, undressed and facing away from him. He was told that the lady was the wife of a prominent individual and had for some time wanted him to paint her picture, but this had not been possible, and so she had arranged for him to be brought there to paint her portrait secretly, though only from the back and only by seeing her through the keyhole. He was supplied with paints and carried out this most unusual commission, whereupon he was paid his fee and returned blindfolded to his home.
I told her that the story sounded like a piece of Edwardian gentleman’s literature, but she insisted that it was so; that it had happened in Oaxaca and while this was not the official story everyone knew it was the case. And that I should not apply gringo logic to things that happen in Mexico. And to drive home this point, she began another story.
Everyone knew, she said, that a certain prominent politician was responsible for the murder of one of his opponents, but the body was never found. Then recently the police, acting on the advice of a bruja -- a witch -- had dug up the garden of the politician’s brother where they found a body, but it was not the body of the murdered political opponent, but of the bruja’s missing husband.
At this point someone came to the door and we were called off on other business and my hostess never had the opportunity to finish her story, other than to repeat that I should not try to apply gringo logic to things I found in Mexico.
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