After Toluca, and a week of the best food I have ever eaten in my life, we headed to DF for a week. DF is a city collapsing under its own weight, literally. Due partially to the fact that it was built on a swamp, and partly because they continue to pump all of the water out from under the city, there are parts of the city that have sunk thirty feet in the last half century. From our hostel roof in the zocalo, you could look down rows of ancient streets and see the parapets of the buildings, which were once even, waving up and down like hills.
Besides that, DF is a choking place. Even though we were there during semana santa (easter week), which is less congested than any other week of the year (a local newspaper said it was a “sin” to not travel during the vacation) it was still the most overcrowded and polluted place I have been (which, admittedly, isn’t a long list). Due to the steady economic decline and concurrent globalization of the last twelve years in Mexico, the commerce has moved out onto the streets, and most of the thoroughfares in the center of the city are clogged with makeshift shops selling every pirated object that has ever been made, from hats to backpacks to phones to movies and stereos (such brand names as SOONY), and the stalls have become so many that cars don’t even attempt to drive down many of the streets.
On Monday morning most us got on a bus bound for Cuautla in the neighboring state of Morelos. Monday was the anniversary of the assassination of Emiliano Zapata, the hero of the Mexican Revolution. Not only was his assassination the result of a betrayal, the revolution ended up being a betrayal, too: It ushered in the birth of the PRI, the world’s longest living democratic one-party rule. This was a good backdrop for our purpose of going to Cuautla, which was to see La Otra Campana. La Otra is, of course, run by the Zapatistas, who unlike the PRI still fight for the same things as their namesake did some eighty years ago. The caravan of Subcomante Marcos and the entourage of Zapatistas that travels through Mexicowith him was to arrive in Cuautla, the site of Zapata’s tomb, at four in the afternoon to address the public.
My friends and I showed up around noon and explored the small town. It is a classic medium-sized Mexcan town, with a tree-lined plaza surrounded by small congested streets where the businesses spill out into the streets, with the sounds of nortena or banda music from one store mixing with the reggaton of another. At the smaller public square where Zapata lies entombed the local activists, communists, and other anti-government dissidents were setting up their banners and tables in preparation. On the side of the square a man with a microphone duct-taped to an acoustic guitar sang revolutionary songs.
Over the next few hours the square began to fill up. The highlight was when the Frente de Atenco showed up. The frente is a famously anti-government leftist group that won a major battle a few years ago fighting the installation of an airport in their community- They have also become famous for bringing their machetes with them to protests, and true to form when they showed up in Cuautla, at least fifty strong, they were chanting “Zapata Vive!” and waving their machetes in the air.
After a few hours, it became clear that there was some sort of hitch in the schedule. A fiend of ours had come by to tell us that there was some sort of problem involving the Zapatistas in the town of Cuernavaca that they were coming from. Suddenly all of the Frente from Atenco got back on their buses and took off. We waited around a few more hours until we heard that they were definitely not coming. We got back on the bus and headed to DF, and when we arrived we learned that Marcos had decided to aid in a protest of the construction of a shopping mall. It seems that it would have involved cutting down some old growth trees, so some local environmental activists had chained themselves to the trees in advance of the oncoming bulldozers. Apparently the police had arrived to forcibly remove the protests, but when the Zapatistas and their media contingent showed up, the police retreated. We were happy to hear about another small victory for the Other Campaign, but still disappointed it couldn’t have come on another day. To read about that protest, check the NarcoNews website.
After another week of red eyed and sore throats from the pollution, we all packed up and headed to Chihuahua City, the capitol of the state. Northern Mexico is remarkably different from the south. There is none of the European influence of San Cristobal or visibility of the indigenous population. Chihuahua city, for example, could easily pass for a town in Texas, with old men in cowboy hats ambling down the wide streets.
Our host group this time was a group called Barzon, which was a debtor’s organization that sprang up after the peso crisis of 1994. Apparently when the bottom fell out of the peso, anyone who had debt, for a mortgage or credit card, for example, suddenly found their interest shooting up to unimaginably, and saw their payments increase up to 300 percent. As a result they decided to band together and help each other not only renegotiate their debt with the banks, but also put a stop to all of the evictions. Our host mother told us stories of the first few eviction protests she went to, including one where the head of the organization, after being chased by the police, barricaded himself in the kitchen of the house that was being evicted, turned on the gas all the way, and threatened to blow the house up if the police didn’t leave. Amazingly, the police relented and the family eventually got to keep their house.
Another movement that we were studying in was for justice for the victims of the femicides. Although it is far too long and tragic of a story to recount entirely here, the basic nature of it is that over the last decade an inexplicably high number of women, mostly poor and young, have turned up missing in Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez. Many have later turned up, a number mutilated, dumped in the desert on the edge of town. A number of conspiracy theories have been tossed around, including theories that the police, drug lords, local politicians, and other members of high society have been involved in some sort of sex slave trade. There is no evidence to any of these claims, however, because the police more or less refuse to investigate into the hundreds of disappearances, which only fuels the speculation.
On the Thursday of that week we went to to the state penitentiary to visit David Mesa who was imprisoned for the death of his cousin. David had been a human rights activist in Los Angeles, and when he heard that his cousin had disappeared, he went back to Chihuahua to investigate. Apparently he asked one too many questions, and he and his uncle, the mother of the victim, were thrown in jail. David Mesa has been in jail, with no evidence except for his confession extracted by three days of torture, for three years. It apparently doesn’t matter to the court that he was well-known to have been in Los Angeles at the time of the murder. Even the New York Times has written about his plight, but the state has still refused to set him free. Despite his situation, he remains cheerful and smiling. He talks with sadness I his voice, but more with hope and gratitude. He thanked us for coming to visit, telling us that if he ever did make it out of jail, it would be because of the support given to him by groups like ours. We, of course, had little to feel proud of, but were happy to see a man that the state has tried so hard to break still talking about justice and dignity. David is still awaiting the final decision in the case, which is expected to be heard sometime in May.
