From Xico

Netzahuacóyotl Is Not a 21st Century Leader

2009-11-07T13:45:22-06:00

I am going to go off on a tangent again, one filled with the usual overgeneralizations:

I think we Americans have a very hard time (most people probably do, but we have a lot more ability to affect a lot of people in a hurry) conceiving that there might be other ways of looking at just about everything than the way we look at it. One of our particular traps is our notion of progress: that we are going down some kind of path inevitably leading to something better and that if other people don’t follow that path, they must be deficient. Perhaps we slip from the path occasionally, but then we come back to it. This came up recently in the question of why Mexicans haven’t come up with any technical inventions lately (lets say since the beginning of the 19^th century) like cars. I’d like to say here that they may not have invented cars, but they sure can fix them better, more inventively and for a lot less money tha Americans. Surely THAT is a major achievement.

I’d also like to say here that hardly any of us, no matter our culture, could have invented cars, and those who did were building on a set of previous knowledge and cultural history and ways of thinking and that people with other kinds of previous knowledge and history and environments came up with different sorts of achievements, not necessarily following our “path of progress.”

AND I’d like to say that technical prowess in the sense of combustion- and electricity-powered machines isn’t always good for the world. People who invented cars also invented tanks and bombs and incredibly destructive weaponry and now are dependent on the continued production of such for their livelihoods. Technically proficient (in the western sense) cultures are responsible, through their technology, for the killing of millions of people, destroying the livelihoods of millions more, the rape of the natural world, etc. etc., especially when such prowess is embedded in a cult of free-market capitalism.

NOT that technology is in and of itself evil, nor is capitalism (as long as it’s with a small c.) Rather, I think the combination of technology and rampant free-market capitalism has reached its useful limits in many areas, and that western culture in which technology-as-we-know-it is embedded is now crippled by its own inventions and is going off the deep edge.

THAT SAID, I think it might be useful to look at some other worlds. Mexico, for instance, which has the oldest university in the western hemisphere.

Perhaps because the people who lived here in Mexico before the Spanish didn’t leave that much in the way of memoirs and biographies or individually signed works of art, or because there was no daily media report on their doings, it’s a little hard to have as much of a feel for them as it is for, say, Rush Limbaugh or Michael Jackson. It might have been easier to learn about people in those long-ago days if the Spanish hadn't so systematically destroyed the codices the Aztecs had written before they came. Remaining codices were written after the Conquest. Codices were books in which pictures were used as symbols to express information about history, geneology, the calendar, etc. Here is an illustration from the Codex Borbonicus, written around the time of the conquest:

And here is a link to a very nice site on Aztec codices and their symbology.

There were indeed great and creative leaders before the arrival of the Spanish. They sometimes had perspectives quite different from our own. One of these leaders was Netzahualcóyotl (or Nezahualcóyotl) who is one of my very favorite historical figures. He was the king of Texcoco in the 15^th century, that is, before the arrival of the Spaniards.

A representation of Netzahualcóyotl in the Codex Mendoza:

It’s not perhaps that well known al otro lado – north of the Mexico-US border that in fact the Aztecs were not simply the Aztecs, but were part of The Triple Alliance, three different states in which the Aztecs, or Mexicas of Tenochtitlan (which is today Mexico City) were dominant. Netzahualcóyotl became the head of Texcoco, the next most influential member of the alliance. The weakest member was Tlacopan The triple alliance dominated the central section of Mexico pretty much from coast to coast during much of the 15^th and early 16^th centuries with the exception of what was the Kingdom of the Tlaxcalteca which is today Mexico’s smallest state, Tlaxcala. It was Tlaxcala that gave Cortés essential assistance in his conquest.

But there is a great deal more to Netzahualcóyotl than his political alliances. He was an engineer, a naturalist, a philosopher and a poet. Leaders like him in our own experience who come to mind are Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Abraham Lincoln, though none of them were poets that I know of.

I have a charming little book called Poesías de Nezahualcóyotl con semblanza biográfica –(Poetry of Nezahualcóyotl with a few words on his life) The semblanza biográfica is by Abraham Camacho López as are the translations of the poems attributed to Netzahuacóyotl from Nahuatl to Spanish. (I will continue spelling it Netzahualcóyotl out of respect for our local bus company.) There is some scholarly questioning of whether the poems were actually written by Netzahualcóyotl. I think this doubt is not quite warranted. As Camacho López indicates at the end of this piece, there are reasons to think he did. In addition to Camacho's reasons, I would add that oral societies managed to transmit without alphabets as we know them a great deal of their learning, history (as they wanted it remembered) and culturally important beliefs, knowledge and mythology. To decide whether or not it is worthwhile to track down exact authorship of actual words is also a cultural judgment.

Some bits from Camacho López’s Semblanza (my translation):

Nezahualcóyotl (1402-1472), the poet king, had am intense, complex, even ambivalent life. He was a valiant warrior who participated in memorable adventures, epic battles and exalted passions. As a youth he was exiled from his kingdom, but even in the face of harsh challenges, he returned to reconquer it. He was involved in palace intrigues and regularly confronted conspiracies against him. As leader, he reorganized public institutions, formulated and imposed strict laws and he punished crimes harshly. At times, he revealed a cruel and sly character, but he could also be benevolent and generous. He surrounded himself with priests and wise advisors, and he knew how to make alliances. Other leaders sought his lucid advice.

[Here I omit for now the history of his expulsion and return to Texcoco]

When he was 29, following all the rites and traditional ceremonies, of the Mexicas and Toltecs, he was made sovereign of Texcoco. And thus began an age of stability and prosperity for the Texcocanos.

Netazhualcóyotl commenced to demonstrate his notable political abilities and his own governing vision. Throughout the kingdom he established order, and he encouraged prosperity. He reorganized the political and administrative structure, dividing the capital in six sectors…, delegating local government to the people who lived in those areas, and distributing different artisan and craft guilds through different neighborhoods. In order to guarantee loyalty to the State and t its customs, he issued a series of about eighty civil laws and penalties, some of which were too strict since infractions were punished in most cases by death.

He was a strict and impartial judge since all the laws applied equally to everyone regardless of social status or anything else [including whether they were personal favorites of his.]….

In a division of powers, he formed Councils of Public Instruction, War, Finance, Justice and Music, the last encompassing the subjects of science, art, literature, poetry and history. He also formed a Supreme Council made up of the 14 most important kings [meaning here, I think, leaders of those areas encompassed by Texcoco’s reach.]

The Builder

The government of Netzahualcootl didn’t only represent a model of government and administration, the king also undertook extraordinary architecture and construction projects in Texcoco and Tenochtitlán. He had a special interest in public works and beautification and because of this, he built damns, aquaducts, palaces, temples, monuments, paved roads and gardens.

Because of his aesthetic vision, he sought to harmonize the requirements of urban systems with the natural conditions of the environment….

Motivated by his ecological inclination, he preserved the waterfalls and trees, in his favorite places for relaxation, the woods of Tetzxutzinco and Chapultepec. He developed a system for directing water through the mountains and introduced irrigation. He sculpted ponds and swimming pools in rock formations, he planted flowers, propagated various animal species and ordered the construction of a zoological park and a botanical garden.

The famous gardens of Netzahaulcóyotl’s magnificent palace were compared in splendor to those of ancient Babylon. The impressive aquaduct he constructed ran from the forest of Chapultepec to bring fresh drinking water to the people of Tenochtitlán. At the request of his ally and equal, Moctezuma I [not the Moctezuma that Cortés defeated] he also conceived and brought to fruitiion a rock and wood dike to impede the floods which affected Tenochtitlan, and which furthermore served to impede the mixing of salt water into the fresh water of the big lake. [Tenochtitlán was constructed on the west side of Lake Texcoco, the biggest of the five connected lakes in the area.]

The splendor of the culture and the arts [of Texcoco]

During the reign of Nezahualcóyotl, Texcoco became a center of culture and a place in which flowered chroniclers, poets and creators. In order to institute the Council of Music….Netzahualcóyotl established an extraordinary archive where he brought together large collections of indigenous documents known as “painted books” [codices] which were composed of historical memories, chronologies, genealogies, laws, rituals, religious ceremonies, speeches, magic formulas, prophetic calendars and descriptions of territories and their attributes.

He also founded higher schools of learning for the study of history, astronomy, medicine, painting, philosophy, theology. He gave impetus to the development and perfection of poetry and the Nahuatl language.

Such was the intellectual and artistic progress of this ancient Mexican society before the Spanish conquest that its greatness, according to the historian Lorenzo Boturini, was equal to that of ancent Athens.

The Philosopher

In the rooms of his palace, Netzahualcóyotl brought together wise men, astronomers, priests, judges and other kings. With them, he dedicated himself to the creation and to the pleasure of music and poetry, and the discussion and discernment of transcendental themes of philosophy.

His extensive education permitted him to accumulate and assimilate the rich cosmovision inherited from his Toltec ancestors. Knowledgeable about divine matters, the Texcocano king developed, as did Quetzalcoátl, mystical thinking based on the notion of the existence of only one god called Tloque Nahuaque.

In his numerous songs and poems he expressed well his artistic, humanistic and metaphysical restlessness where can be found fundamental themes addressing the fate of human beings such as the permanence and fleeting nature of earthly life, the human questioning in the face of “the giver of life” and the possibility of glimpsing “the maker of himself.”

The Dark Side of the Poet

[There is here a summary of wars and exploits and of how Netzahualcóyotl conducted himself in these successful efforts.]

…[P]erhaps the most controversial and transgressive episode in his life is that which has to do with his passionate love affair. While there is no precise and certain record of his intimate life, it is presumed that until he reached a mature age, he had not found a true love in spite of being surrounded by some thirty concubines and more than a hundred sons and daughters. This caused great sadness because he still had to choose a legitimate wife who would provide a descendent for the throne.

Aztec emperors interested in perpetuating their alliance with Texcoco sent Netzahualcóyotl noble and beautiful maidens, but he kept rejecting them. However, finally, one of them, a maiden from Coatlichan, succeeded in awakening his interest and capturing him with her charms. When he met her, she was still too young to marry. So he put her in the care of his older brother who was to look after her and instruct her with the idea he would marry her in the future. But adversity stepped in. When Netzahualcóyotl sent for her to marry her, he received the news that his own nephew, ignorant of Netzahualcóyotl’s wishes, had taken her for his wife.

The failed marriage plunged Netzahalcóyotl into despair and in order to overcome it, he took to travelling. On one occasion, he arrived at the pueblo of Tepexpan where he was received by King Cuacuahtzin. This king, in order to honor his distinguished visitor, had a banquet prepared and ordered that his fiancée, the lovely Aztec maiden Azcalxochitizin attend.

At seeing Azalcalxochitzin, Netzahualcóyotl fell head over heals in love with her and forgot all his sadness. The king of Texcoco succumbed to his desire for this woman who was promised to Cuacuahtzin. Blinded by this unseemly passion, he hatched a trap to elimate his rival: he appointed Cuacuahtzin a general and ordered him to a war in which he would surely die since, at his age, he no longer possessed the strength and agility required for violent combat.

Although the noble Cuacuahtzin was aware of his hidden and fatal destiny, he complied with this unjust command. The plan unfolded just as Netzahualcóyotl had foreseen. Once he was killed, in 1444, the Texcocano king married the beautiful Azalcxochitzin, descendent of the noble Aztecs. She became the mother of Nezahualpili, successor to the throne of Texcoco from 1573 to 1515, a time in which he continued the great works undertaken by his father.

The Poet Who Transcended His Time

Netzahualcóyotl died in 1472…, he was seventy years old and had been king of Texcoco for 41 years.

In his lifetime, he enjoyed fame and prestige as a political leader, but also he had achieved broad recognition as a poet. At this point, 36 of his creations have been preserved, among them poems and songs written originally in Nahautl and gathered, after his death, in the collections of manuscripts of prehispanic poems/songs.

He was accustomed to recite his creations at festivities and in meetings with other kings, wise men and poets. In his poetry, philosophical thought more than lyricism prevails, but not because of a lack of emotion and beauty. The results are eloquent and original.

His elevated aesthetic sensibilities and his great love for nature not only are reflected in his urban and architectural work, but also in his poetic creations in which he meditates on themes such as divinity, the fleetingness of life, the inevitability of death, destiny and his own poetry.

Thus, he exalted the significance of poetic invention, gave tribute to flowers and springtime, formulated profound spiritual questions, assumed an inquisitive attitude in the face of divinity, reflected over the anguish of existence and lamented his own ephemeral nature, He celebrated the pleasures of life and friendship, sang the praises of warriors and heroes, speculated on “the beyond” and “the region of the dead” and finally, he made dismal prophecies.

Although Netzahualcóyotl did not catalog his own works, nor were they dated when they were created, it is possible to reconstruct the circumstances and the period in which some of his songs/poems were written: for example, The Song of Flight can pe placed around 1427; that called Remembrance of Heroes is subsequent to 1443 and one can deduce that he composed a song dedicated to Moctezuma Ilhuicamina, the Great, when he was sick, around 1469.

Furthermore it is possible to perceive in each of his songs and poems a subtle guiding thread which links together a sort of logical sequence and which confers a certain unity and totality which manages to reflect vividly the memorable Nahuatl world. Thanks to his poetic work, the spirit of Netzahualcóyotl has endured with all its wisdom and magnificence.

*****************************************************************************

On my path paved with good intentions is a the intention to put some translations of poems into English on the blog.

AND the image of Netzahualcóyotl from the Codex Mendoza is taken from a wonderful site from the Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas, Austin called Law in Mexico before the Conquest. Definitely worth looking at.

COMMENTS SHOULD BE EASIER TO MAKE NOW

2009-11-07T11:01:20-06:00

I didn't realize you couldn't just add one. Now you can.

Even More on LIght Rail and Transportation Issues for Coatepec

2009-11-07T10:27:33-06:00

Another friend said,

"I have a few questions regarding the rumor of a new libramiento. The traffic between Xalapa and Coatepec is not as dense as you might believe. Of the times that I have traveled the autopista, there wasn't that much traffic. The only times that I have experienced heavy traffice was a night in Coatepec from the glorieta to the zocalo. Can a light rail actually save money and energy? Where would the terminals for the light rail be located? Certainly not in the center of the towns nor anywhere near to those who wish to travel. In order to get to these terminals, people would have to either take a bus (or two) or a taxi or drive and find a parking place. Perhaps the cities would build parking lots for the travelers. Lastly, traveling 7 or 8 kilometers doesn't need a light rail system."

I responded,

About traffic problem causes in small-street Coatepec: I suspect the following without any real data to back me up,

1. A growing population which includes a significant number of people who are well off and accustomed to driving everywhere.

2. Truck traffic which is currently only permitted during certain hours.

3. Tourist traffic both to and through Coatepec to Xico. The road from Coatepec to Xico on holiday weekends is bumper to bumper.

Possibly some solutions:

1. garages at the perimeters for parking as you suggest.

2. At the moment there are little tourist trolleys. Expand them (and lower the price) so people could park and ride, though it would hardly be necessary for people visiting the El Centro unless you couldn't walk. There are buses to further out areas.

3. Actually, not light rail but some kind of trolley system might be good within Coatepec and even to Xico. There's actually a side road from the top of San Marcos to Xico which I think was originally (and still may be) intended as part of an expansion two four lanes of the Xico-San Marcos Road which could be used, as could the San Marcos bypass. There is land without housing from there pretty much to the outskirts of Coatepec. Anyone my age who lived in NYC knows that trolleys can run right down regular streets, in any event.

4. Some method of developing a bypass route that doesn't go right through the downtown-park area. Perhaps extending the road from Xico along the street at the bottom and then finding some route which might go right over the river and then meetup with the Las Trancas road. This could be for trucks and for through traffic. Though here, too, I am wondering if there aren't some planners who might consider jumping the whole truck-traffic issue by restoring freight trains for long distance hauling.

In the conversation I heard about a libramiento, the idea seemed to be to have it start at Zimpizahua and completely bypass all of Coatepec. This obviously would not be easy to get to, either, without some other assistance. The people were discussing a four lane highway and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. In my experience as a resident of San Antonio, build highways and they will come, so to speak. AND they do a lot to destroy downtowns and urban neighborhoods.

The libramiento project is apparently lagging because of slowness to acquire necessary properties. Thank God! Highway-building really should not be equated with progress, nor seen as necessary for progress. In this day and age, we really have to avoid lateral thinking.

More comments welcome! I'm opinionated but I listen.

More on Light Rail in Our Area

2009-11-02T14:52:54-06:00

A friend said that we could use both a rail system and a libramiento. He pointed out that the fare on a rail system is not likely to be as cheap as that for buses is currently...and that is already a bit high for many people. In addition, a libramiento (I hope with access from Coatepec itself) would allow for truck traffic.

Commuter Rail for Xalapa-Coatepec

2009-11-02T11:44:00-06:00

Traffic in Coatepec and between Coatepec has been building quite noticeably since we have lived here, not to mention before that. There is talk of another libramiento, from just before Coatepec to Xalapa to relieve some of the congestion.

NO, NO, NO, NO.

Why follow the US down the road (or highway) to even more dependence on cars and buses and to more consumption of gasoline and to more pollution and to the demand for yet again more highways and the continuing concretization of farmland and forests?

Now is the time for Mexico to go the way of really smart countries and go for RAIL: light rail and longer-range high-speed passenger rail. AND to restore rail as the route for cargo over long distances.

In our particular neck of the woods, rail would require far, far less land and therefore far, far less consumption of rich agricultural terrain and far less destruction of housing. Light rail can go right through an area with only minor disruption.

THIS would be worth pursuing!

Day of the Dead in our Neighborhood and Lots of Tamales

2009-11-02T10:24:54-06:00

Today is the last of the Day of the Dead celebrations and probably the most significant. Today is All Souls’ Day on the Christian calendar and it is the day to visit the graves of those whom you love who have died. Some of our neighbors, for instance, are going to Tlalchi so that Doña V. can visit her mother’s grave. Since the 28^th of October, we’ve been surrounded by celebration and cooking and making altars. Neighbors have brought us tamales and yesterday we visited friends in Xico who gave us tamales to bring home after we stuffed ourselves on them at their houses. Our fridge overfloweth with tamales. I might try to freeze a couple to bring back to the US for Thanksgiving.

I made a pile of all the ones we have left on our dining table for a photo:

Everyone has her own recipe. Tere steams hers in banana leaves and uses a light touch of polvo de aguacate in her bean tamales -- powder made from avocado leaves. Doña G in Xico uses more of the polvo and steams all her tamales in corn husks. We had bean and meat (separately) in tamales at her house yesterday and she gave us a bunch to take home. Then we went to visit Doña J and Don A. Doña J makes her tamales a bit differently. She is originally from the state of Guerrero and lived many years (over thirty) in Mexico City where she learned to beat the masa and manteca (lard) with a beater and without melting the lard, so the masa part of her tamales is fluffier, more like biscuits. She cooks her meat tamales with mole. She also gave us two kinds of sweet tamales, one with pineapple and one with coconut and then sent us home with a bunch. Last night when we got home, Blanca came over with more meat tamales from her mom. Haven't tried them, but Doña V is another excellent cook. I have qualms about my appointment in two weeks to check my cholesterol. It is very hard to stop eating tamales.

Doña G in Xico is very much a faithful Catholic. She really cannot understand people not having faith. It has comforted her over all her years and tragedies and hard times. She told us about a nephew who lived in the city who had grown to scorn the idea that the dead came to visit on El Día de Muertos. In a recent year he came home to visit at the time of the holiday and he ended up participating in them: making the altar, loading it with ofrendas, joining in all the visiting and finally preparing the graves of the dead in his family and spending the day at the panteón with them on November 2. Our friend said he decided the dead did come to visit.

This isn’t so strange, you know. As far as I know, people don’t believe the dead come in corporal form, but rather as their essences. They don’t eat the tamales, but enjoy the odors and the warmth of the food and the love of their families. And the families enjoy the warmth of the memories of their relatives and the warmth from their essences which intermingle with their own.

It really feels as if that’s what happens. It is a time of memories coming alive.

Jim put a picture of his parents and another of his mother on our altar and I put one of my grandparents. And memories and affection poured forth.

As our friends say, it is not a time of sadness, but of memory. Bittersweet, perhaps, but definitely sweet.

Here is a picture of our altar, a little droopy after four days. The saucepan in front contained incense.

Home altars can be very extravagant. Doña G's is absolutely beautiful, and I wish I had a picture. It was lush with flowers and greens and fruit, all artfully arranged. There are streets in Xico overflowing with flowers of all kinds, sold not only for the altars but for the graves where you don't have to be confined to the marigolds and patas de leones.

Carlos Pascual May Not Remain US Ambassador to Mexico

2009-10-31T10:39:53-05:00

Carlos Pascual is a very interesting and competent functionary, now currently Ambassador to Mexico. He has hardly had a chance to show himself as Ambassador to Mexico, but already is being, apparently, considered for head of USAID. I suspect if he is given some leeway, he would be a wonderful USAID director, and would give the agency an important boost and hopefully a more international perspective on problems.

Carlos Pascual, US Ambassador to Mexico on Narcotráfico

2009-10-31T10:23:36-05:00

According to El Proceso, 21 October:

The US Ambassador in Mexico, Carlos Pascal, warned today that Narcotráfico is a threat to the whole hemisphere since it control points of sale, demand and transport in the American Union (sic), Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and South America.

After presenting his credentials to President Felipe Calderón at the National Palace, the US diplomat said that in facing this situation, one must analyze the problem of narcotráfico on a hemispheric scale, get involved in the issues, invest resources and abilities, to deal with all these aspects of it.

He confirmed that in the US they have begun to tackle the subjects related to the demand for drugs, and at the same time they have begun to improve abilities to reduce the flow of arms and money to other countries including Mexico.

On the subject of corruption, he said, US authorities have undertaken the matter in a responsible and serious fashion and they have, to this end, have put in place systems to monitor customs officials and the police.

However, he admitted that it must be recognized that the narcotraficantes are always going to be "adjusting" their strategies, because o which it is necessary to review how to integrate the systems of both countries.

Furthermore, he spoke on behalf of a joint Mexican-US project on the border of Mexico and Guatemala to combat arms traffic.

In declaring that the Plan Mérida was a Mexican proposal, Ambassador Pascual said the initiative had been important for regional cooperation on matters of secrity.

He saidthat possible at the end of the year or in January, US planes and helicopters would arrive In Mexico as part of the equipment agreed to en Plan Mérida.

On the issue of migratión, he noted that it was a matter which the Obama administration intended to address, although at present the priority was reform of health care.

Pressing the Flesh

2009-10-30T12:18:59-05:00

I'm hardly a reader of the garbage mass-congregation media-star religious leaders on the right put out, but Rabbi David Wolpe, although leader of a large congregation on Wiltshire Boulevard in Westwood, in suburban Los Angeles and a frequent guest in the media, is cut from different cloth. (I have, I know, revealed a bunch of prejudices.) He is truly wise and learned. Below is his most recent Off the Pulpit post, perhaps not his best one, but one that interested me because in the tangential way my mind works, I was led back to yesterday in our Spanish class, where we started talking about Mexicanidad, or Mexican nature/identity. That led me to thinking about differences between living where I do and living where I did in the US, most recently for eight years in San Antonio.

Below, Rabbi Wolpe talks about the value of teaching with a teacher present (especially a wise one) vs.reading his lessons long distance and what you learn about the teachers themselves and not just their scholarship. I agree with him.

Roles Greater
than Rules

BY RABBI DAVID WOLPE

Judaism so treasures words one might think you could get a righteous person out of a book. Yet beginning with the bible Judaism taught that laws come to life in people. Role models speak louder than rules.

Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary Solomon Schechter famously explained to the incoming student and future Chancellor Louis Finkelstein that the purpose of coming to the seminary was not to learn a fact or law; he could learn those elsewhere. The purpose was to study with great men. Speaking of his years as a student my father told me far less about what he learned than about the people with whom he learned. They were not perfect, but they were passionate, learned, marvelously eccentric and they brought the tradition to life.

To the extent that the Internet and the proliferation of long distance learning deprive us of being in the presence of charismatic, kind, scholarly people, it will be a tremendous loss. When a Hasid said that he traveled miles just to see how his master tied his shoes, he was expressing this beautiful idea. What we learn from a great teacher cannot be put into a book, because it is in a look, an inflection, a quirk of personality or a tossed off comment. The greatest human lessons are found in the power of presence.

So now as is its habit, my mind leapt kind of obliquely to thinking about human contact in my current life, and not just or even with sages (except for Jim). Here we have much more contact. We can't just hide in our house and hop in our car and go to a mall or to our cubbies at work, or only shop among strangers...or we could, actually, if we lived in some of the newer, more prosperous fraccionamientos in Xalapa, although even in that case, life is different: houses tend to be right next to or at least near each other, people are out on the streets, etc. etc. etc. I think the actual flesh-and-blood kind of human contact part of life is something a lot of Estadounidenses are badly deprived of (but certainly not all as my friends in the Northampton, MA area could testify to, or my kids who live in Boston's North End). In much of the US we don't brush against each other as we walk down streets, we don't have the water man bringing us our garafones every few days, we don't have neighbors ringing our bells to ask questions or use the phone or invite us somewhere (often done in person since most people in our Colonia at least don't have phones); We don't have kids coming by to use the computer or to ask if we've put up our altar for Día de Muertos yet. We don't have people knocking on the door to sell home-made tamales or chairs or lottery tickets or to ask for a faena for some local project; we don't walk across the street to buy whatever we've run out of at the little tienda or down the street to buy hand-made tortillas. We don't just stop in the street VERY frequently to exchange news with neighbors to the extent that we are almost always a bit late for appointments. In our colonia, on the other hand, if someone tells us, for instance, that someone's house has exploded because of a gas leak, we recognize who the person is, and we recognize the person's family and we know them well enough to at least have been saying buenos días over time....Everything is just more personal. Flesh is real, if you will, contact often unplanned, without make-up, and rarely with strangers. Of course in our Colonia people experience the worst of each other as well as the best. This is good. We can't step over the neighborhood drunks because we know them. They are flesh and blood. Some of the people are grasping and mean but overwhelmingly, most are not. We have a few very, very old women in our colonia, tiny and thin, more like feathers or wraiths. They walk here and there slowly and carefully. One of them lives in a tiny two-story house overlooking the river across from the main part of the colonia. We've seen people helping her fix it up. The woman in the produce market gives these old women less-than-prime vegetables, but they are usable and free, and the transaction is dignified.

We are outsiders and always will be to some extent. But as the life of the community seeps into our being, we also feel more and more like this is home.

Dia de Muertos en Nuestra Vida/Day of the Dead in Our Lives

2009-10-29T17:37:58-05:00

I am working up a post which I hope will give you some substantial information on The Day of the Dead. MEANWHILE, Day of the Dead stuff has already started, not only in our Colonia, but in the wider community.

Yesterday in my painting class (in a tienda on a corner of Campillo in Coatepec) an old woman came in selling the gorgeous big golden marigolds that are universal for the Day of the Dead and big purple flowers which in the US I think are called coxcomb but here are called Pata del león -- lion's paw. She carried them in a shawl. I bought some of the latter, our maestra bought a lot of both. There is a standard price, I think: ten pesos, or maybe $.70 a (big) bunch for either kind of flower.

Yesterday evening in my Spanish class in el Museo, La Casa de María Enriqueta in Coatepec, we talked a bit about faith and identity because obviously the Day of the Dead has religious roots. Our maestra who is an absolutely delightful and very intelligent and articulate woman from Coatepec said that nowadays, people picked and chose what they wanted to observe in Catholicism, but that Dia de Muertos is very important for evryone: a kind of cafeteria-style Catholicism, perhaps, but nonetheless an integral part of Mexican culture.

In our Colonia, which is neither very rich nor very sophisticated, for many it is a kind of loose Catholicism that prevails as well. And yet Día de Muertos captivates everyone, and our neighbors are very anxious that we, too, have an altar. Eduardo, the son of an amiga, brought us a basket for an altar in which we could put dulces. So Jim put a picture of his parents in our nicho, and Tere put the patas del león in a vase and found another picture of Jim's mother. Today, I brought the golden marigolds home, and Tere decided she had enough to go whole-hog. I will post a pictue when she is done.

More to come...