Vasconcelos/Periferico blockade

In recent weeks, I have spent much time looking long and hard down “Calz. E Vasconcelos”-- the northern half of the Periferico loop-- with curiosity, wondering what lie beyond the bus blockades to the South. I had walked the street perhaps once before, trying to get my bearings long before I actually lived in Colonia Reforma to the north of the city. Somehow, however, the blockades looked menacing, and I did my best to put off the compulsion to walk down the street. No, Anna. Dangerous.

Today, as luck would have it, I stumbled upon this very street, except from the southern end. Buses circumnavigate the entire area every time they drive from my neighborhood downtown, and to be honest, until today I wasn’t even sure where the long line of blockades ended. I myself always walk in another direction, through a pleasant cobblestone neighbhorhood which is always open and feels safe. But today after work I needed to pick up some groceries, and in my wanderings I came upon the southern end of what I could only assume to be the blockade. I should say, by the way, that this "street" is not really any such thing; rather, it is a four lane highway, one of the largest in the city, two lanes on each side with a median in between. For perhaps six blocks running north-south in a three-block-wide swath of the city, it is closed off to vehicles by city buses, which are parked at every intersection across each of the two lanes on either side of the median.

Laden with my one overloaded grocery bag and my leather satchel full of teaching materials, I decided today to investigate the mystery further: it was, after all, the easiest route home. Tentatively, I started walking towards it. To my surprise, no one halted me, and I could in fact see one or two normal people walking towards me from the other side of the first line of buses. In fact, there seemed to be no one about at all who looked interested in asking me what on earth I was doing there. I continued, and my heartbeat quickened to the beat of the punk rock music blaring from the CD store open on one side of the street. At least some stores are open, I thought. That's a good sign.

Taking a breath, I crossed the first blockade. And on the other side of the buses, I entered a foreign world. Here, a four-lane highway had been converted into a city park. Women sat picnicking in a thicker section of a median, and genuine, relaxed laughter drifted lazily my way from men sitting across the street from me. Several people riding bikes took advantage of the fact that there were no cars, and as I passed blockade after blockade, I realized that this is the tranquillest part of the city that I have thus far found. I could not hear a single car, even in the distance, just the soft sound of people living, their voices travelling lazily across the warm air. I almost felt cheated for having thought it a dangerous zone for so long.

Walking down the streets, I saw that this area was covered with graffiti, but that it was far more philosophic in nature than the common vandalism I usually see on my way to work: one phrase which particularly struck me read, Mejor morir de pie porque no se puede de rodillos. Esperanza es la ultima morir (Better to die standing, because one cannot die on one's knees. Hope is the last thing to die).

I passed block after block of languid protesters and their families reclining in the streets, finally walking by a baseball game in progress. Relaxed, and totally unafraid, I watched the men play, and realized that in all my wandering I had not been harassed once, nor had I been called güera, the obnoxious word for "pretty white lady" or something of the sort. These people, it seemed, had something more interesting to worry about than me, even if I obviously didn’t belong here. As I walked down the street I even went so far as to wonder whether the people in this neighbourhood didn’t prefer things the way they were for all the tranquillity and calm.

And then, as suddenly as it started, it was over. I walked through the last blockade right onto Highway 190, the six lane divided highway I have to cross one way or another to get to and from work every day (it’s divided in strange ways so there are as many as four and as few as two lanes to cross at a time, with frequent confusing lights that have quashed any potential desire of mine to ever drive in the city). And suddenly, the world was full of noise again. I was confused and disoriented, and my turnoff to go up my street came sooner than I expected. As I continued to walk home, somewhat stunned, the strains of a saxophone reached my ears, accompanied by a slow, mournful drumbeat, a plaintive song like the one in the movie Glory which always used to make me cry. And I wasn’t sure, for a moment, why I wasn’t crying, because I half wanted to, but the tears wouldn’t come.