My God! So this is Mexico

First impressions of life in Mexico. A letter from Oaxaca

George Salzman
Quetzalcóatl No. 220 int 2
Centro C.P. 68000
Oaxaca, Oax. Mexico
    e-mail: george.salzman@umb.edu
    tel (from U.S.): 011-52-951-48242
    http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/
Saturday, September 25,1999
Hello Erica and Mark,
My call to you last night was the first one we made using our new telephone in our apartment. What a bizarre experience this is turning out to be so far! Nancy and I got to the Oaxaca City airport late on the night of Sept 1, quite late because soon after leaving Mexico City on our Mexicana flight, the port engine began complaining with uncomfortably strong vibrations. It was our good luck that the pilot decided to return to Mexico City instead of trying to tough it out to Oaxaca. They then used a different plane. Happily our reservation at the hotel was not cancelled because of our late arrival. Then, with more great good luck we found a place the very next day, to be available in 2 weeks, and were able to move out of the hotel and into our new quarters on the 13th. The landlady and her husband are avid small-time capitalists who work like crazy on the property, located in the old historic district in the center of the city, like Nancy's beloved Beacon Hill.
We are moments from the mammoth Santo Domingo cathedral, a dominant landmark to which is connected a museum and a huge outdoor cactus garden (more ranch- than garden-size) still under development. I'm enclosing a postcard of the church, the interior of which is ornate with gold beyond reason.
About the telephone line, which on Sept 3rd we were promised would be put in on the 14th, and for the installation of which we pay 1,904 pesos (a little over $200), finally yesterday, after more unfilfulled promises, it happened. Not too bad, 10 days late, in this mañana country. Wednesday morning we had started out to walk to the phone company office to try to press for the promised line. We were no more than 30 yards from the entry gate to our shared patio when we heard a bell ringing. Here garbage pickup, water delivery, and gas delivery are by trucks which churn their diesel-enshrouded way up and down the principal, hilly streets. Nobody knows exactly when they come, or even what days they come, or how many days a week. So the ardent housekeeper is ever alert for the clanging bells or dragging chains with which they each announce their nearness, and which are, at least to me, not distinguishable one from the other. When Nancy's keen ear, and even keener imagination, picked up the sound, from the opposite direction to that in which we were walking, we ran back to the other corner to look down the street, and if we saw it to be the garbage truck, the jogger would run back to the apartment, grab the plastic bags in which we tie up the daily refuse, run back to the street corner, and either toss it into the truck's rear hopper or, if the truck was still laboring up the hill, set the bags on the narrow sidewalk for pickup. Nancy says the sight of all the people running with their garbage bags at the sound of the bell reminds her of those little Swiss and German clocks where the small figures pop out of the doors when the chimes ring.
Well, whatever the sound was, it wasn't coming from one of the three essential trucks. But pushing a roughly-made two-wheel dolly on which he had tied two small dressers, a local carpintero (carpenter) was laboring up the street named Porfirio Díaz. Nancy eyed the dressers, which she thought would be good for the bedroom, and the process began. We weren't sure they would fit in the space where she wanted them, so I ran back to the apartment, not for the garbage this time, but for a piece of cord with which I would measure the wall space and come back to compare it to the dressers. The man did not understand just what was going on in the gringa's mind. He immediately offered her a dresser for 350 pesos (about $38). But she wasn't sure she wanted to buy them, until she knew if they'd fit. Then, when he understood she was thinking about both of them, but was unsure, the poor man quickly offered both for 600 pesos, dropping 100 pesos in his eagerness to make the sale. I ran back with the measurement before he had time to drop the price any more; it was OK, and we bought them for that price (about $65). One more painful episode to remind me how priviledged I am (along with most of the gringos here), and how poverty-stricken are so many of the people who beseech us with their teeth-shy smiling faces to part with some of our money. Nancy has a much keener sense of the human dynamic than I do, and gets pleasure out of entering into the bargaining that is integral to the entire informal economy. I keep thinking how little the money they are asking in exchange for their labor means to me, and what it means to them, and so for me there's no pleasure in bargaining with them. On the one hand there's the whole tourist industry here, raking it in from rich tourists (one hotel charges $200 a night), and on the other all the impoverished people just trying to keep alive. In the middle are the striving and partially successful entrepreneurs, like our landlady and her husband. Our apartment, consisting of a bedroom, a study/bedroom, a study/living room and bathroom and kitchen, is 2,600 pesos for the first 6 months and 7% more for the next 6 months (a bit over $280/month at first and then a bit over $300/month), including utilities--electricity, and gas for hot water and the stove; there's no heating of the apartment, nor hot water in the kitchen. The place is modestly furnished; we're buying some additional items.
So here we are in our Tevas, at which people gaze, because here people who can afford to buy shoes wear shoes, or else stylish and expensive sandals. Our Tevas most resemble the rough leather sandals worn by many of the indigenous people, except that ours are evidently much more carefully fabricated, and more costly, and incidentally, made in China.
Yesterday morning at 9:15, much to my amazement, a man from the telephone company was scrambling on the roof with wires. Credulosity paid off; each time they promised the coming installation mañana our hopes soared with wishful belief, and then it happened. Now we can get serious about choosing an internet service provider. So, perhaps this letter will come well after a brief e-mail announcement that I'm back on line. We're feeling a little isolated from the world at large. We bought a radio, but so far it hasn't helped much. Nancy's comprehension is considerably better than mine, but even so she's not able to get very much information from the news reports. We are getting Jornada, a good daily paper out of Mexico City, several times weekly, and that helps, but for now there's no substitute for being able to read in English. So the internet will really be welcome.
Shortly after the line installation started, Nancy went out to the local market to haggle over the price of chicken -- It reminded me of my early years in Brooklyn during the Great Depression when we moved in with my mother's parents in Flatbush. All the butchers, kosher and non-kosher on Flatbush Avenue, cleaning chickens, the pungent smell of scorched feathers from singeing off the small once-downey feathers that remained after plucking, naked chickens hanging by their feet in the storefront windows, an economy of small shopowners, pushcart peddlers, stalls with every variety of item for sale, small urchins and pregnant women in abundance everywhere.
And on the roof the man stringing the telephone wire was suddenly singing, a somewhat plaintive, romantic song to accompany his sweat in the by-then well-risen equatorial sun (we're at about 17° north latitude). In the market fresh produce (and meats?) come on Tuesdays and Fridays. Of course we've both had our early bouts of turista. Hopefully our digestive systems are by now beginning to adjust to the local bacteria and we will not continue precipitously losing weight. These first impressions are so forceful that I ought to try to write more before I become accustomed to everything and their vividness fades, but I guess I'll leave that to Nancy and put my efforts into my more overt political ambitions.
I've begun again working on the translation of a paper, Comunalidad y Autonomía (Communality and Autonomy), determined now to try to push it through finally, three years after I first got it. We met a young American couple working with a faith-based group on EDUCA, an educational project that focuses on poor urban areas. They too are very interested in questions of communality (I believe) and are completely bilingual, having spent, if I recall correctly, six years in Guatemala before they had children. I think Nancy will undertake to do some translating for the EDUCA project, and I'm hopeful Joe and Jeanne, our new friends, will prove sufficiently interested that I may get a little help from them on my translation.
This is really chile heaven. On our second or third day here we were walking along one of the market streets and saw several people eating grapefruit sections in little plastic dishes with plastic forks. Nancy had to try it, so at the next sidewalk vendor who had them she got a dish. The woman doused them with chile powder from a "salt" shaker, then spooned some salsa on top, and finally squeezed lime juice on it before inserting the fork and handing it over. It was delicious! Of course we're eating plenty of beans and tortillas. Nancy is proving to be quite adventurous -- she's doing the food shopping and preparation and I do the kitchen patrol. All the fruits and vegetables go into a large bowl filled with bottled water into which Microdyne (a trade name) is added to kill bacteria, molds, and parasites. After 10 minutes they are removed and allowed to air dry. And I'm scrupulous about washing all the cooking and eating utensils with a paste-soap, throughly rinsing them with tap water and then setting them out to air dry. It's a division of labor that seems to suit us. We're also eating out one meal a day. When Nancy returned from the market yesterday our kitchen table looked like a wonderful illustration from a Mexican cookbook. So much for our daily life, for now. My love to you, and of course to the children,

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