long post to make up for mis faltas

Sorry for the long time, no update thing. Anyways, I've done a lot of cool stuff since the "party weekend." Don't worry, I haven't been recovering this whole time. I have been busy, however.

During carnival, which is like when the city goes crazy and is a big party for a week and school is canceled, I actually took the opportunity to go to San Cristobal de las Casas, which is in Chiapas. The city is considered a Pueblo Mágico, and I could not agree more. I went to visit my friend from Michigan, Andrea, who had just moved there and I met her roommates, who are also really nice. She had just gotten a job at a Lebanese restaurant, so I mostly explored the city myself on foot during the day. It was a lot of fun - there are lots of churches which are arquitecturally unique to Chiapas due to the mixing of indigenous and christian religions.

There is a great artisan market there - and it's dirt cheap! A lot of Chiapaneca women come to Mérida to sell stuff and probably do with moderate success. However, the journey about doubles the price. In San Cristobal I was able to pick up a pretty nice leather messanger bag and knitted wool hoodie for about $400 MX. Both seem like they're super high quality to me. In Mérida, the same bag is often hawked for $550 MX, and not from actual street vendors but from tourist-oriented souvenir shops. The fact that I haven't seen many Chiapaneca women selling them in Mérida tells me one thing - that people go down to Chiapas, buy the goods, and then bring them back up here to sell at 2-3 times the price down there.

When I was in San Cristobal, I felt guilty haggling with people. The fact is that the differene in price I got on the items wasn't that much to me, and even the asking price was a pretty good deal for what I was buying. I never pushed very hard, and mostly negotiated just to go through the motions. Buying stuff in bulk, I imagine that the souvenir middlemen of Mérida make a killing. Needless to say, not to the benefit of the actual producers of the products.

I'm having one of those "ohmigod the structure of the world economy really needs to change in order for people to have equal opportunities in life" moments. Since this trip, I've been on the lookout for manifestations of structural inequality, both the causes and the consequences. There are a quite a few when one is looking.

For example - the women who come to Mérida from Chiapas to sell stuff. Why do they do it? I guess I should ask them to really know - maybe it's some sort of employment circuit that every member of some sort of artisnal co-op does every so often. I'm guessing not, though. That means shouldering the cost of travel, lodging, moving a lot of products with you, and normally bringing children. I'm sure they've perfected their system of doing this, but how much can it benefit them? Even if it does result in economic benefits, it undoubtedly perpetuates structural inequality. For example, the children aren't in school. By the time they grow up, they'll be ready to work in the artisnal market, but won't have many other opportunities. However, the number of kids which come of age into this situation can only be increasing - as I said, the women in Mérida often have 5 kids with them, and the same was true in San Cristobal.

Of course, the Mexican educational system is no gaurantee of greater opportunities either. Again, I haven't done actual research into this, but it seems like every so often you have to take a test which determines if you keep going to school. If you fail, you're out of the system. I've been told that the Mexican educational system is incredibly corrupt, and while this testing process may be a great way to trim budgets, it does little to give opportunity to those who don't show "potential." Talk about high pressure and psychological assault. A friend of mine who works making copies in the facultad is pretty much done with school and working a dead end job. I'm really curious how much she makes but I'm afraid of asking. Again, what else is there to do when the system throws you out on the street? I really think someone needs to write a book like "Nickeled and Dimed" but about other countries and structural inequality. Maybe I will try to do this later.

But back to what I did in San Cristobal. One day I went to San Jan Chomula, where I did not hear a single person speaking Spanish unless I first spoke it to them. Everyone was speaking an indigenous language, the name of which I can't remember. I couldn't take my camera there, because photo taking has a bad rap - of stealing the subject's soul. Apparently tourists have been badly beaten because of this. Anyways, the carnival was pretty interesting. Men wore specific costumes and took smallish bulls around the plaza and controlled them with ropes held by about 20 men in total. Other men tried to jump on the bull and ride it. They were not costumed, and most appeared to be teenagers or early 20 somethings, or moderately intoxicated. Women pretty much just watched. So did I, for about three hours. It was very entertaining, and I didn't even see anyone get seriously hurt!

Later that night, Andrea and her roommates and I met a really nice, although probably quite psychologically insecure middle aged American tourist named Edward. He took us out to drinks at the Lebanese restaurant where Andrea was working. I drank about 6 Araks, which is a Turkish anise liquor. Yum! Ed's treat - double yum! Afterwards we went to some other places and kept partying and Ed went home. I got tired of him pretty early in the evening when his inner lecher emerged. He said he wanted to come to this canyon with us, but thankfully didn't answer his phone in the morning.

The following day, I dragged Andrea out of bed kicking and screaming (not literally, but it took a little work on my part) to go to the Cañon del Sumidero, a really cool canyon close to San Cristobal with rock faces up to 1 km. It was truly breathtaking; one view from within the canyon is the official seal of the state of Chiapas. There were animals, too. A few times we passed by an entrapment - my unofficial word for where currents take floating trash never to escape. Of the maybe twelve people in our boat, Andrea and I were the only ones who seemed to acknowledge the trash.

Back in Mérida, I rested for quite a while - I couldn't sleep during the overnight 14 hour bus ride back. Bummer. However, later in the weekend I went to Celestún, where there is a cool ecological reserve with about 15,000 flamingoes you can observe from a moderate distance. Even though I was super tired still, I figured it was worth it to go when friends were going rather than trying to go later and maybe having to pay a lot more for the boat. Interesting fact - the flamingoes go there to eat mosquito larvae. Imagine how many larvae there must be to feed that many flamingoes. Now imagine what that might smell like. Yuck. But it was still worth it. On both boat trips, the wind rushing through my hair and around my body was sufficient to wake me up.

Since then there has been little of note, especially because I've been so busy with homework and school actually. Test tomorrow, presentation Tuesday, and I need to think about papers now, too. The one thing I would mention is that today I went to see this Picasso exhibit in the centro cultural here. It was SO great and confirmed Picasso as one of my favorite artists ever. I saw a lot of other ideas coming from him through these drawings that don't really make it into big museums. The works were pretty much all drawings or black and white paintings spanning a lot of his career, from 1905 to 1955ish. The cool thing was seeing him approach the same subject in different ways and in varying degrees of what you'd think of abstractness and bodily distortion. If you ever get the chance to see work by Picasso that's not his most famous stuff, I'd highly recommend it.

The crazy thing, though: every room in this exhibit was guarded by multiple police wearing bulletproof vests and carying either shotguns or automatic weapons. I wonder what they think their guns are protecting...? Like, if someone is going to destroy the art, will a barrage of bullets in their direction actually do less damage? I doubt it. I thought the metal detector and bag inspection were sufficient.

Now, back to work.

Note: something weird is afoot with blogger and I can't post any photos or links right now. Maybe I will do that later in either this or another post.