Cuernavaca, The Complete Idioto´s Guide part 1

Cuernavaca: a city of ravines.¨Upper¨ and ¨lower¨ class is literal. Well, not always, but mostly.

Walk up certain hills, and you´ll see mansions and flowering trees.¨The city of eternal spring¨ is Cuernavaca´s motto, and there is nearly always some kind of flower in bloom.

The people in these fancy houses are often people who left Mexico City for bigger houses and courtyards, some imitating the tiled domes of Spain. Unlike Mexico City, we have enough water for some people to have swimming pools.The modern convent of the Guadalupanas del Cristo el Rey is here at the top as are some language schools.

It´s good ground to avoid earthquakes like the one that ripped Mexico City apart in the 80s. Granted, land at the very top of some of these hills is looser and cheaper judging from what my host mother Alicia told me.

Okay, time to go down to the middle ground where I am now. Here you find small-shopkeepers with painted signs, good for if you need anything.

Walk down a flight of stairs into a ravine. Available space, if it´s there, often gets used for chickens. People come here from the countryside. Many will wind up in the U.S. eventually. The ravines actually look kind of picturesque from a distance because of their greenery and general wildness compared to the rest of the city.

At far bottom you hit the rivers that carved out the ravines. The ravine-bottom is nice and shady, but you´ll get a headache if you stand down there for too long. Black rivers carry sewage that washes down from all the layers above. Usually the rivers flow with suds. Just imagine the combined fecal and garbage smell. I can´t show it. The worst of these ravines don´t even have roads at the bottom, meaning that the people who live there have to climb stairs.

Foreigners (except for me) avoid the ravines with the exception of the San Anton waterfall, which is awesome despite not being clean. It´s a bit different from other ravines in that it´s more or less one of the nicer parts of town.

The city as it stands now grew in a jumbled way out of Cuanahuac the pyramid site of the Tlahuica (meaning ¨They who work the land"). The Tlahuica were among Moctezuma´s loyal taxpayers. They built their temples near Cuernavaca's modern center. Cortez had slaves rip them apart to build a castle for himself. His castle still stands at the city's center.

The Palacio de Cortez as it's called has a mural inside of it by Diego Rivera. The mural shows Cortez invading, destroying Aztec Empire's class system, and installing himself and the Spaniards on top. It's beautiful in spite of showing the divides of wealth and race. Cuernavaca itself is much the same way.

Palm weaving

My relationship with the summer program is a little different from other students.I do go with them sometimes, but only when it´s something that I hadn´t done during the spring program, usually. One of our excursions last week was just down the street to visit some women from an indigenous village who were staying there to sell baskets and other woven goods in Cuernavaca. They taught us how to weave their style of palm baskets as well.

They talked a lot about life in their town and relationships with their husbands. I won´t go into that too much because I know this is a culturally sensitive subject, and I hate to be the white man criticizing the norms of indigenous society. I will say that they thought the location of houses in Cuernavaca next to the cemetery was problematic due to their own belief in ghosts.

For them, their artisan work is very much an art, because it requires time and effort, just as much in their opinion as painting or engraving (which we discussed) particularly with the harvesting of plants.

Tepotzlan v. Amatlan

One of the great thing about doing so many flashbacks this week is that I can look back at things I haven't covered and try to mix them up in ways that show people the contrasts that exist there.

Tepotzlan is, as I've already said in my facebook album on the subject, a very new-agey town, where hippies and other outsiders have taken over to some extent. It has great mountains though, and some nice ruins. The new-agey thing is kind of fun actually, but...

It was different from my class experience with the indigenous side of Mexico in the same municipality, this time in the city of Amatlan. Visiting the house of Ignacio ("Nacho," a community leader in nearby Amatlan) with him explaining the conquest, the pre-hispanic history, the government's (in his opinion) useless projects and the role of religion, including a trip out to a sacred natural rock arch with pre-Nahua-era petrogliphs was definately one of my favorite experiences connected to classes.

I may have doubts about the fact that the Spanish left them with this land only because they had purchased it back. Like reservations in the U.S., I've since concluded that it is not the best agricultural fields, in spite of its sacredness. Yet somehow at the time I didn't consider such things.

Mexico has a complex relationship with its indigenous past. Often people try to throw it off in order to advance themselves, wanting to be culturally closer to Spain, France, or the U.S., a process hastened by the inquisition and now less violently by migration and globalized trade. Still, it remains among the things I find most appealing (and often hidden to U.S. eyes) about Mexico.

Who is this Subcomandante Marcos dude I keep mentioning?

Above: Subcomander Marcos shows that he is not afraid of cancer. courtesy of http://kassandraproject.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/el-subcomandante-marcos/

I am studying Spanish. Yet I write these entries in English so that people back at home can read them. I also spend some time here taking classes about history and current and past issues facing Mexico, along with the rest of the world.* So, when I refer to these things, people may get confused.

I've made at least two references to Subcommander Marcos though, without explaining who he is. For my blog's two official followers, I assume this is not a problem. For everyone else, it might be.

Actually no one really knows who he is. Like all of the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) officials he nearly always appears in ninja-type ski-mask outfits which he regrets making the norm for his appearences given the Mexican heat.

Marcos is not his real name. I've also heard that he decided to change his name to Delegate Zero. He claims the mask isn't just to hide himself but to make more people identify with him by not making himself a specific person.

The Mexican government believes that he is Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, a former philosophy profesor in Mexico City. He denies this, but it does fit the popular account in which he came into the state of Chiapas trying to tell the local Maya "workers of the world unite!" and that they should grab land from the evil greedy capitalist thieves etc. The Maya "just stared at him."

They told him that the land wasn't property and they didn't consider themselves workers. This is the version that Wikipedia believes in. So, it has to be true. In any case, he claims to have been converted to their way of thinking.

He's a spokesperson for the "Zapatistas" The name comes from Emiliano Zapata, a leader in the 1910 revolution.

One of the ideas behind the EZLN was that the NAFTA trade aggreement and other policies of were favoring big plantations over small farms. There were many other issues of course, but if I had to pick one, that would be it.

I find it telling that, according to my teacher Antonio (himself a gay-rights/AIDS activist), Marcos is on record as saying "transgenic" instead of "transgender" when trying to talk about LGBT rights. It probably means he often can't think about anything besides corn.

They captured control of a series of towns in 1994, and still hold control of some areas.

They claim to be an organization of direct-democracy with Marcos acting only as a spokesperson for the Mayan communities which he represents. I can admire the idea, if it is in fact true. My friend Rudy Rodriguez-Vivero thinks that they are pawns of Europeans who want mineral rights in Chiapas. The EZLN often gets labeled as a foreign group of armed terrorists,especially here in Mexico.

Which is why Subcomandante Marcos and other Zapatistas have, more or less quit trying to expand militarilly in Chiapas and are now doing speaking tours around Mexico, and apparently writing childrens books.

Mexico has, however, moved on. Many leftists now support Lopez-Obrador (whom Marcos hates). I get the feeling that most ordinary Mexicans would rather run across the border than fight the system. After all, they get better results from that usually.

Idealizing foreign rebels is exactly the wrong strategy for people in the U.S. right now. We have "indigenous" people in our own country too!** Supporting rebels in foreign countries (also including his holiness the Dalai Lama) sends the message that we just want to save some random exotic race and not ourselves. The left is just as guilty as the right on this.

If there's anything I've learned here from studying Atenco, or the 13 Pueblos movement,*** or even the "Zapatistas" it's that these movements draw strength from being rooted in Mexican or more often local identity. People in the U.S. should seriously take the hint already.

*Unlike when my sister did this program I am not going to Guatemala on any official visits (people said it was too distracting). However, we have discussed U.S./United Fruit Company interventions in El Salvador and Guatemala, we just haven't been there.

**The term "Nativo Americano" never caught on in Mexico, because literally interpreted it includes nearly all Mexican Citizens.

***A group against the creation of the landfill in Loma de Mejilla.

Don't Panic!

Share this anyone who is worried about me and/or about the swine flu.

Yes I am in Mexico. In Cuernavaca, Morelos to be specific, the city of eternal spring (to me more like eternal summer). I have been to Mexico City recently, but not recently enough for that to be a problem.

As far as I know there have been no reported cases in Cuernavaca. A few in the state of Morelos.

Yeah, I was freaking out at the first warnings. Now I just find the people with their surgical masks (cubrebocas) to be funny. Not only that but we here at Augsburg's Center for Global Education have way too many of our surgical masks, for what its worth. Also I've heard that there's more cases in the U.S. right now than here in Mexico.

The fact is THIS IS A NON-FATAL ILLNESS. NORMAL FLU KILLS MORE PEOPLE! People always get scared of new things because they're new.

Please check out this site if you want some real information. If the link doesn't work for you, copy and paste the adress
http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20090501/putting-swine-flu-in-perspective

Our classes aren't closed because we're all from the U.S., even if we're running out of Mexican guest speakers at times who are willing to come to our classes. Some people are leaving but this'll probably be over as fast as bird flu or West Nile Virus. I'm still staying.

The real issue is that some Mexicans aren't educated enough to wash hands before eating and other such preventative matters, often try to auto-medicate with useless anti-bacterials and don't see doctors soon enough. However, I can assure you that none of the above applies to me or my friends down here, including my Mexican friends. Also I've temporarily suspended my involvement of

One girl here called her friend in Mexico City, who said that he didn't know anyone who actually had it (neither do I) and that it's all a conspiracy by the government. I don't know about the Mexican government, but I think that the U.S. government and media may be trying to distract attention from Osama bin Ladin's death, as announced by Pakistani officials. I heard that in passing here in Mexico. I'm not sure if any of you did. I still believe that it's real, but not really a threat. I may have already had it and gotten over it actually.

Oh, and eating well-cooked pork will not get you sick. I just thought I might add that.

And I might mention my favorite Mexican flu remedy I've heard, this from back when I had, and got over a different strain of flu (or possibly the same one, but unlikely, because it was earlier):
Have someone experienced put alchohol and lime juice (probably some other ingrediants too, I've never actually seen it done), burn it, and then put it out before it actually hits your feet. It's used by Indigenas (as we say here in Mexico, the term "natives" being too ambiguous) from the state of Puebla. I assume it's a solution they figured out after the Spanish destroyed their sweat lodges (which I've seen in the ruins here).

The Ancient Mexico

Some may say that studying in Mexico is strange. Tradition holds that one should study in a country with a long and proud history of artistic and scientific accomplishments, such as Brittain, France, or Italy.

In actuality certain parts of Mexico were indeed centers of learning and power.



















Recently I visited the site of an ancient observatory, a city where Zapotec and Maya studied in ancient times. It included a cave with an ancient ¨telescope¨consisting of an opening to the sky, and (in ancient times) a bowl of water below to reflect. The opening was set up to coincide with the sun´s position at summer solstice.

Despite having no weapons beyond flint, they pulled off some great accomplishments including the invention of the number zero (long before it was though of in Europe) the notion that the Earth goes around the sun, and the ability to design a plaza where the echo of clapping sounds like a sacred cocateil (the last of these has yet to be accomplished by modern people, maybe for lack of trying). To me it seems racist to attribute these accomplishments to aliens, but many people do.

Of course these civilizations eventually ¨collapsed.¨ After the gradual collapse, here in Central Mexico,the Aztecs and later the Spanish conquered the remaining nations. Although many Indians thought the Spanish would be better masters than the Aztecs, they turned out to be just as demanding in some ways.

Mexico´s current rulers also rule from Mexico City. According to my teachers Mexico generally remains a hierarchical rather than equal society (it was hierarchical even in pre-Aztec times). I don´t know if I believe it, I haven´t been here long enough. The language brough by the Spanish doesn´t help much (givden that it distinguishes between tu and usted).