Apologies for the long gap between notes. Things have a tendency to take longer than one expects, like, spending a day and a half to pay a seven dollar US electric bill. Facial paralysis. And my little fling with 25-year-old blue-acid-girl@prodigy.com.mx (not her real service provider) with all those cute pieces of hardware she wore, now over. It all takes time, doesn’t it?
There’s a lovely, bright yellow canaricita caged in my patio, my neighbor’s, with a wonderful loud, brilliant trill she delivers at pretty regular intervals, much to my delight. And she’s got an amante, a little brown-grey Mexican sparrow (“congito”) who hangs around the patio all the time and whips up and out (rising like a grouse from grass, and I suspect a relationship to grouse, actually) whenever someone (human) enters or leaves. Otherwise, he’s always there, near her cage. Quite touching, really. She must be Jean Harlow and Maria Callas to him.
Oaxaca… haven’t been following it, but the Federal government refused to remove the governor or to promise not to issue a proclamation of martial law. The teachers union has agreed to reopen the schools and I believe has released the radio stations, and I know additional talks between various offices of the federal executive and the APPO and teachers union are still going on. No indication they are ever going to get rid of their governor. On the other hand, no indication the federal government is going to move in troops immediately. They seem to be having very similar problems in the state of Tabasco as well, and then of course there’s Chiapas. So three states on strike.
There kinda seem to be four different Mexican economies. There’s the poorly capitalized and unlicensed millions of tiendas and tallers (shops), often with very high rates of underemployment. Folks sitting around all day reading the newspaper while waiting for a customer. You have to wonder how these places hang on, and of course one reason is low wages and a low living standard. Then there’s Wal-Mart (really! and they have a Mexican partner they now own as well as their own name). Well capitalized, everyone hopping or they shut it down. Or Ford. Then there are the small farmers, particularly the small farmers of the South and particularly farmers of corn, which is the staple food, in one form or another, of all of Mexico. These guys are being ruined by imports of cheaper, subsidized corn from the US, and are the foot soldiers of the PRD, Obredor’s party, as well as the “Zapatistas in Chiapas. And I presume there are the agribusinesses, owned either by Mexican capital or absentee landlords in the US. And state owned businesses, but I get the impression that under Fox, and Calderon, these have been largely sold off. Pemex, the oil company, for instance. One of the hallmarks of the Chavez government and the government in Peru is they renationalized their oil industry, major revenue generators. Or so I gather. And of course, GDL is totally silent politically.
For some reason, which I don’t understand, Mariachi bands come out to serenade folks at 12 midnight, with tributes lasting several hours. This has happened several times and I really must ask about it. Difficult to sleep with three trumpets down the street wailing away, but, hell, how can you get angry about Mariachi music?
I understand you’re getting an American version on television of one of my novellas, “La Fea Mas Bella” (or something like that… “The Most Beautiful Ugly One”) -- “Ugly Betty,” is it? Just coming to a conclusion in Mexico. She ends up running the whole company. Hope I’m not giving anything away.
The review of my six months of studies in Costa Rica is finally complete and I’m at least studying new stuff. Took twice as long as anticipated. And I still have about 30 pages of the Conversa Linguistica book. It’s one of those “heavy-on-grammar-light-on-vocabulary-and-real/common-usage” books. I hope the new course will be much more conversational. I have a lot of problems studying. It’s very boring. On the other hand, my Spanish is still execrable, so…
The weather here a little drier, although we still get occasional violent hail storms and stuff like that. Warmer as well. Not unpleasant, although I prefer sweater weather in Seattle. For some reason, rainstorms in GDL are wildly electrical with continuously rolling thunder and lighting (and I do mean continuous) for hours. Thunder Over Mexico, Sergei Eisenstein, 1933.
Face: I can now blink my right eye independently and move my mouth on the right side although it certainly doesn’t move as well as the left side (and tires easily). At least little kids don’t run screaming for their mothers when they see me, which is helpful. I’m beginning to think about jobs teaching English again, although as I say, I have some study goals to accomplish first. The paralysis still affects my speech slightly when I’m tired but otherwise, I sound pretty OK. Still can’t whistle worth a damn.
Food: I like tacos, particularly handmade corn tacos, but the stuff they put in them is frequently pretty boring, or crummy, or both. And basically, it’s been a twice-a-day thing, every day, for nine months now. But the tacos are quite good. I can see doing them hot with butter for breakfast, if I had a kitchen. The cheese is pretty good, bland with subtle differences between the products of various states. But a little too subtle for my taste. Anyway, possibilities there. Good butter, if you can eat that stuff. And quite good wheat bread as well which might be sourdough. White, nice chewy crust, sort of like mini French loaves. I would love to prepare a moussaka for these folks. Eggplant not in the common diet.
Lots of possibilities with that corn, bread, cheese, butter, dairy setup. But by Chinese standards, quite undeveloped. And the meat is crummy and not handled very well. Mind you, I haven’t been eating with a Mexican family so don’t take anything I say about food too seriously. Somewhere, someone, I know, is eating real well in Mexico.
Oh! I seem to have instant messaging under the email address of salas_in@hotmail.com. Interesting to see how well that works between GDL and the States.
~Roberto
