Just another instance of nothing happening...?
I awoke this morning to realize that I had slept the night through; the sun beamed down full force through Jessica’s bedroom windows. Why isn’t the city in flames? I wondered to myself. I rolled over and ran my fingers through my newly short hair and asked, unimpressed, to no one in particular, “Is this just another instance of nothing happening?”
“I think so,” Emily said from across the room. “Still, my nerves can’t handle it.”
It didn’t seem strange to me to find her standing there at the window, nor did it alarm me that I was in fact in someone else’s bed in someone else’s house and wearing someone else’s clothes. Whenever rumors begin to fly through the city about political chaos and conflict at the barricades we all find our way to the Crespo house one way or another; it isn’t uncommon to pass the night on the couch or comfortably in Jessica’s enormous bed downstairs. This latter circumstance was the case last night, and so I awoke at 8:15 in Jessica’s room with Emily standing gazing out the window at Oaxaca on yet another lazy Sunday and it did not seem strange at all the Jessica herself wasn’t there.
A journalist from Indymedia in New York was killed in my city two days ago, one of four to be shot by plainclothes policemen in a systematic raid of barricades on Friday organized by the state government. The move was one of unparalleled stupidity, and all in all it was precisely what we have come to expect from Ulyses Ruiz Ortiz, Oaxaca state governor currently banned in his own capital city and on the run from insurgent forces who have had control of the city for the past five months. His actions were in stark contrast to the current situation in the rest of the city, which had led us to believe that things would soon return to normal in the confused city.
Friday began another three-day economic paro or huelga (strike) by businesses in the city. The APPO put up extra blockades so as to be especially annoying. It was a quiet day, one which I passed almost entirely reading in my hammock after my morning class was finished. Call it foresight, call it clairvoyance, but sometimes I just know when it’s a good day to stay home. By mid afternoon we knew that something had come to pass which was wholly unexpected: local police had systematically, overtly, come to remove the barricades. In the resulting mayhem and confusion—protesting teachers had all but returned to classes and given up their quest, at least on the local level, and there seemed in fact to be no reason for additional pressure from the government—several people were shot, including Brad Will, a 36-year old leftie journalist arrived in Oaxaca perhaps three weeks ago to cover events here.
Saturday was shrouded in tension; we cancelled our Halloween party at the last minute as perhaps only four or five students showed up to each class, including mine which usually has twenty rowdy, jostling eleven year olds eager to do anything but learn English on their Saturday morning. The softspoken director of my school, perhaps 27 and originally from Cincinatti, Ohio, himself an APPO sympathizer, interrupted class to call all the teachers together to organize a meeting after work at the downtown building. He was calm and a little shaken: as it turns out, he had written once or twice for Indymedia and had been in correspondence with Will before his arrival in the city.
The full meeting with all my coworkers was brief. Mostly James, our director, talked for a while and reiterated the emergency contingency plan; the rest of us looked at one another, half bored and half nervous. The other teachers at Cambridge Academy also happen to be my dearest friends; we have independently discussed the situation to death and as I looked around the table I could guess with a fair amount of certainty exactly what was going on in each of their heads.
After the meeting we walked to the nearly empty organic market and ordered seven wheatburgers from one of the last closing stalls, sitting in front of the fishpond and chatting. Loud fireworks banged throughout the afternoon. We then in various groups wandered, as we always do, to the Crespo house, the closer of the two buildings that we as teachers inhabit in the city, because it has wireless internet where we can follow the news and all sleep in the same place if need be.
The night passed uneventfully. Periodically we looked up to see airplanes, but none of them were military planes. Loud, frantic wedding music blared into the twilight and the night resonated as it always does with periodic booms of ubiquitous Mexican fireworks. Nothing seemed remiss except for the somber attitude of the city and the deserted streets. Bored, we cut my hair to a boyish crop, gave Britney punk rocker bangs, and gave Emily a bob minus the garish bangs typical of that style, which we kept long. John offered to let us glue the extra hair onto his own head, the front of which hasn’t seen hair for a while, but we didn’t have any crazy glue and gave up the mission in favor of playing hearts and listening to music, our ears secretly attuned to helicopters or other unusual sounds in the night which never came.
But the night passed without event, and in fact I slept peacefully. Breakfast consists of quesadillas from the local market and Nescafe instant coffee. We laugh at the fact that we are so accustomed to instant coffee. Everything seems to be an ordinary Sunday. Only today, we hear the thumping of helicopter propellers in the sky, harbinger to the eerie sight of helicopters circling, circling, circling the city in their lazy arcs. It is a sound familiar to all of us by now, and it draws us out onto the roof to look. Sure enough, they are circling the sky. Two, shiny new ones. Not the older ones of a few weeks ago. A sign of the federal police. I shudder in spite of myself. I don’t know if I can ever look at the powerful creatures the same way anymore—such an incredible, graceful phenomenon of modern physics, and yet so terrifying that my hair stands up on end as I see them and I feel adrenaline surge to my limbs. I think of Chris Rea and his fascination with aviation, back in the states somewhere living his normal life, and of the days we spent putting together model planes in high school. Then, I secretly wished to know more about them, so that perhaps one day I could design them. Today, I am simply confused.
Our boss arrives, and between gulps of instant coffee and the rush to find new batteries for his camera, he announces that there are new mentions of peace talks, which is a relief. We now know that there are 3000 troops in barracks in Etla and 200 poised to block the road to Mexico City. Local police are still in plainclothes throughout the city, but for the most part they have no real meaning. It is the federal troops which could, when pressed, do real damage, armed with riot gear, tear gas, and everything else necessary to have a very violent “nonviolent” intervention. But today, nothing seems to be in the works—only the neighbors flashing large mirrors into the sky to harass the two military helicopters still circling the southeastern part of the city.
James scoots off on his motorcycle, APPO identity card/“press pass” in hand, to check out the barricades, promising to keep us posted via cell phone of what is actually happening. I fuss after him for a few minutes, making sure he has an emergency backup plan and that what he is doing is not actually stupid. When he finally turns to go, I shake my head and bite my lip, laughing to myself at the fact that I should feel like such a mother to a man who is in fact my boss. In a sense I wish I could go with him, but I know that to be stupid. He knows the city and its people far better than I do, and I am in that respect content to stay at home at the computer, listening to the University radio station with my instant coffee, typing and plotting things out on the giant map of the city spread out beside me, following things as best I can while, as always, taking things with a grain of salt and a dose of courage.
I know that the news at home sounds bad. Fox issued a written statement recently saying that he would now use force if necessary. We made the Americas section of the New York Times again today (actually a very good, fairly accurate article, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/world/americas/29mexico.html?n=Top/News/World/Countries%20and%20Territories/Mexico). Headlines and photos look horrendous, and are, as usual, exaggerated. But I say—slowly and cautiously, with as level a head as possible—that things are okay. That I am okay. I will know when things go wrong, when it is time to switch into panic mode and get the hell out. The system of action here is delicately calibrated for appropriate planning and response. And I have—we have—a system in place for if and when it comes time to leave.
As always, I have two hundred dollars in cash stashed in my room next to my passport and my FM3 visa ready to go in case of emergencies, photocopies of all of my important documents, including credit cards and extra identification. My cell phone is stock full of phone numbers to call in case of an emergency, people with cars and safe places to stay. And in the meantime, the owner of my school has a home in the hills that we can leave to in the event of a personal crisis or the need to escape for a while, and a house in Puerto Escondido in case we simply feel like taking a week off. I am okay. The weather outside is fantastic, my instant coffee for some reason tastes good in spite of its cheapness, and the company of my friends is unparalleled in its comfort and honesty. I shall spend this afternoon, like so many other afternoon recently, listening to insurgent radio and watching helicopters do recon over my city.
Today, incidentally, marks the conclusion of my fourth month in Mexico.
Namaste,
Anna
“I think so,” Emily said from across the room. “Still, my nerves can’t handle it.”
It didn’t seem strange to me to find her standing there at the window, nor did it alarm me that I was in fact in someone else’s bed in someone else’s house and wearing someone else’s clothes. Whenever rumors begin to fly through the city about political chaos and conflict at the barricades we all find our way to the Crespo house one way or another; it isn’t uncommon to pass the night on the couch or comfortably in Jessica’s enormous bed downstairs. This latter circumstance was the case last night, and so I awoke at 8:15 in Jessica’s room with Emily standing gazing out the window at Oaxaca on yet another lazy Sunday and it did not seem strange at all the Jessica herself wasn’t there.
A journalist from Indymedia in New York was killed in my city two days ago, one of four to be shot by plainclothes policemen in a systematic raid of barricades on Friday organized by the state government. The move was one of unparalleled stupidity, and all in all it was precisely what we have come to expect from Ulyses Ruiz Ortiz, Oaxaca state governor currently banned in his own capital city and on the run from insurgent forces who have had control of the city for the past five months. His actions were in stark contrast to the current situation in the rest of the city, which had led us to believe that things would soon return to normal in the confused city.
Friday began another three-day economic paro or huelga (strike) by businesses in the city. The APPO put up extra blockades so as to be especially annoying. It was a quiet day, one which I passed almost entirely reading in my hammock after my morning class was finished. Call it foresight, call it clairvoyance, but sometimes I just know when it’s a good day to stay home. By mid afternoon we knew that something had come to pass which was wholly unexpected: local police had systematically, overtly, come to remove the barricades. In the resulting mayhem and confusion—protesting teachers had all but returned to classes and given up their quest, at least on the local level, and there seemed in fact to be no reason for additional pressure from the government—several people were shot, including Brad Will, a 36-year old leftie journalist arrived in Oaxaca perhaps three weeks ago to cover events here.
Saturday was shrouded in tension; we cancelled our Halloween party at the last minute as perhaps only four or five students showed up to each class, including mine which usually has twenty rowdy, jostling eleven year olds eager to do anything but learn English on their Saturday morning. The softspoken director of my school, perhaps 27 and originally from Cincinatti, Ohio, himself an APPO sympathizer, interrupted class to call all the teachers together to organize a meeting after work at the downtown building. He was calm and a little shaken: as it turns out, he had written once or twice for Indymedia and had been in correspondence with Will before his arrival in the city.
The full meeting with all my coworkers was brief. Mostly James, our director, talked for a while and reiterated the emergency contingency plan; the rest of us looked at one another, half bored and half nervous. The other teachers at Cambridge Academy also happen to be my dearest friends; we have independently discussed the situation to death and as I looked around the table I could guess with a fair amount of certainty exactly what was going on in each of their heads.
After the meeting we walked to the nearly empty organic market and ordered seven wheatburgers from one of the last closing stalls, sitting in front of the fishpond and chatting. Loud fireworks banged throughout the afternoon. We then in various groups wandered, as we always do, to the Crespo house, the closer of the two buildings that we as teachers inhabit in the city, because it has wireless internet where we can follow the news and all sleep in the same place if need be.
The night passed uneventfully. Periodically we looked up to see airplanes, but none of them were military planes. Loud, frantic wedding music blared into the twilight and the night resonated as it always does with periodic booms of ubiquitous Mexican fireworks. Nothing seemed remiss except for the somber attitude of the city and the deserted streets. Bored, we cut my hair to a boyish crop, gave Britney punk rocker bangs, and gave Emily a bob minus the garish bangs typical of that style, which we kept long. John offered to let us glue the extra hair onto his own head, the front of which hasn’t seen hair for a while, but we didn’t have any crazy glue and gave up the mission in favor of playing hearts and listening to music, our ears secretly attuned to helicopters or other unusual sounds in the night which never came.
But the night passed without event, and in fact I slept peacefully. Breakfast consists of quesadillas from the local market and Nescafe instant coffee. We laugh at the fact that we are so accustomed to instant coffee. Everything seems to be an ordinary Sunday. Only today, we hear the thumping of helicopter propellers in the sky, harbinger to the eerie sight of helicopters circling, circling, circling the city in their lazy arcs. It is a sound familiar to all of us by now, and it draws us out onto the roof to look. Sure enough, they are circling the sky. Two, shiny new ones. Not the older ones of a few weeks ago. A sign of the federal police. I shudder in spite of myself. I don’t know if I can ever look at the powerful creatures the same way anymore—such an incredible, graceful phenomenon of modern physics, and yet so terrifying that my hair stands up on end as I see them and I feel adrenaline surge to my limbs. I think of Chris Rea and his fascination with aviation, back in the states somewhere living his normal life, and of the days we spent putting together model planes in high school. Then, I secretly wished to know more about them, so that perhaps one day I could design them. Today, I am simply confused.
Our boss arrives, and between gulps of instant coffee and the rush to find new batteries for his camera, he announces that there are new mentions of peace talks, which is a relief. We now know that there are 3000 troops in barracks in Etla and 200 poised to block the road to Mexico City. Local police are still in plainclothes throughout the city, but for the most part they have no real meaning. It is the federal troops which could, when pressed, do real damage, armed with riot gear, tear gas, and everything else necessary to have a very violent “nonviolent” intervention. But today, nothing seems to be in the works—only the neighbors flashing large mirrors into the sky to harass the two military helicopters still circling the southeastern part of the city.
James scoots off on his motorcycle, APPO identity card/“press pass” in hand, to check out the barricades, promising to keep us posted via cell phone of what is actually happening. I fuss after him for a few minutes, making sure he has an emergency backup plan and that what he is doing is not actually stupid. When he finally turns to go, I shake my head and bite my lip, laughing to myself at the fact that I should feel like such a mother to a man who is in fact my boss. In a sense I wish I could go with him, but I know that to be stupid. He knows the city and its people far better than I do, and I am in that respect content to stay at home at the computer, listening to the University radio station with my instant coffee, typing and plotting things out on the giant map of the city spread out beside me, following things as best I can while, as always, taking things with a grain of salt and a dose of courage.
I know that the news at home sounds bad. Fox issued a written statement recently saying that he would now use force if necessary. We made the Americas section of the New York Times again today (actually a very good, fairly accurate article, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/world/americas/29mexico.html?n=Top/News/World/Countries%20and%20Territories/Mexico). Headlines and photos look horrendous, and are, as usual, exaggerated. But I say—slowly and cautiously, with as level a head as possible—that things are okay. That I am okay. I will know when things go wrong, when it is time to switch into panic mode and get the hell out. The system of action here is delicately calibrated for appropriate planning and response. And I have—we have—a system in place for if and when it comes time to leave.
As always, I have two hundred dollars in cash stashed in my room next to my passport and my FM3 visa ready to go in case of emergencies, photocopies of all of my important documents, including credit cards and extra identification. My cell phone is stock full of phone numbers to call in case of an emergency, people with cars and safe places to stay. And in the meantime, the owner of my school has a home in the hills that we can leave to in the event of a personal crisis or the need to escape for a while, and a house in Puerto Escondido in case we simply feel like taking a week off. I am okay. The weather outside is fantastic, my instant coffee for some reason tastes good in spite of its cheapness, and the company of my friends is unparalleled in its comfort and honesty. I shall spend this afternoon, like so many other afternoon recently, listening to insurgent radio and watching helicopters do recon over my city.
Today, incidentally, marks the conclusion of my fourth month in Mexico.
Namaste,
Anna
posted by ajolley | 9:25 AM
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