1 post tagged “appo”
Aqui estamos en Oaxaca. The last time we were here was for the wedding of one of the youngest of thirteen siblings. She was beautiful, both the bride and the groom in creamy white manta, her thick brown hair falling heavy over her shoulder. The heat was on then, sometime in early Spring, and the white tent shaded us and fluttered in the well-needed breeze; I saw a single butterfly floating here and there among the multitudes of family, friends, and food.
Now we have returned for the weekend to attend the quince años birthday party of my host-mom's niece. Quince años here in Mexico is the fifteenth birthday of a girl, somewhat equivalent in celebration to our "sweet sixteen," but here it is usually an expensive prom-like experience, a big to-do. Usually, there are padrinos or benefactors for every amenity you can think of - from the expensive ballroom gown to the dj, someone is chipping in. The birthday girl, called la quinceañera It is very common to see huge signs on event halls that say XV AÑOS, advertising their space for rent. You know something is of cultural significance when they have entire magazines devoted to this one thing. And there are many of this event. It used to be more like a coming out party, where the girl was considered eligible to be married. Nowadays it's more like an opportunity to dress up and party, to celebrate youth; not to mention lots of gifts and cash for the quinceañera. This quince años wasn't quite such a big show, but it was still an important moment for the celebrant.
There are about 30 people all sleeping in one house. We were lucky enough to have gotten here early and reserved beds, but most are on the floor in sleeping bags or on mats. The house belongs to my host-mom's brother and his wife. They have three pretty daughters, one of whom is the birthday girl.
The ride down was excrutiating, but is also one of the most gorgeous trips. It's worth the 8 hours from the City just to see the scenery. For one, I had gotten no sleep the night before our departure due to the devil in the form of a mosquito buzzing around my ears all night. So when my alarm went off at 4:45 a.m. (our schedule take-off time), I'd maybe gotten 2 or 3 hours of sleep. I rode in the back and slept a car-rider's sleep: Nodding and feeling totally exhausted, my eyes dipping until gravity or simple discomfort had me wake up with a start and then again nodding, my head bobbing into dreams and...up we go again. For several hours that is just what I did. I woke up in the state of Puebla. They picked a great time to go because there was little traffic and we sped along watching both sides of the highway go by - pure grassy plains and beyond that blue mountains and after that more shadows of more mountains.
After a while I was finally awake, and we passed through the clouds and down curvy roads hugging the edges of fantastic steep cliffs as we entered the state of Oaxaca. Looking around me I couldn't help thinking of pictures I'd seend of the red sands of Mars, or some science fiction writer's invention of a planet called "Org:" the rockiness, the creeping fog, the total absence of human life around the strange abundant shrubery and cacti so foreign to me having grown up in the deciduous forests of the northeast.
As we passed through the martian landscape, my host-sister blasted cumbia and viejitos (old Mexican favorites) that everyone in the car could sing along to. I was really tired, but not about to try and sleep in and out again with the bumps waking me up and then lulling me off to a short-lived nap. I settled down and plunged into "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. Instant new favorite book.
We finally arrived about 1 p.m., famished. The wonderful uphill curve of a ride going into Oaxaca gives a view of the sprawling city nestled in a tree-filled valley, and a welcome greeting spelled out HOLLYWOOD style in stones on a hill (I think it is a Benito Juarez quote that ends in the word "Peace" except that recently that "PAZ" was blown up by none other than Ulises Ruiz the governor that a huge movement of violent protestors has been trying to oust for months.)
Oaxaca has been the sight of much political unrest in the past year. "Viva APPO," "Muere URO," "PODER AL PUEBLO," etc. are grafitied all over the city.
In the evening of the first night, the family took us to a huge salon buffet, complete with stunning mountain vistas and more other-worldly fog. When we first came in it appeared to be a typical family-style Mexican buffet: stone pots filled with traditional soups and stews, steaming hand-made tortillas on the table, always excellent service, Mariachis serenading tables, Jesus and Mary framed on the walls smiling, with affectionate yet vapid looks in their eyes.
We got half-way through our meal when out of no where one of the tables on the open air porch began to make a fuss, clapping, cheering, and then starting in unison to chant "Todos somos la APPO," "We are all the APPO" over and over again in crescendo. Everyone turned and looked, the bored waiters leaned against walls and listened.
I look around at their table. The "activists" as they are so titled look like none other than your local mother and father, hard-workers, every day folks. One man gets up in the middle of the fuss, a bit on the drink, and starts to give a speech glass in hand. "I've taught students all my life," he says. "We need to remember it is more than just teaching. We are formers," he says, "We are shaping them." The APPO ( Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca) originated in a teacher's strike at the autonomous university of Oaxaca, but umbrellaed out to include various causes and eventually names itself as a group for the people by the people, calling for "solucion o revolucion," and drawing attention to various oppressed groups in the region.
So I was pretty excited at that point. For me to see members of this teachers movement that overnight became an upheaval of citizen groups and underground revolutionaries is like a tween seeing Lindsay Lohan in a supermarket.
In any case, I went to get coffee a little closer to where they were to see if I could hear any more of what the white-hired man was saying. It appeared they were celebrating something but I didn't catch too much of the rest.
We eat our dinner, they finish up. Slowly they leave one by one. I watch one woman leave, a sturdy long-skirted Mexicana with a fierce determined look to her. I am amazed by human commitment in the face of tremendous odds and horrible possibilities. Maybe that's why I love Christianity and martyrs. But it's also why I love huge families in humble circumstances and movements with long acronyms that end up incorporating every cause for miles around.
I cheer for the underdog because chance is not on his side, but if he does come through, everyone somehow knows that a miracle has happened.
Oaxaca has a lovely downtown called Santo Domingo, named as such for a huge church that houses a national museum and is surrounded by a large plaza and a city of cobblestone streets and colorful buildings from the Spanish occupation. It's a dreamy little district with dim streetlights, quiet places to dine or look at art, and usually live music sifting into the street somewhere. I've been lucky enough now to have twice run into live, loud Mexican parties in the streets of Santo Domingo. I don't doubt it's quite regular for the locals. I was trying to explain to my sister that she had missed out on the night when she stayed at home to break into her load of homework. I told her what I'm about to tell you:
"We saw a wedding coming out of the church and they had huge dolls of the bride and groom and we went dancing down the street, all the way down the main road and..."
"Yea, Pili, I know. I live here."
"Oh, that's right, I'd forgotten for a moment that we're not all experiencing this for the very first time..."
But for me it is an exciting and magical moment. Tonight my dance partner was Erica, the youngest of the thirteen siblings, and the only one with down's syndrome. She has never learned what most Presbyterians here believe which is that dancing is not Kosher. She, like me, welcomes the uncontrollable urge to bop, stamp feet, swing hips wide, and clap hands to any marching band mariachi that she hears. I pretended to have a bustling skirt on, swishing it from side to side; she stomped out the beat, snapping her fingers to the cymbal clap. We had a blast as it started to drizzle.
Erica can be quite sensitive and her mood can be sunshine one moment and change rapidly to clouds the next. Occasionally if her nerves are ripe, one can say something with the slightest sarcasm or accusatory voice and she just about breaks down like a little girl. I'm the type of person who spoils girls and boys like Erica because where most of her family just says "Oh Erica, you always react this way," I am relatively new with her and so I give her a great big hug and kiss her and kid with her when she's down. "Don't cry," I tell her. She gets all the attention she wants from me.
Tonight before we had out dance-off, Erica had a tift with her cousin Esau and the tears started. That's when I first grabbed her and we started walking side by side, my arm locked around her and eventually twirling her around in the late afternoon, the gray sky poised to explode rain on us. She forgot about the fight. I forgot about whatever else I had going on in the mind that day. And that's the point. Yet more evidence that dancing is so vital to the spirit and its house that is the body. A time for all things, and sometimes it is time to dance.
