17 April 2005
Months ago I spoke with Ginny LaRoe, an Indiana journalism student researching women's international reporting. She recently
posted her interviews As of this writing, she was still adding my bit. Stay tuned to find out if I've ever been armed.
22 August 2004
Thanks to members of the Extra Miler Club for allowing me to trail them during their annual meeting/Rhode Island swing, as detailed in today's Boston Globe. Not sure if the Herkimer story ran yet, though a sidebar appears on the site.
19 August 2004
Reporter recently contacted me from the Santa Fe paper about the Christian Science Monitor piece. They ran the original, a Spanish version and some disturbing reader responses I'll post the Spanish version soon.
03 August 2004
New photos from the ITF art show are up on www.inthefray.com Plus you can view the rest of the work and artist bios in the Pulse gallery. This week's blog is about Helen Thomas and the sad scene in the Rose Garden.
02 August 2004
For those of you who have not been browsing your local Christian Science reading room, here's the latest
I have also been blogging weekly for Pulse, part of the burgeoning In The Fray online media conglomerate Our first art show didn't raise much money, as the naysaysers were quick to note. But it did bring together virtual coworkers, many for the first time, gave us some publicity and ideas for ways to improve. Idea number one: Use only donated galllery space. Anyone?
More to come at month's end, including Juchitan updates and a multimedia spread about female foreign correspondents. Indiana grad student Ginny Laroe is masterminding that project, although I do play a part.
13 June 2004
To see the promised travel story, which ran in the Boston Globe today Check here
To all members of the Class of 1999 in town for reunion who are reading and have offered encouragement: Many thanks. You never cease to amaze; the weather was lovely; wish I could have chatted/debated with more of you and that we didn't have to stop dancing so soon.
07 June 2004
I am finishing two more stories that should be posted soon. Have not set up the new blog yet. Want to wait until the last stories run. I've added a few more links below, as promised. I also have a new mobile number 518-253-2168. The old one is still active, but try this one first.
13 May 2004
Updates
You can see the latest story
More soon to come. I also plan to start a new everyday blog, which I'll link to from Recuerdos. Thanks again to all who helped with this project and continue to share advice as I prepare more stories.
03 May 2004
See my latest story/photos of guest worker recruiting in Mexican tobacco country
Many thanks to all involved, and for the incredible opportunity to follow the story. More to come.
02 April 2004
Riot
After visiting the ancient Mayan ruins at Palenque yesterday, I found myself at the center of a riot this morning. Managed to survive thanks to Centurion training, Spanish classes and what mama Rosa Maria would call my ?Good wits.?
This is how it all started: Rather than visit the villages surrounding San Cristobal de las Casas alone, I went with a group of travelers. There were six of us - three Israelis and two Canadians, none of whom spoke any Spanish. They all had the same guide book I do, and had read about local customs, which include indigenous/Catholic ceremonies before Easter week. Local religious leaders, mostly men, dress in embroidered huipile shirts, sandals and ribbon bedecked hats, light incense, sharpen knives, chants, and venerate sacred statues. They charge extra for entrance into local churches. Photographs there and even in the square are forbidden.As you can see here
I saw one of the Israeli girls with her camera out near one of the ceremonial areas, and warned her not to take pictures. I?m not, she said, I know about the rules. She kept the camera out.
A few minutes later, a local leader accosted her. He grabbed the camera, insisting in Spanish that she relinquish the film. She did not understand and started to fight him. The crowd of men closed in on us as I tried to explain. Trouble was, I was explaining in two directions - to her and to him, simultaneoulsy translating, trying to diffuse the situation as men started to pelt us with stones and brandish sticks. Did my best to play the supplicant muneca, and to fend of the dozens of hands.
Finally, we got her camera back. A few of the guys kept pelting me. I stood my ground, chided the cabrons for berating me when I did not even have a camera. I explained that we respected their traditions, and were only trying to learn more. In the end, I had them deriding the pinche gringos with me and I scored a few more marriage proposals as I whispered to my companion to get moving.
She was shaken. She did not understand why they were so upset, just as she did not understand why they charged admission at the church, or why villagers throw trash along the mountainside. I tried my best to be sympathetic and to explain. It is their land after all, I said, to do with as they wish. She did not seem persuaded.
We went on to hike the forest roads to Zanacatan, visit another church and lunch on a hillside. It would probably not have been safe to go alone, but I must admit I enjoyed myself more after the others left me to roam the town, exploring the Bat Museum and chatting with Tzotzil women as they wove their glittering blankets.
Do we come to Mexico to lose or find ourselves? The Canadians said they came in search of something they could learn about themselves. I came to get lost in the lives of others.
31 March 2004
Searching?
Day one of the search found me in Juchitan, a town perched on the edge of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec where everything is in-between. Even personal pronouns are hard to pin down. I am looking for a certain personality, and with him ? and her - the story of a people. Amaranta.
To see why I was so eager to arrive take a look here Isabella Tree's writing reminds me of Songlines.
I knew Amaranta had friends at the Juchitan hospital. But rather than stop there, which I could not reach by phone, I decided to ask around the Casa Huespedes just after I arrived ($10 a night, btw). Met two lovely muxhe right away who directed me to a nearby estetica. No Amaranta, but I did meet her friend Paco, who runs a bar nearby. After taking me to look for the famed Amaranta, he found me a taxi driver who knew how to get to her house. Actually, since she ran for the senate last summer just about every taxi driver knows.
The neighborhood is called Los Pinos, same as the Mexican presidential palace but far more modest. Mango trees separate it from the dirt and gravel entry road. Chickens and baby rabbits roam the vast chiki hut outside, a shady porch that doubles as a roadside restaurant. Amaranta?s mother forced gorditas and Coke on me during the six hours that I waited. Was that Amaranta in the blue Nissan four-door? Climbing out of the taxi, the combi, the souped up Impala with the indigo windshield? No. Heat penetrated everything, dry and humid at the same time, sort of Key West meets Iowa. I gave up any pretense of not looking the gringa and stripped down to shorts and a tank top. No one seemed to mind ? Amaranta?s sister in law was doing the laundry out front in a transparent blue slip, after all.
The cultural exchange continued as Amaranta?s mother and her friend rattled on about my fate as a soltera. I could do well here, they said, considering men hate skinny women. And did I know that only a few towns away, all the people have blue eyes? The conquistadors, they said, nodding, two round, brown women in gold hoop earrings, colored t-shirts and flower print skirts. Then they cracked open three Victoria beers ? and I do not mean the chica ones ? explaining that women here can drink as much as they want. Here women sew so well, even Selma Hayek came to buy clothes for that movie, ?Frida.? Married or single, fat or thin, young or old, women here run things, they said. Viva Juchitan.
I did my part to answer their questions about the U.S. I estimated salaries - they were amazed to hear what even the average teacher makes. They asked me to name all the states. ?All 50?? ?Are there really 50?? I gave them the highlights, admittedly slighting the midwest. Midway through, I dispelled their misconception that Anna Kournikova, much-despised for stealing the greatest Latin lover alive, is American. Not sure if they believed me. They kept citing blonde Hollywood movie stars as proof, as though the horde spawned and propelled her to tennis pseudo-stardom.
Shadows stretched across the road as the heat subsided. The sky darkened. I finally left at about 6:30 p.m. by bus for the plaza, where I found Paco but ? that?s right, not Amaranta. I am now sitting in my room. An industrial-strength fan is whirring away above me, trembling with the effort of combating tropical heat. Sounds? like Platoon. Could it have been fashioned from recycled helicopter blades?
Tomorrow: The search continues.
Day 37
Do not fear death but rather the unlived life. You don?t have to live forever. You just have to live.
~?Tuck Everlasting?
Found Amaranta - After a long, drawn out search. This is Mexico, after all, land of anticipation and the manana syndrome. We were supposed to meet at the cultural center next to the church, where I found a Zapotec dance class in progress. No Amaranta. An hour later, called the cell. News was we would meet soon ? half hour at the most. More waiting. Mexico is a lesson in paciencia. Thought of my grandmother, who would say, ?Offer it up to God? and ducked into the church. I passed a hybrid Zapotec/Catholic altar painted in fluorescent pink and yellow. Ducked out again with a funeral procession replete with black lace and white gladiolas. A few blocks later I sat down on the foot-high curb, exhausted from a day alternately filled with interviews and long, hot walks among the palms.
Then I heard my name, Mariana (the Spanish version). It was coming from behind. I turned, and there was Amaranta, lighted by the sunset from behind. Amaranta in a flowing purple flowered skirt and pink scarf, brown hair pulled back in a clip, dark eyes flashing. Amaranta bending down, offering her only hand to greet and help me up as the curious began to approach.
Much conversation ensued, about the muxhe tradition in Juchitan, recent changes and projects underway. Stories soon to come. Many thanks to those who got me this far, including Pew, mis professoras de espanol, the fam and my leading Mexican contact who is still working this week after a car accident landed her with a broken arm. Indestructible! Now that is Mexico
Next: Destabilized zones.
Day 39
Traffic everywhere is getting crazy as Semana Santa approaches. In small towns sidewalks are only about two feet wide, so buses, trucks, bicycles, three-wheeled bicycle taxis and pedestrians compete for street space with vendors. The crowds combined with the heat, bad directions, broken telephones, locals? propensity to forget citas/entrevistas (interviews) and my hair?s propensity to turn ?All 18th century French? as KHF would say, had me frazzled late yesterday. Just as I surrendered control to whatever benevolent force was left in the universe, everything came together. All the people I wanted to talk to converged on the house where I was already interviewing someone. That?s how I arrived at my Mexican chaos theory: If you want to get something done, do not under any circumstances commit. Do not plan. Better to arrange two or three other things at the exact same time, then cancel them.
Met some amazing women and muxhes in Juchitan who helped me understand how indigenous groups are grappling with SIDA, (AIDS). Thanks to all who shared their stories, particularly Sodelba, 21, who you will be hearing more about in an upcoming story. I wish her and her two sons pictured here in their house, ages three and four, luck in their search for truth, salvation and a cure.
Am now in Chiapas. Just arrived and still exploring. Climate reminds me of the Sierras in Puebla but even colder. Mist on the mountains, gringos in the streets as well as vendors from nearby towns hawking everything from rope belts to dried meat. Hope to head out to el campo tomorrow.
27 March 2004
Chapulines!
Many reporters advise that when food is offered, eat. Prior to this trip, I re-read Ned Glascock?s ant-eating account Read him here
to steel myself for the visit to Pahuatlan. I was disappointed when the most exotic dish set before me was a seeping tres leches birthday cake. Two weeks ago I had another near-culinary adventure - almost sampled sheep intestines. But we did not arrive at the Zacatecas taqueria until midnight, too late even by Mexican standards. Saw tobacco workers, though:
Then today, just as I was beginning to lose myself in the famed Oaxaca markets, came grasshoppers.
Market day is a feast for the senses. The scent is overwhelming, coming at you from a block away - chicken feet, dried fish (eyes intact), piles of mariscos, mole paste, mango-on-a-stick, cut calla lillies, rose bushes and fresh coffee beans. Goats and pigs bleet and grunt their way past, until customers pile them into their trunks. Is that the sound of parakeets singing, or a Hello Kitty alarm clock striking the hour? Banda competes with Thalia?s ?Cerca de Ti.?
And then, grasshoppers.
They come in three sizes: large, medium and small. The small ones just look like a pile of red sawdust. The medium ones look like dried bark. The large ones are fresh from the frying pan, still wriggling. Usually there are some fried larvae nearby.
I had a large one pressed upon me. Tasted...salty. Oh, but you need more, the vendors agreed, filling a foot-long bag. I really do not need more I thought as I watched one escapee wriggle free of the platter. Plus, I have grasshopper guilt. When I was about 12 I went through a grasshopper killing phase. I pelted them with rocks. Have always regretted it.
So I only bought a half a bag. Not sure if I can eat them all. But I have eight days left, and the vendor assured me they last at least a week.
24 March 2004
The Hood
What makes for a bad neighborhood? And how can you tell, as a foreign journalist? According to Nelida Villa aka Nelly who has been helping me translate interviews, I must be a lot more careful in Colonia Centro, which is where I have spent most of my time trailing immigrants and hanging with mariachis outside the metro:
I need to watch my back, the translator said, and not take the subway after hours. I was surprised to hear all this from a former party girl/sports reporter who has traveled the world. But she did just turn 30. That?s her holding the baby (Feliz Cumpleanos - now the world knows!)
The real bonus of working with Nelly is that she is such a star all the workers - that is, a bunch of guys from the countryside ages 20 to 40 - want to come talk to us.
She also corrects my grammar, and has me joking in Spanish. I remember this much from my sojourn in France - it is such a thrill when your personality, and not just words, start to translate. Yesterday I chided a guy who tried to run me down (Monterrey drivers are infamous, sort of like Boston as I explained to a taxi driver today), traded barbs with a bunch of norte?o cowboys and had the padre at Iglesia Cristo Rey singing me Irish lullabies.
Next week: More story links, La playa, and the search begins for Amaranta...
22 March 2004
Single mothers
My first story ran in The News & Observer today, with photos. Viewable
I also promised that Josh Benton link a fun read from a former Pew Fellow who, despite e-mail delinquency, is a swell guy and a new convert to the marathon fold.
21 March 2004
El Campo
Was cursing myself today for not pumping a source for information about Fox's visit to his hometown of Guanajuato today. He went to celebrate Benito Juarez Day, the first day of spring (and the Aztec calendar) and to see his mother. Waiting for him were a group of ex-braceros with demands. Apparently he made concessions and is scheduled to meet with leaders in the D.F. Wednesday. Locals had promised to kick out protestors, but according to the news tonight they did not clash much. Not sure if Fox actually emerged from his ranch (the Mexican equivalent of Crawford) to talk to them.
The trip would have taken two days, and I was busy interviewing workers here, touring the consulate and preparing a story set to run in The News & Observer tomorrow (link to come).
Quick update: A few days ago I returned from visiting workers in the fields of Nayarit.
This photo, like the rest on the site, is made possible by my dear Cannon G5, Dell Inspiron and Josh Benton, now viewable at http://www.crabwalk.com (updated link to come). Many thanks, props, etc.
19 March 2004
Black market
Had to post before I forget/lose the easy access. Okay, so I was robbed. No cell phone. Checked everywhere. Interrogated hotel clerk, but decided it had to be the supermarket paqueteria.
Yes it could have been much worse - boots, camera, computer. But I just bought the phone, the second one I had to buy, and I had work to do. I said a prayer to St. Jude, patron of hopeless causes, and figured I would have to rely on noisy Ladatel stands for the next few weeks, inevitably located near screeching buses, garbage trucks or children.
Then I thought of Hal Jones ?99. He insisted on filing a police report about a recent run-in with Mexico City thugs. Way to change the system, he said. Principled. I returned to the supermarket and explained that I wanted to file a police report, al instante, and since I did not have a phone they needed to call.
Enter: Black market justice.
It was not my idea. But when the manager suggested he help me out, I did not say no. In fact, I promised not to call the cops or a lawyer. Yes, when he tried to welch on the deal this morning, I played the good little Catholic girl plagued by thieves. But I am. Sort of.
Y despues... He bought me a new phone!
So much for changing the system. Now lets see if the phone works: 811-183-9486. Time to say another prayer...
Watching my back
I was robbed!
No, not in some dark back alley, abandonned country road or Monterrey nightclub - at the supermarket. As usual, they took the one thing that would cause muchas problemas replacing: the cell phone. Make that the second Mexican cell phone I have bought.
Despaired. Did not call the police. Have a plan. Dispatch soon to come.
18 March 2004
Long term recuerdos
I fixate on details. When I cannot remember the name of a particular tree (palo verde) or former dictator (Fujimori) it drives me crazy. Last week, it was a painter. I spotted his trademark rays radiating from the bodies of subjects in paintings at the MARCO in Monterrey. NYC artist; AIDS activist; bald. But the name...
Just when I was despairing, the Internet gulag/cafe came to my aid. It almpot made the heat bearable (there is a fan, which ghnags, tantalizingly unued, above us as we slave away at our terminals). The artist: Keith Haring. As Martha would say in trademark Spanglish, Thanks God.
BTW, does anyone know of a good Spanglish dictionary? Forget Esperanto, Elizabeth. This is the language of the future you should be teaching those Wakefield kids.
Lights over Guadalajara
Just back from a three-day road trip to Mexican tobacco country. Story forthcoming. I was apparently a good luck charm, because we were not stopped once by soldiers at multiple checkpoints on the libre roads. So much for my Centurion check point safety training...
Best: Banda and steak in Guadalajara. No, but I really was a vegetarian before I got here...
Worst: Being subjected to replays of ?Shes Having My Baby? on the truck stereo while touring the fields with a local recruiting agent. There is a definite down side to globalization.
Thanks to Simri and Sarah, my translators in Santiago who endured the humidity and heat of northern Nayarit to help me cover a worker meeting. The heat was no worse than N.C. in June, but it was enough to make one woman standing in front of me in the crowd of about 400 faint. Sarah offered her one of our water bottles as the men carried her away.
One of those I am writing about, a Monterrey native, kept pointing out roadside scenery and saying ?That is Mexico.? Houses of weathered sticks, shoeless Huichol indians huddled at a streetcorner; the town of Tequila with its roadside stands of free samples; a drunk collapsed, hands outstretched only inches from the local bar; a young man debating whether to cross the street and continue the party at 4 a.m. on Thursday morning in downtown Monterrey.
We drove all night and into this morning, through Saltillo and Aguascalientes and Zacatecas. On the way out I saw more vistas, mountains of gray-black stone that shadow Monterrey, fields of agave, clusters of yucca and organ pipe cacti. It was pretty dark coming back. At one point the guys wanted me to get out and admire the stars, bright as streetlights. But it was 3 a.m., by the side of a libre road replete with spiney barrel cacti and tractor trailers swaying in the breeze. I stayed inside. Thank you, Centurion.
16 March 2004
Day 17
Think visually. They say that at newspapers. They mean think like a photographer. But I have a confession to make. I prefer painters. Especially those in the Monterrey Museum of Contemporary Art.
At the entry, we find Tolstoy proclaiming:
?El arte es un medio de union entre los hombres que les permite identificarse o traves de las misdmas emociones y sentimientos lo que lo hace indispensable para la vida, el progreso y el bien estar de los individuos y de la humanidad.?
Art unites us. More than that, it forces us to reexamine our world. My job.
I want to show you Mexico as Sergio Hernandez does, ?Carried away more by sensations than by anything else. In other words, there is little or nothing in his work that deliberately interferes with reflection.? Olivier Debroise calls it ?Mexicanidad, mexicanismo.?
I agree with Roberto Cortazar when he says, ?I am interested in the powerful relationships between people and in the history they acquire.? Like Alejandro Aramgo, ?I like telling stories, starting from an image a story starts developing and I unconsciously pick up on a moment I want to tell on the canvas.?
We are objective. I believe that. But there is, of course, interpretation. Truth is filtered. Take ?Ways of Seeing? or Susan Sontag?s fabulous meditation ?On Photography.?
Sometimes I read a story and see the bloody text streaming across Janet Logan?s canvas: ?As if you?re describing a myth but you?re only at the edge of the myth. You don?t yet know what the myth is.?
Why not search as Georgina Quintana does to ?Reconstruct her mythical city,? to build a story that is brighter, closer to the truth. ?She discovers a world that lights its own myths? Supported by an intuition that takes her to the place of mystery and revelation.?
We can tell stories that touch upon the metaphysical.
As Maria Novaro asked when confronted with the work of Dulce Maria Nunez:
?What is broken inside of us, Dulce Maria? What is tattooed in our memory? Why does our heart beat so fast??What rips us apart and makes us scream??
In Mexico I have felt what Filenon Santiago, an indigenous painter from Oaxaca, presents in muted portraits: ?Silent anger, melancholy and desperation.?
Beside his work, curators placed this disclaimer:
?Filenon Santiago has never been a painter of happiness and it is improbable that he ever will be.?
Upstairs, Augustin Castro Lopez presented the conflict stretched across 20 feet of canvas. I had been waiting for the painting that would catch and suck me in. I was transfixed. A couple in shadow, faces obscured in each others? shoulders, drew me into their desperate embrace. Could they be half-submerged in a pond of wide-eyed fish, flowers and green stems, or safe on land? With time, I saw the water was rising. Should they reach shore, shades of red and orange destruction threatened to destroy them.
Ser, he calls it. Our state of being, in flux.
Day 19
Road to Guadalajara:
Land of the giant yucca gives way to barrel cactus, creosote, then blue green fields of agave, raw tequila ripened just in time for spring breakers.
Tomorrow: Tobacco.
10 March 2004
Michael Penn: Cypher?
Was walking to the mercado today after visiting the catedral - post to come - and heard a startling sound (NLD, pay attention):
Maybe I?m her Romeo in black jeans
Maybe I?m her Heathcliff it?s no myth
Maybe she?s just looking for
Someone to dance with
Perhaps the most requested song ever by a Harvard Student Employment Office employee. They played it once in three years. Here it?s in heavy rotation at the Italian coffee shop along with, of course, Cerca de Ti.
Temple of the Sun
The church is a buttery-yellow beacon on a hilltop overlooking the college town of Cholula, about two hours south of Mexico City. Nuestra Se?ora de los Remedios, one of more than a hundred built in 1519 during Cortez’s conquest. Though his men built many from the stones of the ancients, historians have yet to decide whether conquistadors knew what lay beneath the foundation.
Piramide Tepanapa remains covered, but archaelogists built nine kilometers of stone tunnels to expose the base. It turned out to be not one but three pyramids built on top of each other by Olmec and Cholultec peoples beginning in about 250 B.C. Though Egyptian and even Aztec pyramids are taller, none is wider than Tepanapa – 440 meters on each side. And, as my guide explains, unlike the Aztecs worshippers at Tepanapa never offered human sacrifices. Every few feet the rough gray stone tunnel breaks open and I glimpse the original grandeur – an impossibly steep flight of stone steps, slanted sides or one of 18 rain channels that corresponded to months in the Mayan calendar.
My guide, Jose Velasquez Hernandez, has been leading the curious through Tepanapa for years. Although he is “A believer,” as he says, a life-long Catholic, he doesn’t even bother touring the church. He lays claim to the pyramid as a sort of home, deploring graffiti artists who take advantage of the free admission for Mexican nationals on Sunday to tag tunnels.
Most tunnels are about five and a half feet high. After a 20-minute tour inside, most emerge temporary hunchback. Fields of singed grass ring the hill, broken by remnants of the pyramid’s exterior. Some are reconstructions. Others, like the wall peppered with sharp black rocks from the nearby volcano or the grand Patio de los Altares, are original sites frequented by the ancients. Here archaeologists found tools of jade and onyx, earthenware bowls and figurines on display at a museum across the street.
As we approach the altars, Velasquez tells me to wait. Stand there, he says, indicating the center. I oblige. He walks a few paces, then starts clapping. He circles the altar, clapping all the time, and I stand transfixed at the sound. Acoustics, he says. The people did not have a microphone.
But it’s laughter I hear. Claps come bouncing back at me like high-pitched voices. Do the people who built this altar, carved a sundial, grasshoppers (like this one)
serpents and homage to rain, wind and sun know about the irony of the church above? A 1999 earthquake almost destroyed it, repairs were only completed this year, and with so many grander neighboring churches, its main attraction today is what lies beneath. I glance up - buttery yellow stucco - a latter-day altar to the sun?
Chololan, Velasquez tells me, gesturing to fields of red and yellow flowers outside the pyramid complex, meant spring. “Pero, after Cortez, it is Cholula,” he said, explaining in classic Spanglish that “Cholula significo nothing.”
09 March 2004
Cell phone madness
The one I brought from the U.S. depsite all assurances does not work. Therefore, as Martha Ojeda would say, I bought another one (after much haggling with clerks in Puebla).
From U.S.:
01 52 222 365 2263
Those in Mexico know how to adjust. Thanks to all who ahve tried to reach me for your patience, and I hope to talk with you soon.
06 March 2004
?Los objetos estan mas cerca de lo que aparentan?
That is what is written on the rearview mirrors here. Objects are closer than they appear. Better than the English version. More suited to the mission of this trip. Mexico has become the American south. We are closer than we think.
Earlier this week, I came rumbling up the grassy road to a small town in Jalisco that rarely sees gringas, and has perhaps never seen a bonified white girl from the U.S. I dressed for the occasion, as I have since arrival, in one of two outfits I brought - hiking boots, t-shirt and pants of some indestructible synthetic fabric. Blue eyes behind brown glasses, my brownish hair tied back, I rode shotgun. Up the hill I came in an 88 Nissan driven by the local teacher, who also brought his wife and baby son. Activity at the school ceased as the car passed, we got out, and the kids rushed to ask their teacher: ?Why have you brought us this mu?eca?? Muneca means doll, but that is not what they were really calling me. They were calling me a Barbie.
I took a break that morning to walk up into the hills, wary of white tigers and the spiders, a hairy variety related tyo tranatulas, common to the mountains. On a path through towering palms Raulio found me. He was wearing a sweatshirt, shorts, sandals and his mothers rosary which he informed me would protect us on our journey to the river. We hiked beside, then trough the water as he told me about his games, his treks, his rope swing, how he helps his mother with the wash. He did not tell me, but I later learned from the teacher, that we once went to school. Three years they tried to teach him, but he could not learn, the teacher said. Then he got aggressive. With only three teachers for six grades at the elementary school, they had to send him home. They call him Cuco. The most aggression I saw was when Cuco chased some marauding horses away from the teachers wife. He is nine. But he likes to pretend he is four. He would like to go to school, he said, or at least learn to read.
Power has shifted. It favors the young, the nortenos, the immigrants, the fighters and green-eyed beauties of Jalisco. Objects are closer than they appear. Look back into the rearview mirror and they see: A 60 year-old man shining the shoes of a four year old for less than a dollar. Huichol, Otomi and Nahuatl beauties huddled under Coke and Fanta ads; before the visage of Uma Thurman in a department store entrance - mu?eca.
?Let show all things splendid in their darker nature splendid also.?
Molly in the news:
Was just alerted by Crimed Rich Tenorio that the latest edition of Havard Magazine ran that story I mentioned to some of you:
http://www.harvard-magazine.com/on-line/030402.html
Do not know what happened to the photos. Ran into some former Eliot House residents at the Starbucks during the lengthy photo session in D.C., where we ended up despite my protests. I never go there. Really. I do not even drink coffee.
For all those scandalized, I obtained permission from both parents for the interview. I liked the story, and have no problem with any of the quotes. Write THAT on the wall...
05 March 2004
Mexico as Panopticon
Signs that a culture of surveillance has taken hold:
*Towers in supermercado parking lots where guards patrol for thieves marked ?Vigilancia?
*Two major scandals involving politiciams caught taking bribes on tape.
*Another season of the American rehashed version of ?Big Brother?
*Videotape set up at eye-level of passengers as we board at the bus station, yet my bag sets the alarms off and no one bothers to stop me.
First motorcycle ride today (without helmet, sorry Ma) through a ranch. Caught a g?limpse of the sea from the mountains of Jalisco, but little more.
04 March 2004
My deep-seated distrust of cabbies - Validated!
It was a tabloid headline kind of day. As the sun set here and teenage boys
took to the square to pester me (How do you say school in English? Pencil? Flowers? I am going to kill you?) I hailed a cab to escape. As usual, I checked the address and the price with him first. My hosts had advised me not to pay more than 15 pesos. I settled for 20, climbed in, and started to talk to him about his days working in NC tobacco fields. He seemed young, energetic, simpatico. Then I noticed we were driving in circles. He stopped a few times to ask directions at tiendas before telling me it was going to cost more because I didn{t know where I was going. I repeated the address, and made clear that the taxi driver who got me there yesterday had no problems (I did not mention that I paid the guy 30 pesos). Two more stops for directions and he gave me an ultimatum: Pay or he would stop driving. We happened to be in a darkened alley, not a soul in sight. ?If you leave me here, I am not paying you anything,? I said, underlining the point by slashing my hands mid-air. Fine he says. I get out and walk a block to the nearest tienda to ask directions. Turns out I was a block from home. As my hosts and I decided, it was only fair - worked out to 15 pesos a ride, the going rate.
01 March 2004
Question: What is my real name?
Molly is on the business cards I?ve been handing out. But as in France, people have problems with the pronunciation. I explain that my real name is Marian, Marian Jane after my abuelita, Mary Jane. Which they translate into Mariana, then Mariana de la Noche, a popular telenovela. Mariana is a natural strawberry blonde who, bucking the trend, does not appear to have had much plastic surgery. The guy romancing her resembles a young Sean Connery, and he?s already managed to stage a worker?s strike AND meet her in the forest for a dusk rendezvous. Inteligente y guapo, tambien. Check it out
Way to go Mariana.
After walking about five miles Saturday before finding a ride, I decided find one before leaving San Pablito today. That?s how I ended up clinging to the back of a pick-up as we bounced along, inches from the precipice mentioned in previous posts.
And to think, I thought I was lucky to snag the Carolina blue truck with the ?San Pablito? N.C. vanity plate 
Still, I saved about four dollars (cha-ching, right Dad?)
Speaking of saving money: Am about to embark on a 14-hour journey by bus. Anticipate many high-volume, low plot action movies. Luckily, I spent an hour last night saying the rosary in Spanish (funeral rites for a friend?s grandfather). Sorry I won?t get to see much of the countryside, but I?d rather arrive in the a.m. than late at night.
Day 7:
A week already. Time to address pressing questions. Such as: Is Molly single, why, and how long does she plan to stay that way?
At some point, every person I met here has asked: Grandmothers, ninas, boys on street corners, the hotel clerk, taxi driver, cashier, and of course, the priest. I tell them all the same thing.
Yes, I am single. No, I am not 30 yet. I am 27. I know 27 is old by Pahuatlan standards, but I am actually very happy. No, I do not plan to get married soon. I like adventure. I like feeling free. Yes, I am Catholic. Yes, I love children. But you know, I can always adopt.
This makes them smile.
You give what you get. How can I inquire into the intricacies of Pahuatecos? lives without sharing some of my own? I know that I am a preposterous vision here, a 5-foot-11-inch behemoth painted in pastels. I don?t want to fit, I want to find. Part of the reason I began writing in Pahuatlan was curiosity - a reporter from The News & Observer came years ago, and I needed to see the people and places he described. We are intimately bound. North Carolina is changing this place, but it is also changing us.
Not that I?m going to run out and get married (Sorry Ma ? no Mexican fixation yet). But I could be falling in love. Or maybe I?m just addicted to pan dulce and telenovellas?
Random Mexican moment: Someone is blasting that ?Hallelujah Hare Krishna? song. Who sings that? Who is playing it? Why do they love it so? With no ambulances to chase, I?m off in search of answers.
Day 8
Let?s talk about food.
One of the stories I?m working on is about two panaderias, so I have spent a lot of time around bread ? pan dulce, galletas, todos. Strawberry is still mi favorita. Of course, as during the nightly rounds that just ended, when it?s offered, I always pay.
But I have also visited a lot of homes. I stay to talk, and inevitably a meal ensues. Everyone waits for me to eat first. I decline, then offer to pay, but they never let me. I have tried bringing food, refrescos; gifts. People tend to act insulted. ?We are not so poor that we cannot afford to feed you,? one woman told me today. She was standing in the two-bed open-air shack that is home to seven family members. Her sister earns about $40 a month. And she was offering me mango soda, bread, hot milk, tortillas, beans and ham cold cuts.
Food-related: I learned how to hold a chicken in the curve of my arm at the Boleta de la Pila?s today.
I?m the under-exposed one in glasses, which are way better for riding in open-air trucks sin suspension. The blond tiger in my lap is Pancho. During the five mile walk back, I saw Mary Jane in situ for the first time. And NC glamour plates that read ?San Pablito.?
I was also stopped about six times by Carnaval roadblocks. I love Carnaval, the great equalizer. It?s one week when everyone - gringos, Mexicans, Spaniards, todos are harassed equally. What a vision: roadblocks of men and boys in embroidered blouses and skirts, their faces covered with silky scarves and sunglasses, their heads with cowboy hats sprouting multi-colored peacock feathers. Some wear rubber Halloween masks. All spin circles as fiddlers play on the corner, a sort of rachero square dance. As soon as a car approaches, they wave it aside and demand payment. Dancing traffic cops.
Day 9:
More evidence of the confluence of cultures in Pahuatlan, 1950s meets cutting edge:
*At the market today, among vendors hawking embroidered tablecloths, grilled lamb tortillas and calla lilies, rancheros poured from one speaker, disco from another and from a third ?Don?t wanna be a player no more.?
*Kids eating at the ?American Pizza? stand in San Pablito drinking Coke from foot-tall glass bottles, the girls in t-shirts and tapered dress skirts.
*Senor Dionisio Hernandez and his horse, Saraman, who insisted on a photo 
and quick chat over limes picked from a nearby tree as autos passed at dusk. He wanted to get a picture of me riding downhill, but I didn?t dare inflict myself on poor Saraman, age 12.
*Plastic flowers and vases of calla lilies propped against ornate mausoleums, tiny white Taj Mahals built atop graves in the town cemetery, which I have wanted to see ever since I wrote that body shipping story.(link) I visited at dusk, almost as an afterthought.(link) It was the perfect time to go ? only a few loud black birds for company, the sky an anguished gray and bits of music drifting up from the village in the valley, (Sorry, the picture was too dark to post)
I will probably leave town tomorrow, with few posts for the intervening week.
27 February 2004
?The rooster has cried a coming dawn, but in the gray daybreak the shadows still lie in dark pools about doorway and alley. Somewhere, an Indian elder bows to the four directions and invokes the rain-givers, the earth-shakers in their mountainous domain. The mouth of the volcano still yawns; the future is not yet.
It lies in the walk of that man, shielding his face against the cold; in the gestures of that woman, fanning the embers of her fire and drawing her shawl more closely about her sleeping child; in that lonely figure, setting a signal along a railroad track. There is still time until the sun rises, but men scan the sky; for their lives are mortgaged to tomorrow.?
~ Eric Wolf, ?Sons of the Shaking Earth?
Wolf wrote that in the 1950s, but such is San Pablito. Women wear embroidered blouses, their daughters boot-cut jeans. Fathers stamp out the Carnaval dance; sons prepare to leave for the U.S. Roosters roam in and out of some houses, proclaiming their presence at every turn. Is that pounding I hear the sound of workers assembling the homes of immigrants in the U.S., or wives beating bark to make traditional papel amate in their absence? Drink watermelon juice or Coke, watch the fire or the television, the future is at hand. In San Pablito the road is a riverbed; cars with N.C. plates sweep men away. Mortgaged to tomorrow. Remember that ? the theme of a coming dispatch.
No credit to the guys at C@fe Internet in Pahuatlan who blasted techno from their terminals until my laptop modem started making those wonderfully painful beeping sounds. Viva machismo. Then I went in search of a taxi. People in Pahuatlan thought I was a little crazy to go to San Pablito alone, especially during Carnaval ? lots of dancers roaming the streets, downing Sol beer and asking me questions in broken English. But I found the clinica and mis entrevistas tambien. Learned how to say buenos dias, como esta and gracias in Otomi, an indigenous language that dates back to 1000 B.C. Caught a ride back and watched the sun set while reading Wolf in the plaza, beside the nightly soccer game and kids playing tag. At one point I became ?it?, focus of all attention, until I told the banditos I really needed to read. Gringa translation: Relax.
How do you translate ?This place is so beautiful it takes my breath away?? Este lugar es si bonita, yo no puedo respirar.
Imagine a road worn down to mud and stones by frequent rain, littered with trash. Then a dirt path less than a foot wide, winding through scrubby trees, past vagrant pigs, roosters and shacks that smell of burning wood. Suddenly, the trees give way to a vista ? the verdant valley, so green it hurts the eyes, shrouded in mist. Perched at the end of the precipice stands another one-room shack with just enough space for two beds, home to a family of seven.
When you really want to know the story, you find a way past every obstacle, including language.
Before I left, someone asked me why people here would talk to me. Good question, especially in San Pablito, an indigenous community that people in nearby Pahuatlan consider cerrato, closed even to mestizos. I wondered the same tonight, as a woman who speaks my kind of Spanish (slow and simple), half my height and wearing flimsy plastic sandals, led me down the abovementioned path, in the dark, to a house and family I had never seen, without the possibility of a ride back to town. I trusted them. They talked. I rode the wave.
It was like that all day, traveling from one entrevista to another, staying far too late in San Pablito and catching a ride back gracias a Dios. I was entranced, amazed at the capacity of some immigrant families to build better lives even as others break apart. Listening to Otomi, I catch bits of Spanish. What is the future of this language; this people?
?Your eyes,? said the young taxi driver, the only one of three I asked willing to take me to San Pablito during Carnaval and a storm, ?They are so blue. I want to trade. Show me your eyes.? We were passing a mountainside shrine, time enough to look away and cross myself before the red and white cement virgin. Only when I looked back, and he smiled, did I see his hat. Guess what? Jose Alfredo Castillo, 23, is already a Tarheel.
Spent the day at the panaderia, watching Senores Castillo Ortiz bake, run errands, show off their son?s property and make deliveries. This was the longest day ever, 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. (just got back to the hotel ? only food available: Chocolate-covered Popsicle and Gatorade Frost). Senora Castillo Ortiz took me to el Mercado, where we moved from one tiled stall to the next, scooping up raw chicken and mole poblano paste, from which the pollo sauce is made. Then on to the tortilleria, where they pile white corn paste into metal sieves that drop globs onto a conveyor to be pounded, fried and piled. She bought paste for lunch and finished tortillas for later. Back at the house, which sits high on the mountain above Pahuatlan, almost obscured by a towering jacaranda and bouganvilla vines, I watched Senor Castillo Ortiz feed wood planks laden with galletas into the wood orno, or oven, much like a brick oven pizza parlor. Galletas, which I would later eat, are hollow pieces of bread that taste like plain crackers and are dipped in caf? before being eaten. After much talk, and a trip even higher up the mountain to see the aforementioned plot of land, past a field with some sparse corn, garbanzo beans and cilantro growing like grass. Then we drove to 12 tiendas in nearby San Pablito to sell bread and cake. The road between deteriorated into what looked like a quarry, then a river bed. We took a Ford Lareate whose lack of discernable suspension I was cursing until we hit two rocks the size of a small child. The driver, the only one of us who could drive standard, proceeded to run over them. No problem. I made sure to bless myself at the next roadside shrine, of which there were many. Not surprising given the road drops off to nothing about two inches from the makeshift roadway.
When a load gets heavy, girls here still put bags, baskets and boxes on their heads. Girls in school uniforms, the traditional embroidered blouses, even Senora Castillo Ortiz.
They were celebrating Carnaval in San Pablito already. Men dressed in Halloween masks ? devil, skeleton, pirate ? stuck peacock feathers (sold locally, no se porque) in their hair, ribbon-bedecked hats on their heads and scarves all around. Some put on embroidered blouses and skirts, too. There were fiddles, music, stomping and dancing. And whenever we encountered the crowd, the banditos demanded payment. Laughingly at first, but a bit more insistent as the night wore on. I asked a girl I?d met Sunday, whose house we stopped at, if she liked the fiesta, and she said she did, especially the music. I think I liked the dancing better. And the little banditos who clung to the truck as we passed, eyes bright with the challenge of ownership, defending their tradition.
23 February 2004
The news this morning was all about the latest guerra sucia trial in Mexico D.F., which I was following before I left. Not many details penetrate Pahuatlan, and nobody seems particularly interested, but I am eager to hear what people think about it in the city, especially the families of los desaparecidos. As the T.V. in a family store blared the news, I absorbed daily routines during my first work day in town. Pahuatlan woke with a chorus of roosters at about 8 a.m., sent its men to the dusty corner buses and its children to school on foot and in uniform. Red cardigans for the primaria, gray for the older students, both with an official crest sewn to the lapel. All bought by the families, along with school supplies. And of course, all the girls wear skirts and some version of Mary Janes.
Padre Javier spent a good hour this afternoon telling me how the youth here are losing their traditional values, their morals, but it?s hard to see. Those I?ve talked to all seem to essentially do what their parents want: Go to church and school, to the U.S. and back. Okay, maybe parents say they don?t want them to leave, but they benefit. The boys take over family businesses; the girls whisper, blush and marry accordingly. Padre Javier had something to say about that, too, which I?ll return to in a later dispatch.
After visiting the high school Miguel Hidalgo and the church, Santiago Apostole, I had an appointment with Senor Martiniano, the municipal president. Like Vicente Fox, he belongs to the PAN party and replaced a member of the PRI, the party that had ruled Mexican politics for more than 70 years and still boasts a sign on the main road into Pahuatlan. He?s a medico, a doctor, the kind that wears dress slacks and a silver crucifix around his neck and talks about teaching a man to fish instead of giving him some (my rough, clich?d translation). Seemed to me, and to a friend, very PAN.
Did I mention the door of my hotel room is made of bamboo? That I have eaten more meat during the past two days than the past 10 years? That there are nearly as many donkeys as bicycles crossing the black stone roads?
Then there was the suspension bridge, which I nicknamed, without even seeing it, ?Miedo.?
Too bad the Pew scaveneger hunt doesn?t include replicating the adventures of our collective cinema hero, IJ. The bridge appeared to be constructed from warped wooded planks strung over five cables and stitched together with rusted barbed wire, and the whole affair was of unknown vintage. A plaque at the other end said it was reconstructed in 1956.My guide said he had not crossed it in 15 years. The sound of the rapids hundreds of feet below made him shudder as we picked our way across the center. He is afraid of heights tambien. Strange, since the hike was his idea (I jumped at the chance for an impromptu interview). Mexican machismo in effect. My next entries will probably come at the fin de semana
Day 2:
I arrived in Pahuatlan (see photo) just as the sun was setting, and began my second day before sunrise. I woke at 5 a.m. (Pew fellows on the a.m. shift can atest this is a switch for me) but I had to get to church by 5:30. It was empty, but filled up within minutes ? no on in my pew, of course. This is a town of about 5,000, remember. The men share a secret whistle as they pass in the street. By day?s end, the women whispered about me as I passed ? the gringa from Carolina. At church, the pews were little more than narrow benches assembled from varnished planks and rebar. The sermon began with a prayer for immigrants abroad, (appropriate), then strayed to why we should not take The Bible literally as doctrine, but apply it to our lives. I was distracted by las senoras, all a foot shorter than me and most wearing tattered acrylic sweaters and woven rebozo-style shawls, hair braided down to their waists where they miraculously held themselves together. And the men, verdad campesinos who really do put their hats on the tiled floor to pray. Looking down on us from the walls were a host of deathly pale plaster saints with what looked like real hair. And outside the enormous wooden doors - which stayed open ?macaws called down from the towering palms, taunting us all. Gracias, senor.
By the time I left, the vendors were just setting up their tents, converting the plaza into el mercado. The priest was busy, and the municipal president had yet to arrive at his office. So I went to the tienda run by a family I know, had some of the local caf? I have heard so much about and pan dulce. I spent the rest of the day chasing stories. Think I caught at least two. Braved the precipice of a road to nearby San Pablito 
in one of many cars with NC plates. More rebozos, many with babies slung inside; my first chance to see paper amate and hear Otomi, idioma indigena. The nearest Blockbuster is two hours away, but at least a few of the kids have seen The Fast and the Furious. And there are more than a few fans of Eminem and 50 Cent.
The arcade in town and the Internet caf? both sport that dancing game with the Twister-esque dotted carpet that devotees frantically leap about on. Both are relatively new (last five years) along with money transfer services and a bunch of tiendas run by families with relatives in NC. A couple of French nationals I ran into found it startling. Why NC, they asked me, and I tried to explain.
The first of what will likely be many banned words during this trip: Gringa. Sounds like a cross between gorda and grande. No wonder I hate it so much. A few kids murmured it in my wake like an epithet. I am the only one here. Okay, there were the French nationals, but one has a Mexican husband and they?re both short brunettes. They blend. Gringa. Another drawback: Rhymes with chinga. The word is just wrong, wronger than the Spanish version of ?Total Eclipse of the Heart,? which they are playing in the hotel restaurant as we speak.
I?ll file again at week?s end, and may move on despues.
Day 1:
Opera ? flying into the largest city on earth felt like being spirited away by music you can never quite comprehend. After being harassed, as expected, by men at the airport offering to do everything from carry my bag to escort me around the city (no necesito ayuda, gracias) I got suckered into taking an airport taxi to the first of two buses I had to take to the village, but no matter. Looking out of the window I was moved to tears. You will say I?m a fool to love such a polluted, impoverished city. But what I saw from the secure confines of that tricked-out taxi/Caddy SUV was what so many immigrants have struggled to describe: La vida ordinaria. I saw men selling long bags of pistachios at intersections or working on the metro tracks, bright signs flashing past on stucco walls advertising Farmacias y Tiendas Gigantes; shiny red and green Pemex stations and beyond the city fields dotted with nopal cactus and cornstalk piles. I saw scrappy trees, their white painted trunks reminding me of Phoenix? except that they were only painted half-way up. The rare burro grazing in a bleached-brown field. As we climbed into the Sierra Madre, (ears popping) fields were replaced with sheer cliffs and mist-covered mountains with the rare house that looked close enough to shout at. Eucalyptus trees turned to lush ferns and banana tree-type leaves, all coated with a grayish dust.
I was watching you, Mexico. And I marvel at your courage.
The bus from Mexico D.F. to Tulancingo featured one of the trademark dubbed American action movies, which I was dreading (watched Master and Commander during the flight over, which put me in the mood for adventure, that and sitting next to an NGO guy going to feed Zambia). But it turned out to be ?Charlie?s Angles: Full Throttle.? Fitting. Necesito practicar mis espanol, after all. Of course, I was much too captivated by the scenery and my fellow passengers to watch?
The hotel is muy confortable, and I have already been given the grand tour of town by the owner?s brother, Guillermo, who is a dentist visiting from the D.F. We walked the plaza?s checkered tiles, past the taco stands, teenage girls and boys huddled on separate benches and two basketball games in progress. We saw the church, a cream and rust colored stucco affair with a bell tower and wrought iron gate (locked), then the municipal offices, a mustard-colored, two-story edificio with Spanish tile roof. Quite impressive until you stroll inside and discover not only is it open air, it?s leaky and the offices are up a narrow corner staircase. A roaming policeman stopped to wish us good night, and I tried not to flinch as he shook my hand.
It smells of dust, smoke and mist here, and you can hear some sort of cicada chirping from the street. Mexipop from a few cars, but it?s pretty quiet. The road to town is winding, with shrines at several turns to the Virgin and associated saints. A few grand estates, but mostly wood and stucco shacks with corrugated rooves and roaming roosters. I?m looking forward to mass tomorrow a.m. at 5 (!) and then a visit to the priest, the municipal president and some contacts in a nearby town. I had enchiladas con mole Pahuateco tonight and I can still taste the spicy chocolate sauce. Penso que la verdidad revolucion se hace aqui, en la vida ordinaria.
18 February 2004
"Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly if we do." ~ Steinbeck
Just a hint of things to come.
Spent the weekend back in NC, listening to Mexican ESL students discuss the relative merits of Big Macs and the Dream Act. Rose at 5 a.m. Saturday to enter a panaderia kitchen cloud, eau de pasteles. Between batches of pink, chocolate and creme-crusted cakes, resident cooks Jose and Pepe mocked me for kneeling to get a better shot with the digital camera, then traipsing around with flour-covered knees. Both Veracruz natives, they could not understand why I would pass up the opportunity to spend carnaval in their hometowns.
I am reminded of the person who told me that I had the chance to go anywhere in the world during this fellowship and I picked my backyard. I might have agreed before I went to Florida and North Carolina. Mexico colored everywhere that I reported, and I longed for the time to pay attention. We have the fantastic power as writers to slow life down, to taste sugar suspended mid-air.
17 February 2004
I leave on Saturday for the great adventure. I will be in Mexico for six weeks on a Pew Fellowship. I've been writing for The News & Observer and before that for The Palm Beach Post
27 January 2004
Molly Hennessy-Fiske has been a general assignment reporter at The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. for two years. Before that, she worked for two years as a police and courts reporter forThe Palm Beach Post in West Palm Beach, Fla. She has interned at The News & Observer, The Miami Herald, The Boston Globe and The Daily Gazette in Schenectady. Her articles have also appeared in The Advocate magazine and Salon.com. She has written from Mexico and Belfast, where as an undergraduate she interviewed female members of the Irish Republican Army about their conception of nationalism. She graduated from Harvard College in 1999.