Noticias
Hello, all… a brief update and some rambling about things in Mexico, not necessarily in that order. Feel free to skip to the end if you´re short on time.
Friday is my favorite day of the week. It seems to be the favorite day of the week of the internet café guy, too, though he celebrates it, as he celebrates every other day, by sleeping in until 10:30 when the sign on the door clearly says 9:00, so that I can't just conveniently stop by on my way home from work but have to double back later after killing time by drinking too much coffee. But today somehow I was nonplussed by the tardiness of Mexican time, which seem to apply to all establishments except street vendors and beggars, who are at work 24 hours per day.
As I said, Fridays are my favorite day of the week. Once upon a time this might have been because they offered the prospect of two whole days free of work and thinking, the opportunity to escape responsibility and reality for an entire weekend at a stretch, but given that I work seven hours on Saturdays now, I can hardly imagine that that's the case anymore. Rather, I think I enjoy Fridays because I do work in the mornings, from 8 to 9, and then have the rest of the day free to wander around the city and try to get lost. Of course, I have long since stopped being able to be truly lost, especially since I often carry a map with me anyway (damn Clark's geography department!). But I still wander around new streets and loiter in different places, sometimes to the enjoyment and sometimes to the annoyment of the store and restaurant owners in my own fresa (translation: ritzy? snobby? nice?) Colonia Reforma.
Today for entertainment, I spent a whopping $10, walking around the market building near my school and cheering up street vendors by chatting and buying their goods, one item at a time, each thing from a different person. I never get tired of walking through the markets here, seeing the fresh fruit and vegetables stacked one on top of the other in gorgeous rows, red strawberries and green choyotes (no translation- round spiny squash-tasting things?) and yellow platanos (bananas), ripe and plump and vibrant, just waiting to be painted… perhaps someday I will get to this. Somehow it's altogether different from American markets, where everything is sterile and in plastic bags and your groceries are your own private business. Here, grocery shopping is an enterprise, a battle, a ritual. You have to bring your A-game or you go home with something that resembles a chicken chopped up by a seven year old with plastic picnic utensils, or a shriveled cactus that you're not sure how to peel, let alone eat.
So today I began with something familiar: tlayudas (big, flat, round tortillas), a staple which I didn't need but bought nonetheless because they are so delicious. The tlayuda woman was short and dark and hunched and beautiful, her eyes luminous behind her wrinkled skin. She smiled at me when I bought her goods, it being early in the morning yet for so unexpected a sale. I then continued on to copal, a miraculous resin which supposedly keeps away insects when burned and with which I entertain myself at night using the flame from my candles. I then bought a selection of granola, which is absolutely amazing down here and served with yoghurt and honey. I bought quesillo, a Oaxacan cheese which is somewhat similar to Mozzarella cheese but far better, and then, remembering my granola, proceeded to buy yoghurt. I lingered a while over the bread selections, because there are so many vendors selling it and because I didn't actually need any, but eventually settled on some soft round loaves that taste good with quesillo and beans in a kind of Mexican pizza they sometimes serve here. All in all it was fabulous, and I felt like a child at a candy store, as I always do, my eyes wide, shiny round pesos burning a hole in my pocket until I had to spend them to alleviate the burden.
My final purchase was a brave one, something I haven't bought in quite a while: a newspaper. I even chose the liberal rag, Noticias, now operating outside the city because of the current crisis (not sure why, the city is now run by leftists). I have intentionally avoided the news for a while now because it's so damn wrong all the time, but things have been calmer lately, I've been able to sleep at night, and I wanted to get an idea of what is stirring and how the plans for an alternative government are doing, at least according to the socialists.
I have to say, the paper made me laugh. I sat at my kitchen table at home, listening to mariachi music along with the guy doing construction in our complex, reading Noticias and drinking tea, and the sheer ridiculousness of the situation finally dawned on me. Never mind I walk to work past both APPO stakeouts and uniformed military with assault rifles and a scary-looking green jeep. Reading the newspaper, it all seemed to make sense. A march beginning in Etla yesterday walked the first 25 kilometers of the five hundred and something it takes to walk to Mexico City, protesters yelling, "This march is going to arrive in DF (Mexico City)!" According to my calculations, it will take the better part of a month for this to happen, while the rest of the country waits, bored, picking their noses and walking to work over rubble. On the same page, glaring out is a picture of lame duck Vicente Fox and president-elect Filipe Calderón standing too far apart, Calderon seeming rotund and almost obscenely short in comparison to Fox's lanky figure, his round glasses making him look more like an elderly gentleman at a wine tasting than the future president of Mexico. Next, a picture of "the APPO" and "the magisterio" parading around in matador costumes in a political cartoon that I clearly didn't get. An article on potholes. Elaborately overstated opinions in the Editorial section. Calls for peace. Calls to arms. Apparently the phrase for bloodbath in Spanish is " baño de sangre," which to me means bloody bathroom. But why not? This is Mexico, and no one's really sure who the President is anyways, let alone our state Governor. There's no police and no government in the city and we don't really care because the APPO takes care of it. Either that or we complain a lot about it just for fun. Just ask the periodistas: they make up news as it comes into their heads, just like the protesters do on the stolen radio stations. Soap boxes everywhere.
So that's the news: there is no news. No one knows what's going on. Just listen, and if you do it long enough, you'll hear what you want. Everything's going on. Nothing's going on. It's all happening at once. Ulyses is about to regain power. Ulyses is about to be assassinated. We're still deciding on how we want to end this one, but we're taking our sweet time doing it. This isn't the US, there are no deadlines. The internet cafes don't even open until noon if the owner went out for mezcal the night before. Just try organizing a revolution. We're just waiting. But I've got my tlayudas and my copal, so I'm good to go in the meantime.
Friday is my favorite day of the week. It seems to be the favorite day of the week of the internet café guy, too, though he celebrates it, as he celebrates every other day, by sleeping in until 10:30 when the sign on the door clearly says 9:00, so that I can't just conveniently stop by on my way home from work but have to double back later after killing time by drinking too much coffee. But today somehow I was nonplussed by the tardiness of Mexican time, which seem to apply to all establishments except street vendors and beggars, who are at work 24 hours per day.
As I said, Fridays are my favorite day of the week. Once upon a time this might have been because they offered the prospect of two whole days free of work and thinking, the opportunity to escape responsibility and reality for an entire weekend at a stretch, but given that I work seven hours on Saturdays now, I can hardly imagine that that's the case anymore. Rather, I think I enjoy Fridays because I do work in the mornings, from 8 to 9, and then have the rest of the day free to wander around the city and try to get lost. Of course, I have long since stopped being able to be truly lost, especially since I often carry a map with me anyway (damn Clark's geography department!). But I still wander around new streets and loiter in different places, sometimes to the enjoyment and sometimes to the annoyment of the store and restaurant owners in my own fresa (translation: ritzy? snobby? nice?) Colonia Reforma.
Today for entertainment, I spent a whopping $10, walking around the market building near my school and cheering up street vendors by chatting and buying their goods, one item at a time, each thing from a different person. I never get tired of walking through the markets here, seeing the fresh fruit and vegetables stacked one on top of the other in gorgeous rows, red strawberries and green choyotes (no translation- round spiny squash-tasting things?) and yellow platanos (bananas), ripe and plump and vibrant, just waiting to be painted… perhaps someday I will get to this. Somehow it's altogether different from American markets, where everything is sterile and in plastic bags and your groceries are your own private business. Here, grocery shopping is an enterprise, a battle, a ritual. You have to bring your A-game or you go home with something that resembles a chicken chopped up by a seven year old with plastic picnic utensils, or a shriveled cactus that you're not sure how to peel, let alone eat.
So today I began with something familiar: tlayudas (big, flat, round tortillas), a staple which I didn't need but bought nonetheless because they are so delicious. The tlayuda woman was short and dark and hunched and beautiful, her eyes luminous behind her wrinkled skin. She smiled at me when I bought her goods, it being early in the morning yet for so unexpected a sale. I then continued on to copal, a miraculous resin which supposedly keeps away insects when burned and with which I entertain myself at night using the flame from my candles. I then bought a selection of granola, which is absolutely amazing down here and served with yoghurt and honey. I bought quesillo, a Oaxacan cheese which is somewhat similar to Mozzarella cheese but far better, and then, remembering my granola, proceeded to buy yoghurt. I lingered a while over the bread selections, because there are so many vendors selling it and because I didn't actually need any, but eventually settled on some soft round loaves that taste good with quesillo and beans in a kind of Mexican pizza they sometimes serve here. All in all it was fabulous, and I felt like a child at a candy store, as I always do, my eyes wide, shiny round pesos burning a hole in my pocket until I had to spend them to alleviate the burden.
My final purchase was a brave one, something I haven't bought in quite a while: a newspaper. I even chose the liberal rag, Noticias, now operating outside the city because of the current crisis (not sure why, the city is now run by leftists). I have intentionally avoided the news for a while now because it's so damn wrong all the time, but things have been calmer lately, I've been able to sleep at night, and I wanted to get an idea of what is stirring and how the plans for an alternative government are doing, at least according to the socialists.
I have to say, the paper made me laugh. I sat at my kitchen table at home, listening to mariachi music along with the guy doing construction in our complex, reading Noticias and drinking tea, and the sheer ridiculousness of the situation finally dawned on me. Never mind I walk to work past both APPO stakeouts and uniformed military with assault rifles and a scary-looking green jeep. Reading the newspaper, it all seemed to make sense. A march beginning in Etla yesterday walked the first 25 kilometers of the five hundred and something it takes to walk to Mexico City, protesters yelling, "This march is going to arrive in DF (Mexico City)!" According to my calculations, it will take the better part of a month for this to happen, while the rest of the country waits, bored, picking their noses and walking to work over rubble. On the same page, glaring out is a picture of lame duck Vicente Fox and president-elect Filipe Calderón standing too far apart, Calderon seeming rotund and almost obscenely short in comparison to Fox's lanky figure, his round glasses making him look more like an elderly gentleman at a wine tasting than the future president of Mexico. Next, a picture of "the APPO" and "the magisterio" parading around in matador costumes in a political cartoon that I clearly didn't get. An article on potholes. Elaborately overstated opinions in the Editorial section. Calls for peace. Calls to arms. Apparently the phrase for bloodbath in Spanish is " baño de sangre," which to me means bloody bathroom. But why not? This is Mexico, and no one's really sure who the President is anyways, let alone our state Governor. There's no police and no government in the city and we don't really care because the APPO takes care of it. Either that or we complain a lot about it just for fun. Just ask the periodistas: they make up news as it comes into their heads, just like the protesters do on the stolen radio stations. Soap boxes everywhere.
So that's the news: there is no news. No one knows what's going on. Just listen, and if you do it long enough, you'll hear what you want. Everything's going on. Nothing's going on. It's all happening at once. Ulyses is about to regain power. Ulyses is about to be assassinated. We're still deciding on how we want to end this one, but we're taking our sweet time doing it. This isn't the US, there are no deadlines. The internet cafes don't even open until noon if the owner went out for mezcal the night before. Just try organizing a revolution. We're just waiting. But I've got my tlayudas and my copal, so I'm good to go in the meantime.
posted by ajolley | 10:11 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home