pero a pesar de todo eso...

Diez Razones Me Gusta Mexico

1. conoci mi esposo aqui.
2. puedo ir cualquier fin de semana a ver un evento o lugar que sea historico, cultural, y diferente.
3. la cultura no es tan materialista (todavia).
4. los puestos de tacos, elotes, y gazpachos.
5. hay mucho trabajo por hacer en la educacion.
6. el clima
7. hablar español aqui es una forma del arte.
8. la historia rica del pais
9. Cinepolis auque sea un monopolio es un placer ver peliculas alla.
10.los colores de las casas

gringa sings the blues

“Just the facts, ma’am,” encapsulates a US approach to crime; cold, logical, and professional. What happened is indisputable; just fit all the pieces of solid evidence together logically and scientifically and the answer-- the truth-- appears. When my father in law was kidnapped in Mexico I thought, just the facts. Let’s figure out “what happened” and put the perpetrators behind bars. I was about to find out that “what happened” in Mexico isn’t the answer to a systematic search into the crime, but rather a cloudy, evasive and tortuous path through a cultural psyche.

There is a joke that is told in Mexico and it goes like this: There is the CIA, the Scotland Yard and AFI, the Mexican Federal police. They are each given a challenge: a rabbit is let loose and each group is told that will be timed to see how long it takes to track, find and return the rabbit. So, the Scotland Yard takes off and 20 minutes later they return, triumphant with the rabbit in tow. The CIA decides to go next and returns a half an hour later with the rabbit. AFI looks at their successes and scoffs: this is easy. So they set out. The CIA and Scotland Yard sit around waiting. 20 minutes pass, a half an hour, an hour. Hours pass but finally AFI is seen coming close in a pickup truck. AFI officers surround an enormous animal with huge guns. It is an elephant. The elephant is blindfolded and shouting, I am a rabbit! I am a rabbit!

Every joke is funny because there is a kernel of truth encased in otherwise absurd situation. Here in Mexico getting to the bottom of things is not a pursuit that holds much interest for the police—giving a little “push” to the people who are in custody so they tell what the police want to hear is practically protocol. I would never receive a thorough, disinterested investigation because police officers don’t get to the bottom of things through investigation. Why not? I suppose the answer to this question is the purpose of this essay: Culture. Why is a culture one way and not another? I have no easy answer to that question, but I do know that I became intimately aware of the deep differences between me and Mexico. The kidnapping served as the catalytic event that forced me to closely look not only at Mexican culture but also my own.

I am an “extranjera” in Mexico, a stranger. I have lived here five years ever since meeting my husband while working at a local university in Morelia. After getting married, we had two children and began carving a life for ourselves here in the city. Originally from Connecticut, this change has offered one cultural lesson after another.
How to make Mexican food, how to speak Spanish were obvious, but then there are the more subtle lessons: how to say no without saying no, how to get a job through contacts, and how to care for babies in the midst of bizarre superstitions. But I rolled with the differences because, quite frankly, I was in Mexico married to a Mexican. What did I expect? But then this kidnapping happened and required me to look a little deeper at Mexican culture—not just at the superficial differences, but into the deepest corners of the collective consciousness. And I found that I really only began to understand Mexico in the midst of this incredible drama.

The story begins last September. I had just returned to Morelia from a vacation to the States. I began my teaching job and was resuming life as usual. It was Tuesday night, September 12th, 2006. I was 5 months pregnant with my second child and my husband was in his final semester of law school. My father-in-law, Tobias, was getting ready to sponsor a year length’s worth of festivities for the patron saint of his hometown, an honor he waited years to fulfill. We were all looking forward to the coming year. On that warm, September evening, Tobias left the house to inspect a piece of property that he wished to buy and was kidnapped. His abductors demanded 500,000 pesos, an amount roughly equivalent to 50, 000 dollars, for his return. For three days they called demanding the ransom as we scrambled to come up with the money. We negotiated the final sum and agreed to wait for a final phone call that would indicate when and where we were to drop the money. It was Friday. But the phone call never came. We waited. And waited. We still are waiting.

Kidnappings are a frequent, unfortunate occurrence. Michoacan, the state where we reside, has little industry other than drug trafficking, drug laundering, and avocados. Poverty leads to delinquency and desperation. Some—many-- have so little left to lose that they form bands and kidnap for a living. Many people ask why this happened to Tobias. They think he must have been wealthy or connected. Not so. He was a regular middle class working man who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or perhaps it was an inside job—many kidnappings are plotted and executed by close friends or even family.

At the time of this writing over a year has passed. The most probable explanation is that Tobias has been murdered. Another, which we must believe, is that he is still alive and for some inexplicable reason the kidnappers still have him. Whether or not we will ever know is an answer that only time will tell. The horrendous waiting that has left us all numb, cheerless and desperate is a condition that will be ameliorated by nothing. The unknown is unbearable.

But since the unknown is intolerable for all—Mexicans, my family in the US—what does culture have to do with it? While my Mexican family was never pleased with the police behavior or the justice system, it wasn’t shocking. “That is just how it is” was the most common explanation. But why? These are infuriating and inconceivable events for an outsider, but consider this: Police budgets are small here in Mexico and the pay for a cop is pitifully small. To supplement one’s income one needs to drag their feet so the family will offer a bit of money. Most officers have minimal education—few have finished any education beyond high school. The budgets are so tight that proper police training in ethics and computers and investigation tactics is practically non-existent.

In the US we behold public servants to an abstract personal integrity, an obligation to society inculcated from a young age. But if that commitment wanes, human nature being as it is, there is also a reward system woven into pay raises, public recognition, and promotions. If I begin as a beat cop I have the opportunity to advance in my career and pay scale by the number of cases I crack, good behavior, etc. So, besides fulfilling my societal duty through good investigation I am also benefiting myself. There is no such system here. To make money a police officer is almost obligated to look for bribes or illegal sidework. And without training or technology to aid my investigation they can’t do their job well anyway. So, lesson number one: bureaucratic structures encourage certain behaviors. In this case, police ineptitude, apathy, and corruption result from a system without internal rewards, little training and pitiful pay.

This is example one of those subtle differences in Mexican culture made clear only through this experience. But I learned a little about my own culture too—or at least my role in US culture. I discussed my feelings of desperation and powerlessness in the face of the police corruption with African-American friends. One commented: now you know how the minority feels about the police in the US. Where I see justice and nifty police work in the US, many people of color see an institution seething with racism and unfairness. Maybe Mexico’s police system has institutionalized corruption whereas the US system has institutionalized racism. Maybe this cultural difference I find in Mexico has a bit to do with confronting my white privilege. I’ve taken enough sociology courses to know that I have it, but I have never had to really face up to what it meant. Being white in Mexico in this situation means nothing. I can’t rely on my physical appearance to get the police to do the “right thing” something that subconsciously I would have expected in the US. Being on the outskirts of this society as a minority is a frustrating space to occupy—a space that many US citizens inhabit in their own country. It’s ironic to be learning about one’s own culture while so deeply steeped in another.

The families of the victim cannot push the cops to do their job without “mordidas” or bribes—and sometimes these are not enough. Regardless of the thousands of pesos you spend, the letters you write, the protests you organize, and the phone calls you make, you are powerless. This forces you to give up your ideas of individual volition and personal responsibility. You must accept the world as it is because you, as an individual, don’t matter and cannot affect change. A US perspective of self is quite different. We wholeheartedly, if not erroneously, believe that we control our future. We have become specialists in controlling every aspect of our lives in the US and it is difficult for us to imagine a true sense of powerlessness over ones environment or future.

In the US I walk into an ice-cream shop and choose from 50 flavors of ice cream, 7 different sizes and 100’s of different combinations of toppings. I control to the minutest detail every part of my ice cream eating event. Buying ice cream in Mexico affords quite a different experience: I choose between vanilla and chocolate in one size. That ice cream eating experience is offered to me as is. I have little autonomy. Now this seems like a ridiculously trite example, but in its simplicity one can see the range of mobility that US citizens exercise compared to Mexicans. We take this for granted. Lesson number two: personal choice is a cultural notion that you must shed in Mexico.

How did Mexico get like this, a friend asked. I wonder if the question shouldn’t be: How did Americans get like this? Our individualistic mindset and controlling nature that perhaps comes with the plethora of options that our advanced economy offers us is, in fact, not the norm if you look at world cultures. But in response to his question—it’s complicated!
I can get mad, cry for justice, and weep salty crocodile tears but this matters not. I don’t matter—I am a nobody. Octavio Paz, one of Mexico’s more fascinating writers and public figures writes, “They (others) simply dissimulate his existence and behave as if he did not exist. They nullify him, cancel him out, turn him into nothingness. It is futile for a Nobody to talk, to publish books, to paint pictures, to stand of his head. Nobody is the blankness of our looks, the pauses in our conversations, the reserve in our silences. …He is an omission, and yet he is forever present.” So, there we are, the people, but we are mysteriously cancelled out. How does one explain this to someone who is not Mexican? Even I cannot fully understand this nullification—but I have experienced it. When Tobias was kidnapped, we didn’t become a special case. Judges, politicians, police and the general public didn’t consider our experience. We blended into the cloudy dark side of the “victim.” And we had no voice, no autonomy, no social or political will. Lesson number two: Independence and self-sufficiency lose meaning in a culture where the individual dissolves into a mass of “nothingness” with no volition.

Maybe this sense of collective meaninglessness that one tacitly feels is the reason for the strong presence of religion and “adevinas” or fortune tellers and the omnipresent Virgin of Guadalupe. I remember my sister’s reaction when I told her that the “vidente” (psychic) told me that Tobias was alive. She paused on the phone and said, “hmmm,” a polite dismissal of someone who never had to resort to tarot card readings to feel something sure. Passing by the housing projects, I understood why there were so many shrines to the virgin of Guadalupe, encased in glass with adorning flowers. An impoverished existence is ameliorated by compassion, love and hope of change as represented by the Virgen. And you do believe in what the “vidente” tells you hoping that she, too, is telling you of positive change soon to come. Whether or not it happens is secondary. They provide the smallest sliver of hope. Living with total desperation is impossible, and hope comes from strange places: justice metted out by a fair God in the next life. In Mexico, there is no real belief in self or hard work or progress to incite change and a better life—these ideas sustain US ideology. The afterlife, spirits, tradition: those are the ideas that can offer us a better life, at least psychologically, in Mexico.

“What happened” is impossible to know. But what I do know is that my father in laws kidnapping provided a whole lesson in culture. I learned, not as a fact, but deeply and intuitively that the bureaucratic structures prevent any real investigation. There is no money, advanced technology or training in the police force. They are paid pitifully and apathy reigns. Two, this is not an individualistic culture in the sense that people really believe they can make a difference or exercise control over their environment. There is a tacit, collective nothingness that one feels here. Nothing gets done, no one can change, I am nobody. And because one feels part of a mass of impotent public a certain kind of fatalism begins to color how one sees life. I cannot demand justice because who am I? So, I find justice in the third cultural difference: religion, the virgin of Guadalupe, spirits, and psychics. They soften a harsh reality that most live through here and provide a belief system that buoys our spirits and offers justice through compassion and consolation.

I will work on a conclusion later. I will continue al rato...

La BODA

El verano pasado fui a la boda de mi hermana Leah. Ella estuvo feliz, feliz -- brillando-- adornada con flores caras, vestida como una princesa, y en medio de un fin de semana organizado especialmente para ella. Ella llego a la iglesia en una limo, tomaron un monton de fotos de ella, y se caso dentro de un caos organizado. Luego hubo una fiesta y luna de miel en un pais extranjero donde sus dolares valen mas que la moneda local. Eso, me parece es el sueño de cada mujer: ser princessa por un dia, ser novia. Es el Sueño gastar miles de dolares en un evento que dura un dia y que representa un rite of passage symbolico: entras al mundo de los adultos y ahora entiendes del amor el romance y la responsibilidad tener una pareja. A pesar de todo imagen bueno, yo, en este blog, voy a proponer que la boda es una pendejada que sirve nada mas segurar heterosexualidad como institucion lo cual estandariza comportamiento y mantener el sistema capitalista en su lugar.

Amarga, me dices? No, nunca jugaba con Bridal Barbie soñando en el dia supuestamente mas especial de mi vida. Nunca me emocionaba tener mi Principe encantado esperandome al final del pasillo en la iglesia, yo en blanco, serena, feliz, y el epitome de todo lo femenino. Y no mas en mi etapa de gangster bitch--la cual duro menos de un año-- queria diamantes. (mas sobre este detalle en el futuro.)

Uno no nace queriendo vestirse para la graduacion, salir con dates, creyendo en el romance. Aprendemos a traves de peliculas, novelas, y las diferentes formas de actuar. Y la boda representa la culminacion de toda la ideologia del romance heterosexual. No importa si la heterosexualidad es un dado biologico y "natural," la idea es que la heterosexualidad es organizada por la sociedad y la cultura, y nos enseña el comportimiento correcto.

Heterosexualidad es un sistema de creencias basadas en el romance. Debido a el elemento romantico se nos hace dificil ver como la heterosexualidad preserva el genero para funcionar. El romance nos da papeles naturalizados del genero y por eso exhibe control cultural. ¿Cual otra razon puedes pensar que nosotras las mujeres estamos conformes con sueldos mas bajos que el de los hombres, puestos especificos por ser mujeres, la violencia hacia nosotros en la forma de sexual harrassment hasta la violacion? La institution que apoya estos patrones del comportamiento por genero es la heterosexualidad. Y el acto sumamente simbolico del heterosexualidad es la BODA.

Ahora podemos hablar de papeles del genero que no son tan ofensivos: el hombre paga, gana, abre las puertas y camina en el lado de la banqueta mas cerca de los carros. Que tierno. O, quizas, es el mantimiento de la institucion que nos pone en "nuestro lugar." Piensenlo.

La BODA tambien es la culminacion de fuerzas distintas en el capitalismo. Consideran esto: cuando hay una recesion economica la industria nunca sufre. La BODA flota ciertos sectores de la economia por la fuerza de la institucion. En EU gente gasta mas de 18 BILLONES en regalos. ?!

Es una locura.

Unos otros puntos para que lo consideren:

1. Los vestidos estan hechos principlmente en paises del "tercer mundo." Es decir, estás contribuyendo a la miseria, imperialismo economico dentro de muchas mas cosas culeras cuando compras un vestido.

2. Despues de comprarlo tienes que tener alteraciones (alimentando la economia para cierta clase de trabajador...definativamente no para el Guatamalteco quien lo hizo en primer lugar.)

3. Los diamantes son las piedras del diablo. Punto. No hay una manera en que me puedan convencer que DeBeer's, la compania mas grande en la venta de diamantes, no es responsable por la colonizacion de ciertos paises de Africa, especificamente SudAfrica. Todos sabemos que vida tan linda tienen alli con el apartied, racismo de la chingada, y ahora neo-colonialismo (lo cual es la misma chingadera de colonialismo pero en la esfera economica.) Porque DeBeer's, una compania Brintanica, cosecha todas las ganancias de los recursos naturales de su vieja colonia?

4. El vestido, si puedo regresar aqui, es blanco porque la reina Victoria lo uso. Fue un simbolo de clase y poder. Ahora el color del vestido debe ser blanco para representar una novia virgen. Entra la religion para restringir la vida sexual de la mujer y mas double estandards .

5. Todas las revistas de BODAs enseñan mujeres blancas. Racismo de la chingada.

6. La BODA representa las aspiraciones de los pobres a escapar de su clase por un dia.

7. Para hacerlo "correcto" uno debe gastar en la fiesta de boda, fiesta de la novia, la BODA, y los regalos. Siguen alimentando la maquina capitalista. ¡Compra! ¡Consume!

8. La luna de miel. ¿Como puedo empezar hablando de los destinos mas populares? Son islas pobres dentro del neo-colonialismo donde la gente tiene una vida jodida sirviendo los "honeymooners" mientras viven en casas de carton. Jamiaca, Antigua, Martinique...

9. Mujeres toman el nombre del hombre y llevan un anillo que significa pertenencia despues de que su novio pida a sus papas por ella. ¿Propiedad?

Puedo seguir. Pero mejor hago un resumen. La BODA significa un elemento esencial al capitalismo. Mantiene el racismo, clasismo, e intolerancia. Tambien la boda es el momento simbolico que referimos por la construcion del genero lo cual mantiene una estructura del poder e ideologia. Ahora, me pueden decir que es tradicion y es bonita y que y que...pero la cruda realidad es que es una institucion que nos chinga.

No dije nada de eso a mi querida hermana quien paso mucho, pero mucho, tiempo pensando y emocionandose por gastar tanta lana en su BODA. La ideologia va profundamente dentro nuestra cultura y para sugerir lo contrario es como una declaracion de locura. Me quede calladita y pague todo lo que tenia que pagar por mi papel en la boda con una sonrisa. Me fui a todas las funciones que tenia que asistir con un corazon ligero. Y llore durante la ceramonia pensando en la cascara del romance que nos hace prometer el amor por toda la vida. sigh.

Yo no escape a las garras de la ideologia y la tradicion lo cual puede comprometer mi posicion. Pero mi propisto no es convencerles de no tener una BODA, sino que piensen en el porque hacemos lo que hacemos.

Vertigo

Ayer tuve el placer ir a la casa de la cultura aquí en nuestra ciudad linda con unos miembros de mi nueva pandilla Esteban y Carlos. Hubo una exibicion de los altares para el día de muertos y uno que nos gusto fue una maquina de los sueños que represento que la muerte sucede cuando dejamos de soñar. Había mucho detalle y cuando me aleje para apreciarlo me tuve que acercar a una escalera larga y empinada. Imediatamente agarre el barandal para el apoyo necesario para superar esa sensacion rara que siempre me pasa con las alturas. Vértigo. ¿Que es exactamente el vértigo? Depende en tu educación puedes considerarlo como un estado psicológico, un proceso biológico, un miedo inventado, pero yo lo veo filosóficamente. Para mi el vértigo, esa sensacion del mareo e inestabilidad, es una confrontación con tu propia libertad.

Tenia un profesor en la universidad Tsenay quien llego a EU desde Eritrea por razones políticas y me enseño que esta sensacion que tuve en las escaleras es mucho mas que un miedo de las alturas o unos procesos biologicos. Es el momento en que confrontamos nuestra finitud. Coqueteamos con la posibilidad de nuestra propia muerte porque estamos viendo el momento entre elegir mantener el eliquilibrio o saltar para cesar el tomar decisiones-- dejar de ser. Y finalmente es el momento que escogemos vivir. Vértigo es cuando nos damos cuenta en una manera profundamente tacita que somos nosotros que escogemos nuestras vidas.

Hay un momento en la vida cuando te das cuenta que existes y existes en una manera muy diferente que una piedra, perro o cosa. Tenemos consciencia. Eso nos distingue de animales y cosas porque podemos refleccionar y tomar decisiones basadas en algo aparte de las necesidades y reacciones biologicas. Yo recuerdo cuando era niña y tenia problemas siempre veia a mi gato, contento y feliz fuera de una consciencia de si mismo, y sentia envidia. Pensababa que hubiera sido mas facil si no tuviera consciencia porque para citar Dostoyevsky "el sufrir es el origen de la consciencia."

¿Porque nos traumatiza tanto la consiencia? Porque con la consciencia tenemos la carga para darle sentido a la vida. No tenemos NINGUNA guia confiable para garantizar el sentido y eso nos lleva a la desesperacion-- un sentimiento unicamente humano. Esta desesperacion o ansiedad es fundamental a la condicion humana. Es porque no existe un proposito en la vida-- no hay una razon por la cual debes escoger entre hacer una cosa u otra. Aqui estamos aventados en el mundo sin guia con todas las posibilidades disponibles.

Los seres humanos tienen libertad para escoger cualquier camino, situacion, etc, en la vida. Con esa libertad tenemos la posibilidad. Podemos hacer lo que sea, todo es posible, pero nada es necesario porque no hay una razon por la cual debes hacer algo. Aqui es donde entra el pavor y la ansiedad de nuestras decisiones. Yo cargo toda la responsibilidad de todas mis decisiones porque no hay nadie mas que se haga responsable por mi vida. QUE ANSIEDAD! Es mas facil tomar desiciones por que es lo que mis papas me dicen, lo que la etica me manda hacer, lo que me señala la sociedad. Pero llega un momento en que tenemos que confrontar que no hay nada fuera de nosotros que de sentido a la vida. Nosotros damos el sentido a nuestras vidas y eso es una carga tremenda.

Cuando nos llega esa realizacion podemos deprimirnos, ponernos ansiosos o ir completemente en la direccion opuesta, la cual es la negacion. La negacion es la opcion mas facil. Creamos estrategias para correr lejos de la ansiedad: la busqueda de los placeres materiales, la religion, un codigo moral, etc. pero la persona mas autentica siempre confronta su propia libertad sin escapar dentro de respuestas pre-fabricadas. Y eso, creo es lo mas dificil.

Tenemos que confrontar nuestra realidad bonita (con todo su orden y sentido) verdaderamente es una cascara, un red de sentidos que existen por nuestra propia voluntad. Y cuando nuestra volutad cambia (lo cual siempre pasa porque no somos seres estaticos sino procesos) entra la crisis existentialista.

Y aqui regresemos al vertigo- esa sensacion de mareo- que nos puede enseñar mucho. El momento metaforico nos da una oportunidad escoger nuestra vida. Vertigo es una señal o recuerdo que todo esta en nuestras manos. Podemos usar vertigo para ahogar en el pavor y ansiedad de las posibilidades de la vida o, como yo prefiero, podemos empezar a vivir verdaderamente. Podemos ver la ansiedad como oportunidad de crear una realidad que es conforme a nuestros ideales, deseos, etc. A veces esa implica cambios drasticos, agregando o quitando gente o situaciones de tu vida, momentos muy incomodos que seguramente van a ser dificiles, pero creo que todo eso es parte del proceso hacernos mejores seres humanos. Soy optimista.

Bienvenido a la vida tan insegura, llega de pavor, y sin sentido. Pero tambien benvenido a la vida sin limites y de tu creacion.

Eso es todo por hoy....