Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Life goes on, here in beautiful Queretaro. But for me it feels like an interlude, until something real takes hold again. Last weekend I visited a beautiful Mexican restaurant, built around the homestead of my landlady. She is from a very large family, and her brother Gustavo runs the business. They have a very comfortable and beautiful ranch, and are expanding to include rooms for guests and facilities for fiestas, wedding receptions and stuff. Lots of relatives dropped in during the day, a built-in clientele and rolling community for them. The food and tequila were exceptional. I even understood some of the conversation.
My application for the Crisis Corps opportunity in El Salvador continues. I had to go to several different clinics to get the necessary hepatitis blood tests, and the innoculation for typhoid fever doesn´t exist in Mexico. Otherwise, just about everything has been handled, and Peace Corps Washington seems to think I will be in El Salvador by the end of the month. Myrna should join me there, so that we can pick up our marriage again after these two and a half months apart.
Meanwhile I am still teaching English at Iglesia Kennedy. This is the third day that my one morning English student has not shown up, which is a bummer. But occasionally she has to go to work early, and that seems to be what has been happening.
I finished reading a book about Emilio Zapata - part of my Spanish self-study. He comes across as a charismatic egotistical leader turned revolutionary and guerilla, riding on the desperation of the huge disadvantaged and exploited portion of the population. He was active in the south, at the same time that Pancho Villa was terrorizing the north.
The book got me interested in the history of Mexico. There certainly hasn´t been much breathing room. Independence in 1857 after some 400 years of Spanish brutality and exploitation. But only 4 years later, the European powers invaded - or were invited in by the conservatives in reaction, depending on your point of view - concluding with the brief monarchy of Archduke Maximillian. There followed a brief flurry of false starts, then the 35-year reign of Porfirio Dias who continued the concentration of power and land in the hands of the very few, and the impoverishment of all the rest. That is an understatement, really - unless you owned land, you were a virtual slave to the plantation owners. This is where Zapata and Villa came into the picture, and the country was in 12-15 years of civil war. Zapata and Villa were finally eliminated with very substantial help from the USA, and a new Constitution was signed promising reform. But it was only lip service, and Government for the Few continued unabated under Carranza. After some 70 years of increasingly corrupt one-party PRI rule the party finally self-destructed when Fox managed to pull his upset victory some 12 years ago. So currently we have Calderon as the Pres Elect confronting Obrador, who is another charasmatic figure who claims to represent the poor and downtrodden and who still refuses to admit that he lost the election.
My application for the Crisis Corps opportunity in El Salvador continues. I had to go to several different clinics to get the necessary hepatitis blood tests, and the innoculation for typhoid fever doesn´t exist in Mexico. Otherwise, just about everything has been handled, and Peace Corps Washington seems to think I will be in El Salvador by the end of the month. Myrna should join me there, so that we can pick up our marriage again after these two and a half months apart.
Meanwhile I am still teaching English at Iglesia Kennedy. This is the third day that my one morning English student has not shown up, which is a bummer. But occasionally she has to go to work early, and that seems to be what has been happening.
I finished reading a book about Emilio Zapata - part of my Spanish self-study. He comes across as a charismatic egotistical leader turned revolutionary and guerilla, riding on the desperation of the huge disadvantaged and exploited portion of the population. He was active in the south, at the same time that Pancho Villa was terrorizing the north.
The book got me interested in the history of Mexico. There certainly hasn´t been much breathing room. Independence in 1857 after some 400 years of Spanish brutality and exploitation. But only 4 years later, the European powers invaded - or were invited in by the conservatives in reaction, depending on your point of view - concluding with the brief monarchy of Archduke Maximillian. There followed a brief flurry of false starts, then the 35-year reign of Porfirio Dias who continued the concentration of power and land in the hands of the very few, and the impoverishment of all the rest. That is an understatement, really - unless you owned land, you were a virtual slave to the plantation owners. This is where Zapata and Villa came into the picture, and the country was in 12-15 years of civil war. Zapata and Villa were finally eliminated with very substantial help from the USA, and a new Constitution was signed promising reform. But it was only lip service, and Government for the Few continued unabated under Carranza. After some 70 years of increasingly corrupt one-party PRI rule the party finally self-destructed when Fox managed to pull his upset victory some 12 years ago. So currently we have Calderon as the Pres Elect confronting Obrador, who is another charasmatic figure who claims to represent the poor and downtrodden and who still refuses to admit that he lost the election.
