Men with guns

About a week ago I noticed a large number of men with machine guns (I looked it up and I think they're M16s) in various types of uniforms (some looking like state police and some in plainclothes who I take to be municipal police) lining the street I take to get to the Llano, Jalatlaco, the collectivos out of town, in short, down a street I walk often. At first I thought they were stationed outside the electricity commission, but they seemed focused across the street at this white building I haven't been able to figure out. It is a rather nice looking 2-story (office?) building fronted by a large parking lot with a guardhouse in front that I've always seen wealthy looking people going in and out of. I couldn't figure out what was going on and didn't want to linger to see more and figured that a crime or threat had taken place, perhaps a high-profile kidnapping as Oaxaca has had many so far this year (I think about 24, putting us towards the top of the country behind DF and the border, all Mexican wealthy targets) or the aftermath of an earlier shooting in Col. Reforma (again with wealthy Mexican targets).

Again today when I walked by I noticed a plethora of men with machine guns standing around the building and all along the block, casually holding their guns some in full gear, some wearing casual clothes. And I realized that I have this twin paradoxical reaction. On the one hand I am terrified about the ubiquity of men with giant guns-- I find myself unable to look away from the materiality of violence that these guns represent to me much more so than a handgun-- especially given the deep instability of Oaxaca, of Mexico, and the frequency of (para)governmental violence in rural communities. And on the other hand, the casualness with which the men hold their guns make them seem banal, as if they were nothing more than symbolic plastic accoutrements-- perhaps for me my disassociation with violence and the almost unimaginability that I would be physically present in these kinds of potentially deadly situations. And, the causalness of the other passerbyers who do not react as if entering a dangerous context, the mundaneness of the setting (a gentle rain on a semi-crowded street), all make the men with guns seem like normal and unremarkable fixtures on the street.

In other interesting observations, I was in the Mercado de 20 de Nov. yesterday buying fresh fish (made a delicious Veracruzana sauce) when I noticed that a stand was selling fresh strawberries-- not Mexican of course but from Driscoll's, one of the largest berry growers in the US based in California. Now who do we think cared for, picked and packed these strawberries? Likely the majority are Mexican (probably Oaxacan) immigrants. I don't think there is an employees discount for the Oaxacan market.

Something else I didn't have to think much about in NYC

Was planning for bathrooms (and to some extent I would argue this in LA and Boston as well). In NY though this was often most pronounced for me, I could go out for the day (especially if I was in Manhattan) and between my NYU access, Starbuckses, and working my cultural/racial/economic capital to use other buildings, I never had to think too much about planning a trip around bathroom access. But here it's something I really think about a lot. In the hospital in Tlacolula there is a public bathroom with no toilet paper, toilet seats, or soap, so I carry kleenex and hand sanitizer in my "work bag" and know that I may be dealing with smell issues by the afternoon given that you can't flush toilet paper. And people here matter of factly carry toilet paper rolls with them as they go about their days. When I go to villages there maybe the same setup but I'll often have to ask someone to open the bathroom for me and perhaps flush with a bucket. And those are things I'm used to and can work around. But in the absence of being in these largely "domestic spaces," there are no real options when you're out and about unless you go to a nice-ish restaurant. So there's a lot of planning required before heading out. Or, as happened last Sat as I happened to be walking back from the Organic market with friends they stopped at my house.

On the downsides of being a guera

So one of the first words that I learned in Spanish was guera (there's accent marks over the "u," but I'm being lazy at the moment), literally it means blond girl but it is used to refer to almost any white (looking American) woman, especially if she is in her 20s 30s. My first summer here I was so disturbed by men coming up to me on the street, wanting to know about me, and of course the first things they asked were whether I was single and where I lived, that I bought a ring to wear on my wedding finger. It's also made me very conscious of the height of my necklines and the length of my skirts, and I’ve gotten used to mostly ignoring the heckles of men on the street, which has slowed as I approach 30 and look less newbie-esque.

So tonight I was out with friends I’ve made here after going to the year anniversary mass of my landlady’s aunt (this is the substance for another post), and the friends that I am closest to are both American women, one of whom is married to a Oaxacan man and the other of whom is dating one. At the end of the night, we were waiting to get into a club downtown (this sort of interesting intellectual and slightly pretentious one that at midnight had a loose crowd clustered around the door and doesn't get started until 11), and decided that no one was feeling it enough to go in so we would make alternative plans. At this point J and I realized that our friend K was not in good shape due to relationship issues and so stood on the corner talking with her as a station wagon full of young men pulled up along side us (F, J’s husband, was giving us some space a little up the block). The 6 young men in the car stuck at a red light started yelling stuff like “ay que guapa “ “ay guera” blah blah blah and I basically ignored it until I realized that they weren’t stopping and J and K were getting increasingly upset.

J has lived in Oaxaca for over 3 years, and been married to a Oaxacan man for over 2 of them, and K has lived here for over 2 years and they had had enough. Once realizing that ignoring them wasn’t working and the light wasn’t changing, they started yelling back, “go away, stop bothering us” and then finally “f*** your mother, we’re not interested.” And they didn’t stop and didn’t move once the light changed, and "chinga tu madre" is one of the worst things you can yell at someone. F finally came over and yelled at them making aggressive moves to get them to leave but not ready to fight (something none of us wanted) and K stepped in the middle to tell them to get back in the car, to leave us alone, that none of us wanted a fight, but also that we didn’t wanted to be yelled at/ whistled at. Finally with horns honking behind them, they peeled around the corner, double parked and came back, going for F. J stepped forward and told them firmly “I have lived here for over 3 years and I’m tired of being whistled at / having men shout things at me, I am his wife, what would you do in his place if men were yelling at your wife?” And they eventually conceded the point after some tense moments, J was amazing they even apologized. But I was very conscious of feeling very unable to defend myself (especially when one of the guys defended himself with the way that I look/ was dressed). I quickly pulled on my rebozo (shawl) and it wasn’t until I got home that I realized that my wrap dress had migrated into my cleavage, showing more (but by no means scandalous amounts, or even what I would wear out in NY) skin than I had originally intended, even though I had tested and tested the top, to see if it required a camisole. This is what I am tired tired tired of, this constant feeling of conspicuousness, this constant having to check my clothes to make sure that I am not “inviting” harassment.

And, when they took me home there was a homeless man masturbating on my doorstep (ew), which I guess is sort of part for the course no matter what city you live in-- he was very nice about moving so I could get in at least.

Before all the drama ensued, I almost adopted a dog, it was a close call but for better or worse I’m not the impulsive type in this regard. As K, J, F and I turned to leave the club, we found a puppy, probably 4 or 5 months old, mostly golden retriever on the corner who had obviously been someone’s, she rolled over for us to scratch her belly and she pushed her head into our hands. Her neck fur was all rubbed down and they explained to me that it was because someone had tied a collar or string around her neck to claim her and then obviously left her and it as she grew and it did not. The men with a hotdog stand on the corner laughed at us when we asked if she was theirs’ and J pleaded with K and I to take her as they already have two I just couldn’t imagine having a dog in my apt without preparations (not to mention I don’t think my landlady would be too pleased), but it broke my heart to leave her.

anthropological engagement and our "true" selves

So this is probably mostly for the anthropologists who read my blog but I've been thinking a lot about the anthropological method and the ways in which we use our bodies/our selves as the medium of investigation. I've been really struggling with what sometimes feels like paralyzing shyness over the past couple weeks, partially I'm feeling burned out and partially it's just really hard to continually feel like I have to introduce myself, to put myself and my project out for others' acceptance, and trying to figure out the trigger to get past it. And today I was thinking about John Jackson who writes in his introduction to HarlemWorld that he was an incredibly shy person who was prone to getting stuck in his head about his project and informants etc, so he invented AnthroMan. And John might be too shy/ too overthinking to approach people's doors and ask them to participate in his project, but AnthroMan (and he would try to channel the early greats, Ruth Benedith, Boas, Meed, Sapir), he had no self-consciousness about asking people to let him into their interior lives.

So I was thinking about my own personal anthro-superstar alter ego and what that would feel like as a mode of engagement. But then, if so much of our method and the implicit promise of our engagement with communities is a reciprocity of self (that we are open and honest in our engagements just as we assume they are as well), how does that stand-up if I'm channeling an altered ego? I mean to some extent I feel like I tell white lies to people (or perhaps its better to characterize them as partial narratives), I talk about my close relationship with my parents and my nieces/ nephews (not elaborating that many are part of "chosen" family), I occasionally tell some people I'm married (it's just easier), I tell everyone that of course I want to have kids someday-- I tell my life and myself in very safe and expected gendered ways, leaving out the parts that seem so foreign or counter to their assumptions about a woman of my age and stage... sort of like the stories I would imagine telling a grandparent I was less close and open with. So, I'm really torn with what it would mean to not be shy (to channel another, making rejection less personal) in this instance.

It doesn't help my desires to hide from the world when it seems like lately when I walk around downtown a man strikes up a conversation with me and wants to be my new best friend-- somehow my non-newbie blase veneer must have worn off and I look like fresh bait... time to bring back my wedding ring and fictional children.

today on the roof

As I sit here watching the clouds slink down the mountains and wonder how long I'll have before drops make me fear for my trusty security blanket of a laptop, a giant black and yellow butterfly flew by, hovering in the flowering vines next to me. As I haven't encountered barnyard animals lately, this seems to be my brushes with urban nature.

Here's me sitting on my slightly crumbling cement stool thing (maybe an old cistern? it's too cumbersome to haul up and down a plastic chair) and looking over the roof tops to the cathedral.

A still hummingbird

I'm sitting on the roof of my apt (theoretically there's a breeze up here but not at the moment) watching a hummingbird perch on a branch 5 feet away, totally still. I've never seen one not in motion, I wonder if this is a singularly lazy one, but then my neighbor comes home and it darts away. It's head was much more "fluffy" than I would have thought given how sleek its feather look while it hovers.

My time in Mexico City

A couple weeks ago I went to Mexico City for the first time (or el DF, “day f ay” as it’s known in Mexico, or simply “Mexico” in an interesting collapse of capital and nation) with some trepidation. I had been meaning to go for a while (and one grant application even had me spending three months living there learning about reproduction on a more general/ national level) because I felt like I should, because a friend of mine from NY lives there, because people told me that it was amazing, because an obnoxious man in NY told me that I couldn’t say that I’d only ever lived in major metropolitan areas if I’d never been there, because, because, because. But in the face of all those reasons my only experiences of DF had been sitting in hot, smoky, and polluted waiting rooms in the airport in which people never understand my Spanish and I always feel frumpy and uncool—coalescing in an image of the place as the worst of LA and New York. Plus, it’s not like media representations of DF anything but of a city that’s overcrowded, dangerous and polluted (L likes to tell me the percentage of fecal matter in the air). But, all its good personal PR and two friends living there convinced me to schedule a trip there in June and after S asked me to come pick her up at the airport, I decided to take the bus up a couple days early and see “the big city” for myself.

I took the bus up to DF on Saturday afternoon (it takes about six hours) and except for lots of low clouds and drizzle got a sense of the remote and gorgeous Mixteca region of Northern Oaxaca and Puebla (it really reminded me of the central CA valleys in some ways with a lot of cultivated fields bumping up against foothills). A lot of immigrants to New York and more rural Californian communities come from this area, which is very craggy and remote with the land essentially stripped because of mineral extraction and where there is essentially little to no economic prospects (coming back at night, there were no lights except for those of the cars along the pan-American highway and this amazingly bright almost full moon). I called my friend C (a friend I started grad school with) when I arrived and caught a cab to his apt (too many horror stories about people being kidnapped by pirate cabs led me to take an overpriced authorized one) and he took me out to dinner at a cool seafood place… where of course I misheard and almost ordered an undrinkable drink (after that I subscribed to the follow in C’s steps). And then he took me out to meet some of his expat friends at a bar that reminded me of my favorite bar in the lower east side (super chilled out and unpretentious), where we stayed out until the wee hours of the morning. For all that DF is in image and reality a dangerous city, the area C lives in feels very safe and insulated so much so that he and I walked to and from the bar with no incidents along tree shaded pedestrian medians. He walks everywhere (but also recognizes the gendered privilege of doing that) but also doesn’t carry any more money than he needs for while he’s out, his debit/ credit cards unless he’s on a specific errand, or ID, all things that I don’t think about while in Oaxaca.

C gave me his apt while I was there as he had keys to a friend’s apt around the corner and it was so nice to be back sleeping in a queen-sized bed with high-count cotton sheets as opposed to the double-bed/ poly-blend ones I have here—yuppy princess that I can be ☺ He was in the midst of a bunch of writing projects (it was really nice to be hashing out theoretical analyses with him) so he was like a mother bird pushing me out of the nest for me to practice flying for myself by myself.

So, Sunday I set off with my camera without a map with a general orientation in my head and a set of suggestions of parks to check out in C’s neighborhood. It was hard, but a good self-project combating my feelings of shyness and vulnerability, as I scouted out the scene and found a café to sit in as I waited for another friend C(the 2nd) to call me to hang out. It was Sunday in Mexico, a day for families, and most of the streets felt “closed” (the irony of my fears of a crowded overwhelming city) with the only public activities being located in the cafés and parks. I spent the afternoon in a big park in la Condessa neighborhood which was teaming with dogs hopping in and out of the fountains and at least physically heterogeneous crowds of families.





It very much felt like I could have been in any trendy upperclass neighborhood with the French revival archictecture (remnants of the Porferieto) and cosmopolitan crowds where I heard English and French as much as Spanish.


It is also an area that I heard a lot of buildings fell down during the Earthquake and weren’t replaced until recently as the neighborhood became more and more popular, and there are also new tall buildings (using the same design elements as the fancy new houses going up in Venice) interspersed with classic buildings and 1960s apartment complexes.





Something that I’ve often found in exploring a new city by myself is that it feels very overwhelming and things like finding a place to eat become hard tasks, but once accomplished everything else seems more manageable and possible. C(the 2nd, another friend from NY, the partner of someone in my program) took longer having brunch with his mother than expected and so I spent a couple hours hanging out in el Parque Mexico (which C described as like a section of Central Park) just watching everything happening around me. I spent a period of time bouncing between watching Tango lessons and listening to a band of two bagpipes and three drummers—Mexicans have no self-consciousness about dancing in public.



Monday I set off to play tourist and check out “el centro” and C sent me off via subway (big gulp), which was absolutely without problems (cleaner than NY’s). It was much more “Mexican” than the Roma and Condessa neighborhoods with tons of street puestos and hawkers and crowds and people everywhere. I realized I have become very accustomed to men with large guns around as I passed security guards with shotguns at ready standing outside of the McDonalds while an armored car idled at the curb. I took the subway (with transfers) to the Zocalo/ Palacio National and again, it was less intimidating and overwhelming than I had built it up in my mind (as well as less visually impressive).



These people were all standing in the only bit of shade in the Zocalo (the shadow of the flagpole).


This day I had brought my trusty Lonely Planet and had decided to go to this museum of Mexican Medicine (but I had forgotten that museums tend to be closed on Mondays) and so I wandered around aimlessly for a while until I ended up in the Secretaria de Education Publica where I had read that there were Diego Rivera murals. After getting lost and redirected, I came to a back patio where there are three floors of Rivera murals lining the walls and began to make my way around them taking them in aesthetically rather than trying to “get” them.



Midway through the second floor an older man stopped me to talk and introduced himself as a former Art History teacher and asked if I would let him show me around. I hesitated and then we went back down to the first floor (with him scolding me that I shouldn’t walk so fast and take the stairs, didn’t I know the altitude difference between NYC and DF? My explanations about living and hiking in Oaxaca didn’t help). It was a really incredible experience, he took me around slowly and insisted that I really “see” the murals, describing their import both aesthetically and politically and he was impressed with my knowledge of Diego and Mexican revolutionary politics (as he grumbled about Mexicans not taking the time to appreciate their national treasures, “it’s free, why don’t they come?!” and the lack of attention given by tour guides “you see how fast they go?!”). The first floor was all about the revolution and building a new society, the second devoted to the arts and sciences and al the state’s emblems, and the third was about the conflict between communist and capitalist society.







Not only the murals (which are incredibly impressive), but a really fascinating thing to see was the imprint of time on the paintings—as well as to notice the two murals that his assistants were responsible for, which brought into relief his conceptual and technical expertise.

Tuesday I took off again by myself and without a real plan I explored the Alameda and the Palacio de Bellas Artes and decided that I had inadvertently embarked on the Diego Rivera mural tour (with the DR mural museum across the park from Bellas Artes). Another truly impressive building (in a different way than the SEP) with two floors covered by murals Tomayo (he was Oaxacan), Rivera, and Siqueiros (including a recreation of the famous one destroyed by Rockefeller)-- it was fascinating to see the murals change in the perspective from across the atrium and upclose. And then I took the metro to meet C to meet S at the airport. Poor dear, she doesn’t speak Spanish and it took her no time at all get through immigration and customs so she beat us, but it all ended well. And, after taking her around C’s neighborhood for a late lunch, we caught an evening bus to Oaxaca.

It was really nice to be back in a “real city” and really brought home to me how much I’ve been living in the “provinces” more than ever before. I think that’s been one of the big differences in my time in Oaxaca versus other trips, and brought home the differences between living in a place versus being there for a sort of “out of real time” short trip. All and all it’s clarified for me some of the important things to look for in assessing places to live in the future, as well as some of the ways to build a new community around me.

It was wonderful visiting with C and then having S come, lovely to be around people who know me so well and love me. S was only in Mexico for 6 days, 4 in Oaxaca, but we packed so much into the time visiting five villages, taking very imaginable mode of transportation, and taking a cooking class…. and then she got sick ☹ and I got to practice my “mom skills” forcing pediolite on her and spending the day in bed watching movies (I introduced her to Frida and gave her a précis on Mexican post-revolutionary art/ politics and learned that she is a hidden font of knowledge about the Russian revolution).