Mexico City: Friday, October 30, 1998

I explored the city on my own.  The central area is crowded, noisy, and dirty, but not ugly.  The buildings are not tall, and there are many built of stone or masonry with bas-relief designs.  More colors than in the U.S.  A newspaper stand or shoe-shine stall on every corner, and street-prepared food everywhere.  People selling fresh-squeezed juice, Indian handicrafts.  Beggars on the sidewalk.  A man sharpening knives on a grinding stone rigged up to a bicycle.  More churches than all Italy.  A European feeling of age and history. 

Green VW taxis are everywhere.  Mexico is a "Volkswagen republic," after all.   They drive down streets named "February 20th," "September 15th"--Dates when national heroes Carranza, Morelos, and Hidalgo-- led masses of poor people to fight and kill each other in the name of liberation, and not much changed after that.  Mexico had a second revolution one a century later, and still not much changed.  I thought about Jefferson's statement that you need a revolution every so often to ensure that justice happens.  Now the PRI, or "Institutional Revolutionary Party," has been in power for 70 years.  How can something be institutional and revolutionary, at the same time?

I found a little joint where they sold tamales and had my first corn experience.  I was in Mexico and all I wanted to eat was corn.  I wanted to avoid street food, thinking about the article I had read that said 60,000 people die each year from food poisoning in Mexico because of food they buy on the street.  I saw a man walking down the street with a big cart, bigger than a shopping cart, full of naked chicken bodies, painted with some kind of yellow solution.  A while later I saw him and a couple others chucking yellow chicken bodies into the back of a big truck, where they landed on a pile of crushed ice.

While eating my tamales I heard some drumming.  I went out into the street.  A dark Indian man was walking down the street beating a small drum with one hand and playing a flute with the other.  He was dressed in a colorful outfit with feathers, with a shiny breastplate and loincloth, as if he had just stepped out of an Aztec calendar.  His daughter was passing a cup for donations.  Kim later explained to me that sometimes people come out of the villages with these outfits on to raise a little money.  He was not working the tourists, however--just walking through a neighborhood. 

Walking down the street, I heard music everywhere, from people selling tapes, coming out of the stores, in the markets.  Salsa, nortena, cumbia.  You couldn't be in a poor mood with cumbia in the air.  You couldn't even be jet-lagged.  

By the hotel I heard what I thought was fiddling.  I followed the sound and found a man sitting on the sidewalk, holding an avocado leaf to his mouth.  He was blowing onto it just the right way and coming out with good music.  His intonation was fine and the music was almost a slow gypsy air. The man played with his left hand, because he had no right arm. 

Next to the cathedral are the Aztec ruins of the "Templo Mayor." these had been discovered some time in the last couple of decades, and there is a museum next to the ruins, explaining what they were.  I stood looking over the fence at the ruins and a young man came up offering to be my guide and show me around for 100 pesos, about $10.  I declined but as he did not have much business, we talked a while.  The guide told me that he had voted for Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas for mayor of Mexico City, and that he thinks they need another revolution.

A dozen or so young people were dressed up as Aztecs a few yards away, dancing to a drum.  They were wearing feathers and brightly colored clothes similar to those on the man I had seen earlier in the yellow-chicken neighborhood, only more extravagant.  The guide told me that they were practicing the Aztec religion (minus the sacrifices, I guess) which held that every 52 years major changes take place.  The Aztecs used to rebuild their temples every 52 years.  This year - 1998 - was the next increment of 52 years.  There was no indication of what was going to get rebuilt, but the Aztecs were collecting money from the tourists.

We looked into the cathedral, and found that it was full of green scaffolding, holding the whole place up.  There was a plumb bob about the size of a watermelon hanging down from the central dome.  The guide had told me the previous day that the whole building was sinking and there wasn't much they could do about it, and he didn't regret it.

In the Zocalo there was a large display of the damage from the ongoing disaster of Hurricane Mitch, which was hitting not only Honduras and Nicaragua, but also part of the Yucatan.  There was also a table where you could buy literature and buttons of the EZLN, the Zapatista army holding a low-key rebellion in Chiapas.

Campaign posters were all over town, because municipal elections were to happen around the country on November 8.  There is nothing like a world plastered with the faces of politicians to inspire cynicism about politics.  I saw a man reading a book about the EZLN, wearing a t-shirt advertising the PRD, or Revolutionary Democracy Party, the party of Cardenas.  Cardenas and his party were supposed to be better than the PR - a  change of blood, so to speak - but I also saw signs all over town protesting the repression of his Mexico City government, in power since 1996.

Patzcuaro: Sunday, October 31

We took a bus to west to Morelia, in the state of Michoacan.  The bus was the most comfortable I had ever ridden on, especially after Bosnia.  There's more legroom than on an airplane; they give you food and drinks, and there are little televisions that show movies.  We passed through tacky suburbs of Mexico City, then piney hills.

I read an article in the newspaper about how the police forces were confiscating stolen cars and then keeping them for themselves or selling them.

We found a hotel by the bus station, and then took a bus to Patzcuaro, a town about an hour away.  It was the weekend of the Day of the Dead, one of the most important holidays in Mexico, when people go to the cemetery and get in touch with their ancestors.  This fits in with Catholicism, but the related customs go back much further. 

Patzcuaro is on a large lake by the same name.  We went to a docking station on the lake, where there were a number of shops and restaurants.  We wanted to go to the island of Janitzio, where there was a special celebration, but there was a huge crowd waiting to get on the fast narrow boats that made the 20-minute trip.  We walked around and listened to roving bands of musicians playing local music, with guitars, fiddles, and a trumpet or two. 

When we found out that this was to be the last night of the festivities, we waited in line for an hour, and then took the boat over.  It was kind of an eerie ride in the dark, with pitch pots marking the route.  There were seventy-five or so people on board as we approached the brightly-lit island.  We arrived to find a little village built on a steep hill, with walkways winding up the hill, lined with food and crafts shops.  Women were cooking everywhere, selling deep fried fish, fruit, and pastries.  Kids with masks on their faces came up to us carrying pumpkin lanterns and held out their hands for a peso or two.  Mariachi and Nortena bands wandered around. 

We walked up the stone steps above the shore, passing old women and little girls tending their clay cookpots.  Many of the women and girls wore traditional clothing - pleated skirts, colorful blouses, and black shawls with blue stripes.  At the middle of the hill we found the cemetery under a cliff.  The ceremonies were not to start until midnight, but the cemetery was strewn with marigold petals.  We walked further up, above the cliff, where we discovered that we could watch a folkloric performance going on next to the cemetery.  A couple dozen youngsters were dancing, waving sticks in the air, turning, and clacking their sticks together.  There was a brass band, and every once in a while the saxophone would take a solo, backed up by the tuba.  It was a funny combination, especially since the timing and tuning was off, but it was homey.

Urupan: Wednesday, November 4

We traveled to Uruapan, to the West of Morelia.  Uruapan is a down-to-earth city of rough dusty streets with cheap cafes, bakeries, and clothing stores.  Our hotel was at the top of the sloped town, near a national park.  We walked down to the Zocalo, with the usual church on one side.  The streets surrounding the square were busy with hotels, people shopping, newspaper stands, and sidewalk food vendors.  At the bottom end of the Zocalo there was a narrow market several blocks long that went off perpendicular along one street. The street was covered by corrugated fiberglass, and densely crowded with stalls and shoppers. Here you could buy bulk beans, cassettes, shoes, baptism suits, underwear, peanuts, hammocks, and everything else. 

There was a man hunched down on the sidewalk selling nopale, a cactus.  He had a crowd of women gathered around him and he was exhorting them as to the natural health benefits of the vegetable.  He had pictures of anatomy on display and a lizard about a foot long on a leash.  He was holding forth with the seriousness and intensity of a preacher.  It was almost a call-and-response setup, with the seller asking rhetorical questions and the spectators nodding in affirmation.  We didn't buy any.

I read in the paper that 80% of international humanitarian aid donations that go through government agencies get stolen.

On the wall in a prominent place near the Zocalo was graffiti: "30 years after Tlatelolco: For the color of blood is not forgotten."  Tlatelolco was the square in Mexico City where government police massacred many students during protests in 1968 on the eve of the Olympics.

Tzararacua: Thursday, November 5

We walked in the large park right next to our hotel, many acres of unspoiled woods with a river running through it, broken up by about eight waterfalls, crossed by stone bridges, graced by white butterflies as big as your hand.  Banana trees lined the riverbanks, there was a food stand here and there, and at the end of the trail was a pond called Rodilla del Diablo, Devil's Knee.  For a small fee a young kid would recite the oral history of that pond and why it came to be called Devil's Knee. 

We took the bus out of town to Tzararacua, another wooded park and a fun word to say.  We passed several miles of outskirts before coming to a huge gorge surrounded by woods.  Pines, oaks, and avocado trees.  We walked down a short trail to a place where a huge waterfall cascaded over a cliff.  Beside the waterfall little springs were coming into the pond from several directions.  Other tourists were making the half-hour trek on horseback. 

We were about to walk back when a horsemonger in a flat straw hat asked if we'd been to Tzararacuita, an even more fun word to say than Tzararacua.  It's a smaller waterfall a little further off in the woods.  I walked off in that direction, thinking about bears and bandits.  I got a little turned around and ended up on top of a hill, from where I saw a dam off in the distance.  As I was coming back down I saw a large black animal coming towards me.  It turned out to be a young bull, who fortunately wasn't interested in me.  I found Tzararacuita, completely hidden in the woods, visited by swimming boys and a couple of young lovers, and it was worth the extra walk.

Guadalajara: Saturday, November 7

We traveled to the city of Guadalajara, Mexico's second biggest, in Jalisco, the state north of Michoacan.  Guadalajara has a mall running from the central square downhill about a kilometer, ending in a Market district.  On the mall there were many people, Indians and local hippies, selling crafts.  The Indians were selling beautiful beaded things - masks, bowls, and frogs.  The market at the bottom of the hill was as big as a covered stadium: three floors high, with clothes, areas for dining, leather, produce, shoes, and sporting goods.  Across the street there was a corner where Mariachi bands gathered and would play a song or several for a fee, to anyone who was sitting at the table of an outdoor restaurant.

During all this time I was enjoying the food of Mexico very much.  I wanted to eat anything made of corn, and Mexico is basically all made of corn.  "Chilaquiles" were a favorite discovery - basically chopped up corn tortillas sauteed in hot sauce with cheese melted on top.  My tolerance for spiciness increased and, amazingly, during the whole month I never had a stomach upset.  I also never ate street food or drank tap water.  I even kept my mouth shut while showering. 

Sunday, Nov. 8

The nationwide state and municipal elections took place today.  The PRI won two states, and the PRD one.  The friendly landlady at our posada told us that the PRI was bad, that they were "robbers."  Salinas, the last president, is on the lam in Ireland, evidently the only country that won't extradite him.  His brother Raul is in jail for embezzling millions.

Monday, November 9

We went to a neighborhood of Guadalajara called Tlaquepaque, worth going there for the name alone.  It used to be a suburb of the city, where rich people had their villas.  Now the suburb has been swallowed by the city and all those fine houses have been turned into shops and galleries.  It's still a very pleasant place to walk around and look at tinwork, embroidery, beaded masks, textiles, pottery, and carved furniture.  Many people are selling crafts on the streets, and nearby a man played on a marimba.

It's worth it to walk into the stores and galleries just to see the fine way the aristocrats used to live in the old days.  Every house has elaborate iron grillwork on the windows, a carved front door, a courtyard lined with colorful tilework, maybe a fountain in the middle.

Guanajuato: Tuesday Nov. 10

We took the bus east to the town of Guanajuato, in the state by the same name.  Guanajuato is the Indian name for "place of frogs."  It's a town built in a large ravine in the mountains.  In a way it's like Sarajevo, because you can walk from the center to a good view in a few minutes.  Most of the town is on a slant, except for the main street and about five squares.  The central square is a triangular park surrounded by restaurants, and there are always a few mariachi bands competing for the business of tourists and local diners. 

Guanajuato is a little like Venice to wander around, except that instead of canals there are tunnels for the traffic to go through.  Some of these tunnels were originally mineshafts, but now they keep the cars from dominating the city surface.

Guanajuato was the place where Hidalgo took over the armory during the revolution of 1810.  Later the Spaniards captured him and three other leaders and cut off their heads, mounted them on the four corners of the armory, and left them there until the end of the War of Independence, about four years later. 

We slept at the most pleasant posada, with an inner courtyard full of tropical plants, cacti and succulents, and songbirds.  We had an upstairs room, and could look down over the red railing onto the courtyard.

  Meanwhile Hurricane Mitch struck the Caribbean, making a huge mess in Honduras and Nicaragua, as well as part of the Yucatan.  Someone said, "Honduras doesn't exist anymore."  Over ten thousand were killed in the region, and in Honduras one fifth of the crops were wiped out. A woman from the USAID was expelled from Nicaragua for suggesting that foreign aid be channeled through NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to prevent theft.  In Nicaragua after the 1972 earthquake, Somoza got rich and Managua is still a vacant lot with a few buildings here and there.  Of course, nothing like that would happen today.

The Mexico City Times reported that 20% of the army is in the state of Chiapas (I have heard an even higher figure), where they are giving vaccinations, building roads, and providing medical services.  Their goal is to "win the hearts and minds of the people."  Where have I heard that phrase before?

Wednesday, Nov. 11

I walked up the hill above one side of Guanajuato, to where there is a statue of a man holding a torch, about to burn the armory, or Alhondiga.  The quote on the side of the statue is, "And there are other Alhondigas to be burned."  I think of Jefferson again.  But like Jefferson, the people who built this statue in the 1930s made sure that no further revolution could take place.

San Miguel de Allende: Thursday, Nov. 12

We took a day-trip to San Miguel de Allende, the famous hill town that has been made into an artist-colony for gringos.  It's a pretty little town with a good view, and nice shops  where everything is about twice the price of the rest of Mexico.  Entering the town, we noticed a smell and many damaged houses near the river.  It turned out there had been a flood a couple of months earlier, and not everything had been repaired yet. 

Kim and I sat on a bench in the Zocalo, and a woman came up and asked us if we spoke Spanish.  She asked Kim, "Do you know of any jobs washing clothes?"  She told us that the flood had wrecked the school, and that now the school administrators were asking the parents for money to fix it.  She said that two famous bullfighters had held a bullfight to raise money to donate to the town for repairs, but the money was stolen.  Money from the US for repairs was also stolen.  She put her hand in her pocket in a gesture of theft, and said, "It's hard for us when they..." There was no ending to the sentence.

The newspaper reported an EPR attack on a police station in the state of Guerrero.  The EPR is an insurrectionist guerrilla organization operating in six states, not related to the EZLN of Chiapas.  50 masked men destroyed the station.  Meanwhile in northern Mexico a family of 18 was massacred in an attack related to some kind of drug-dealer rivalry.

The newspaper also reported that torture and disappearances have been taking place in Guerrero and Chiapas, and that 6 journalists have turned up missing since May of 1997. 

Mexico City: Saturday, Nov 14

I returned to Mexico City.  In the afternoon I visited the Museo de las Culturas near the Zocalo, where I saw a brilliant display of Pre-Columbian artifacts. I learned of the main ethnographic regions of Pre-Columbian Mexico: the Mayan area, Oaxaca, the Gulf, the west coast, and the Altiplano, or high central area around Mexico City.  I saw the craftwork saved from the people of those times who worked in clay, wood, stone, shell.  They painted murals on their walls before the Spaniards came.  Their work was as rich as that of the Egyptians.  Their motives were of nature, fantasy, and human society.  Eagles and other birds, jaguars, vultures, frogs, monkeys, and dogs were shown.  Warriors, sacred rituals, calendars, and music were all included in the depictions of their contemporary life.

 There were exhibits from other parts of the world which I mostly ignored.  But by chance I walked into a room full of Bosnian artifacts, of better quality than you can see in Bosnia.  This was in the "Jugoslavia" section.

There was an exhibition of paintings by a Haitian artist as well.  These showed the history of Haiti from before the conquest.  One of them showed the explorers coming and killing natives in the name of their religion.  The caption read, "Christianity or Satanism?"

Sunday, Nov 15

This was my big day for museums.  I visited several Diego Rivera murals, including one at the Palacio Nacional on the Zocalo.  Here was a vast painting of overwhelming brightness, color and detail, primarily depicting the culture of the indigenous people as they lived before the conquest.  There were scenes of people harvesting, preparing food, weaving, building, enacting their sacred rituals.  I noticed faces I had seen on the streets of Mexico City.  Other scenes showed the arrival of the conquistadors and the upheaval of their violence.  The formation of Mexico with its revolutions and revolts was also displayed, with a portrait of Carlos Marx off to one side.  Rivera was definitely influenced by Marx and the Soviet revolution, and his work is somewhat stuck in that historical period, giving it a kind of quaintness.  But it is still a powerful "people's" version of history not found in the textbooks and, as such, I find it a bit odd that such a conservative government would continue to allow it to be shown.  Perhaps this is the Mexican government's own version of cooptation.  The "revolution" continues as a mythologized institutional form, completely unrelated to the needs of ordinary Mexicans.

For a little break from museums I went over to the Mercado de Merced, on the West side of Mexico City.  This is a neighborhood market supposedly going back to Aztec times, and it is too vast to comprehend except from a helicopter.  Approaching the neighborhood I walked along a divided street with people selling all kinds of goods on the sidewalk, their wares laid out on tarps.  Plump young prostitutes leaned idly against the chain-link fence.  Suddenly the vendors started packing up their goods and scooting off in every direction; the police were coming.  The prostitutes didn't stir.  Mexican free enterprise has a minor twist on the U.S. version.

Across the street was the entrance to the "mercado dulce," or sweets market.  Here were sold marshmallows, tamarind paste, sesame candy, millet candy, candied fruit, lollipops, and hundreds of kinds of colorful candy that I had never seen before.  Probably the entire 1970 Cuban sugar harvest was needed for this haul.  There was gelatinized fruit with bees swarming around it.  I wondered how all the bees of the entire Altiplano found this one spot in teeming Mexico City. 

 In the surrounding markets everything I have seen in previous markets was for sale, plus Christmas decorations, Cheerios in bulk, juice, water, toys, pinatas, cigarettes, juice that you could buy in a plastic bag with a straw.  A loudspeaker was advertising cures to all kinds of diseases.  Someone sold bulk popcorn in a barrel, and people were walking by and dipping a hand in to sample it.  Probably a good way to get one of those diseases advertised on the loudspeaker. 

 To top off the day I visited the Anthropology Museum, a world-class museum as big as the Met in NY.  It's part of what makes Mexico DF a world city that one must hold their nose and visit for at least a couple of days on the way to and from somewhere.  I should have gone to the museum first thing in the morning, but this was nice too.  For a couple of hours I wandered through sections displaying the ethnography of each region of Mexico in great detail.  There are some artifacts brought in from nearby ruins for safekeeping, some of the better examples, which make you want to go to those ruins soon. 

Monday, Nov 16

I took a bus to Teotihuacan, the ancient ruins of pre-Aztec people who built this major city starting in 200 BC, which thrived until around 700 AD.   They built the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon, the first one being the largest pre-Columbian structure in Mesoamerica.  The city was laid out in an orderly way with a long boulevard running a few kilometers north and south, with the Pyramid of the Moon at the north end, the Pyramid of the Sun in the middle, and the Citadel, the sacred center, at the south.  The boulevard was lined with smaller pyramids.  Informational signs were in English, Spanish, and Nahuatl.  One sign told me that there were 260 sacrifices buried under the citadel.  This reminded me of legends of bridges throughout the Balkans that had been built with a sacrifice buried inside them, usually the wife of one of the builders, in order to ensure the stability of the bridge.

Oaxaca: Tuesday, Nov 17

I took a hilly bus ride to Oaxaca, passing dry canyons and pine forests.  Kim has been living here.  She showed me around the Zocalo bounded by shops, restaurants, and a market.  Kim showed me her favorite food places, where to shop, and where to do e-mail.  We walked by the covered market below the Zocalo, and checked out the chocolate factories.  Almost as amazing was the Church of Santo Domingo, the main cathedral located near my pension, which was filled with more gold than I had ever seen in one place.

 In the evening I sat at one of the outdoor cafes enjoying a sidewalk marimba band.  Four men were playing on two marimbas, with each man holding two mallets in each hand.  They were accompanied by a conga player and a trap set.  They wore black pants and candy-striped shirts, and played a more organic version of lounge-lizard music which, if polished up and de-souled would have fit well in Las Vegas.  The leader wore a ducktail and dark glasses.  They played a gypsy song, then Girl from Ipanema, a lot of show tunes, and when some Canadian gringos asked them to play Mack the Knife, they played that too.  A plump Mexican couple danced joyfully in the street to a slow tune.  An Indian woman came by with a basket of flowers on her head, hitting up all the young couples.  "Zocalo boys," as Kim calls them, hustled the gringo girls. 

While in Mexico I noticed grassroots political activity nearly everywhere: demonstrations, flyers and graffiti on the walls, sit-ins, marches.  In Oaxaca there were sit-ins at the municipal building on one side of the square for most of the week that I was there.  People sat there all day with huge banners protesting corruption of the government, illegal sale of property, and political arrests.  Sometimes folk music blared from a sound truck.  At night the people lay down on thin straw mats and went to sleep on the stone pavement.

One group of protesters was from the town Loxicha.  Their leaflet read thus: "The families of political prisoners from the region of Loxicha are holding a protest sit-in to demand the freedom of 98 political prisoners who were arrested unjustly, and who are located in various prisons…We demand justice for more than 15 assassinations committed by the police, paramilitary groups, and gunmen in this area. These police and paramilitary groups are sowing terror in our communities by arrest, torture, assassinations, and disappearances.  They accuse our indigenous people falsely of belonging to the People's Revolutionary Army E.P.R., and are concocting false charges against us such as conspiracy, sabotage, rebellion.  These are all vile fabrications by the government and the caciques (big landowners) in order to justify the arrest of our people…"

"Free all political prisoners in the Loxicha region immediately!
Down with the militarization of the state and our communities!
Down with violations of the rights of the indigenous peoples!
Army out of Loxicha!"

Wednesday, Nov. 18

In the evening I listened to my marimba band again.  A woman wearing the bright red clothing of the Trique tribe sold homespun shirts.  Gringos sat drinking, having their shoes shined, taking photos of each other. 

I sat with some Canadian gringos.  They said, "We don't want our son to come here.  He smokes pot.  The police will plant some marijuana on him, accuse him of smuggling, and then charge him a $300 fine.

Friday, Nov. 20

There was a big parade through the center of town, commemorating the 1911 revolution.  I waited in the sun for a couple of hours for it to start, and by that time I had a six-year old kid on my shoulders, several more in front of me, and their mothers behind me.  I had hoped for a folkloric exhibition, but instead watched groups from the hiking club, the soccer club, the tumblers, and the baseball players walk by.  A skating group tried to negotiate the cobblestones.   Music was provided by loudspeakers carried by cars leading each group.  A group of cheerleaders, young girls not really built to leave the ground, cartwheeled.  Their music was "La Cucaracha," which goes, "The cockroach, the cockroach, he can't walk now, because he doesn't have, because he lacks, marijuana to smoke."  I wonder if the cockroach gets a $300 fine, or is that only for gringos?

Some boys and girls with toy guns dressed up as Zapatistas walked by.  As if this is a story from before our grandparents time. Meanwhile real guerrillas are in the jungle in Chiapas, with real guns. 

Mexico is cognitive dissonance.  The PRI steals land and kills peasants, but at their campaign tables they sell buttons of Che and even of the EZLN's subcomandante Marcos.

Sunday, Nov 22.

I visited Monte Alban, the ancient Zapotec ruins in the hills just above Oaxaca.  The Zapotecs are the largest tribe of Indians around the state of Oaxaca.  They still speak the ancient language.  In the classical period they built a large and imposing city with pyramids arranged around a central courtyard.  Some of these pyramids are visible from within Oaxaca.  The city is fairly well preserved, including some stone carvings. 

On the bus back from Monte Alban, I made friends with a couple of young girls who invited themselves to sit next to me.  They were Norma, 9, and Cristina, 11.  They told me they had been up at the ruins "asking people for money for their school books," but no one had given them anything.  In Mexico, as in many other Latin American countries, families have to buy their children's textbooks.

I asked Norma and Cristina if they lived with their parents.  They told me that their father had killed their mother and that now he was in jail.  They now live at their grandparents' with a 2-year-old sister.   They told me this in a matter-of-fact way, and in another minute were joking and smiling again.

Back in town I walked over to a small museum that had advertised an exhibit on Kosovo.  I could hardly believe that such an exhibit would turn up in faraway Oaxaca.  In fact, it was a tiny exhibit, the size of half a sheet of plywood.  But still, the textiles shown were of excellent quality.  Not only that, there was a completely up-to-date and accurate explanation of what was going on in Kosovo, even mentioning the massacre in Donje Obrinje that had happened in September. 

Monday, Nov. 23

I took a day trip to the slightly less ancient ruins of Mitla, stopping in the town of Tlacalula on the way, which was worth it if only to be able to pronounce that funny name.  It was the day after market day, and there wasn't much going on. It was non-market day, if not aftermarket day.  But I heard some brass band music and chased it, finding a band in front of the cathedral.  A couple dozen old folks were sitting around outside.  It was entirely unclear what this was all about until a four-year-old girl dressed in red velvet came out of the church with her mother and father.  It was the first-communion celebration. 

The little girl stood there as stiff as Queen Victoria, not knowing what to do, accompanied by a friend dressed in white.  The two obviously wanted to be gone, to go play in the dust.  The mother took out a couple of handfuls of pesos and threw them to the old folks, who scrambled for them like pigeons after breadcrumbs.  I tried to believe they were scrambling for the good luck, or something other than the ability to buy a loaf of bread.   The brass band led the family, friends, and Queen Victoria down the main street of the otherwise sleeping town, and I headed back to the bus station.

Mitla was a post-classical pre-Columbian city, with its heyday from 1100 AD until the arrival of the Spaniards.  The conquistadores left some of the buildings, leveled others.  A cathedral built upon their foundations stands at the top end of the town, which has remained continuously inhabited.  I walked from the bus stop uphill  through the long, narrow town to where the ruins are found.  The town was quiet, half-empty, dusty, and poor except for crafts stalls near the ruins.  But on this Monday there were precious few tourists to patronize them.  I went from the cathedral into the grounds of the remaining ancient buildings.  The ruins are characterized by unusual facades with intricate geometric brickwork patterns that I have not noticed in any other Mesoamerican art.

How did the Zapotecs feel as they saw their civilization destroyed?  Were their tears recorded anywhere?

Tuesday, Nov. 24

I returned for a last visit to D.F., enduring a "routine" army inspection of my bus on the way back.  In the news, 200 city policemen had just been arrested for bribe taking, theft, and homicide. These policemen were in league with some of the 750 youth gangs that make Mexico City an interesting place to live.  A raid on one police station was led by policemen from another, wearing ski masks.  Hundreds of other police tried to prevent these from entering the station. 

Meanwhile, the EZLN (Zapatista) rebels were meeting in Chiapas with the government, to discuss ending a 2-year stall in the "peace process" (I can never take that phrase completely seriously).  The rebels are calling for autonomy and implementation of an Indian rights bill.

Wednesday I watched a sit-in at the Zocalo.  Local people from some of the numberless vast outlying neighborhoods of D.F. were protesting mayor Cárdenas's failure to fulfill his election promises.  Their leaflet read:

"The leadership of the Antorchista Movement has once again rejected the invitation from the D.F. government to have a 'dialogue' about our requests: water and drainage for the neighborhoods of Cuautepec, credit for the construction of a residential unit…once more we are receiving only dialogue, but no recommendation for a solution…it is clear that these meetings are planned by the government only as a publicity measure in order to discredit our mobilizations.  But we are not only looking for meetings, but solutions to our problems…"

Later I took a trip to an outlying neighborhood, Coyoacan, that was obviously not involved in this kind of struggle.  Coyoacan was the first European settlement in the area, from which Cortez launched his attack on the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.  It is a quiet and pleasant neighborhood full of early colonial houses, many of which (on Av. Francisco Sosa) are turned into galleries open to the public.

On the grounds of the museum I spoke with a couple of workers, one of whom was wearing all black, with a cross around his neck and a hammer and sickle on his hat.  He told me, "I believe in three things: God, Jesus, and Death."  I said, "I guess you are very Mexican."  I also talked to the director Rafael, an intelligent young man who was eager to practice his English.  I took the opportunity to ask him about the incident at Tlatelolco, about which I had seen graffiti all over Mexico.  He explained to me that this was a square in D.F. where there had been a massacre of student protestors 30 years ago.  He told me that over 2,000 were killed, and these people were killed by death squads who had been trained by the U.S. (They were actually killed by regulars of the Mexican Army.) 

Tijuana and the border: Thursday, November 27

I traveled to Tijuana; then to San Diego, en route to Seattle.  The big news was that Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile who had been arrested in England, was turned down for immunity and is to be extradited to Spain.  So justice, while somewhat random, occasionally exists.  Meanwhile in Mexico, bank directors were calling for the president of the Supreme Court to be impeached for bribe-taking and influence-peddling. 

I woke up the next morning, my first in the U.S. since summer of 1997, in a Motel 6 on the outskirts of San Diego.  It was clean, empty, fake, and dead.  I walked out to an asphalt world with nothing real - all fake food, all cars that in Bosnia only gangsters could own; no personal interaction.  A Bird of Paradise flower, kind of far from home it was, blossomed in the otherwise sterile garden of a Texaco gas station.

Last words of my notebook: "Christmas advertisements, fake food, fake news--Help!"