Diary of a Reluctant Güera_archives

A burned out car blocks a street near the Zócalo. Probably the work of common vandals, not the teachers' movement.

I dream I’m on my way home from my job at the airport, accompanied in the shuttle by my father and stepmother. The van moves in slow motion down the road I know so well, crossing the lush milpas on the banks of Atoyac River on its way to the highway. We’ve just passed through the gate at the perimeter of the airport, when the terminal behind us explodes into flames, the reflection illuminating the windshield. My dad is driving. We scream for him to escalate but the van seems to advance more slowly than before.

I have to call my mother, but the buttons on my cell phones won’t work. She will think I’m dead in the airport. Time does not exist in dreams, and place is relative. I’m not in Oaxaca anymore. We are in the States and homeland security searches us to make sure we don’t have any bombs on us that might explode at any moment. This possibility is not as shocking as the fact that we’ve escaped it.

My eyes blink open in the 4AM gloom. I listen to the city outside like it was a jungle. I try to distinguish the firecrackers from the gunshots. Firecrackers make have a sharp, expansive sound that dissipates back into the night where it originated. Gunshots make a flat, implosive sound followed by silence.

The whistles sound up and down the streets. They are communicating with each other: the jungle beasts: the teachers, the army, the APPO, the vandals, the teenagers…we don’t know anymore. The whistles are followed by the sound of shattering glass. There is a courtyard and two-adobe walls separating me from the street. My ears are the only way I know what’s going on.

At five AM my cell phone rings. It’s Lupita. She and her sister are on the bus from Mexico City, where they’d been stranded since Sunday; “they”- the teachers, the APPO - closed the highway. They want to know if it’s safe to walk downtown.

“Wait,” I say. “Wait until…” Half asleep, I forget the Spanish word for sunrise.

At eight-thirty I step out onto the street. I expect to step out onto a surface of shattered glass, but everything is the same as always. My neighbor is on the sidewalk in front of her house, heating her clay griddle for her morning memelita business. Pyres of firewood, tires and trash, simmer and smoke in the middle of the intersections, but they are quickly stifled under the tires of passing buses. I join the Señora’s with shopping bags and men with briefcases walking toward the center, where the airport shuttle stops to pick me up.

Posted by Anna at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As if inter-sexual, not to mention intercultural, communication weren’t difficult enough already, communication technology in Mexico has added a whole new dimension to the who-called-who-after-how-many-days game.

This is a country where everyone has cell phones and no one (apparently) has money to put in them.

Unlike the US, in Mexico we do not buy cell phone plans with a fixed monthly rate and pre-allotted number of minutes. Instead we buy cell phone “credit” in denominations of thirty to five hundred pesos. Depending on who your service provider is, you add credit to your phone by purchasing a phone card and entering the secret code on the back, or by simply adding “electronic” credit at designated retailers. In some places you can even buy airtime at an ATM machine.

For local calls, most cellular services charge 4-5 pesos a minute, with discounts for frequent numbers. Incoming local calls are free. To send a text message only costs one peso. This is why communication in this penny-pinching culture (where the average monthly wage is about 350 USD) has deteriorated to the exchange of cryptic text messages.

To cram as much information as possible into a 12-word text message, Mexicans have developed an abbreviated code language loosely based on Mexican Spanish.

“Te quiero,” “I love you,” becomes “t kiero.”

“Que te pasa?” “What’s up?” is shortened to “ke t pasa?”

This form of writing becomes so habitual that you start to think it’s correct. After all, in these fast-paced, modern times (granted in Mexico this only means forsaking the afternoon siesta) who has time for the intricacies of Castilian spelling?

Add chromosomal and cultural differences to this mix and deciphering these communications becomes an even greater challenge.

First of all, text messaging, because it’s cheaper, gives men an easy out from the direct human-interaction of the telephone call.

Us women are left analyzing impersonal text messages such as:

“Saludos. Espero que estes bien. Luego t hablo. Señor X”
“Greetings. I hope you’re well. I’ll call you later. Mr. X”

Remember that in Mexico “I’ll call you later” means anywhere from “I’ll call you tonight” to “I’ll call you next month,” or “I’ll call when I’m tired of the girl I’m currently sleeping with.”

Fortunately, the time lapse between text messages allows plenty of time to for you and your girlfriends to analyze all the possible interpretations of Mr. X’s brief message (usually by exchanging a flurry of text messages).

Telecommunication technology also makes it easy for men to “disappear” into cyberspace on the pretext that they “have no credit.”

For example, the guy I’m currently dating went “AWOL” for more than two weeks, presumably because he had no credit. During this time I sent him two text messages, the last one inviting him to a nightclub where my girlfriends and I were on the prowl. When he did not respond I decided not to waste my credit calling someone who didn’t have one lousy peso to send a text message letting me know he was alive, much less that he cared about me. I even began to feel relieved that he had chosen this passive-aggressive way of ending our relationship, thereby sparing us an emotional break up scene.

But a week later, he reappeared in my life as if nothing had happened. He even had the nerve to say: “How did you expect me to come to the club if I was in the Sierra?” Well, how did you expect me to know you were in the Sierra if you didn’t call me?

Who says technology makes life easier?

Posted by Anna at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (7)

I've always wondered why Mexicans are not fatter. Neither are they are the most svelt of people. Kate Moss could never achieved such levels of heroine chic growing up in a traditional Mexican household. Her extended family would have pressured her, with utmost tenderness, into that second and third helping of chilaquiles (fried tortilla strips smothered in salsa and topped with generous dallops of cream).

According to the most recent statistics, Mexico has the dubious honor of being the third fattest country on earth. Do we really have to ask who's number one? God Bless the United States of McDonalds.

But considering what they eat, it's really quite an accomplishment that they are holding onto that number three spot. First of all, they consume enough carbohydrates to make Dr. Atkins roll over in his grave, then they find a way to combine them with saturated fat and sugar, with irresistible results.
We are all familiar with the taco family: various configurations of complex carbs filled with succulent meat and cheese and thrown into a sizzling vat of pork lard for good measure. But this is just the beginning. There are breads beyond the gringo's imagination, dense with butter and egg yolks and adorned with a crust of brown sugar. And the beverages are not benign. You order water in a restaurant and they ask you what flavor. The wholesome sounding mango, tamarind or hibiscus flower water is liberally sweetened with heaping tablespoons of sugar or aspartame (so if the heart disease doesn't get you, the cancer will).

As if the succulent sights and smells are not enough to rob you of your willpower, they add a component of cultural guilt. Food is an integral part of every cultural event, from smallest of family get-togethers to the epic-scale face stuffing of Christmas and Day of the Dead. This is a culture based on reciprocity, refusing food is much a faux pas in Mexico as asking someone's weight in the US.

So why aren't Mexicans fatter? The cause and the cure coexist in the microscopic fat dribblings on the Mexican plate. If you eat the Mexican diet for long enough, sooner or later you are going to feel the consequences, and not just around the middle, but deep in your gut, Mexicans and gringos alike. If the food born parasites (which flourish as dishes are left out during days long fiestas) don't get you, the sheer quantity of grease will. The result is chronic and recurring stomache ailments. At best, you will go off your feed from anywhere from a day to a month. At worst, you will be discharging toxins from both ends. By the time you can face a fat oozing plate of chilaquiles again, you will have lost at least five pounds.

But we are gringos after all, we don't have time to wait around for Moctezuma to take his revenge. What if you need to lose weight quickly to fit into that bridesmaid's dress? A friend of mine has proposed an efficient solution: bottled Mexican water! A couple of sips, or in acute cases, half a bottle, and you will be wearing your "thin jeans" in no time.

Posted by Anna at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (12)

Writing about the Llorona got me thinking about other Mexican folk legends.
A few yarns, such as that of the Llorona and the Chupacabras, have taken on such epic proportions that even gringos have heard of them. But most Mexican folk tales, while reflecting archetypal human fears, rely heavily on the local landscape.

Here in the city of Oaxaca, taxi drivers, of all people, are the best sources of urban legends. You see some strange things cruising the city late at night. Or at any rate, it gives you time to think up some good yarns.

In the long annals of Oaxaca taxi driver lore, this is the most well known story.
My friend Diego Luna (the taxi driver/Chemist, not the actor) swears it is true.

In the darkest early morning hours, a young woman hails a cab near the cemetery in the barrio of Los Jardines. Diego can describe her in great detail. She is beautiful and light skinned, with curly brown hair. She always wears a pink cardigan sweater. She tells him to take her to a downtown address. But when they arrive, she confesses that she has no money to pay the fare. She tells him to return in the morning.

“Take this ring,” she says. “Show it to my mother and she will pay the fare.”

When the taxi drivers returns the next day, he is greeted by the girl's mother. When she sees the ring she nods sadly. This is a regular occurrence for her. It seems her daughter has been trying to return home for the last fifteen year, since the night when she and her fiancé were killed in a car crash. It’s her engagement ring she gives to taxi driver as collateral.

Diego claims to have driven her home on several occasions.

Believe it or not.

Posted by Anna at 06:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (16)

In Mexico we all know the legend of the Llorona. She inhabits the night, a whispy, white-robbed figure wailing, "Where are my children?"

At my house we have our own Llorona. She is my next door neighbhor.

In the wee hours of the morning my eyes flick open when her jagged shadow crosses my window, the image gently ondulating with the ripple of the white curtains in the breeze. Through the transparent curtains and six inches of stucco, I hear each tight intake of breath exploding in a series of sobs. Sometimes she speaks. "Why? Why?" she asks the night sky.

Still in my bed, a white curtain between us, I feel close to her in a way I never do during the day.

During the day she is distant, even when we pass eachother on our shared balcony, or brush elbows hanging laundry on our roof. She barely responds to my hopeful buenos días. Her downcast eyes dart up briefly and she smiles nervously.

She looks like she's in her early twenties. She's short, attractive with long black hair which is always pulled back in a pony tail. She has several children who do not live with her. When they visit her one-room apartment there is so much chaos on our floor that I can't keep track of the exact number of inquisitive eyed children peeping at me through the gaps in my curtains.

Her husband works at a bar. During the day, he lounges around the apartment building without a shirt on. Sometimes he complains loudly to the landlord about our frequent power outages and water shortages. He trys to blame it all on me, the gringa, who doesn't know how things work here. My landlord defends me. This is probably why he has never ever looked me in the eye, although he watches me from the window when I come up the walk in the evening after work.

I've only once heard him fight with his wife. Don't all couples fight? But when she cries at night, I wonder. I lay there listening and I wonder if I should do something. My Mexican friends assure me I shouldn't interfere.

The other night the husband was arguing louder than usual with the landlord.

"Behave yourself!" she screamed. "That woman is the mother of your children." I scurried to turn down the volume on my telenovela.

"I have been really patient," the landlord went on. "but I can't have my tenants scared, thinking you're going to kill your wife!"

I couldn't make out his response. He speaks with the Mexican equivalent of a backwoods drawl. But his tone was pleading.

Last night, I heard the Llorona again. Does she know I hear her? Does she know the intimacy we share on that dark rooftop where stray cats quarrel under the starry sky. To be sure, I've never been beaten, but I know what it's like to be in a relationship that superimposes its own reality, puts up walls you can't see beyond. I know what it's like to stay.

Llorona, how I wish I could go to you, but you see me as just a gringa, not a woman like you.

Posted by Anna at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (25)

I will go out on a limb and make a cultural generalization. I hope I don't offend anyone.
Here it goes: Mexicans are a lot more efficient when it comes to food than they are when it comes to anything else: time, transportation, politics...you name it.

At ten o´clock Sunday morning we still had no idea what we were doing that day, but we were prepared with two bags of tostadas, a tupperware container of beans, a 12 liter of grapefruit soda and a foot long marble cake.

After much shrugging of shoulders we took our tostadas and our cake under our arm and went to the movies. Then we realized we couldn't smuggle the cake into the movie theater, even wrapped in a blanket the way the indigenous carry their kids. So we stopped to eat it, which turned into an elaborate production with paper plates and all the trimmings and lasted nearly two hours. Afterwards, unable to decide between such thrilling cinematic offerings as Garfield and Monster House, our group started to break up.

Finally, a few off us took off for San Gabriel de Etla, a small town about an hour outside town where there is a "river." Don´t be fooled when Mexicans, (or Arizonans, for that matter) describe anything as a river. You will be lucky to find it has water in it. In the case of San Gabriel de Etla, not only was there water, but a very attractive brook running through the dapplied shade of a steep ravine. Here I was able to take pictures of something besides burned buses and marching teachers for a change.

On the road to the river in San Gabriel de Etla

Looking back toward Oaxaca from San Gabriel de Etla

Crossing the "river"

Posted by Anna at 07:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1) You start to relate to the characters in telenovelas.

2) Your ATM card is in the hands of the Mexican Postal System.

3) You are seriously thinking about sleeping with the Richard Nixon look-alike at Migration to get out of fines for expired visas.

4) You always find yourself passing by the liquour stores where they hand out free mescal samples to tourists.

5) You're actually happy when striking teachers hijack your bus because it means you don't have to go to the Migration office.

Posted by Anna at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)