Diary of a Reluctant Güera_archives

The Federal Preventative Police (PFP) ham it up for photos, flashing
thumbs up behind their plastic riot shields. “New York Times!” shouts
someone, as if any gringo with a camera is affiliated with that
illustrious publication. I guess I should be flattered to be mistaken for
the New York Times instead of a very lost tourist. You see this is the
PFP’s big moment. Usually they only let them out of the the barracks for
natural disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes and such. It’s not often they
get to do some real repressing, so when they do they make the most of it
(see Atenco). When they're not busy seasoning protesters with chile
pepper spray (what a quintessentially Mexican form of riot control!) they
scan the local papers for a glimpse of themselves in action.

So this is the mythical PFP. After five months of anticipation and rumors
they appear to us in the flesh, and what do we have? A bunch of frat boys
with bazookas, sent here on some kind of initiation challenge by the big
brothers up in Mexico City, Chente and Carlitos (Abascal, Governing
Secretary). They’ve moved into the APPOs old encampment in the zocalo,
only they made it a lot less hospitable for themselves yesterday when they
ripped down the tents and overturned the sofas and cooking pots. Now they
have to play boy scouts in the ruins, cooking their own food and sleeping
on the cold ground. They lurch around in their body armor like pubescent
robo-cops, sparring and joking with each other and erupting in catcalls
when a pretty girl walks by.

“Guera!” they bellow. “He-lo! What you name?”

I ignore them. In addition to a morbid curiosity to see the damage (shared by the entire neighborhood which has turned out with their cameras) I’ve come to see Carlos Loret de Mola, the Matt Lauer of Mexican Network TV, only more attractive. I saw on TV that he was filming just blocks from my house and couldn’t resist the chance to see him in person.

The crowd around Carlitos was still small when I arrived at the corner of Hidalgo and Cinco de Mayo where he and his camera crew were filming. The crowd was only about half composed of sincere concerned citizens who wanted to share their well-thought-out view points with the National viewing public; the rest of us were women of all ages who just wanted to see Carlitos up close.

“He’s a lot cuter than Flavio Sosa (the leader of the APPO),” I said, provoking laughs.

The appeal of Carlos Loret for average Mexican women is no mystery: in this country almost any white man over 5’6’’ tall is automatically considered attractive. But for me there is nothing exotic about these physical traits (because I possess them myself!). What Carlos has is the most earnest face you have ever seen; a face made for TV journalism. He has prominent dark eyebrows, which draw inward as he speaks into the microphone, furrowing his youthful forehead. His nose is elongated at the tip, giving him a touch of puppy dog sincerity.

But it’s not put on for the cameras. In fact, sometimes I wasn’t sure whether the cameras were rolling or not; Carlos retained the same trustworthy expression whether he was talking to his camera crew, APPO supporters or adoring housewives.

Alas, Carlos Loret is a lost cause; happily married and just became a father for the first time.

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2PM
Helicopters again, but this time it’s for real. On the TV we see the
federal preventitive police (PFP) advancing in their jeeps, but after months of threats and
counter threats, rumors and warnings, the reality just won’t register.

It’s a perfect fall day, not a cloud in the sky (making the black
helicopters stand out all the more!). The change of season is invisible,
the sun remains hot, the leaves green, but even this far south the air
takes on a new crispness, reminding us its almost Day of the Dead. Most
years we don’t need reminding; the streets explode on cue with clumps of
magenta and orange cepuxochitl flowers. Our arms brim over with them as
we carry them back from the market. But this year Day of the Dead, rather
than being the main event, is just a backdrop (and a darkly ironic one at
that) to the political crisis. The venders spread their baskets of
cepoxochitl out on sidewalks splashed with graffiti calling for the
Governor's death.

6PM
What a full, yet what a wasted day. I wouldn’t say I’m nervous, but I
can’t sit still. I’m too restless to write, to wash, or even to sit on
the roof and watch the helicopters circle. I spent most of the afternoon
on the curb in front of the house. It was a block party of sorts; all the
neighbhors were there: the tamale lady from next door, the folks from the
Laundromat down the street, and the usual assortment of kids and dogs. I
ran into old students of mine I hadn’t seen in over a year. We stood
watching the smoke rise from the center, flicking on our cameras every
time a helicopter swooped close overhead. Parents posed their kids for
pictures with the smoke billowing behind them. My nine-year-old neighbor
and I joked that we should be selling souveneers to the passers bys,
commemorative coke bottles of the "Second Battle of Oaxaca." Every now
and then we’d duck inside to compare the TV coverage and the “live” view
from the street. Funny how even with events unfolding on our doorstep we
still look to the TV to validate what's going on.

Later in the afternoon, teachers and APPOs began to march slowly down our
street. They were retreating (not fleeing in panic) from the Federal
Preventive Police who were closing in on the zocalo. They were on their
way to the university where the movement was to regroup. They were tired,
but far from defeated. They stopped to buy water and coca cola from the
store in the front part of our house. The later they used to dampen the
rags they wore over their noses and mouths. Apparently it helps against
tear and pepper gas. Unlike the previous police crackdown (on June 14) I
didn't smell the gases, but it may be because I have a cold.

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I’ve never been one of those girls who fall for men in uniforms. Like any nice girl from western Massachusetts, for me uniforms represent something to rebel against: conformity, entrenched authority.

I refuse to be impressed by boyfriend’s Doctor outfits. When we first met at a night club, I asked him if he were a real doctor or a stripper. But I’m the only one who doesn’t give him preferential treatment because of his uniform. Everywhere we go, they swoon over him: waiters, bus drivers, old ladies selling gelatin. “Doctor, how are you? Doctor, what can I get for you? Doctor, is everything to your satisfaction” and my favorite, said right to my face: “Doctor, I have a daughter in the university, I’d like to introduce you.” Don’t they realize how irresponsible it is to go around feeding the ego of a twenty-five-year-old male? There’s nothing left for me to do but to “accidentally” spill salsa on his white slacks.

But today I experienced for myself the power of the uniform. And I have to admit I liked it. What happened was that I went to visit “Dr. Dengue” in the hospital, which I’m able to do now that he’s been promoted from the ER to the supervisor of the second floor, where the patients are stable but under observation. Visiting the second floor isn’t exactly like watching into an episode of Gray’s Anatomy. “Dr Denge” sat at a desk eating potato chips and writing reports on an antiquated typewriter. Every so often a nurse or one of the lower interns on the food chain calls him to go stick a tube in someone.

During one of these interruptions it occurred to me to slip on his white lab coat, which he’d left slung over his chair. The results were almost instantaneous. Interns started addressing me as “Doctora,” visiting family members stopped to inquire about their loved-ones conditions. “Let me just consult with my colleague,” I said, going to fetch “Dr. Dengue.”

It was raining when I left so “Dr. Dengue” let me take the coat, my power trip lasted all the way home. "Taxi Doctora?" "Have a seat, Doctora." "Can I help you Doctora." Used to being addressed as "blondie" "hot mama" and "sexy baby," I was overcome by this show of respect, even knowing it was directed at the uniform, not me.

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I went to Mexico City last week with the pretext of taking the GRE exams, but really to expand my familiarity with the nation’s capital beyond the airport and the TAPO bus terminal.

As soon as I arrived I threw my backpack down on my hostel bunk and walked to the zocalo. I was pleasantly surprised to find people milling about the plaza instead barricaded in their houses hiding from Mexico City’s famous delinquents as the newscasts would have you believe. It was dusk and the weather cooperated to make memorable my introduction to the world's largest city: thunderheads the size of pyramids, shot through with lightning, a strong wind unfurling the Mexican flag. It had all the great travel magazine copy: musclar youths in feather headdresses dancing in front of the cathedral, cute kids holding out boxes of chicles, a thousand VW bugs honking in unison...

But I hadn't gone half a block when I saw the big, bold headlines on the newstands: CRISIS IN OAXACA, LAW OF THE JUNGLE IN OAXACA, THE FURY OF THE APPO, OAXACA UNDER SIEGE. I stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk, almost causing a stampede among the chicle brigade which followed close on my heels. I seized the nearest paper desperate to know what new calamaties had occured in the seven short hours since I'd left Oaxaca. But there were none; scanning the short articles accompanying the 100 point font headlines I found no new information.

All the time I was in Mexico City Oaxaca was never far away. Every other food stall and pirate CD stand seemed to be manned by Trique indigenous women, in their red and black stripped huipiles. The National Museum of Anthropology had two entire floors dedicated to Oaxaca, the only state honored in such a way. And, of course, I could never escape the APPO.

I stumbled upon the Mexico City branch of the APPO and the teachers’ movement on my way to the Museum of Bellas Artes. What a warm fuzzy feeling to see the familiar tarps and the effigies of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz in the middle of a strange city!

Not so homey was the sight of federal police, in bullet proof vests and riot shields, stationed just across the fence from the protestors. But the teachers I talked to said they weren’t too concerned about the police presence. They said it was just a routine measure. I guess that a visible police presence could come as a relief after the guerrilla tactics favored by the Oaxaca state government. That very day in Oaxaca, a teacher was shot from a moving car.

Saturday morning I took the red-eye bus to Oaxaca, arriving at dawn when the smoke from the barricades still clouded the streets. Never the less, it felt peaceful and provincial compared to the grit and noise of Mexico City. Maybe this only goes to show how I've lost all sense of what is normal. Even if the APPO is a band of thugs, as the mainstream press portrays them, they are OUR band of thugs, darn it, and I'll take them over Mexico City's unknown delinquents any day!

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“A city taken hostage” is how the press describes Oaxaca in these days of conflict. While this statement is accurate in many ways, it’s incomplete, the same as the repetitive images on TV; what were just blips of violence in the routine transmission of our lives, gain power in the focus of the camera lens.

The conflict is part of my life, but I’m hardly hostage to it.

6:30: I stagger outside to turn on the gas so I can make coffee. Then I switch on the TV to see Carlos Loret de Mola, Mexico’s most attractive talking head. I sip my Nescafe with panela and watch the latest report on the “problema de Oaxaca” with an odd detachment that’s only part sleep induced.

7:30: I’m out the door and walking to toward the center: past the indigent woman who sleeps on my corner, past the graffiti that marks the street as APPO territory.

7:35 I arrive at the first of the roadblocks on my morning route. Usually, by the time I arrive, annoyed motorists have already pushed aside the sheet metal and coils of barbed wire. The second blockade is more intimidating, a wall of stone-filled sacks. But the gentlemen of the APPO make way for me. “Move it buddy, here comes my girlfriend,” they say with a wink.

7:40: I stand and wait up-wind of the pile of rubble still simmering in the middle of the intersection. But I’m only half aware of the scene; I’m mentally revising what I’m about to teach.

8:30: I sit in the administration office of the Oaxaca International Airport (the international distinction owing to two daily flights to Houston). I wait for my student, an accounting executive who uses the roadblocks as an excuse for his habitual lateness. I occupy myself reading the Imparcial newspaper, the government-slanted daily. If you examine the discrepancies between the Imparcial and the Noticias, the paper that sides with the APPO, you can guess the true state of affairs in Oaxaca with reasonable accuracy.

9:30AM: I teach my students words like barricade, tear gas, and threaten, which cannot be found in their elementary English textbook but are necessary for communicating about their daily experience.

10:30AM: I enjoy my ten-peso breakfast (a tamal and hot chocolate in a Styrofoam cup) alongside the teachers in the zocalo. They are up and reading the paper, sweeping the sidewalks in front of their tents, or standing around in groups engaged in strategy sessions.

4:00 PM: Oaxaca Lending Library. Read the Noticias newspaper, which actually bothers to interview members of the teachers’ movement and the APPO. Then I email a summary to my poor bosses at LanguageCorps back in Boston, who only see newsreels of helicopters and fleeing protesters, and not the monotonous days of teachers crocheting Afghans under tarps.

11:30: I drift off to sleep in spite of periodic explosions from the APPO barricades, which act as a primitive alarm system, spreading warning of any disturbance from one end of the city to the other.

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Saturday afternoon everyone was on the streets: parents pushing strollers, packs of giggling teenagers, venders peddling everything from ice cream to rubber chickens. Then the whirr of propellers filled the air, and the mood changed abruptly. Two helicopters came up over the top of the sierra and descended steadily until we could read the word Marina printed on the bottom of their hulls.

For almost twenty minutes they circled methodically. Their bubble-like cockpits and blur of propellers gave them the appearance of demonic dragonflies. Rather than running for cover we were all drawn outside, where we stood looking upward. A little later a military plane followed at a higher altitude. This display of Mexican military might was not exactly “shock and awe,” but we all remembered the last time helicopters invaded our sunny skies: June 14th, when the governor sent them in to drop tear gas grenades on the teachers' encampments.

As the shock subsided the streets began to clear. Businesses did not close, but the proprietors sat on the steps, watching the sky. From within, radios tuned to the broadcasts of the movement, belligerant voices calling the citizenry to take to the streets to defend their city. But most people didn’t; we went home.

But nothing happened. The helicopters returned Sunday morning, but at a less threatening altitude. We ventured out to the markets, even into the zocalo. By Monday, we hardly noticed the helicopters anymore. We knew the government was just trying to bully the APPO and Co. into accepting their terms. We also knew it wasn’t going to work. Sure enough, 24 hours before the next round of negotiations was set to begin, the APPO and Section 22 of the Education Workers Union announced their withdrawal from the talks. They accused the government of hypocrisy, talking about compromise out of one side of their mouth while planning a military intervention out of the other.

But Oaxaca is surprisingly calm this morning. The teacher’s continue to crochet their doilies while they wait for the federal troops.

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