Street art

So many of you may know that I'm a little obsessed with street art here (and in fact the grad student I met Sunday told me about another anthropologist here who's doing research on the stencil art collective here). One of the more difficult things (for a webbed-in person like me) that I've noticed about life here is that rather than announcing things on-line (and there is definitely some of that), people put up these big silk-screened posters on walls. There's also a ton of stencil and graffiti art... which I want to meet this guy and learn more about if/how it's connected to other sorts of social politics.

There's one wall close to my apt that is covered and I find these two elements very interesting, although not particularly new.



Associating women's reproductive potentials with both colonialist and liberation movements has a long history... and managing women's reproduction has been a key component in Mexico's self-modernization, largely through encouraging (indigenous) women to have more planned and fewer children through biomedicine. And, there are articles about women in Chiapas actively refusing to enter public health institutions for fear that they will have IUDs implanted without consent. So it might make sense to see social movements responding to state practices with pronatalist art like this... but I haven't seen or heard any feminist or health activists doing so..... so, I'm not sure how to read these kinds of public art in terms of actual politics.

And here are some more pieces of street art I've found around my adventures.....

From bed to mountains

Besides starting back up with fieldwork I got back into the social swing of things Sunday... and no one seemed to mind that I'm still a little lung hacking. My new friend J held a "ladies brunch" in the morning which was very lovely. She's an American in her mid-30s who moved down here to teach English and then married a Oaxacan man (who's also lovely) and is currently working to get a permanent resident visa for him (they have truly opened my eyes to the fact that marrying someone does not mean that they can even visit the US... the state dept refused him a tourist visa because having an American wife means that he is more likely to overstay!). J has pulled together this community of American women living down here (mostly doing non-profit work or research) and she is a wonderful cook and she has cute cute adopted puppies. I met another grad student there who is plugged into the American researcher community here, which is always good.... although she seemed surprised that both L and I are doing work outside the city.

Leaving L and I and two other women decided that we could basically walk from J's house on the other side of the "river" if we had a ride to the river (which is just across from the sprawling abastos market for those who care) and we would take the first one.... which was a mototaxi. So the four of us squeezed into the back... when I thought that 2 would be pushing it... the driver was thrilled, he kept expressing surprise that we were all American and didn't mind mototaxis and spoke English and and and... didn't feel skeezy unlike this man who asked me out on my way home in a collectivo on Monday.

Later in the afternoon L and I met up with her friend G to explore San Felipe. L's boyfriend is going to come live here with her in the winter and she wants to move because her apt is tiny and our neighbor J is crazy, so L is constantly on the hunt for furnished apts. San Felipe is basically the furthest north part of the city and has a weird mix of people... I've been told that the richest of the richest live there (including the governor), but there are also a lot of artists and intellectuals, and poor people as well. There is also an ecotourism park where I went for an abortive hike the last time I was here. G,L, and I decided that this time we would go up and find the waterfalls... even though the ranger looked at us like we were total fools. He sent his dog with us (they really are gringa herding dogs), but I think that the dog decided that three women didn't need an escort so he abandoned us early.

It was super fun and while we didn't find the falls, it was a good hour up and back, and L and I are trying to only speak Spanish with each other when we're around Mexicans (for my Spanish). Apparently the term 'trail" means something a little different as we often were following where it looked like others had bushwacked picking the side of the little creek that looked the most passible. It was definitely a good example of erosion as I made use of little trees and all four limbs on some of the slopes. There was only one time where I was actually worried as L tried out a descent and people below us called up that it was straight down at the bottom and I ended up sliding down without a good foot stop.... but it was fine and we laughed a lot. I think that we may try again this Sat as there is an outdoor yoga class in the same location.

And finally, I've found a yoga class I really like. It's at a place called Casa del Angel and has much more of the meditative/ being in your own body/ quieting your mind aspects that I really appreciate... the kind of class where the teacher sees me using a prop and has me make the pose "easier" (in the sense of on my muscles) to get a more open line. And, I was able to basically understand it all in Spanish, I'm getting good at body parts!

What do I want to know?

This is the question that sends fear and anxiety into the hearts of all graduate students I know, I thought it was bad while I was writing grant applications, but now that I'm in the midst of things it seems even worse. Because I could answer the question (at length) before I started, and then I came and started work and have tried to absorb all these new details and information and still maintain a meta-perspective on my data, that it feels like the details are driving me. It is one of the maxims of anthropology training that what you go to find in the field and what you find are often two different things, and that the questions you develop emerge from the context. So, what then are my questions? I have a sense of themes and concepts but not questions (which was exactly my problem writing both grants and comps)... and I'm really struggling with holding on to what I thought was my main interest and what people here want to talk about (not that anyone is partially loquious about interpreting their own experiences). Plus, while observing is fine, I'm having a really hard time getting time to do informal interviews as everyone is so busy that I feel super hesitant asking for more time for my agendas. I tell people here that I want to learn about the cultural and political context of pregnancy here in Mexico within the broader frame of the relationship between what is happening here and in LA... but the questions that this would lead to are still elusive. Also, I'm still feeling all over and gathering data in domains that I'm having trouble seeing the connections between them. I "feel" that they are there, but it's hard to explain the connections in cohesive ways. Plus, there is an ongoing tension between my project here and my big project including LA-- so I am constantly asking myself if the questions I am asking here apply to this larger context to make sure that I can later draw transborder connections rather than describing two places using loose bridges.

So today, instead of going into the hospital to observe exams, I'm trying to be disciplined and really sit with my data... and type up allllll the fieldnotes that I've been taking. Hopefully, this will unlock some of the meta blocks that I'm hitting up against as I want to both transcribe them and then outline some of the processes that I'm seeing-- like the normative processes through which women obtain prenatal care.

And now an amusing fieldwork anecdote:
After being literally in bed for a week (it was very Victorian dramatic... but I need to acquire a fainting couch to fully be the wan figure I felt like), I started back in the swing of things this week. I hadn't been to the hospital in a couple weeks between events that kept me in the city (and then going into the hospital to find no apts that day), my Dad and Sherry visiting, and then being sick. So it was very difficult to start up again... and one of my hardest issues is that I haven't figured out a way to anticipate the day's schedule, so I just show up and pick a doctor to work with (made more awkward by the fact that I've only met some of the docs and I don't think that the director introduced my project as he had said he would), talk to their nurse about what apts they may have with pregnant women, and then wait for the apt (which is made not by time but order).... argh, I need a better system.
But anyways, yesterday I went with the equipo de salud team again to Xaaga and had a longer talk with a girl I'd seen the first time. She was waiting for her plactica (timing gets confusing since Xaaga doesn't use day-light savings so she told me that people show up sometime within the hour) and I asked her if I could ask she some questions.... one of the things I asked her was her age even though I was pretty sure she was 16 and she responded with a smile "guess" so I purposefully guessed 18 "menos" she smiled, 16? "no, 15" really? I replied with big eyes and she laughed... and we had a good conversation. Later she asked me how old I am and I said "what do you think?" she laughed and said 21, I was like ummm, a little older, "I'm 29" she was totally shocked and was like, I never would have guessed that old (and if you think about it, she could conceivably be a grandma just a little older than me). I made a joke that I'm a "vieja (old woman)" no, she said, "the hills are old, you look so young." Flattery flattery and it was a day I just had my hair in a ponytail sin makeup but dressed up a little. So later after the plactica I took a gander at the sign-in sheet that had circulated and the age range was 15-28... I would have totally guessed the older woman in their mid-30s.
I've been having a hard time guessing ages consistently, but this was something I never would have guessed. I think that it's a combo of having had children and living in a very impoverished village (much more so than any of other villages I've spent time in), life takes its toll on women's bodies here... and in many ways they remind me of Dorthea Lange's pictures of women during the depression.
But, again, this isn't necessarily related to my big questions or what I want to know....

Indiana Jones gives Anthropologists a bad bad name

L and I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie last night because a) we both are movie nuts and b) what do people think of when you tell them that you're an anthro? Indiana Jones, so it's sort of like research. It's bad, really bad, my verdict is racist, horrid portrayal of anthropologists (and pity my archaeologist friends at the moment), and perhaps most importantly, boring. I really don't think that it would have been any different to have seen it dubbed in Spanish rather than in English with subtitles. I might have walked out except that I'm really not good at it and I was astonished at the suckatude.

First of all, they made mistakes that a quick google session could have solved.... they DO NOT speak Mayan in the Amazon, not in Peru, not in Brazil, nowhere in South America-- the Mayan empire only went as far south as El Salvador (which I double checked in 5 secs just not now). Nor did they ever ever ever speak Quechua along the US/ Mexico border. These are stupid mistakes, but if you're going to sell the character as knowing something, even just a little bit, about the cultures of the Americas let alone as an expert, make better mistakes!!!!!

Then, I don't care if it's set in the 50's, anthropologists have historically (while operating in problematic relationships with indigenous communities) not had the mentality entering into indigenous spaces with a guns first orientation, really, that's your attitude toward people who are justifiably peeved by the fact that you are destroying their cultural objects and desecrating spaces!?!?! Way to represent anthros. Plus, could we not have a movie in which the secondary bad guys are all wordless savage brown people with body paint and spears?!?! Yeah yeah yeah, it's the genre, but it also pours salt in the wounds of communities who have have really messed up relationships with anthropologists and are justifiably peeved at their representations within scholarly and popular mediums.

But for me perhaps the worst because of its insidious racial message was the big lynch-pin of the movie (and if you continue to read, I will spoil the "surprise"). Ok, so they set up that the city of gold was the treasure everyone sought blah blah blah, the conquest (and Harrison Ford has an atrocious Spanish accent), but that also it evidenced technological skills beyond that of its time period. That's a really interesting point, Mesoamerican archeology shows that indigenous technology, architecture, and cosmology were extremely advanced calling into question our preconceptions about the teleological development of civilizations that so often maps onto contemporary geo-racial politics. Monte Alban, just outside of Oaxaca City demonstrates amazing technological development unheard of in Europe at the same time, as one small example. So cool, Indiana Jones is going to reveal ancient MesoAmerican development as technologically advanced (slightly making up for the way that it portrays contemporary indigenous people) .... but nope, couldn't do that, nope, really it was aliens!?!?! I mean, way to pull the rug out from any scrap of respect the film might have offered indigenous peoples, and that for me made the movie not only completely implausible, but beyond redemption. It also undermined the one moment of Indy "getting it" or acting as a responsible anthropologist when the kid says "they don't look like god, they look like aliens" when told that the images he sees are representations of head binding to make people look more like the gods. Indy replies, "they don't look like your god, but they look like their gods," ok, decent cultural relativity 101 stuff, that was completely shattered by the revelation that no, they really were just aliens. Also as L pointed out, this twist also meant that you didn't learn anything from this movie (beyond the erroneous mapping of languages) unlike in the earlier ones.

And the reason I give a shit enough to rant is that this is about real people and real communities, as much as it's only about entertainment and commercialism, these movies have real impacts on both the work of anthropologists and more importantly real indigenous communities. L and I are both infuriated and offended enough to write letters... and I don't usually ever do that.

And if my political-academic reasons weren't enough, the movie is fraking boring, the fight scenes are too long and repetitive, Harrison Ford phones in his performance, the kid is a non-presence and the sets look like Disneyland rides.

Totally fraking surreal

So I just got back from this totally weird experience.... watching a high school performance of Fiddler on the Roof in English put on by (as my friend M calls it) a crazy christian school. My friend M's oldest daughter goes to the school and was in the play so she invited me and L to come an watch (L's first time seeing the play). It was up in Colonia Reforma in this crazy building I had walked past many times the last time I lived here-- called the Parthenon-- that's like Tara on Greek steriods, a giant white temple of a place. We got there and everyone was speaking english, which was actually a hard brain shift as I was gathering my spanish to say "hi, my friend left us tickets at the door."

And then, the performance (I feel really bad for people who don't speak English, because they were totally SOL), oy, super cute and ernest with white rebozos standing in for talis and abysmal yiddish pronunciation. But then it was also really weird because as the officiant explained before intermission, this was a troup of wholly evangelical kids putting on a play about Jewish tradition and oppression (that was also when he explained that while there was a scene in a bar, the school/ organization did not condone or approve of such things). But then he also explained that this play was important because it is the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel.... ah hah, the craziness of Zionist evangelical Christians seemed to be at the root of this selection!

Super super super weird... also that while this is an American Christian school it is in Oaxaca, but M explained that most kids don't speak all that much Spanish. Instead, she said that it's a group of Christian missionaries spanning different doctrines who have moved down here with their kids to convert "the indians" (and there are a ton a ton a ton of Mormons, 7th Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses around with corresponding grand edifices). Two Canadian evangelical teens traveled down to run the production that was comprised of both kids at Embar's school and home-schooled kids who live in Mitla. I have no idea what it must be like to grow up part of the time here and in this sort of secluded community. So, super weird night, but M is wonderful and her kids are absolutely adorable-- the youngest one (3, who's half Oaxaquena) speaks this charming Spanglish like "esta es la comida para el cat."

One of the hardest things was that I had to watch my snarky comments to L because not only did people around me understand English, but they probably would be offended by how I talk... luckily my hacking cough and incessant nose blowing was probably more annoying.

In an unrelated note the teachers have begun their planton and taken over the Zocalo... let's see what happens....

And in an even less related note, I found an organic natural food store with tofu!!! And organic meat and American herbal tea (much better and stronger than Mexican) and and and.... I could spend my grant there.

Craziness

And this image deserves its own post, it's a banner advertising a special promotion for Mother's Day

Update

My dad and Sherry were just here for a lovely weeks vacation and now I am sick sick sick, bleah. I think that it's an allergy attack to the hot dry dusty conditions (exacerbated by the construction next door) that seems lodged in my throat, causing me to develop a vocal alter-ego named Edna, a 70 year old chain-smoker in Florida who runs a bowling alley. It's a bummer since I had a really productive week before visitors, but most of it wasn't in the hospital, so I was hoping to get back into the swing of daily fieldwork. Instead I am pouring as much tea with honey down my throat as I possibly can (at least 30 cups yesterday).



Chiles for sale in the Mercado Juarez


Architecture of the Textile Museum

Ancient huipile

Detail of my bathroom skylight in the rain




Utility sinks lined up on my way back from the Guelagetza de Salud


Bunches of garlic for sale at the Tlacolula Sunday market


Balloons prepped for a concert for "Red Cross Day" (which were then handed out and we were instructed to lower and raise them, but not let them go... judging by the number stuck in the Laurel above us, I'd say that that last instruction wasn't really followed).

should I be alarmed?

There's a gecko-looking lizard climbing one of my walls up on to a beam... I'm stimutlanteously intrigued and a little weirded out-- would lizards be considered vermin?

I'm glad that I wasn't making soup

So in an attempt to make life here ever more normal I bought a cookbook the other day (Oaxacan cooking in English) and perused the kitchen aisle of my local supermarket (nothing too fun) and decided to finally cook cook, as opposed to the very mediocre throwing things together I've been doing. So today I decided to make albondigas (or Mexican meatballs in a chile verde sauce) with my own variations of course (I had basil not mint and cinnamon rather than allspice and cloves) based on what I happened to have on hand. Also, it's very sad, but I have neither a comal nor cast iron pan so there was no toasting of whole spices in my plan. But it was all going fine and I put a little bit of bread into my blender to make into crumbs and moved a little too fast. The plastic part in the lid was a little bit not on right which caused it to fall into the bowl and before I could turn the machine off, it burst out of the side of the blender in a shower of breadcrumbs and clear plastic! So now I have to figure out another way to make the sauce and my dish will be that much less authentic.... luckily Soriana sells blender bowls (I bet I'm not the only one this has happened too).

Oaxacans know how to put on a festival

Last night marked the beginning of the 4th (?) annual May festival of the Humanities here in Oaxaca. It's a State (and Federal?) sponsored 10 day festival in honor of cultural diversity themed around a region in the state (La Costa), a Mexican state (Tabasco), and another county/ culture (India)-- although I don't know how they are all supposed to fit together. Until next Sunday night there are public concerts outdoors and in the various theaters (I don't know if you have to pay for those), workshops, conferences, art exhibitions and cooking demonstrations. I don't entirely understand the "purpose" of the festival (cultural education?), but the cynic inside me thinks that it's coordination with May Day works to position the state government as the benevolent supporter of communities.... unlike many people's experience of race/ class stratification. As always, stuff here in Oaxaca that may be free are still not necessarily accessible.

But I do enjoy a parade and am never one to pass up outdoor concerts (there's something about the ability to wander in and out) and luckily last night the opening night calenda of participants passed right by my apt and then I was able to catch up with the front a little later (parades here also move incredibly slowly). I think that along with the infectious banda music, what I adore about calendas here are the dancing women-- and more accurately, their skirts, they are everything the little girl inside who loves full twirlible skirts could lust after.



This guy leads off the calenda with a spinning firework display (I was a little to close this time and had to duck away from the sparks)



The India float was actually the last one in the procession and had a jarringly disjunction between the tabla players and the banda group directly in front. When the floats came to an end, people mobbed the float taking pictures and shooting video. Similarly, the small exhibit on Indian popular art in the Museo de Palacio was also mobbed.



Butteflies seem to be the theme of the festival, with its icon a butterfly whose upper and lower wings and torso reflect the textiles of each place.


I think this dance group as from Tabasco (but maybe they were supposed to represent the Central Valleys, or the Coast). It's really interesting, a men's dance where a bull's pelt is placed over a wood frame and then the carrier dances as a bronco.


Dancers from the Coast and their float. What was also interesting is that the art exhibition from the Coast is called Sana Negritud, La Raiz Olvidada-- with all these Afro-Mexican themed lithographs (something that intellectually seems to be the defining trope of this region), but there were no Afro-Mexicans represented in the Coasta participants.

And I shot some video for those who want the more visceral sense of the proceedings, but blogger doesn't seem to want me to post it... I'll try a little later.

May Day means something here

So I wandered down to the Zocalo around noon and it was full full full full of people. In the gazebo a mike was set up and a woman was giving a speech about political prisoners surrounded by painted stencils of notable prisoners' faces-- she kept referencing Chicago and Haymarket. Most people didn't seem to be listening, neither their bodies nor attention oriented towards her... instead they looked bored. The paletas and jicaletas (sort of jicama popsticks which are dipped in powered flavorings) vendors were out in full force as the sun was strong today. All around the edges of the Zocalo and into the Alameda there were tight pockets of mostly sex seggregated groups talking and making speechs. Most businesses are closed today... and a man I talked to at the tourism office (there for another errand) told me that they will be closed monday for the 5th as well (I guess some people do celebrate here).

migration and the ever widening ripples of local economies

("Oaxaca exports immigrants", a stencil from an exhibition at the contemporary art museum in 2006)


As always issues around migration swirl around my everyday here when I leave Oaxaca city (and to a lesser extent within the city, for largely class reasons). In part that’s because it’s in my consciousness and it’s a large part of what first brought me here to Oaxaca, but even more so, it’s because it’s an empirically huge issue here (which goes back to why I first choose Oaxaca). For all of the defensiveness I often found myself reacting with when people in New York would question my fieldsites (cushy and/ or home), I can now really say that there are real benefits for my research in being from LA. In almost every conversation I’ve had with people in different communities or in collectivos people ask me where I’m from and when I say California, LA, they tell me that they were there for X years, and that their cousin, sister, brother etc. lives in Santa Monica, Riverside, etc. All of this is to say that migration (especially to Southern California) is a very present and real thing in this region (and I also have heard stories about a person who’s just gone and getting the news that they got their safely), largely related to the economy—although L has some really interesting thinking about what beyond economic reasons is driving out-migration. The combination of NAFTA which destroyed Oaxaca’s subsistence agricultural possibilities and global warming (almost every person I’ve talked to in either the Ocotlan or Tlacolula valleys has talked about how hot and dry it has become—that they are no longer able to grow all that they used to) has made it nearly impossible for most communities to feel like their future does not involve some sort of migration options (whether it’s to Mexico City or to do agricultural work in Baja as a less well-paid alternative to the US). So, with all of this, there is also (among both people who are paying attention to global economic news and people who are hearing reports from “el oltro lado”) a lot of thinking about the impact of the slowing US economy and housing market on communities here—e.g. in the NYtimes today there was a piece about the huge decrease in remittances over the last two years.

There is also a lot of (at least NGO) talk about creating sustainable development opportunities here and a community in the Mixteca just won a big development award for a reforestation/ community development project. One of the things that has really taken off as Oaxaca has carved out a reputation as an international tourist destination is the artesania market which has allowed specific villages to specialize in a particular kind of craft, which they may either sell through middlemen in the city and/or develop local cooperative markets. And right now tourism/artesania (and mineral extraction sort of, which is at the root of a lot of protest) is really the only industry that Oaxaca has to offer (unless you count mescal, which hasn’t taken off as a huge export). But one thing that this specialization and development of artesania profiles has done as well is track tourist money into specific sites. When I was first here in the summer of 2005 I went to a calenda in San Ana de Valle (just up from the hospital in Tlacolula where I’m doing research) and few tourists had heard of it—a friend joked that it was the maquiladora for Teotitlan (the famous rug weaving village which is hugely hooked into the global economy). Now, along the caratera there are huge signs for San Ana as a weaving destination as well, but people still say if you want rugs go to Teotitlan and you would want to go to San Ana for their community museum.

So, I’ve been thinking about all of this stuff in relation to conversations I had in Xaaga and with people from San Martin Tilcajete (a village famous for alebrijes, which I just found out where only started in the 1980s as part of developing marketable artesania). Xaaga is a very impoverished village where a lot of houses are still made from mud bricks instead of clay or cinderblock and many of the compounds were incompletely fenced with cacti rather than chain-link or blocks. Only the road leading into town was paved and as the afternoon went on, the wind swept up clouds of dust. One woman I spoke with (a partera!) told me “living here is very difficult, there is no water, but it used to be different.” When I asked her if there were many migrants to the US from Xaaga she said no, there’s no money to do it (I’ve heard that it’s at least $5,000 to get a coyote to take you across). Other people told me that yes there’s migration because otherwise there’s no money, but I would guess that given the lack of remittance driven infrastructure, it is a more recent phenomenon unlike other villages with long histories of migration. This would also mean that these immigrants would be the most vulnerable within the current US economy. The nutritionist told me that this village does beautiful weavings (rugs, tablecloths), but I would guess because they aren’t a named one, they don’t have a solid place within the tourist/artesania marketplace.

In contrast I sat with a couple at the birthday party I went to on Sunday (have I mentioned Mexicans’ fondness for gelatin based deserts?!?!) from Tilcajete who have carved (haha) out an international reputation for their alebrijes—which are unbelievably intricate. They have traveled a lot in the US (invited to the NMAI, the Indian Museum in Santa Fe—they had a whole other interesting discussion about how indigenous Oaxacas are and aren’t considered within Native North American craft communities), but are still living in their small village where they grew up two houses away from each other. Even though it has established itself as a solid craft village (it’s where you go for alebrijes) San Martin has had a lot of out migration to Chicago and Santa Cruz (that’s where most are going now). Jacobo and Maria told me though that it’s bad, for the community and for migrants—“people think that all their problems will be solved, but they don’t talk about the real problems there. Guys sit in the workshop and talk about getting $10/hour and how much they can make in a 40 hour week, but they don’t talk about how much it costs to live there.” So more and more, people either leave or want to leave to support their families—but Jacobo and Maria said that all too often men leave when their children are young (to be able to pay for not only food etc. but the required school uniforms and materials) and for the first year or so they send money back—but then they get a new family in the states and they forget to send money back. Many women have gone with their kids since they can’t live here without remittances only to find their husbands with new families on the other side.” Or, people forget that running the town requires community work, the cargo system, and think that they can just send money back and that will elevate their status without having to put the time in. Also, for the first time, San Martin has two cases of AIDS (which everyone blames on men who migrated and came back) and people are worried that pregnant women will soon also have it (Jacobo and Maria found this out when the community doctor disclosed to the community in order to emphasize sexual hygiene (?).

So, there’s all this stuff about migration and the US swirling around (interestingly, this is the first trip where no one has directly mentioned racism as a downside to life in the US) and the economy here (which can also be blamed on the corruption of the local governments)—and what’s partially interesting is the way that the position of different communities here within local economic stratifications and their historical relationships to migration also shift the way that this stuff is framed. Part of this project is me trying to figure out an analytic frame for thinking about the relation of rural indigenious communities to the State and then in transmigration—which gets ever more complicated when the first term is not a homogenous referant.

es un poco chistoso

So I was skimming my blog feeder today and have noticed for about the last week that there's been this whole explosion of posts about Mexican food because (gasp) Cinco de Mayo's coming up. The funny thing about this is that when I was in Xaaga tues and bored I was chatting with the nurse intern about all the upcoming fiestas, noticing that kids in the preschool across the street were practicing dance routines, and she was saying they were preparing for dia de los niños (or day of the children) which was yesterday (April 30th, to honor and celebrate children—who represent the future-- largely through festivals, candy and toy give-aways, etc.). And then she said that maybe it was instead in honor of dia de las madres (May 10th), which is a really big deal here.... and at that point I asked about Cinco de Mayo. She stopped, shrugged and said "maybe in Puebla it's a big deal, but here, no one really cares." She was incredulous that in the US Cinco de Mayo is seen as the day of Mexican liberation and independence!

Meanwhile, it's May 1st, labor day, and I plan to soon head to the Zocalo to see the end point of a number of marches scheduled for this morning. In the hospital I'm working in there was a big notice from the social security workers' union (basically the social services sector that's linked to employer-based subsidies as well as the rural open population) about the march protesting the privatization and cut-backs to Opportunidades benefits (sort of like AFDC) with a note at the bottom that it's obligatory (which is pretty standard, part of the responsibility one owes for the benefits of communal benefits). I didn't get a chance to ask people yesterday about it and what that would mean for patient appointments given that Tlacolula is a half-hour away.