El D.F.
the Federal district (Mexico City)
Tulum
For you, Sean, on a trashcan in Tulum. Did you put this there?
This is in San Cristobal, not Tulum.
Sin pelo
The Aquarium in Veracruz
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Mexico pictures
Sunday, April 4, 2010
MEXICO!
It´s been a long time since I wrote here.
I'm in Mexico now. Ruben and I travelled from the Guatemalan border to San Cristobal de las Casas, a mountanous cold city, beautiful and filled with indigenous culture and Zapatistas, still active and fighting to protect land from their government.
From San Cristobal we went to Palenque. The jungle. Lots of green, lots of rain and lots of spiders. We camped in a very wet tent and went to the Palenque Mayan ruins which were not that impressive after going to Tikal in Guatemala, but still really cool.
After Palenque, Tulum, Cancun and Islas Mujeres. I didn't fully appreciate Tulum until after we went to Cancun and Islas Mujeres. Before I even got on the bus to Cancun, I didn't like it after all I've read and heard about Cancun. The tourist strip in front of the beach is like some Miami or LA city and the barrios outside of the center are poor. The roads are horrible, full of pot holes, because the city spends all it's money on the tourist area no mas and leaves the poor neighborhoods to get along on their own. We met an artisaño couple on the street and they offered us to stay with them in their house.
Islas Mujeres I had high expectations. It's pretty there but nothing like I imagined. The beaches and streets were super crowded with drunk happy redneck gringos in their rented golf carts and Coronas in hand. It was especially illegal there to sell on the streets, so we didn't stay long.
From Islas Mujeres we went inland on the Yucatan to Vallodolid, Campeche, Ciudad del Carmen, Merida, and Villahermosa (la cuidad de dos mentiras. No es una Villa y no es Hermosa), all cities with basically no international tourism. They were cool. It's cool to be selling to the same people of the country again like in Colombia and Venezuela. It's nice not to have to depend on gringos to sell to. Mexicans are consumers. They have money and like to shop.
In Villahermosa one day I was walking through the market, in the meat section, holding my breath and looking at the different pieces of animals strewn around. Pollo: Why do Americans throw away the majority of the chicken? In the States, in our meat sections, you'll find breast meat, thighs, wings and the ''whole chicken.''
Here in Mexico, along with Central and South America, the ''whole chicken'' is a chicken, sometimes this includes everything up to the feathers, sometimes still alive with their little feet tied together jumping and tripping along on the floor of the market. Generally, the standard ''whole chicken'' comes with the feet, toenails and all, the neck, the head, the beak, the gizzards, all of them, and now I have noticed them selling chicken with the un-hatched eggs still attached. To eat. Not just for the gringos to take pictures of and put up on Facebook to show friends how crazy Mexico is, but to actually eat. Big, ovary popping eggs. Red. I don't know how they cook em. Fortunately, I have not yet run across one floating up in my soup. You never know what to expect in a spoon-full of market soup. Mondongo soup for example. I think that translates to cow stomach lining. At least that's what it looks like and how I understand the explanation. I still don't understand how people love this ever-lasting chewy ''meat.'' Despite all this grossness, at least they're econominizing the animals. They eat everything.
In Coatzacoalcos, I saw, spoke and sold to many prostitutes. Ladies of the night, as my dad calls them. A woman who walks alone in the street at night here is most likely a prostitute. An assumption, but the majority who are wearing high-heeled shoes and too-tight clothing and sexily wandering aimlessly on the sidewalks are prostitutes. For several nights where we were selling in the main plaza, I watched a group of homeless women: two women, one infant and two young girls of 10-13 years old. The women looked like genuine homeless but the two young girls, every night, walked around the plaza in the apparral and aimless fashion of the prostitute. The older one, maybe 12, looked like a young woman from behind, but her face was so young. Hopefully I was mistaken, but it seemed like the older, ragged woman was her pimp. Maybe her mother. There are lots of commercials and ads here about the increase and amount of child prostitution in Mexico.
I suppose if I was travelling around the States staying in the cheapest hotels of each city and selling on the streets, I would notice more prostitution in the states. I have never opened my eyes to it there. These travels though, from the ''casas de amor'' (houses of love, I like to call them), of Colombia, Venezuela and all of central America, excluding Guatemala, I have seen the world of prostitution much more than I ever knew existed. It's all so disgusting and all just reiforces how disgusting men are and my hate for machismo. However, prostitution is not just the mens' fault. It's womens' too. The need and want for money leaves people to do horrible things.
Machismo. After almost two years immersed in the depths of machismo, I am left with strong feelings against men and their machismo. Now that I can really speak my mind in Spanish I have started speaking my mind to men when they treat me with machismo. It feels awesome! Yelling at a man and (hopefully) making him feel as little as he makes women feel every day with his looks and gross words, is awesome. The other day I told off a guy in front of me in line at the bus station. Instead of standing in line normally, like everyone else, facing ahead, he turned around, stood a little away and gawked at me. At first I ignored him for a few seconds, then gave him a death stare, then when none of that worked I told him to close his mouth, stand in line normally and quit looking at me. He giggled. I asked him if I looked like I was joking and to seriously look in another direction. He did. And when I got up to the ticket booth the woman working smiled at me in, what I would like to think, an appreciating way. :)
However, a lot of women here are so used to machismo that they actually like it when a man kisses at them and says lewd things. Many women have said that it makes them feel pretty. Not me. It sends rage through my blood.
I shaved me head the other day. It's nice to have men look at my head now rather than my chest or behind.
Semana Santa was the past two weeks and Ruben and I worked A LOT and saved 16,000 pesos almost $1400 US. A lot of money but a lot of working and talking. We were in Veracruz. It was really fun being apart of the Semana Santa selling buzz. In the hotel we were in there were lots of other vendors who came from surrounding areas to sell in Veracruz. People were out selling everything. Even the beggers are cashing in. There are boys who stand on pilings and yell to the crowd that they'll jump in the water for money. The people throw coins in the water and the boys jump in after it and find it. One of them told us that in one day he made some $300 pesos. There were mountains of people selling watches, perfume (which by the way the people buy like crazy), glasses, flan, sandwiches, balloons, henna tattoos, sandals, hammocks, dancing for tips, break-dancers, the indigenous women walk around with at least 20 pounds of clothing, candy apples, jewelry...everything.
Now we're in Mexico City, the biggest city in the world, to buy materials. It's a really pretty city.
I'm in Mexico now. Ruben and I travelled from the Guatemalan border to San Cristobal de las Casas, a mountanous cold city, beautiful and filled with indigenous culture and Zapatistas, still active and fighting to protect land from their government.
From San Cristobal we went to Palenque. The jungle. Lots of green, lots of rain and lots of spiders. We camped in a very wet tent and went to the Palenque Mayan ruins which were not that impressive after going to Tikal in Guatemala, but still really cool.
After Palenque, Tulum, Cancun and Islas Mujeres. I didn't fully appreciate Tulum until after we went to Cancun and Islas Mujeres. Before I even got on the bus to Cancun, I didn't like it after all I've read and heard about Cancun. The tourist strip in front of the beach is like some Miami or LA city and the barrios outside of the center are poor. The roads are horrible, full of pot holes, because the city spends all it's money on the tourist area no mas and leaves the poor neighborhoods to get along on their own. We met an artisaño couple on the street and they offered us to stay with them in their house.
Islas Mujeres I had high expectations. It's pretty there but nothing like I imagined. The beaches and streets were super crowded with drunk happy redneck gringos in their rented golf carts and Coronas in hand. It was especially illegal there to sell on the streets, so we didn't stay long.
From Islas Mujeres we went inland on the Yucatan to Vallodolid, Campeche, Ciudad del Carmen, Merida, and Villahermosa (la cuidad de dos mentiras. No es una Villa y no es Hermosa), all cities with basically no international tourism. They were cool. It's cool to be selling to the same people of the country again like in Colombia and Venezuela. It's nice not to have to depend on gringos to sell to. Mexicans are consumers. They have money and like to shop.
In Villahermosa one day I was walking through the market, in the meat section, holding my breath and looking at the different pieces of animals strewn around. Pollo: Why do Americans throw away the majority of the chicken? In the States, in our meat sections, you'll find breast meat, thighs, wings and the ''whole chicken.''
Here in Mexico, along with Central and South America, the ''whole chicken'' is a chicken, sometimes this includes everything up to the feathers, sometimes still alive with their little feet tied together jumping and tripping along on the floor of the market. Generally, the standard ''whole chicken'' comes with the feet, toenails and all, the neck, the head, the beak, the gizzards, all of them, and now I have noticed them selling chicken with the un-hatched eggs still attached. To eat. Not just for the gringos to take pictures of and put up on Facebook to show friends how crazy Mexico is, but to actually eat. Big, ovary popping eggs. Red. I don't know how they cook em. Fortunately, I have not yet run across one floating up in my soup. You never know what to expect in a spoon-full of market soup. Mondongo soup for example. I think that translates to cow stomach lining. At least that's what it looks like and how I understand the explanation. I still don't understand how people love this ever-lasting chewy ''meat.'' Despite all this grossness, at least they're econominizing the animals. They eat everything.
In Coatzacoalcos, I saw, spoke and sold to many prostitutes. Ladies of the night, as my dad calls them. A woman who walks alone in the street at night here is most likely a prostitute. An assumption, but the majority who are wearing high-heeled shoes and too-tight clothing and sexily wandering aimlessly on the sidewalks are prostitutes. For several nights where we were selling in the main plaza, I watched a group of homeless women: two women, one infant and two young girls of 10-13 years old. The women looked like genuine homeless but the two young girls, every night, walked around the plaza in the apparral and aimless fashion of the prostitute. The older one, maybe 12, looked like a young woman from behind, but her face was so young. Hopefully I was mistaken, but it seemed like the older, ragged woman was her pimp. Maybe her mother. There are lots of commercials and ads here about the increase and amount of child prostitution in Mexico.
I suppose if I was travelling around the States staying in the cheapest hotels of each city and selling on the streets, I would notice more prostitution in the states. I have never opened my eyes to it there. These travels though, from the ''casas de amor'' (houses of love, I like to call them), of Colombia, Venezuela and all of central America, excluding Guatemala, I have seen the world of prostitution much more than I ever knew existed. It's all so disgusting and all just reiforces how disgusting men are and my hate for machismo. However, prostitution is not just the mens' fault. It's womens' too. The need and want for money leaves people to do horrible things.
Machismo. After almost two years immersed in the depths of machismo, I am left with strong feelings against men and their machismo. Now that I can really speak my mind in Spanish I have started speaking my mind to men when they treat me with machismo. It feels awesome! Yelling at a man and (hopefully) making him feel as little as he makes women feel every day with his looks and gross words, is awesome. The other day I told off a guy in front of me in line at the bus station. Instead of standing in line normally, like everyone else, facing ahead, he turned around, stood a little away and gawked at me. At first I ignored him for a few seconds, then gave him a death stare, then when none of that worked I told him to close his mouth, stand in line normally and quit looking at me. He giggled. I asked him if I looked like I was joking and to seriously look in another direction. He did. And when I got up to the ticket booth the woman working smiled at me in, what I would like to think, an appreciating way. :)
However, a lot of women here are so used to machismo that they actually like it when a man kisses at them and says lewd things. Many women have said that it makes them feel pretty. Not me. It sends rage through my blood.
I shaved me head the other day. It's nice to have men look at my head now rather than my chest or behind.
Semana Santa was the past two weeks and Ruben and I worked A LOT and saved 16,000 pesos almost $1400 US. A lot of money but a lot of working and talking. We were in Veracruz. It was really fun being apart of the Semana Santa selling buzz. In the hotel we were in there were lots of other vendors who came from surrounding areas to sell in Veracruz. People were out selling everything. Even the beggers are cashing in. There are boys who stand on pilings and yell to the crowd that they'll jump in the water for money. The people throw coins in the water and the boys jump in after it and find it. One of them told us that in one day he made some $300 pesos. There were mountains of people selling watches, perfume (which by the way the people buy like crazy), glasses, flan, sandwiches, balloons, henna tattoos, sandals, hammocks, dancing for tips, break-dancers, the indigenous women walk around with at least 20 pounds of clothing, candy apples, jewelry...everything.
Now we're in Mexico City, the biggest city in the world, to buy materials. It's a really pretty city.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
2010
Last Christmas, seems like much longer than a year, I was in Colombia. This year I was in Belize.
Belize is a strange central american country that feels like the states much more than central america. I rented a house in Placencia, on the carribean, for two weeks with four other artisaño friends, Josinara, a Brazileaña, her boyfriend Walter, from Argentina, another argentino, Herramia and Ruben.
Placencia was beautiful with a tranquil carribean beach, Garifuna and english all around. It was wierd and cool to be in an english land again but when I got back to the border of Guatemala the other day, I was happy to be back in spanish world.
Our tables in Placencia. Mine is the last one.
This one.
Ruben, Josi y Lion a friend we met in Placencia.
Walter and Herramia. New Years eve, waiting to watch the full moon come up over the ocean. It was magnicicent.
Waiting for the moon.
Josi, Herramia and I on christmas. I made my first turkey. Twenty pounds.
I put it in the oven around 7 in the evening and fell asleep before it was ready at around 1. But the next day it was still delicious.
In the back of a bus in Belize, a rasta guys little dog, Snoopy.
He was cold that morning so he had on a little shirt.
Breakfast in Livingston, Guatemala.
Waiting for the boat to go to Belize in Livingston.
A wierd and disturbing mural of a baby/chicken in diapers either
throwing up or eating coins of money.
A new necklace of mine. Opal from Mexico with copper and agate in the chain.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Lynchings in Guatemala
Dec. 6, 2009
My Chilean friend Lalo passed us at a fast trot exclaiming, ¨They´re burning people in front of the police station.¨
Two weeks ago the pueblo of Solola, adjacent to Panajachel, demanded of the police the three people who had robbed and killed the bus driver and passengers on a local bus earlier that day. The town gathered in front of the police station until they eventually burned the two women, one of them pregnant, the man and eventually the police station itself. This I saw and heard about through the news, through the grapevine. Today, it happened here in front of my own eyes.
With Lalo, I walked up near the central market of Panajachel to the police station. A mob of people met me. Police in their full swat team armor stood around with their automatic weapons and tear gas guns ready. A mob circled around something on the ground I couldn´t see. I pushed my way closer and got my first glimpse of a man, bound and tied with a thick stained with blood rope, kneeling, praying and swaying in pain. Covered in his own blood. The mob took turns beating the man. Two machete strikes to the head. The people who couldn´t reach him ranted and yelled ¨Quamalo¨....burn him.
He and three more women still inside the jail, robbed a local store of 7,000 Quetzales. About $900. The police arrested all four of them, but the pueblo, knowing one too many years of police corruption, demanded to take vengance with their own hands. ¨Uno por uno,¨ they yelled. Eye for an eye.
A shirtless drunk was the one to finally take the life of the man lying in the street. Fueled by alchohol and mob mentality he stomped out the life of this man. The mob yelled to burn him. ¨Gasolina,¨ they shouted. The police managed what little control they had by saying that before the crowd could burn the man, women, children and cameras had to be put away. The cameras left. Women and children did not. They dragged the man 10 feet. He lay motionless on the hot concrete. A paramedic pushed through the crowd and checked for a pulse. No. He was dead. Almost immediately the energy shifted back to the jail where the three women were still. ¨Protected¨by the police.
As ancient and barbaric a custom as this all seems, it is something new for Guatemala. Since 1996, these public lynchings have been occuring at an increasing rate. I spoke with a grad student from Yale who is in Panajachel doing her graduate research on the reactions and sentiments of the pueblos where these lynchings happen. When the police capture these theives and murderers they are quickly released within a matter of days if they can pay their way out. A local store owner told me, ¨no podemos vivir asi,¨ there must be consequences for the theives or they will just continue taking from the pueblo. So the pueblos, Solola, Panajachel and many others in the surrounding mountains, are taking justice as they know how. Burning the police station, stoning police, fighting the police until they release the prisoners, and killing them in their own streets, in front of their own stores with their babies and children watching.
On the steps of the police station, the people yelled with blood in their eyes to release the women. ¨Matalas¨ Bring the gasoline. There were about 7 men, ¨neighbors, no mas,¨a woman in the crowd told me, standing and negociating with the police. After much yelling and impatience, the men announced that they were not going to release the women. If they did the crowd would engulf them. The crowd was rabid with a killing fever. But still, women were giggling among each other. Children played tag within the crowd. Men made horrible jokes. Twenty men climbed on top of a truck to see the dead man lying in the street. All the metal smashed down under their weight. Two men started to rock and attempt to overturn the truck. People laughed. Joked. Bizzarre. A man lay dead in the street and the people were acting as if it was merely the county fair in town.
The police announced that they needed five indigenous women to enter the jail. We will not release the women, but five indigenous can enter the jail and kill the three women inside. ¨Con tranquilo.¨ Noone volunteered. The police added, noticing that no woman wanted to do this, they could put a blindfold on the five women so they won´t have to see what they were doing. How they would kill three women. The crowd laughed. Insanity. One woman volunteered. A señora of maybe 40 years. I couldn´t watch anymore. I left. Went back to where we were working on the tourist strip 10 blocks away.
About an hour passed until a señora who sells tamales went running by us saying they were bringing the women down this street to the lake to burn them there. Immediatly shop owners started closing. All the metal doors slammed down. Restaurants kicked out their customers. The indigenous women rapidly took down all the clothes hanging up for sale. The gringos wandered around with lost, scared looks on their faces. Panajachel had transformed from a safe touristy haven to Bagdad.
Smoke pillared into the sky. The mob was burning 3 police cars. Flipping them and smashing the windows. The police began shooting tear gas. People came running, their mouths and noses red from the gas. Crying. Scared. Boys and men walked around with their shirts wrapped around their mouths like bandits carrying rocks. Ready for battle. We left.
The people of Panajachel are not proud of what they did. However, I never got a real sense of regret either. Rather, this is something they have to do. The police take bribes and do nothing, so the people have to defend themselves. A man that was recently lynched in a nearby pueblo was 29 years old. He had been in and out of jail 67 times, a local told me. Sixty seven times in a life of 29 years, this man was arrested, released and set free to only get thrown in jail again for another crime he commited. I read in the paper, El Diario, that since 1996 these lynchings have begun. This is not an ancient Mayan custom. This is a new phenomonon. Perhaps a fad, ¨The people of Solola did it, so we will too.¨ But something that has its roots in a very serious problem.
The police are not paid enough. They are young, uneducated boys from poor familes and are eager for bribes. I spoke with a man from Texas who has been living in Guatemala for some 20 years now. His son, last week, was set up and arrested with seven ounces of marijuana. He was taken to the local jail where locals gathered and fought with the police for permission to burn him alive. The police took him to another jail in order to protect him. There, the family had to pay 3,000 Quetzales to the inmates of that prison so the inmates wouldn´t kill their son. After this, garunteered, the family will have to pay the police if they want their son released from jail. It´s all corrupt. Every part about the whole system. So who can blame the people of Guatemala for wanting their own justice on the spot. The question lies in if beating and burning a person to death for stealing money or selling drugs is justice. Where is the line drawn? When is a person liable for death by el pueblo and when is he not?
The three women on Sunday were rescued from the police station after the crowd began to set fire to the police trucks. The police tear gassed the crowd and a hilocopter flew in and took out the women. The body of the man lay in the middle of the street, covered by a black plastic bag until mid-afternoon the next day. A lawyer had to see the body and sign some papers before he could be removed.
To date, this year, there have been 96 public lynchings in Guatemala.
My Chilean friend Lalo passed us at a fast trot exclaiming, ¨They´re burning people in front of the police station.¨
Two weeks ago the pueblo of Solola, adjacent to Panajachel, demanded of the police the three people who had robbed and killed the bus driver and passengers on a local bus earlier that day. The town gathered in front of the police station until they eventually burned the two women, one of them pregnant, the man and eventually the police station itself. This I saw and heard about through the news, through the grapevine. Today, it happened here in front of my own eyes.
With Lalo, I walked up near the central market of Panajachel to the police station. A mob of people met me. Police in their full swat team armor stood around with their automatic weapons and tear gas guns ready. A mob circled around something on the ground I couldn´t see. I pushed my way closer and got my first glimpse of a man, bound and tied with a thick stained with blood rope, kneeling, praying and swaying in pain. Covered in his own blood. The mob took turns beating the man. Two machete strikes to the head. The people who couldn´t reach him ranted and yelled ¨Quamalo¨....burn him.
He and three more women still inside the jail, robbed a local store of 7,000 Quetzales. About $900. The police arrested all four of them, but the pueblo, knowing one too many years of police corruption, demanded to take vengance with their own hands. ¨Uno por uno,¨ they yelled. Eye for an eye.
A shirtless drunk was the one to finally take the life of the man lying in the street. Fueled by alchohol and mob mentality he stomped out the life of this man. The mob yelled to burn him. ¨Gasolina,¨ they shouted. The police managed what little control they had by saying that before the crowd could burn the man, women, children and cameras had to be put away. The cameras left. Women and children did not. They dragged the man 10 feet. He lay motionless on the hot concrete. A paramedic pushed through the crowd and checked for a pulse. No. He was dead. Almost immediately the energy shifted back to the jail where the three women were still. ¨Protected¨by the police.
As ancient and barbaric a custom as this all seems, it is something new for Guatemala. Since 1996, these public lynchings have been occuring at an increasing rate. I spoke with a grad student from Yale who is in Panajachel doing her graduate research on the reactions and sentiments of the pueblos where these lynchings happen. When the police capture these theives and murderers they are quickly released within a matter of days if they can pay their way out. A local store owner told me, ¨no podemos vivir asi,¨ there must be consequences for the theives or they will just continue taking from the pueblo. So the pueblos, Solola, Panajachel and many others in the surrounding mountains, are taking justice as they know how. Burning the police station, stoning police, fighting the police until they release the prisoners, and killing them in their own streets, in front of their own stores with their babies and children watching.
On the steps of the police station, the people yelled with blood in their eyes to release the women. ¨Matalas¨ Bring the gasoline. There were about 7 men, ¨neighbors, no mas,¨a woman in the crowd told me, standing and negociating with the police. After much yelling and impatience, the men announced that they were not going to release the women. If they did the crowd would engulf them. The crowd was rabid with a killing fever. But still, women were giggling among each other. Children played tag within the crowd. Men made horrible jokes. Twenty men climbed on top of a truck to see the dead man lying in the street. All the metal smashed down under their weight. Two men started to rock and attempt to overturn the truck. People laughed. Joked. Bizzarre. A man lay dead in the street and the people were acting as if it was merely the county fair in town.
The police announced that they needed five indigenous women to enter the jail. We will not release the women, but five indigenous can enter the jail and kill the three women inside. ¨Con tranquilo.¨ Noone volunteered. The police added, noticing that no woman wanted to do this, they could put a blindfold on the five women so they won´t have to see what they were doing. How they would kill three women. The crowd laughed. Insanity. One woman volunteered. A señora of maybe 40 years. I couldn´t watch anymore. I left. Went back to where we were working on the tourist strip 10 blocks away.
About an hour passed until a señora who sells tamales went running by us saying they were bringing the women down this street to the lake to burn them there. Immediatly shop owners started closing. All the metal doors slammed down. Restaurants kicked out their customers. The indigenous women rapidly took down all the clothes hanging up for sale. The gringos wandered around with lost, scared looks on their faces. Panajachel had transformed from a safe touristy haven to Bagdad.
Smoke pillared into the sky. The mob was burning 3 police cars. Flipping them and smashing the windows. The police began shooting tear gas. People came running, their mouths and noses red from the gas. Crying. Scared. Boys and men walked around with their shirts wrapped around their mouths like bandits carrying rocks. Ready for battle. We left.
The people of Panajachel are not proud of what they did. However, I never got a real sense of regret either. Rather, this is something they have to do. The police take bribes and do nothing, so the people have to defend themselves. A man that was recently lynched in a nearby pueblo was 29 years old. He had been in and out of jail 67 times, a local told me. Sixty seven times in a life of 29 years, this man was arrested, released and set free to only get thrown in jail again for another crime he commited. I read in the paper, El Diario, that since 1996 these lynchings have begun. This is not an ancient Mayan custom. This is a new phenomonon. Perhaps a fad, ¨The people of Solola did it, so we will too.¨ But something that has its roots in a very serious problem.
The police are not paid enough. They are young, uneducated boys from poor familes and are eager for bribes. I spoke with a man from Texas who has been living in Guatemala for some 20 years now. His son, last week, was set up and arrested with seven ounces of marijuana. He was taken to the local jail where locals gathered and fought with the police for permission to burn him alive. The police took him to another jail in order to protect him. There, the family had to pay 3,000 Quetzales to the inmates of that prison so the inmates wouldn´t kill their son. After this, garunteered, the family will have to pay the police if they want their son released from jail. It´s all corrupt. Every part about the whole system. So who can blame the people of Guatemala for wanting their own justice on the spot. The question lies in if beating and burning a person to death for stealing money or selling drugs is justice. Where is the line drawn? When is a person liable for death by el pueblo and when is he not?
The three women on Sunday were rescued from the police station after the crowd began to set fire to the police trucks. The police tear gassed the crowd and a hilocopter flew in and took out the women. The body of the man lay in the middle of the street, covered by a black plastic bag until mid-afternoon the next day. A lawyer had to see the body and sign some papers before he could be removed.
To date, this year, there have been 96 public lynchings in Guatemala.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Guatemala
Antigua...
It feels more like south america here. There's a large number of indigenous here, nearly the majority of the population and it's so cool to see them and talk with them. today we were selling our jewelry in antigua's main market alongside all the indigenous girls and women walking around with huge baskets of fruit and veggies balanced on their heads. they pass us and look at our jewelry and give me the look i've become quite accustom to now, the: "awe, look at the little gringa sitting on the ground selling her little jewelry." they wear beautiful long skirts with embroidered belts with many colors and fancy blouses and dangly earrings. Most have a colorful piece of woven fabric slung over their shoulders holding potatos or jewelry to sell or a little baby, wrapped completely out of sight. and some of these mothers are so young. maybe 15 some of them. an old woman of 50 walks around with 2 or 3 generations of daughters next to her.
Panajachel ladies
Fish drying
Marcelito and I at my house in Panajachel. We met in Colombia and have been running into each other ever since. I cut my hair.
The hammock bridge crossing the river to our house. Panajachel.
Church in Antigua.
Parchando in Panajachel. Passing Tuc tuc taxi.
A bus on a boat going to Monterrico, Guatemala.
Parchando in Panajachel.
The little lady standing is Juanita. 98 years old. She passed us every day offering little handmade bags for one Quetzal. We bought at least 2 every day. Now, we have a whole bunch. But she was awesome.
I'm in panajachel now, in lago atitlan. wonderful. really cheap, everything. we're renting a room for 100 Quetzales a week, we have a stove and everything. i went the other day to san marcos with a chilean friend, josé. she's awesome. we met in nicaragua and travelled to el salvador together and then i met up again with her here. we hitchhiked to san marcos just the two of us and that was really fun. you can take the boat in 30 minutes, but we decided to go by land for free, hitchhiking and seeing the beautiful scenary of the mountains. it took about 5 hours because we got a ride to another city, also named san marcos and we had to backtrack a whole lot. but everyone that picked us up were really nice religious folk. we stayed in san marcos in a house where a friend of josé's is renting up in the mountain. everyone in san marcos is really spiritual and meditating and yoga and i had some really good conversations with people....politics, aliens, religion....you know. it was good to spend some days away from ruben with a group of good girls. i miss my good girl friends. it's not so easy to connect with the girl artisaños. there's a ton of argentiños here and the majority of them, especially the girls, are stuck up and clique and not friendly and i'm sick of being around them and their Porteño accents.
Maria José. El Salvador
A little look at my work right now...
A necklace with a sloth´s claw and tiger´s eye stone above.
Playing around with coconut. My initials for earrings.
Necklace with the main stone, obsidiana and white jade above it.
Peacock feather enclosed in macrame.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Nicaragua
Balgue, Nicaragua
We´re on an island now of two volcanos, one filled with fresh water, the other of lave. The island is on the Lake of Nicaragua, fresh water, it´s name: Ometepe. It´s gorgeous here. We´re staying in a small brick room for $1.25 a night. Outside the door sleep 2 big pigs. Everyone in Ometepe has pigs. The brick bunkhouse is on the property of a woman who has been living here for 50 some years, Inez.
She is a mother of 12 and on this same property in ¨La Casa Grande¨sleep three of her own children and their families. Inez runs a little store out of the front of her house and takes care of 2 of her granddaughters whose mother lives in Costa Rica. The 3 of them sleep in a tiny little nook of the store behind a shower curtain.
There are scorpians here. You must kill them if you find one. They carry their baby´s eggs on their backs. I found one on the wall of our room.
Inez lets us use her kitchen everyone. We cook and give her a plate, she cooks and serves us a plate. We help her make ¨pasteles¨ to sell in the store. They´re filled with meat and others with pineapple. It took us practically all day to make over 100 and she only sold them for about 5 cents. The other day was the Day of Independence for Central America and we made enchiladas to sell at the parade. Rubén and I helped her sell them at the pueblo's festival.
The pueblo gets fresh water from the Laguna in the volcano, so there is no shortage of good water. Inez´s kitchen has a clay pit that she fills with water from the hose. The sink is a huge slab of rock with old water canals running outside to the hens. The stove is a fire pit with coals of firewood waiting to spark up to cook. Inez complains of pain deep in her chest that lingers from years of cooking with wood and the smoke. She lights the fire with pieces of plastic and kerosene and the kitchen fills with smoke.
She has 3 dogs, Tigre, Preciousa and Bobby, who wait and beg for food all day and guard the house at night. They eat everything from chicken bones to the most dangerously sharp bones of fish. ¨These are not Pedigree dogs,¨ Inez says, ¨They eat what there is.¨ I want to adopt Tigre. He follows me everywhere.
Grandchildern, children and their husbands and girlfriends and families come in and out of the houses all day. The property runs all the way back to the lake and is filled with banana trees, chickens and pigs. The showers and toilet pits are all outside. The floors are all cleanly swept and pounded dirt. Washing clothes takes all day. Horses and mules loaded down with platanos and fire wood pass in the evening with their tired owners. Music can be heard everywhere, at all times of the day. The pueblo goes to sleep early and wakes with the sun.
There is sense of humbleness here that makes me think of the material aspects of life I am so comfortable with. Inez and her family are not rich. But they have land and family and they all work very hard and take advantage of what they can. And they laugh so much and sit and gossip and talk with their grandmother or grandmother and their Aunts and Uncles and cousins.
It´s beautiful here.
Cristal. The great granddaughter of Inez.
Inez, sleeping outside the store after a long day.
Little Killian. Her mother lives in Costa Rica. Inez takes care of her and her older sister. She wanted me to stay for Christmas and cried when we left.
Making the dough for enchiladas.
Frying the enchiladas.
Killian in her fancy dress.
Inez working at the parade.
Ready to sell.
Killian and a friend watching the parade.
Killian.
The lake.
Joisinada, a brasilian artisano who we met and hung out with a lot in Balgue.
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