Through the Looking Glass

Landscapes

Patricio and I made our way to the Centro Histórico this cold afternoon in search of a book with old maps of Mexico, something that would document the known and changing landscape of the country. We parked at the far end of the Alameda, walking along its length to take in a photo exhibition of the Mexican Revolution. On this day in 1910, Francisco I. Madero called the nation to begin its Revolution, marking big changes in the political landscape, and in hopes of a better democracy.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador believes it to be a symbolically perfect day to begin his own fledgling government, purportedly in the name of a better democracy as well. Filling the Zócalo with thousands of people, he would take his oath as president of Mexico, in defiance of the officially recognized Felipe Calderón. We gathered some images in the chilly afternoon; for many, a double celebration of Mexican revolution. We'll see if the political landscape might at all change from here.

Crowds filling the Zócalo

Marching down past the Alameda

Arriving at Bellas Artes

Flags flying high

It's Just...I Don't Know

jus-tice: n. 1. The quality of being just; fairness.

2.a. The principle of moral rightness; equity.

2.b. Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.

3. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.

Tagging along with Patricio yesterday morning, I accompanied him to work so we could later descend on the American Embassy with a pocket full of pesos and the spirit of shopping at its artisan bazaar. We drove into Naucalpan and inched through traffic to the courthouse, parking the Jetta with its nose to the railroad tracks. Patricio crossed the narrow street and started his lawyerly morning inside marble-floored offices of the Palacio de Justicia, literally translated as the Palace of Justice.

I slipped the bookmark up the pages of my book and opened it for a morning of reading, but eventually gave in to the distraction of roosters prancing around the front of the car. Looking straight ahead, not ten yards from the municipal/state court was an extensive settlement of squatters. The railroad tracks being federal land, no longer in use and overgrown with grass, it's not hard to set up "home" along its length, the likelihood of getting thrown out fairly slim.

Justice, the word that then kept me from focusing on the ones in my book. A considerable lack of it seemed to be right in front of my face, in large part on the the government's side, but also on the part of the squatters. Taking advantage of a political loophole to stick it to the government that's handed them a raw deal makes the idea of "moral rightness" suddenly become extremely slippery.

Because playing with scraps along the railroad tracks, two brothers passed the time together. Then one after another came scuffling out of the same house, a little girl with her sweater on crooked and her older brother, naked as the day he was born. A baby, crawling toward the light, made it halfway out the door before his mother took him inside, swinging him up by a single, tiny arm. Perhaps his older brothers would go to school in the afternoon session. And maybe they wouldn't. I could hope.

Lawyers came and went, pulling on the jackets of their suits as they did their job for the day. A few feet from their cars, the roosters and chickens and baby chicks came and went. So did those kids. And justice? It's just...I don't know.

Primero Muerto que Rajado

I'm not impassioned about politics these days, I tell you. It only seems that way since I've been writing about it more often. And the fact that I'm going to write a bit more in no way means that I get a fiery little sparklet in my eyes when thinking of Mexico's present political situation. If you don't believe me, well, I'll be honest, I guess neither do I.

But I think that despite feeling worked up with questions, considerations and a wide range of doubts, a balance is possible, weighted with a good share of reason. Reasoning can be faulty, especially since self-interest can't help but press influence, and giving it a try can lead to devastating ideas. But it's healthy, and it's helpful, creating an open arena for improvement. This all sounds preachy, I know, but bear with me.

Because I see that one of the most unreasonable and harmful aspects of any culture, and specifically Mexico's, is fundamentally marked with a refusal to employ sound logic. It manifests itself in myriad ways, always linked to an unyielding, obstinate stance. This thing is machismo. And it seems to be the defining principle of López Obrador's new tack.

He has lost the election, and yet he will not abide by this decision of the federal court. By refusing to recognize Calderón as the nation's new leader, by promising unremitting resistance and an alternate, shadow government, he appears to hold fiercely to the most machista of mottoes: primero muerto que rajado, dead before backing down.

It is a mental posture that resists the power of reason, a declaration of assuredness that one is unerring, in the right. It is an exceedingly self-centered, ego-stroking stance, regardless of one's alleged intentions to sacrifice for the others' best interest.

I'll be interested to see what policies are devised in AMLO's alternate government. There may very well arise some potentially effective plans to make the lives of the needy less desperate. That is precisely what dynamic social organizations are for, especially when they ally themselves, if only to a small degree, with the internationally recognized powers that be.

But AMLO is revealing himself as a die hard, implacable macho. Conceding in the slightest to the government he believes is spurious would compromise his position, in spite of the heavy probability that his idea of rendering ungovernable Mexico City or the nation is not, to quote him, for the good of everyone.

His passion is understandable. His rallying of millions is remarkable. His commitment to better the lives of the poor is nothing less than commendable. But if you don't believe in him, well, neither do I. But even now, in my empassioned stance, I'd like to believe that I'm not like Obrador: I'm not primera muerta que rajada.

All's fair in Love and...Blogging

On Sunday morning, at breakfast with brothers and cousins and their kids in Cahuacán, talk of Fox's blocked annual address circulated around the kitchen. Having the PRD party as the subject of conversation inevitably meant opining about López Obrador and his plantón--the organized protest occupying the city center and along Reforma avenue. Blanca said, "¡Hay que ir!" We've got to go!, even though she confessed her suspicions that he's crazy. "He's paying almost twenty bucks a person! And with kiddie rides, shade, and entertainment, it'd be like getting paid to let the kids get babysat. Hay que ir, I tell you," she laughed.

As I work on forming my own opinions, I've done a lot of listening, reading and borrowing other people's words. It's impossible not to; it's the talk of the nation. And like Don Quixote's fat and faithful Sancho Panza, or Sheriff Montoya's wife in The Milagro Beanfield War, I've started using refranes--Spanish proverbs or aphorisms--for lack of my own words to say. Blanca may have been joking about the opportunistic opportunity to join the ranks of plantones, but hundreds of others sure aren't. I couldn't help but think to myself, "Un peso vale más que cien consejos," One peso is worth more than a hundred words of advice. Money talks, so to speak, and quite clearly.

Refranes, or dichos, are far from falling out of everyday speech--the spirit of Sancho Panza lives on. Hardly a day goes by in my Spanish-speaking world that one or maybe two don't come up. These commonly held truths and beliefs are everyone's heritage and a frequent verbal support. In my bedtime novel by lamplight last night, "A grandes males, grandes remedios" came up. "For big evils, big antidotes" it said. It began to think of misguided leaders, apart from the ones inhabiting the book.

One of those big evils happens to be Andres Manuel López Obrador's calling cause. It's the one that, when he's confronted by it, will also cause my father-in-law to say "Al perro más flaco se le cargan las pulgas," It's to the skinniest of dogs that all the fleas begin to flock. It's poverty, and by subsidizing through government programs like a beneficent father, AMLO claims claims to have the "big antidote" we'd all love to see.

But as I know all too well, it's so much easier said than done. "Del dicho al hecho hay gran trecho," indeed--there lies a great distance between what's said and what's done.

By touting a government in that "beneficent father" vein, AMLO sounds uncannily close to taking a PRI-ist point of view. And though his rants have been lately directed at the PAN, that old PRI party takes its share of his critique. Like the old refrán goes, "El comal le dijo a la olla, mira qué tiznado estás." In many respects, he seems no better than who he's deemed his foes; the griddle said to the pot, look how sullied with soot you are.

tremors

even after this morning, the only earthquake i've ever felt was a tiny tremor in acapulco during the summer of 2004. i'd say that fact is probably one of the bigger selling points for living in the state of mexico. our house isn't build on an old, shaky lake bed. we're firmly planted on solid, foothill soil.

i admit it: part of me is disappointed to have missed the pair of morning quakes. i equate the experience with a real mexico city initiation, like no-fee apartment hunting in new york. not having been jostled around, even a little bit, leaves me feeling something like a wannabe.

the other, larger part of me, though, is simply glad we're both safe. i can live without having my house rumbled around, and the tremors seemed to have cut off my cell phone reception, so i'll consider myself effected and just call it good.

but earthquakes aren't the only source of rumblings we've had around here. the political fault lines have also been shaking things up in the city, leaving a lot more immediately-felt effects in its wake. supporters of lópez obrador and his demand that the electoral votes be recounted "vote for vote, poll for poll" have camped out along reforma avenue, closing off sections of the thoroughfare completely and setting up virtual communities with barbershops, a movie screen, makeshift restaurants and dance halls. they're called plantones, planting themselves and their city center tents at the epicenter of continuous waves of discontent.

and the mountains can't keep us from feeling the tremors even up here in the state of mexico. when driving to amealco in the morning on tuesday, a group of obrador's party, the prd, had completely taken over the inter-state's tepotzotlán tollbooth. forcing the toll workers to abandon their stalls, they lined up along the lanes with flags and banners, waving travelers through for free.

it's a historic time for the country, much more memorable than the set of a.m. earthquakes. i feel, in some ways, fortunate to be here and to see these events firsthand. but the emotional investment comes with a great deal of frustration, since i find fault with a large part of the prd's modus operandi. a disillusioned candidate who sanctions illegal appropriation of federal installations (tollbooths, for example) isn't someone who can easily win my support. nor is someone who maneuvers his party's adherents to demand something that's outside the federal legal structure. if the judicial system can't--and consequently won't--comply with a demand to recount the votes of polls that were never officially contested, that non-compliance will be used by the party as another reason for complaint. if the recount of contested polls were to show significant discrepancies, then in the interest of upholding democratic ideals, the recount of every vote seems like a decent and reasonable request. i'd be surprised, however, if obrador were to concede defeat if any recount--partial or full--confirmed calderón as the president elect.

i believe in social justice, and in political resistance when it's for the greater good. perhaps obrador knows a lot about the former and is somehow in the right with the latter. i'm skeptical. but i know we'll have wait for the shock waves to pass, as always, depending on retrospect to see where all the upheaval leads. hopefully, it will eventually leave us all standing on more solid ground.

split and bridge

bridging the divide between june and july with two and a half weeks of vacation, patricio and i took the greening rain with us to el norte, watching and working with splits and smoothings, returning to find it all back home as well; the votes for a new president have the country in a split--one that may take much longer than another six year term to fix.

if only red wine vinegar would work for politics as it can when working to mend pottery. outside of abiquiu, at the foot of ghost ranch's cathedral-like cliffs, patricio and i sat at our table--aprons on and polishing stones at hand--and asked what to do about cracks in our clay. modeling our works after spanish colonial wares, our first forays into these traditional ceramics were attempts at replicating quarai incense boats. polished with smooth stones as they dried to leather-hard, the straight inner slabs became marked in the night by thin, barely perceptible, yet ominous lines. a cup filled with vinegar changed the fate of those four pieces. letting tiny drops of it fall along the cracks, the clay then foamed and we pushed it into place. the slim fissure was filled, the split disappeared. our hand-worked vessels withstood the firing's heat, because of a bittersweet ingredient and a careful, hopeful pressing in.

the future of mexico through its governing institutions, though out of vinegar's simple, amending reach, will still depend on hope and pressure, and it will be doubtlessly a stinging bittersweet. calderón may win a slim majority of the recent election's votes, but the majority of the nation did not choose him on a ballot. they voted for lópez obrador, or they voted for madrazo, or a small party candidate, or for no one at all. facing this rift, appearing overnight between the second and third of july, my hope is that those with power will use the sometimes acerbic solution in their decision-making for the country. it's half the slogan of the lópez obrador's campaign. it's por el bien de todos, "for the good of everyone."

(in the small part of my world where i have my own measure of power, and for the good of your viewing pleasure, i've patched together fifteen photos of our treasure of a summer vacation. click on the thumbnail, way down in the right hand column. then click on the thumbnails again. monoliths, petroglyphs, and painted dish included).

the same, only cheaper?

pharmacists, on the whole, deserve a great deal of credit. they're down with biochemistry, which should in itself be more than enough for the public's faithful admiration. but they also work hard, long hours on their feet, dealing with many doctors' chicken scratch prescriptions and a host of cranky, impatient, impertinent people. they can often be like saints, granting medical relief that's modern day miraculous, with little or no recognition. one of them is an uncle of mine. a few others are friends of my folks, and to one i owe my little toe's recovered health and happiness.

pharmacists here are hard workers, too, though cut a significant break in the prescription reading scene. patricio and i have cured everything from chronic indigestion to pesky constipation without ever stepping through a doctor's office door. truth be told, i'm not even sure what medications do require a physician's signature, since we haven't yet needed one at all. it's a good thing we're not into vicodin.

and there's a certain pharmacist here who also believes that he deserves a great deal of credit; he's been campaigning for it for close to a year. his name is victor gonzáles torres, but he may be best known as the mustachioed doctor simi, el doctor descuento, the country's most famous discount entrepreneur.

he created and owns a nation-wide pharmacy chain, with storefronts boasting the familiar name of farmacias similares. catering to the masses--those with little money--his pharmacies' shelves are stocked with generic, comparable, lower-priced drugs.

he doesn't occupy a place behind the counter. he's now the stuff of billboards and advertisements on t.v. but lately he hasn't been advertising his business, not in an explicit form, at least.

he's campaigning for the nation's presidency.

he says to his interviewers that "para servir a dios y al pueblo" (to serve god and the people) is not his campaign slogan, but rather a way of life. and an alternative, he believes, to the moral compass of politicians today.

he couldn't garner backing from any political party, so his status in the running is "independent, non-registered citizen candidate." his strategy has been to encourage potential voters to write his name in their ballot's blank space. the election process here allows a token trump card, of sorts. if a voter isn't satisfied with any of the registered candidates, she can write even her own name in the space provided for just such a purpose.

gonzáles torres almost certainly knows that a win doesn't await him on the night of july second. but he declares himself a valid alternative, as did his brother some years ago, running as the green party's candidate for president. even on the improbable chance that his blank space ballot votes outnumber those of a registered candidate's, constitutional law still wouldn't allow him to assume the presidency. for that, he'd need to be registered under the auspices of a party. patricio refers to him with a twinkle in his eye as the doctor inverosímil, playing with his nickname, calling him the "unlikely" or "implausible" doctor, which is not far at all from the mark.

some have referenced ross perot in gonzáles torres discussions. but for all their similarities and differences, it's difficult not to wonder why dr. simi is running. he offered to pay an independent party ten million dollars to promote him as its candidate, and in the wake of rejection, he's been spending it on himself. a person has a right to do with their money whatever they choose is best, but ten million dollars of one's funds, spent on a campaign that won't even secure him a spot in the debates, can easily make a person curious.

is it powerful publicity for his pharmacy chain? is it a stab at attaining a party's backing in the 2012 campaign? is it a strategy to destabilize the upcoming elections? is it an honest show of democratic belief and well-meaning altruistic goodwill? is it something he's doing, simply because he can? i don't claim to know an answer at all.

but he's managed to obtain the seemingly dedicated support of a number of registered voters. he's a pharmacist who's enjoying an enormous amount of credit, whether or not he's really down with the biochemistry thing.

say it with skin

we decorated the middle school with yellow ribbons and listened to bette midler's "from a distance," playing out through the loudspeakers of the assembly room/gym as we tried to sit quietly on the lacquered wood floor. that was my introduction into the workings of a protest, happening shortly after the beginnings of operation desert storm.

i've seen--and sometimes been a part of--groups with something to say since then. i remember miles of bicyclers riding north together on sixth avenue; we watched them from the roof garden in aida's chelsea apartment building, knowing they were protesting the republican national convention with an anti-bush ride. i also remember cacerolando--banging with spoons on gemma's pots and pans--in the tiny barcelona plaça de rius i taulet, in the wake of the bombings at madrid's atocha station.

mexico is known for being a city of protests, and yesterday, en route to the zócalo, i watched representatives of the movimiento de los 400 pueblos protest in their now famous way: nude, or in underwear, symbolic of being stripped of their rights. they come to mexico city from their farming villages in veracruz, crying out against a governor's illegal appropriation of land, and the disappearance or imprisonment of many of the movement's members. for years now they've marched, asking for justice, and advocating their cause with banners and fliers and their bare, brown skin.

some think it's pitiful. some think it's ingenious. some think it's futile and some think it's essential. i've heard it called laughable and courageous, an worn out posture and an admirable institution. maybe it's all of that; i don't know enough to say. what i did see yesterday was as peaceful, though, reminding me a little of the intent of yellow ribbons.

offend and defend

half time just began in germany a few minutes ago, with germany one goal ahead of costa rica in a stadium swelling with sound. the world cup tournament is on the t.v., and even patricio's friend and co-worker, marcos, is taking the day off to watch the beginnings of a full month of fútbol. a fellow expat, working as an engineer for a toluca-branch cement company, received a corporate announcement on thursday stating that "all employees were entitled to either A) have a TV installed at work with the games playing or B) stay home and watch the game...with their bosses' approval."

mexico will take to the field for the first time on sunday, facing the team from iran. the super bowl was surprisingly big here, but the world cup games are, literally, in a league all of their own. the game is back on, germany just scored another point, and the televisa announcers are exponentially multiplying the letter 'o', yelling out into an expanse of seconds the once three-lettered word "¡gooooool!" the quick back and forth, the offense and defense, are admittedly hightly contagious. now i'm the one who's yelling out loud, as costa rica cleanly kicked in their second goal of the game.

but the world cup isn't the only tournament toward a definitive win that's rife with offensive and defensive risk. the presidential race, right here at home, is a parallel that's hard to ignore. the boundaries were blurred in the last commercial break, with kikín fonseca--a poster boy for the national team--endorsing the candidate for the national action party (PAN), felipe calderón.

germany just drove in their fourth home team goal, determined to come out winning. the party of the democratic revolution (PRD), with its candidate as the other campaign front-runner, would love the same kind of success. andrés manuel lópez obrador is now kicking out a hit in hopes of hindering calderón's possibilities. calderón, in turn, is calling him a liar.

the race has been nerve-racking; in the past few months, the spots on the air have been marked by negative spin. it's like a fútbol game gone desperate and mean.

the elections are approaching just under a month away, and we'll then get to see who finally made the cut. with six out of ten registered voters unlikely to go to the polls, it seems that watching the world cup on t.v. rings truer to a nation than does politics-speak. both are a game of offense and defense; the former, it seems, feeling a lot less offensive.

in either case, what most of us hope is that mexico is the real winner.

for a roof

the snails are still scooting around in the back patio, taking to the tiles during the evening rains and nibbling on the carrot peels from yesterday's salad when the night takes over. this morning, we were greeted in the kitchen by a particularly fat one, plastered onto a window pane like patricio does sometimes, mashing his nose and puckered lips against the glass to send me a kiss from outside. i rounded them up this morning in the old clothes-scrubbing sink, and found that the population has increased to nine.  it seems that before long, we'll be sharing our space with a veritable little community of shell-dwelling citizens.

in a snailshell, their situation is this: they wanted a place to call home, a place where they could eat well and have room for baby snails, a place they could inhabit for free. they came without permission, their presence wasn't good for our garden, so we moved them to a place less edenic, though sufficient to satisfy their needs without jeopardizing what belonged to us in the first place, namely, our well-loved flowers.

it's a story that runs parallel to one we see when while driving toward the ranch in cahuacán, unfolding on a much larger, more complicated, human scale. the needs that initiate the story are largely the same. it's the end of the tale, however, that's different.

instead of snails, the protagonists are squatters. instead of our garden, the setting is a hill on the outskirts of town. instead of threatening the well-being of our plants, the conflict lies in a threat to private property and the surrounding environment. that's the deal, stated in simple terms. but a wider look at the circumstances show them to be so much more knotty and complex; i certainly don't claim to know the whole scope of the situation.

the term used for "squatter" here lends a bit more dignity to the person, if only in the imagery it calls to mind: paracaidista, or parachuter, does a better job in a single word of describing the risk involved, a descent more graceful than squatting to the ground, and the blink-of-an-eye quickness in which the people land and stake their claim. but the connotations remain similar: people either in need of space to live, or with a penchant for making a statement against the government, taking over someone else's land and setting up a place of their own, quickly, illegally and often permanently, and rarely welcomed by the surrounding community.

the poverty in this country creates a wide base of willing volunteers, and the law makes it much easier to pull off. in some cases it's become something like a business. in others, a squatting effort can become an entire city; ciudad nezahualcóyotl, now with a population equivalent to chicago's, began in the post world war II era as a series of shantytowns built over the dry lake bed of texcoco. a classic example of the "lost city," or ciudad perdida, it continued to grow, accommodating newcomers, crime and continued poverty. still a part of mexico city's suburban spread where even patricio treads nervously, it nevertheless inspires something like awe to see how far the area has come. literally and figuratively.

the shelters built by the paracaidistas here in nicolás romero aren't likely destined to develop into anything like ciudad neza, but in five to ten years, if things go as planned, they will be transformed into houses complete with running water and electricity.

the scenario often begins with a person experienced in establishing settlements on private property. recruiting folks who need a home or better conditions and the promise of owning their own place someday, the leader organizes a plan and the people to begin building shacks in an uninhabited expanse of land. the legal property owner is then placed in a precarious position: in order to remove the paracaidistas from his or her land, a lawsuit must be filed against every single squatter family. this can be very expensive, and it can take a very long time. if five years have passed and the property owner hasn't had the means to file suit, the paracaidistas can try proving legal possession of the land in a claim called mala fe, or bad faith. this entails finding someone to rig up a document stating that the property owner signed over the land. whether or not the document is true is another story, and sometimes it simply doesn't pan out. five more years can fix that, though. if the property owner still can't afford the legal process to reclaim the property, the squatters can file for ownership in buena fe, or good faith, and the government will almost always grant it, reasoning that the squatters have not displaced anyone and have peacefully inhabited the land for a decade. the government is then obligated to provide city services; water and sewer lines are installed, electricity is extended to the area, as well.

i'm going to rail on the system now. since the government is neither successful in providing adequate housing for its citizens nor in reevaluating the law, people are either forced into stealing property or tempted to do so because they might possibly get away with it. the government still pays for services after the determined set of years, but it is less expensive than investing in suitable housing solutions, because the actual cost of housing is shouldered by the squatters. since no architectural or urban planning goes into the establishment of these settlements, the consequences are easily imagined, especially given the fact that for at least five years, residents are living in the area without a sewage system. in terms of health and the environment, each settlement is a small disaster; the living conditions residents endure in order to own a small section of real estate one day are dreadful. and in the meantime, a legal property owner loses a parcel of previously undeveloped, uncontaminated land.   

the right to a suitable place to live is, i believe, a very basic one. the responsibility of a government to both protect and help provide for its citizens is, i also believe, fundamental. watching the paracaidista settlement grow on the edge of town is a glaring testament to the failure of those ideals' fulfillment. it's heartbreaking, on so many fronts. it's nothing near as simple as sheltering the snails, and i really wish it weren't so.