People at home still worried?

Above:  I'm all right, See? I can hug you now, I'm not infected!

Okay, seriously, at this point I can't take swine flu seriously. Except for a few hot dog and tamale vendors, who always wear the masks, no one around me seems worried any more.
There's less cases now than before. Besides which I'm richer than the rest of the population, and thus am less suceptible to complications. In my view, like I've said before,I think the whole class issue gets left out far too often.

I may be the only one here at CEMAL who doesn't have an album on facebook yet of me wearing a "cubrebocas." I wanted to play down the issue. Sure I wore one for a while, but I just felt like a complete asshole wearing one in the Zocalo (main square, I hope to talk more about later) where I stood out as someone who could afford a cubrebocas. The fact is that it's not any more dangerous than normal flu. Just normal handwashing is probably enough.

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You know what? I should see what deals they have at the markets in Taxco on Silver bullets!
Even after sending out my first note one the subject on facebook, a friend wanted me to call to say I was all right. He said I looked pale. And I thought I had put up facebook albums to prove I was still all right! Of course I'm pale compared to some other people here, given that I'm Anglo not meztiso? I mean, sure I stand out when I'm wearing a rasta hat and a long blue skirt (below) but isn't that to be expected?

Seriously, Best. Manaquin. Ever. I actually saw this outside a shop once.
Well, I'd better start jogging before it gets dark. I've got lots more to say, about things that have nothing to do with swine flu. And I've wasted too much of the week sleeping and writing blogs, except for one trip to see some pyramids. Man! There's so much to write about. But also so much to do.
Hasta Luego,
Benja "Benito" Libras

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.

Recycling Center

While here, I've seen and worked at San Anton's recycling center. It's almost completely independent of the government (which claims now to be helping) and sells independently to corporations.

The people who run it consider themselves against the private garbage collectors and their landfill (see "Dirty Politics" post for details) their way of resisting is to provide alternatives.

It's probably among the things that have most inspired me here. In spite of the environmental problems I see around me, people are making efforts to deal with them.

And, it's easy to forget that the problem of garbage disposal is coming about as a result of U.S. buisinesses promoting disposable items here. If anything I think that some Mexicans here are at times ahead of us by being "behind" us.

Gathering rainwater is a necessity. Urban agriculture isn't just "gardens" for the concerned rich, it's people raising chickens in their own lawns. You can still get Coke bottles refilled here at many "Abarrotes" and restaurants. Some people even collect water in a bucket during showers to use for their lawns, rather than using sprinklers (a good choice given water shortages). Sidewalks are on both sides of the street. The list goes on and on.

I almost fell into the trap of complaining about every environmental problem we have here, and that list goes on and on too. If I do that, I'll try to be sure to backdate it before this post, or at least link to it. The developing world may at times appear mad "backwards." In reality they are often more "forwards" than the developed world. I'm glad to be studying here.

Soccer on a Baseball field?

This happened a good deal earlier, near the beginning. I'm putting it here so that I will remember. When it happened I'm not in any way sure. In any case it's a fun story.

A few other students and I were looking for a place to play soccer. As it happened, the soccer fields were already taken. The baseball field had only informal practice. So we played there.

The baseball coach and a few baseball-playing kids joined in on our game (as I said the practice was informal). Our teams were both pretty mixed between Mexicans and U.S., not divided along those lines.

What struck me was that here we were as U.S. people playing soccer on a Mexican baseball field. Something about that seemed very ironic.

Taxistas

It's become so commonplace that I rarely ever think about it: taking taxis. During my homestay time I took them to avoid being late (although the bus, if I could find it, was cheaper). Now I take taxis to avoid being stuck in rain.

Riding in a Taxi with friends or homestay family the Taxista ignores us, generally. Yet riding alone, I nearly always wind up chatting.

It's a great way to practice my Spanish, which I've heard from Taxi drivers is pretty good at this point. Starting out, I had problems with the difference between "derecho" (straight) and "derecha" (right) which used to lead to problems. Now I can talk easily.

The Taxi drivers are usually eager to talk and sometimes start the conversations themselves. It's something I hope to come back to. The headlines nearly always portray Mexican-U.S. contacts as violent. The reality is that most Mexicans I've met are eager to chat and eager to please foreigners. Given the dollar-to-peso rate this should surprise no one.

They nearly always want to know where I'm from originally. I'm happy to tell them Tennessee, which is famous here for Elvis (who lived in the one part of the state I've not been to, although I'm happy to share the same birthday).

I often ask if they've been to the U.S. Often they have, although East Tennessee hardly ever. California seems to be the state I hear most often, although once I met a Taxi driver who had been as far north as Idaho.

Once I was asked whether or not I thought Mexican women were pretty. I honestly answered "Yes." I've had similar conversations with other non-Taxi-drivers, some of them finding it strange that I actually prefer brown-eyes to blue ones. I've heard the Spanish conquest imposed a standard of beauty here that only gets reinforced by U.S. media.

Mostly though taxi-drivers just wonder what brings me here. I've learned to focus primarily on telling them that I study Spanish, which is part true. Somehow I've never felt comfortable saying "Migracion y Globalizacion." Then of course there's trying to explain that back in the U.S. I study Creative Writing. My lack of a clear future plan is also a little bit of a problem too for some. I've never heard anyone particularly say that they were confused by my answers but I've sensed it.

I've told some here that I want to teach English in a Spanish-speaking country. For a while that seemed the most promising option. I've met one woman here who does that, while being a writer on the side. The only problem is that I like the U.S. in some ways. As much as I love certain things about Mexico, there's just something wrong about coming into other as a foreigner. I especially don't know if being involved in other countries' politics would even be right for someone like me.

I told all this to one particular Taxi driver, and he said that I should translate books from Spanish to English, or maybe even write the full history of Mexico for U.S. audiences (he sensed my interest in the history of the places we were going through). In the meantime though I could always become the first comercial Nopal (cactus for eating) grower in Tennessee. I've heard they require almost no work.

A lesson

This is a story from back when I was staying at my urban homestay. I'm not going to worry about all that "Update/backdate" labels anymore. The point is that now I understand some things maybe differently than when they happened.

I should have been doing homework. Instead I was lying on my bed, doing nothing. Really nothing special about that. I'd also left the light on, so that I wouldn't feel that I was sleeping, or possibly so that I wouldn't feel like I had to sleep.

Then Alicia came in, and turned off the light.

I wasn't actually sleeping so I got up from the bed and told her that I wasn't sleeping. She said that I shouldn't have the light on if I wasn't sleeping, and that in Mexico, people try not to waste power.

I realized afterwards that I had my values entirely reversed. I was charging my homestay family money just so that I could feel more productive than I actually was. And, to top it all off, I was probably making the air worse too.

I had always considered myself an environmentalist. I have no idea if Alicia considered herself as such. Yet at that moment it scacely mattered what either of us believed that we believed. What mattered was results.

Random Newsflash! Panic!

Yeah, an earthquake struck near Acapulco. Makes me feel happy that I'm among the few U.S. Americans who is somewhere else in Mexico besides Acapulco.

Yes, I write about problems here in Mexico. I'm not Mexico's PR dude, allright? But the news media hasn't done anything but insult Mexico since I've been here. It makes me want to find something good that is newsworthy about Mexico. And by that I don't mean "The dance club on top of Burger King near the Palacio de Cortez is excellent."

(which it is, sort of, at least in terms of lights and atmosphere, despite being on the second floor above a Burger King. although a bit heavy on pop and hip-hop. I prefer Aloha bar's techno music, or Eclipse's live band covering the Red Hot Chili Peppers in English: "I don' believe its b-eeh-d!" Sorry about that tangent anything to lighten the mood here!)

The job of the news media in the U.S. is to get people worried about things in other countries so that they don't worry about things "over here" (which is not where I am right now, hence the quotes). Sort of like the U.S. military.

U.S. people respond by hating their southern neighbors even more. Harder to place blame on U.S. drug purchasers, or U.S. gun trafficers for border violence. Not to mention the connections between NAFTA, peso-to-dollar rates, and undocumented migration to the U.S.

The Mexican media, meanwhile, mostly reports on Mexico, to control the Mexican people, sort of like the Mexican military, and many militaries throughout Latin America. Which is why they blew the whole swine flu thing out into a panicfest, then told us the number of cases was going down and we had nothing to worry about (I'd already quit worrying, but really it just meant "that's so last week's news" as far as they were concerned).

Sorry if this post offends anyone who works for the media, (and yes, we bloggers mostly parrot what the MSM gives us). Sensational news just sells better! That's why the Cristian Science Monitor is now only a weekly paper. I should put a bunch of pictures of me wearing "cubrebocas" just to increase ad revenue.

P.S. Is it just me or do I do my best writing at 2:00 AM after watching clips of Steven Colbert?