The Blue Monkey Review

My recent trip to Cuentepec, the indigenous Pueblo near Cuernavaca, was thanks to a class that I sat in on last week. The teacher, Gerardo, has close ties with indigenous people in the region and his concern for the continuation of their culture comes through in his teaching and in the projects he has begun with local people to deal with material issues. For instance, people in Cuentepec traditionally put waste into the ground and it recycled naturally, Gerardo told us. But they don´t know how to deal with plastic, which does not degrade but simply collects everywhere as trash. He is working to find a way to consolidate all the plastic and have it taken away.

Gerardo believes the indigenous in Mexico should become autochthonous, living separately from the rest of Mexican society, ordering their own lives, following their own laws, practicing their own religions. I certainly share a deep concern for the plight of indigenous people and recognize that they have needs that are both material and cultural. In Cuentepec, water arrives only once a week. The doctor, when he is there, is only there in the mornings. The possibilities for education or for any kind of material abundance are all depressingly limited.

And, indigenous cultures in almost every part of the world confront world movements that have little regard for particular cosmovisions. In another posting I mentioned the prevalence and apparent success of evangelical churches in El Petén. There is much less evidence of evangelicalism in Cuernavaca, though the carefuyl observer can find Protestant churches in various parts of town. Yesterday, on a walk from my house into the center of town (normally half an hour but more when, like yesterday, I take a wrong turn) I passed two charismatic churches and spent a little time peaking in on the services. In total they included perhaps forty people, so hardly seemed like a threat to Mexican culture or to the Catholic church here. But in those areas where evangelical churches have prospered, indigenous cultures face more of a threat. They have little concern for indigenous practices and make no accommodations for rituals or beliefs that they view as pagan or demonic.

Like most liberal intellectuals, however, I have trouble making up my mind about this issue (or, these issues). I think religious freedom is a fundamental human right, and should protect people who wish to change their belief system and practices, and should equally protect from coercion those who wish to continue in a system of belief. And on the question of separatism, while I find the notion attractive in some ways I can´t quite see how it would work. Only the most oppressive poverty or the most fanatic belief systems have so far provided protection against world capitalism and the consumer marketplace.

When it comes to Mexican culture, I generally try to use my fellow director Alvaro Ramirez as a reality check. He truly understands both U.S. and Mexican culture. Born in Mexico and raised in both Mexico and in industrial Ohio, he manages to understand and to navigate the competing intellectual currents. ¨Cultures change through contact with other cultures,¨ he said over cena recently. You can´t protect cultures from change unless ¨you set them up like leper colonies.¨

Alvaro certainly sympathizes with the problems faced by indigenous, and readily rains curses on government programs that claim to offer help to isolated pueblos and indigenous groups but really only exploit them for their support or for world publicity. ¨The minister of education wants to put computers into every school in the country. How is that going to help when they will go into rooms that are dismal, when the electricity goes on and off all the time, when there´s not support when the computer breaks down? Why not launch a program that will improve teaching? That would really make a difference.¨ (my paraphrase)

If there is any hope for the indigenous, it is their attraction for the tourist industry. If you look at a poster advertising for Mexican tours, Alvaro says, ¨you don´t see an ordinary Mexican young person in Levis with GAP shirts and blond-dyed hair. You see an Indian.¨ The indigenous should take advantage of this much more self-consciously. ¨They should set up Potemkin villages, where you can go see how people lived in 1491, with original dress and religious rituals (without the human sacrifice, of course) and then after the tourists leave they can put on their real clothes and drive to comfortable home.¨

Posted by at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

¨It is in these blocks that the prostitution begins,¨ Felipe told me. I admit, I was so distracted with everything else going on around me that I would not have noticed, not right away, that one or more young women loitered on every street corner. They stood there so casually that if I´d seen them I would have assumed they were waiting for their boyfriends, or their mothers.

Felipe Hidalgo, who teaches at Universidad Internacional, has always gone out of his way during the last three Januarys to show me something about Mexico. I´m always aware that Cuernavaca, the excursions we take from there, provide a very thin slice of Mexico. When Felipe offered to show me the ¨real¨ Mexico, I was ready.

So, we had spent the morning on a tour of Mexico City. For lunch we ate at Casino de España, a beautiful restaurant with a small company of waiters ready for the rush of diners who arrive mid-afternoon for comida. Only after lunch did we plunge into the crowded streets near the Palacio Nacional and the heart of Mexico City.

We moved through streets packed with people buying goods for sale on the sidewalks. This looked a little like the streets near the green market, in Nikšić, except the goods were far more abundant and probably of less quality, and the crowds we passed on those streets probably included more people than the whole city of Nikšić, and the people were all Mexican. So, I guess thee wasn´t much of a resemblance.

After making our way through the marketplace and then into prostitute territory, and crossing a park filled with the sad stories of homeless and drug addicted men, we arrived at La Merced, the largest mercado in Latin America. Like other mercados I´ve seen, it offered everything and offered it in abundance. Every fruit and vegetable known to the Mexican table could be found, piled high and available at prices even people living on the minimum Mexican wage could afford. It resembled the mercado in Cuernavaca, but dwarfed it in size.

I´d visited another part of Mexico the day before. A small grup of students and faculty visited the village of Cuentepec, where the people still speak the Nahua language. Spanish is their second language. One family, who brought us into their home showed us how they made the clay that allowed them to make the clay pots and figurines they sold. Since they have no oven to bake their products in, they set them on the ground and burn them using a mixture of local plants and dried excrement. They made their tortillas by scraping kernels from the corn and grinding them with stone matates, then mixing and baking them, all with the tools that Meso-Americans have used for thousands of years.

We entered other homes, usually compounds of buildings. The materials for building included adobe, brick, concrete, and stone, and we often saw walls of the various materials next to one another. Many of the roofs, especially of the smaller buildings, were corrugated sheets of asbestos. Most people there have animals and it seems that everyone depends on agriculture in some form. But how they manage, how they live was impossible for me to imagine.

Posted by at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Right around Thanksgiving I received an e-mail with the subject heading ¨Worldwide Caution.¨ I thought it must be more spam, but checked it anyway. In fact, it was a message from the United States Department of State, by way of the American Embassy in Podgorica, Montenegro. The topic was the Avian flu, and what Americans abroad should do to prepare for an outbreak.

I suppose I don´t take this particular threat too seriously. SciDev.Net, however, notes that ¨the H5N1 bird flu virus has spread worldwide, and the influenza pandemic it could trigger will hit developing countries the hardest.¨ Keeping this threat in mind, and knowing what a thrillseeker I am, I suspect that my response to a local outbreak in a region where I was travelling would be to run like mad to the nearest international airport. But that brings us to one of the points of the caution from the State Department: ¨commercial airlines might drastically curtail or even cease operations.¨

So, I could be stuck. Not a pretty picture for those travelling. But, for those living abroad the caution suggests, in fact recommends, ¨sheltering in place¨ AKA ¨social distancing.¨ In other words, hunker down and quarantine the rest of the world around you. ¨Americans abroad should evaluate their situation and prepare emergency supplies accordingly (non-perishable food, potable water, medicines, etc.) for the possibility of sheltering-in-place for at least two and up to twelve weeks.¨

Two weeks! I can´t imagine how that could have worked in Montenegro. I went shopping every day. I would have had to load up cupboards with instant pasta sauce. Najo´s refrigerator could only have held so many bags of frozen veggies, and since these aren´t exactly abundant in a city where the green market operates every day, that means I would have had to buy up everything in stock at the one store in town that carried frozen produce. All of this just refers to how I would implement such a plan. I´m not even going to contemplate what it would have meant to miss morning walks and coffee on the korzo.

For those interested, I have included the complete letter from the U.S. embassy in the extended entry.

Notice #01-06 American Embassy Podgorica

November 24, 2006

WORLDWIDE CUATION - AVIAN INFLUENZA AND HOW TO PREPARE FOR "SHELTERING-IN-PLACE"

Health professionals are concerned that the continued spread of a highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) virus among animals in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe has the potential to significantly threaten human health. If a virus such as H5N1 mutates and spreads easily from one person to another, avian influenza may break out globally. While there are no reports of sustained human-to-human transmission of avian influenza, the U.S. government and international health agencies are preparing for a possible pandemic.

Depending on the severity of a pandemic, commercial airlines might drastically curtail or even cease operations. Travel restrictions could also impede people from returning to the United States or fleeing to other countries. For these reasons, it may make more sense to "shelter-in-place" (i.e. stay home and practice "social distancing" to avoid contagion) for an appropriate period of time.

United States Residents: The Department of Health and Human Services suggests that US residents prepare two weeks of emergency supplies (food, water, medicine, etc.) in order to shelter-in-place during an influenza pandemic.

American Citizens Abroad: Due to varying conditions overseas, Americans abroad should evaluate their situation and prepare emergency supplies accordingly (non-perishable food, potable water, medicines, etc.) for the possibility of sheltering-in-place for at least two and up to twelve weeks. Water purification techniques such as boiling, filtering and/or adding chlorine to locally available rainwater, swimming pools, lakes, rivers, and wells may replace the need to store large quantities of water.

What can you do on a daily basis? Cover your cough. Wash your hands regularly woth soap and water for at least 20 seconds to eradicate viruses and bacteria or apply a hand sanitizer with a minimum of 60% alcohol content when soap and water are not available. Stay home if you are sick. Vaccinate yourself against seasonal flu.

Travel: American citizens living in or traveling to countries with human or animal cases of H5N1 virus should consider the potential risks. Keep informed of the latest medical guidance and practical information and plan accordingly. Consult www.travel.state.gov for the latest tips on international travel.

On-Line Resources: Detailed information about suggested preparations, as well as planning checklists, are available on the U.S. government's one-stop web site on pandemic influenza (www.pandemicflu.gov ), also the World Health Organization (www.who.int/en ) and the Centers for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov) websites.

Posted by at 9:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yesterday I wanted to solve several problems at once and the key was to find a good cup of coffee. A strong one. My favorite place from last year, La Manchita, closed a few months ago (probable because I was not around), so I headed down San Jeronimo and checked into a new restaurant, La Torta. At 10:30 A.M. it was deserted, except for the restaurant dog who proved quite friendly. After a minute or so and a few happy barks from the dog, a nice, middle-aged woman appeared to give me the news that no, she had no coffee, but she did have tea, a special tea.

As it turned out, Carmelita, my new friend, opened this La Torta in August. It has breakfast, but not the traditional breakfast, she told me. This breakfast was highly nutritious and very healthy. As was the tea I then drank. As was the juice, derived from aloe, that she gave me to try. I tried it. Something slightly lemony, slightly medicinal, slightly no se.

¨Where is it made?¨ I asked.
¨In a factory in the United States,¨ Carmelita said. ¨It is a nutrition company called HerbalLife.¨
I´d heard of HerbalLife before, but never really knew anything about it. In my mind it fell into a category that included Amway and Megachurches. But here it was in Cuernavaca; Mexico, spreading nutritious living.

Finding evidence of U.S. culture here takes about as much trouble as getting out of bed in the morning, sometimes less. When I look out of the window from my room in the residence for directors, I can see a machine that vends Coca Cola.

But, it always leaves me bemused when I run into examples not of mass U.S. culture but of the American self-help culture. Like the Mormon missionaries you can sometimes spot on the streets, these seem like cultural imports that have no ready audience. As I´ve written elsewhere on Blue Monkey, self-help, therapy, and evangelical religion all have the same roots, or if not exactly the same their roots intermingle inextricably. They all offer a kind of salvation that is radically individualistic. If I change my [fill in the blank] I will have [fill in the blank]. If I change my life, go to a particular church, worship etc., I will have eternal life and [and, according to many TV evangelists and the Latin American Pare de Sufrir, lots of material possessions]. If I change how I deal with my emotions, then I will have more friends and also be able to influence people.

In the case of nutritional supplements, the message is obvious. Change how you eat and you will become healthier. Yet in Mexico every part of the meal has some direct connection to tradition, custom, family. Eating has no individual core to it--it is fundamentally communal. So, certainly some Mexicans (like many of us gringos) could benefit from eating less. But, to revolutionize the diet, to use different condiments and comestibles seems about as easy a sell here as, well, Mormonism.

Posted by at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

¨I always thought European girls were different,¨ Aleksander was saying, ¨but on my trip to Serbia I met two Spanish girls who were like typical Montenegrin girls.¨ I was still enjoying the early afternoon of my first day back in Montenegro. I´d already managed to meet several former students at the university facility where I worked, and now I sat enjoying the company of Aleksander Bogdonović, his sister Ana, Dragan Lazarević, and Petar Kilibarda.

And here, probably no more than fifteen minutes into our talk, Aleksander waved this red flag in front of me: ¨Typical Montenegrin girl?¨ I couldn´t help myself.

¨What is the ´typical´ Montenegrin girl like?¨ I asked. That´s when I learned the new term.

It became quickly clear that Aleksander had not meant to generalize about all Montenegrin young women, but about what he and the others considered a distinctive type, the sponzoruša. She´s the kind of woman who wears short skirts and boots. She wears as little as possible, Dragan contributed. No doubt she provides the market for the high heeled cowboy boots that are so fashionable and so impractical. She makes herself sexually attractive and provocative.
But, she earns her name not by how she dresses but by using her sex appeal to attract a certain kind of man, a sponsor. In other words, the sponzoruša looks for material benefits from the men she attracts, and may even become the mistress of a wealthy man.
All my students had stories. Dragan said that once he was standing by a new car and that a woman who had earlier ignored him suddenly paid attention to him when she momentarily believed the car belonged to him. Petar talked about the women at the resort town where he worked who only paid attention to men with good clothes and expensive cell phones. The implication was that a whole segment of Montenegrin women sought to trade sexual attraction for security and comfort.
I had a hard time knowing how to think about this. The behaviours they described could be attributed to many women in the U.S. and probably in many places around the world. Early 20th century working class girls and women often expected to trade some favors for a good time. But I wondered how general such behaviour was among Montenegrin women.
I talked with some of the faculty members about this phenomenon. Goran, my friend in the Serbian Department, said that the term came out of Belgrade during the war. Maria Knezević, who chaired the conference at the university that allowed me to return to Montenegro, talked with me about this during one of the dinners given by the conference organizers.
Women who dress provocatively make up a part of all western cultures, something most of us can give thanks for. And, unfortunately, some women have ulterior motives when they enter the sexual marketplace. But, then, so do some men. The concept of the sponzoruša reflects the mercenary attitudes of some women. But it also projects issues within Montenegrin society onto the bodies of Montenegrin women: The transition to a capitalist and materialistic society, the uncertainty engendered by the war, even the inevitable changes in the roles of men and women.

Posted by at 9:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)