Gringos call them “speed bumps”. Mexicans nickname them ” policia durmiendo” (sleeping policemen). The tópe (TOE-pay), a bump in the otherwise potholed road of Mexican life, is an endless source of fascination for anyone, like myself, who loves to categorize the phenomena of everyday existence. However and wherever constructed, speed bumps are self-regulation at its most basic. The […]
Continue ReadingWe are tall, white, middle aged and well fed. They are short, dark and thin. We are foreigners and they are native born, “Indio”, indigenous. We are retired academicians and professionals and they are farmers, ” campesinos“, “peasants”. We are donors to a relief effort that was mounted in response to the devastating earthquake and monsoon rains […]
Continue ReadingSanta Maria Tiltepec was once a thriving village, important enough for the conquering Spaniards to order a fine church built. The church still stands, a monument to the determination of the conquerors and the artistic and architectural skills of the indigenous Mixtec peoples who constructed it from drawings of other churches, brought over from the […]
Continue ReadingLarge families, devout Catholics, modest clothing, very poor – these are some of the common preconceived notions about Mexicans from a rural eastern Oregon perspective. However, such a view is limiting and hides the rich variety that abounds in the Mexican culture and among Mexicans from both the United States and Mexico. People who hold […]
Continue Reading(Originally published in somewhat different form in The Mexico City News, November, 1982) Eli was sick a lot in Oaxaca. The air of the city of Oaxaca in those days was fecalized. Many people there still don’t have toilets. They use their yards or vacant lots or — in really rural locations such as Zipolete […]
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In more than five years as an expatriate living in Oaxaca, I have forgotten much, learned a little, and been more amazed than bored. One of the things I think I have learned is that for most of us here in Paradise, what we get out of it depends a lot on what we bring […]
Continue ReadingFirst written in the spring of 1994, this story has been revised several times as dictated by subsequent events. It has generated more responses than any other. Most of them have been at least somewhat rational. Every Norteamericano who reads a newspaper or watches 60 Minutes knows that an armed political/economic struggle has been going […]
Continue ReadingI have been living in southern Mexico, in the city of Oaxaca, for two years noticing daily customs and ways of doing things that are not the same as where I lived in the mountains of Colorado. One big difference is the attitude about water. Oaxaqueños act as if it is liquid gold, more valuable […]
Continue ReadingTijuana is the pits. Mexico’s border towns are all the pits. Normally, I just grab the bus from the airport, and go directly to Los Angeles (also, some would say, the pits), but in May of this year there we were in a night club called Perro Azul (the blue dog), a high-tech bistro in […]
Continue ReadingThe marimba band filled the breezy space with a rippling rhythm, a tropical river of notes and glissandos, bird-light tunes. Sancho responded to the music from home with a roll of the hips and shy smile. Sancho Panse, the Juchitan piñata maker, left Tiger Mountain near the Turtle Coast after his beloved mother died in […]
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