May 15 is National Day of Teachers, a day we’ve come to associate less with apples and chalkboards than roadblocks and riot police. No matter what side of the conflict we’re on, May 15 is a date that’s loomed in our minds for sixth months. We hesitate to savor the peace in Oaxaca, because we know its days are numbered. May 15th is when time runs out: Oaxaca’s Day of Reckoning. We say: “Business is looking up but after May 15th…?” “The tourist as starting to come back but in May…?” “The kids are back in school, but…?” Even the teachers of section XXII don’t seem exactly jubilant to pick up their placards again; it feels more like carrying a cross.

These are picks for the ultimate Mexican songs, by category:

Songs Nobody will Admit to Liking but after several “chelas” (beers) suddenly They Know every Single Word

“La Sirenita” (“The Little Mermaid”) Rico Tovar
“We had a little merman after exactly one year of marriage/with the face of a little angel but the tail of a fish.”

A kitsch classic of ranchero-cumbia, this song a national inside joke. It’s the theme song of a Saturday Night Live-type skit called “Las Nacas,” (roughly “The Hicks”).

“Procuro Olvidarte” (“I Manage to Forget You”) – K-Paz de la Sierra and La Apuesta

Representative of the Durengense trend, which swept the nation like Reggaeton before it. Everybody says they hate Durangense (except my ex-boyfriend) yet they crowd the clubs to dance the Durango two-step (Pasito Durangense) which can only be described as “pinguinesque.”

“La Sirenita” the Durangense remix.
Just when we thought nothing could be worse than the original.

“Con Todos Menos Conmigo” (“With Everyone but Me”) Timbiriche
Featuring lyrics like: “You’re eyes are two green slaps on the face.”
We had New Kids on the Block, Mexico had Timbiriche. We have Britney and Cristina. Mexico has Paulina and Thalía whose careers and rivalry started with Timbiriche.

Love, Alchohol and/or Death

Anything by Jaguares, the melancholy quartet which reaches deep into Mexico’s prehispanic past for their haunting melodies and fatalistic lyrics. The titles speak for themselves:
“Soy Alcohol” (“I am alcohol’)
“Matame porque Me Muero” (Kill Me cuz I’m Dying)
“Hay Amores que Matan” (“There are Loves that Kill”)

“Paloma Negra” (“Black Dove”) Folk song recorded by various artists (I recomend Lila Down’s version) About loving and loathing a partying, two-timing man (the archetypal conflict of Mexican Woman) Could be described as a hardcore version of Patsy’s Cline’s “Crazy. “Para cortarse las venas” -“for slashing your wrists” (but in a good way)

“La Llorona” (“The Weeping Woman”) Folk song recorded by various artists, based on an urban legend about a woman who drowned her children (and herself in some versions) in the river to avenge her husband’s betrayal and has haunted the streets ever since draped in white and crying “Oh my children, oh my children.” Many otherwise rational people have seen her, especially while drunk.

“It’s not me, it’s you”: Break-up Songs with No Mercy

“Ojala que te mueras” (“I hope you die”) Pesado
Surprisingy upbeat ranchera song wishing eternal damnation upon an ex lover.
“I hope you soul goes to hell and your tears are eternal.”

"A chillar a otra parte" ( “Go Cry Somewhere Else”) Pesado
“I know I’m going to enjoy when you come crying I’m going to laughing to see you grovel. You’ll regret ever having met me because today I declare myself your worst enemy. It’s what you deserve for abandoning me and coming back - go cry somewhere else!”

“Insensible a tí” (“Insensitive to You”) Alicia Villareal
Theme of a recent telenovela.
“I’ve cheated on you, many times, I’ve sought out his hot kisses in secret. I’ve lied to you so many times that I can’t keep hiding the truth. I’m living a forbidden love and I can’t keep it quiet any more, because I’m in heat and he makes me Insensitive to you.”

It’s all the Gringos Fault

“El Mojado” “Wetback” Ricardo Arjona’s Grammy-winning tribute to the illegal migrant worker and his suffering at the hands of the Big Bad Gringos.

“Pobre Juan” “Poor John.” Maná
ditto

“Jose Perez Leon" Tigres del Norte
ditto

Shortly after our arrival in Santiago Nundichi, Don Aureliano asked us to visit his father who was ill. Don Aureliano is tall for a Mixtec man. His face, shaded by a white flat-brimmed sombrero, is gentle and serious. The community looks up to him, the same as his father, Don Jose. Both have been influential in local politics and pillars of the church.

We stepped into the hut, rough hewn pine boards with a roof of corrugated tin, smelling the warm waxy smell from the candles glowing around the images of Christ, Guadalupe, Juquila and others. Politely we shook hands with the group of stooped señores seated before the altar. The most elderly of these I took to be Don Jose, for whom we had come. Then I saw the wrinkled blankets on the bed had not been hastily made, but covered the skeletal limbs of the invalid, which seized and shuddered in time with the tearing sound of his breath. Don Aureliano gently pulled back the blanket to reveal the face, disfigured by pain into a taut beak. White foam streamed from the slit at the mouth, collecting in the folds of the blankets. As his son wiped it away it only seemed to froth thicker, drowning him in his own illness. The eyes stayed shut. I felt the soul fighting the feeble body; fighting to regain it, or fighting to be free of it, I don’t know.

“He was fine yesterday,” whispered Don Aureliano. “went to the market.”

We prayed and said Don Jose was a tough old nut, sure to pull through, but we left full of apprehension. Were we up to dealing with a death in the community? The five of us were not real missionaries, only idealistic youth looking to experience the simple spirituality of village life. As for me, I wasn’t even a real Catholic. Jorge, our leader, was not a real priest. He was a 26-year-old environmental lawyer who had undergone training to officiate Holy Week celebrations, not to bury the dead. For Brenda, a 20 year old med student, Don Jose’s impending death meant searing flashbacks of her own father’s passing only nine months earlier. At the crossroads in front of the house stalked an old woman. In one hand she clutched a spray off eafy branches which she held out in front of her, following them like a dousing rod. Every so often she stopped, made a sweeping motion with the leaves and rubbed the air with an egg she pulled from her pocket. She was obviously performing a traditional limpia, or cleaning, but what for?

Over a supper of bean stew we discussed quietly with Don Aureliano and his wife, Doña Placida. That morning they had taken Don Jose into the clinic in Tlaxiaco, the municipal capital, where they had taken blood and given fluids but had offered no diagnosis. They were afraid that if they took him back there they would send him to Oaxaca, where the treatment was expensive and the staff treated them badly.

“Was he bitten by an animal?” asked Brenda. “Did he eat anything unusual?”

The only irregularity they could recall was that upon returning from the market in Tlaxiaco he had consumed vast quantities of Agua de Chilacoyote, a drink made with strands of a spaghetti squash.
“That it came on so quickly makes me things it was poison or rabies.” We thought of the old woman and the eggs.

In the morning Don Aureliano arrived at our door.
“Buenos Dias,” he said, clutching his white sombrero politely to his chest. “How did you sleep?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“My father just died,” he said with the same understated courtesy, although sadness pulled softly at his features.

In the hut at the bottom of the hill Don Jose was laid out on a grass mat, wrapped in a blanket, only his peaked face showing, the orifices plugged with wads of cotton. Candles flickered around him, and friends and relatives were starting to arrive with flowers. In the undulating candle light the grey and red checked blanket seemed to move up and down with phantom breath. Never the less, there was no mistaking the body from the person. The twisting, moaning, fighting energy of the night before was gone and there was only an empty, shriveled seedpod. Its stillness was beyond rest, or even peace, it was just nothingness. I’d never seen a dead body before; my great-grandparents donated their bodies to science and Protestants aren’t into open caskets anyway.

Mexicans are famous for their familiar relationship with death. They celebrate it, make it into comical clay figures, and dance over the graves. But I can tell you that they mourn it too. Throughout the long day and night we sat with Don Jose’s body, we witnessed the grief of his widow and five children who arrived from as far away as Mexico City. The sons fought tears between gulps of agua ardiente and the daughters wailed, pulling their shawls over their eyes.

But I have a confession to make. For the second time I am betraying my upbringing by spending Holy Week with Catholic missionaries in the Sierra Mixteca, bringing food, clothing and good intentions (see "A Nice Agnostic Girl Goes to Church" May 23, 2006)

Why do I stray from the path you showed me?

Maybe I´m rebelling; afterall, your liberal thinking closed for me of the more traditional channels of rebellion, tatoos, dreadlocks, hemp necklaces. However, I thought I got that out of my system when I dated the son of the Manager of the Nuclear Power Plant.

Maybe it´s your fault (blasphemy!) you went too far, taught me to open my mind so wide that there´s even room for organized religion and (gasp!) Republicans.

Actually I think my only motive is to explore and understand this culture I live in. Even you were always impressed by Mexico´s spiritual psychizofrenia, the austere religion of your childhood superimposed on the colorful paganism of the indigenous cultures. You brought home that poster of the Virgin of Guadalupe, supported by the angel on one side, the Indian on the other.

In the name of my Father, my Mother, and the Democratic Party, Amen.

According to my friend Armando there is nothing in Cuicatlán. No Pitico supermarket. No movie theater. And the worst of all its privations, no cell phone reception. There is the hospital, the penitentiary, and the highly anticipated soccer matches between the two, in which the inmates predictably run circles around the strait-laced citizens of the hospital team. Without these things, Cuicatlán would cease to exist, according to Armando.

“Well is it scenic?” I insisted. He thought hard. He wanted me to visit, but obviously didn’t want to build up my expectations about Cuicatlán’s tourist attractions.
“Well, there’s a muro (a wall).”
“What do you mean a wall?”
“There’s a big wall of red rock.”
“Is it pretty?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

Fortunately I know better than to pay attention to Armando. It turns out Cuicatlán is Oaxaca’s undiscovered Babylon. Well maybe not all that, but it certainly claims its place among the seven wonders, or rather, the seven regions, of Oaxaca. Cuicatlán belongs to the region of La Cañada, whose closest English equivalent is Canyonland. I was prepared for the canyons, the cliffs of petrified sand dotted with tubular cacti and the inevitable nostalgia for Arizona. But when the riverbed appeared, a green jungle between walls of reddish rock, nostalgia gave way to enchantment. In Arizona, river and water are not automatically associated. The word river has to be contained between quotation marks. While during summer thunderstorms it may jump its imporous banks and swamp unsuspecting SUVs, most of the year it’s dry. An especially large “river” may be set off by a pair of Cottonwood trees, which have an uncanny tolerance for the schizophrenic rains. So I was suitably impressed by the lushness of Cuicatlán’s Rio Grande Valley (not that Rio Grande). Over a mile of natural orchard, the green textures of mango, coconut, pineapple and banana trees. In this the dry season the river is wide and shallow but still big enough to qualify as a river by anyone’s standards. Clear enough to see the speckled pebbles on the bottom. Clean enough to drink, they say, although I wasn’t about to test my intestines against this hypothesis.

Armando works at the hospital, at a temporary-looking workstation in a corner of the waiting room. He enrolls people in the Seguro Popular, the Mexican Medicare, and a minimal benefits program unveiled with much fanfare by the Fox administration.
“Do you speak Mixtec?” he asks, meticulously checking boxes on his sheaf of forms. The indigenous woman nods reticently and the bulbous wart moves along the crease of her eyelid like a crawling insect.
“Does your house have a floor of dirt or cement?
“How old are you?”
“But your credential says you are 41, not 38. Señora, stop lying about your age!” he jokes smoothly. Probably she doesn’t know how to read the information on her government-issued ID card. She smiles ashamedly and her wart wanders up to the corner of her eye.
“Where is your proof of residence?”
I’m uncomfortably reminded of the agents at the National Immigration Institute, who survey my dog-eared pile of documents with disdain every time I go to renew my work visa. But Armando is patient; as he scans for missing stamps and signatures he jokes with his colleague about the pounding they took in the game against the inmates. “They took us on a spree! 7-0!” He is temperamentally suited, if intellectually overqualified, for bureaucratic work. In the long lags between clients, when the hospital waiting room assumes a vacant, church-like tranquility, he reads literature at his desk or sings along to the melancholy ranchera songs saved on his computer. There was a six-month lag, when the hospital went on strike in support of Oaxaca’s teacher’s union. He and his colleague were relegated to a folding table outside the ER, the only part of the hospital that remained in operation. Not a soul came to inscribe in the Seguro, but they couldn’t complain, because they continued to get a paycheck from the distant federal government.

Even with the hospital paralyzed Cuicatlán did not cease to exist. The hospital and the penitentiary may be Cuicatlán’s link to the modern infrastructure of the state, bringing outsiders like Armando, but the river is its reason for existence. As long as the Rio Grande waters the mango groves, the insular world of the Cuicatecos will remain intact.

Sunday I went to Princess Party in honor of my students, Karla, 4, and Caroline, 5, who also happen to be the children of my boss.

Now, for those of you who may not have not spent much time in the company of two to six-year-old girls, let me tell you that princesses are VERY important, they are right up there with Mom, Dad and Spongebob Squarepants in the preschool echelon of influence.

Every little girls KNOWS that she is a princess, until Disney and Seventeen Magazine come along to delude her otherwise.

The most famous Oaxacan princess was Donají, the daughter of the Zapotec King Cosijoeza, who was taken hostage by the feared Mixtecs. During her imprisonment she got wind of new plans to attack her people, and succeeded in smuggling a warning to her father. When the Mixtecs discovered her espionage, they beheaded her and buried her on the banks of the Atoyac River. Legend has it, that a violet iris sprouted from her blood, its roots wrapped around her head, which showed no signs of decomposition.

Donají's sacrifice is honored by an annual dance performance, an image of the princess on the state seal, and a popular local cocktail made with mescal and grapefruit juice.

But if you ask Karla or Caroline about the Princess Donají, you will be met with blank, disdainful stares. EVERYBODY knows who the real princesses are: Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora (from Sleeping Beauty), Belle (from Beauty and the Beast) and, on afterthought, Pocohontos.

"I'm Cinderella," Karla informed me the first time I met her. "And Caroline is Aurora and Caty (her baby sister) is Snow White." She looked me up and down appraisingly. "You can be Pocohontos."

This year, to celebrate Karla and Caroline's birthdays (which are a month apart) their mother, Tania planned a royal ball to honor her pint-sized princesses. For the two months leading up to the party, our tiny language academy was transformed into Walt Disney's workshop, as Tania put together every detail of the party. As she sat at the reception desk, she glued princess decals onto pencils for party favors (snatching them away from Caty before she could stick them in her mouth), or surfed the internet in search of a castle-shaped piñata that fit her daughters' demanding specifications. The staff room was taken over by the dismembered papier mache body parts of the piñatas she was making.

As the big day approached, the circles deepened under Tania's eyes. The princess piñatas were done but she could not find the right cartoon eyes to complete them! Having scoured the internet in vain, she and I set about drawing eyes free-hand on blank flashcards. And she still had to pick up the princess costumes from the seamstress and make 80 princes out of marshmallows and toothpicks!

Does my boss's wife have an obssesive compulsive problem? Is she the Mexican Martha Stewart? Hardly, she's only trying to keep up with the other upper-middle class mothers, who compete to make the cutest table settings, invitations and party favors.

Children's birthday parties, like most thing in Mexico (including our language academy, as you may have now gathered) are family affairs. Not only was Tania expecting the 50 members of Karla and Caroline's respective kindergarten classes, but their parents, brothers and sisters and random extended family members, not to mention their own extended family network (including employees/baby-sitters like myself) and her husband's business partners. Guests at a Mexican children's parties naturally expect food, drink (including alcohol), music, clowns, games with prizes, multiple piñatas and hand crafted party favors (for everyone, not only the children).

I arrived, in true Mexican style, two hours later than the time printed on the invitation. Tania had rented a pavilion, or "salon de fiestas," for the event. Karla and Caroline held court at a childsized banquet table, their puffy pink and blue sateen skirts billowing around them. But it was two year old Caty who drew the oohs and ahhs. She looked every bit the part of Snow White with her blue and gold dress, black bobbed hair and oversized baby eyes.

Tania had attended to every miniscule detail, from the three dolls, sporting the same princess costumes as her daughters, perched on the cake, to the baseball bat for the piñata, which was disguised as a flaming sword. The buffet table was ladden with mini croisant sandwhiches filled with black mole (Oaxacan noveau cuisine?) and hotdogs on skewers.

Fifty some children ran amok, while Tania and her numerous female relatives bustled here and there, replenishing the buffet, stuffing piñatas, and breaking up fights. Her husband lurked in the background with the camcorder. Some things don't change from culture to culture.

This “Ramón” was my salsa teacher, although strictly speaking, he wasn’t much of a dancer or a teacher. Dance teachers in this country are hardly ignorant of the Dirty Dancing- mythology, they are only too eager to help you discover the sensual power of dance to transcend cultural barriers. This is usually what attracted them to the profession in first place (unless they are gay). In the case of “Ramón” it certainly wasn’t his dancing. After a month of lessons I realized that his surplus of style (creative gyrations which inevitably brought him into cozy proximity to your chest) masked a lack of any real talent. The gay director of the Academy obviously employed him because he brings in foreign clients, with his stilted English, which apparently make lines like “Yew like the sun, I am in yew orbit,” more convincing. The problem is he says the exact same things in his native tongue, without the charming grammatical errors.

“Ramón the Dance Teacher” was in an especially good position for admiring his students’ cleavage because he was about five feet tall. I don’t like to be superficial, but I’m generally not attracted to men who make me feel like a giantess. But obviously I’m in the minority, because according to friends in the expat artist community (where “Ramón” is a familiar hanger on) until recently he was never seen accept in the company tall, willowy blonds, big enough to be his bodyguards. But like everyone in Oaxaca, the political crisis of 2006 touched “Ramón the Dance Teacher” in a very personal way. Countries like the US, Canada and Australia issued travel warnings about Oaxaca, stopping the flow of fair-skinned tourists and Spanish students. The language school where the dance academy offers its services suspended its programs, drying up “Ramón’s” main source of prey. After nearly six months of drought, he fell upon the last remaining gringa in town like a cat on a mouse (or more like a mouse on cat, considering his size). Unfortunately, I was that gringa.

After class he would invite me out dancing, for coffee, even up to my own apartment, to “continue the class in private, ”
“I’m sorry,” I would reply. “I have to work early tomorrow.”
The mark of a true Ramón is that he cannot, or will not, pick up on the subtle cultural code phrases women use when we are too nice to say, “I will never ever in a million years sleep with you.” “Ramón the Dance Teacher” was certainly undaunted. He even turned my excuses back on me, saying, “You are such a serious girl. Why can’t you lighten up?”

One night I found myself stranded at a table with “Ramón the Dance Teacher,” at the Tentacíon nightclub (known simply as “La Tenta”). We had been “stood up,” probably by design, by some mutual friends from the dance academy.
“What? Are you afraid to be alone with me?” said Ramón suggestively as I examined my watch for the third time.
“Petrified.”
“La Tenta” is Ramón’s natural habitat. There are Ramón’s of all shapes, sizes and hair altitude. The non-existent cover charge for women lures unsuspecting foreigners into the Ramón’s den, where he pounces upon her with stilted English phrases.
As Ramón’s hand migrated subtly across the tabletop I watched as if it were a cockroach creeping toward me. When I withdrew my hand this was interpreted as playing hard to get and minutes later a skinny arm descended upon my defenseless shoulders. The third time I shrugged it off, Ramón looked betrayed.
“I don’t understand. All the American girls I’ve ever known where up for anything.”
“All American girls are not the same,” I said. This profound insight into the obvious seemed to shake Ramón to the core of his being. The rest of the night he sat staring blindly at the dance floor like a man who had lost his religion.

"So what time are we meeting to go to the march?" he insists. I stammer something about having to work that day.

"Have you been to Monte Albán? Mitla? Hierve el Agua? Ocotlán, San Pablo Gelatao?" He names off all the tourist attractions and to his dismay I've been to every one.

"Remember," I say. "I've been here for over two years."

"Then I'll invite you to my rancho, there's trees, some waterfalls." I nod noncommitedly and give him a fake phone number.

When I first met him four months ago and he was living under a tarp on the terrace of the Marques del Valle Hotel (where tourists now dine under black canvas umbrellas) his bloodshot, wild-eyed look seemed appropriate, even admirable. But today, among the tinkling fountains and immaculate rows of poinsettas in the "resurrected" Zócalo, he's revealed as just another shady local character, seeking to befriend naive foreigners. He's cleaned up his image (presumably to allude capture by the police) with short hair, a clean guayabera and black pants, but his red eyes, embedded in wrinkles, give him away.

Sure enough, that weekend, the Zocalo reverted to a fortress again, if only for a few hours. But this time it was the State Police who erected the barricades.

For years I’ve begged her to take me with her; Betaza achieved mythic status in my imagination, a land where the fiestas go on for days and clear water of the mountain streams produces miracle cures. But until now I never managed to make the trip. Something always interfered, teaching commitments, weather, or fate. Once we cancelled our plans at the last minute because Guille had to attend a meeting. The day we would have returned, a bus overturned in the region, killing six people.
The coincidence left Guille unimpressed. “Cuando te toca te toca,” she said. “When it’s your turn it’s your turn.”

I thought we were good to go this time when a chance confusion almost ended our journey before we even left the parking lot of the second-class bus terminal in Oaxaca. We were among the first to board the bus, a typical third world rattletrap with bales of flowers, bread and other random merchandise strapped to roof (but surprisingly no chickens) and a sequined image of the Virgin of Guadalupe plastered to the ceiling above the gearshift. It amused me that Guille and her sister Juana adhered strictly to the seat assignments printed on the tickets. We had not been long installed in seats 14, 15 and 16 when three other passengers appeared with the same seat numbers on their tickets. They went back inside the terminal to check on the situation; upon returning they suggested we do likewise. I started to rise from my seat but Guille snapped:

“Don’t get up, we bought these tickets yesterday and we’re staying right here.” Finally a company employee came out. After examining our tickets he pointed out that the departure time was stamped with yesterday’s date: our bus had departed 24 hours earlier.

Guille did not stir from her seat. “It’s not our fault. I told the kid we wanted to leave today.”

“I’m sorry Doña, but you should have paid more attention.”

“But I can’t read!” cried Juana. The entire bus was in an uproar, Guille shouting and the other passengers echoing her. “Thieves! Taking advantage of folks who can’t read.”

Finally, they decided not to kick us off the bus, but to charge us for new tickets, with the current date. This seemed to me perfectly ridiculous, as there were plenty of empty seats. I expected Guille to march off the bus in high dudgeon, but she relented with regal dignity. “The Lord does things for a reason,” she said as she gave up seat number 14 and walked down the aisle to the unspoken for number 22.

The bus’s rocking suspension put me to sleep and when I woke up we were in a storybook forest of tall pines dripping with moss and mistletoe. I drifted off again and opened my eyes to a gentle, pleasant sense of de ja vu. I recognized the landscape of vertical mountains and horizontal clouds, but in a disassociated way, as if from a dream, photograph or the upside-down view from the airplane coming in to Oaxaca.

When we arrived at Guille's cousin's house in Betaza, she informed us that we'd missed the calenda, the ceremonial procession that opens all fiestas, which had taken place the night before.

"You see," Guille said. "God does do things for a reason. We were meant to arrive yesterday, like it said on our tickets."

Guille's cousin Lorena, 27, lives in a lovely adobe house with blue trim. The adobe in Betaza is a orangish gold instead of the muddy brown found in Oaxaca. The house should have million dollar mountain vista, but oddly there are no windows on that side of the house, perhaps to keep out the cold wind.

High school students perform the famous Jarabe de Betaza. While the traditional white dresses appear simple from afar they are actually are pleasted for form a complex diamond design. An original, handmade Betaza dress costs one thousand pesos and up.

Coffee on the vine.

"Downtown" Betaza

Morning in Betaza after a night of dancing and the wee hours in the community kitchen preparing breakfast for the revelers.

The PFP has withdrawn from the Zócalo; the tanks, the uniformed soldiers, the automatic weapons, didn’t fit with the image of the Oaxaca recovered, back to normal, open for tourism, that the government is promoting. The facades of the historic center have been repainted. I find myself disoriented; my landmarks of graffiti and crumbling adobe are suddenly bright pink, yellow and terracotta. On the side of the Cathedral there is an oblong patch of green paint where “Religion is the opium of the masses” had appeared in spray paint. There are also uneven blotches painted on the stone front of the bank, the Governor’s Palace, the bandstand and the Terranova restaurant, where it once said “Death to Ulises,” “Viva la APPO” and “Remember June 14.” The Christmas decorations are gayer than usual, elaborate nativity scenes, colored lights strung over the streets, and three tall pointed Christmas trees. The planters are filled with poinsettias, donated by citizens who support the government. “Thank you PFP,” read the tags, “For bringing peace to Oaxaca.” The tourists are reappearing, innocently snapping pictures of the cobblestone streets which just weeks ago were filled with the blackened hulls of burnt buses.

What happened to the dissent? It’s been whisked away to prisons in distant states, along with hundreds of people who had nothing to do with the resurrection, whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or whose indigenous features matched a certain discriminatory profile. The marches continue, but they don’t make headline news anymore, that might scare the tourists away.

It’s hard not to enjoy the “recovered” city. Laughter echoes from the packed tables of the street side cafés. Indigenous children (employed by the state) dressed in white play marimbas before the backdrop of the Cathedral. Sunday afternoon I sat on a park bench with my notebook, planning my lessons to the sound of the orchestra (also employed by the state) and looking up occasionally to watch the children running after balloons. Should we feel guilty for enjoying this public space which is sacred to Oaxacans? Should we stay home in protest on a sunny Sunday afternoon? We have a right to, after all. But we can’t let the peace seduce us into forgetting the Oaxacans who are absent from the Zócalo, far from the sunshine and the marimbas in their cells in Tamaulipas.

The "reception" was held in the patio of the Marquez family compound, also the home of the Marquez family auto body shop. The cars on blocks had been removed for the occaison, but the bikini calenders remained.

The happy couple and their parents passed out bottles of Corona and Coca-Cola, and styrofoam plates of food. I winced everytime Bety floated by in her white wedding gown, vail and all, balancing a tray of mole negro.

After dinner family and friends practically bullied the bride and groom into playing the traditional wedding games. They were made to stand on chairs in the middle of the dance floor, Vic holding out Bety's vail so a congo line of guests could shimmy underneath. Every time the congo line passed, the guests thrust their shoulders into Vic, trying to dethrone him. Eventually, they succeeded, and Vic soared threw the air as if he'd been thrown from a horse, landing in the dusty driveway. Fortunately, he sustained no major injuries and had let go of Bety's vail in time to prevent hers tumbling after him.

But the highlight of the night was Vic's grandmother, who'd had a little too much mescal. She managed to execute a series of sexy moves on the dance floor before she lost her balance and fell headlong into a row of folding chairs.

“Sitting in Oaxaca’s historic town square, or zócalo, where time barely seems to penetrate the leafy canopy, it’s easy to fall under the spell of a Mexico that is every day more elusive. Without stirring from your bench, you experience the most irresistible of Oaxaca’s attractions, the coexistence of ancient traditions with the modern world. In the zócalo young professionals with suits and cell phones walk side by side with women in traditional dress who balance baskets of wares on their heads. Tourists of every nationality while away the hours at street-side cafés, sipping mugs of frothy hot chocolate made from an ancient indigenous recipe. Eager venders work the tables, offering everything from one hundred dollar woven rugs to carved toothpicks for a peso.”

Things look different these days. The tourists have been replaced with federal police officers. Police on the benches and in the cafes, talking on cell phones and snuggling with their new Oaxacan girlfriends – who all appear under 20 - La Malinches in too tight jeans. Police bargaining with indigenous women for woven shawls and black pottery (souvenirs of the occupation) and in the electronics store watching the soap operas. Police sprawled in hammocks strung between the tires of military transports, listening to hand held radios, like the APPOs always did. Police eating shaved ices and reading novels – from Garcia Marquez to Dan Brown - the covers propped against their riot shields as they guard the perimeter of the plaza.

Every evening there is a concert. On the bandstand, where the APPO leaders used to shout slogans, the musicians dutifully perform Oaxacan classics - the Dance of the Mixes, God Never Dies - for the an audience almost entirely composed of the invading force. The officers sit quietly, chins propped on their hands, watching the civilians passing on their way home.

"Oh my God, it's the gasoline station," Luis, my teenage neighbhor shreiked, pointing at the thickest column of smoke, beneath which we could make out a flickering orange glow. It was coming from about five blocks west and three blocks north.
"Don't be menso,¨snapped his older cousin Lechita. "We would have heard the explosion. It's just a bus."
I remembered when the first bus was set on fire, four months ago; it was shocking. Now it's just a bus.
Another column rose from the area of llano park, the Secretary of Tourism? we speculated.

It wasn't until the morning after that we knew what really happened, as much as we can know in the swirl of propoganda that followed. The fire we'd seen the night before had been the State Supreme court building, located next door to the Pemex station on Independencia. When I arrived around 11AM, joining the crowds of curious behind the yellow police tape, there were still firefighters extinguishing the simmering rubble. The exterior, an imposing yellow colonial structure, was surprising intact:the fire only left inky smoke stains above the windows. The interior was gutted. The only thing left standing inside, was the statue of Benito Juarez, illuminated by a shaft of sunlight.

Other buildings burned were the headquarters of the Association of Hotel and Motel Owners, the Secretary of Turism and the adjoining Juarez Theater, the Secretaria of Exterior Relacions, a tax bureau, and two private homes located on 5 de Mayo.

These two private residences were the kind of ornate, Porfirian era structures that give the center its charm. Their elegant facades are now singed black. The inhabitants, including an elderly lady who was rescued from the flames by officers of the PFP, have no apparant link to either side of the conflict.

While the mainstream media attributes the arsons to the APPO, many here believe it to be the work of Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and the plainclothes officers that serve him.

Opinions are largely split along socioeconomic lines. My students at the airport are squarely against the APPO and applaud the presence of the PFP. They say the feel more secure with the zocalo converted into a military camp and armed police convoys in pick up trucks roving the city streets. My friends, on the other hand, who mostly come from middle and lower middle class families, feel threatened by the PFP. Many are routinely hassled because of their "suspicious" appearence (or rather, for looking indigenous). The other night I "escorted" a friend home from our salsa class downtown because he was tired of being stopped by the police. They assume he is involved in the APPO because he is short, dark-skinned and wears his long hair in a ponytail. He is actually a politically apathetic upper middle class kid who attends an expensive private university. At my side he passed unnoticed by the PFP, who were busy checking out my pasty white legs.

Although the PFP officers have their following among the local females (they can be seen smoozing on park benches between drills) my girlfriends avoid the Zocalo because of the suggestive way the officers stare at them. As I a foreigner, I'm used to the sexual harassment, and I don´t think the PFP would dare lay on a hand on me for fear of causing an international incident. But I believe the reports of local women who say they were groped by PFP officers under the guise of routine inspection.

The wind shifts, hitting us with a faceful of gas. We pull up the collors of our shirts, those of not wearing blue surgical masks (the must-have accessory in Oaxaca these days). Part of me wants to stay and watch, even with my eyes tearing. I don´t know if it´s out of solidarity for the movement or only a selfish urge to experience intensely. I turn and walk slowly back to my house. Some people pass me running. Even back inside my apartment I can´t escape the sweet, toxic smell of tear gas.