The Blue Monkey Review

It"s 11 at night and I-m standing in the train station in Belgrade, Serbia. Twenty-four hours before I"d left Pittsburgh, and I"m conscious that I haven"t changed clothes since then, including my briefs and socks. The weather at the moment is below freezing, and I haven"t had more than a few broken hours of airplane sleep. It occurs to me I had visited Yugolsavia 30 years before, and that my train had wrecked and derailed. That was more comfortable than this.

A lot of my travel time had been spent just waiting around. Most of my day was in the Frankfurt airport. This place would have been the airport of tomorrow in 1955. It"s not that it isn"t up to date, but it is all steel and hard surfaces. Naturally I was eager to leave as soon as Montenegro Airlines would take me. But, after my 10:30 AM arrival, I had to wait until 1:30 PM for the Montenegro check-in to open. MA doesn"t have a regular window in Frankfurt, so I had to keep asking around to identify the correct place to go. I was pretty pleased to finally determine where to go and then to see someone there doing check-in warm-up behavior.

But, that was when the real adventure began. Turns out that the flight to Podgorica, the major city in Montenegro, was canceled. Weather problems. I would hear much more about that in the next 24 hours. So instead of flying to Podgorica, the plane was destined for Tivat. But to get the real story I had to go to another window.

As I made that move I somehow fell in with a German of Montenegrin descent, Janko Petrovic. Janko is a big man, robust, energetic. For the rest of my trip to Montenegro I would follow along in Janko"s wake. And a good thing. I"d still be in Frankfurt or Belgrade of somewhere not quite part of Montenegro without Janko.

At the Montenegro window Janko and I learned that we couldn"t exactly go to Tivat that day, either, but that they would put us onto a Yugoslav Air (JAT) flight to Belgrade, and then we could fly to Tivat tomorrow. That idea didn"t sound all that attractive, and Janko was not in mind to hang around Belgrade. But at least we"d be moving in the direction of Montenegro and away from Frankfurt airport. As it turned out, that plan had to change because the airport in Tivat was also out of commission, the tower struck by lightening"and would be closed for several days.

So after we arrived in Belgrade, Janko engaged in a lot of discussion in Serbian with the people associated with Montenegrin Air, and we determined that they would transport us to the train station for the train to Podgorica. At this turn of the wheel we also, somehow, fell in with a couple, Zenl and Vera, who have a radio station in Ulcinj. The four of us were most of the people who took the bus to the train station.

Once we arrived at the train station we stepped into a world or Orson Welles-ian sets. The train station looked like a third world post office, and was about as efficient, except that here the weather was bitterly cold. It was below freezing outside and below freezing inside. I watched the luggage as my new-found pals went from window to window figuring out our travel arrangements. Even knowing the language and culture as they did, they dealt with three different clerks and it took more than half an hour to make the arrangements. As it happened, they made all the right decisions. We reserved for the four or us a six-person sleeping compartment.

By then it was about 7 PM and we could not board our train until 10. So, we headed out into the night to find a restaurant. I should mention here that I was not traveling light, as I usually do. In fact, I|m not traveling at all but moving to a new place. So I had my backpack suitcase AND a large rolling suitcase. It isn"t big enough to hold a piano. It could probably hold a piano player. But in traveling from Pittsburgh to Montenegro, I had assumed that I would need to deal with the suitcase only when I transferred it from United to Montenegro Air. Instead, I had to drag, carry, and deadlift that monster for hours. From the train station to the restaurant was not that far as the crow flies, but no crow in its right mind would have been flying in Belgrade that night. The suitcase went over curbs and through snow. I stopped worrying about it.

The restaurant we found looked to me like a big, well-lit Italian restaurant except not as well decorated. Half of the place was packed, and the other half less heavily settled. The crowd tended toward the more mature, most of them probably having grown to adulthood, married, and had children under Comrade Tito. A few had grandchildren before Tito died. And almost everyone in the place, our table excepted, was a music lover. The traditional music performed there was something between Zorba the Greek and Hassidic pop. The air hung heavy with a haze of cigarette smoke. Were we there to eat or to find a clue to the third man?

We had a nice, warm meal, including beer for me and a carrot soup that would have broken the heart of a vegeterian. Then, after spending as much time as we thought we could, we headed back across the square to the train station. We made our way out to the platform at almost 10. There, before me, was another movie set, except that a movie set would have been cleaner and warmer. It looked like a Cold War museum piece, with old trains, snow, and the Communist absence of movement. When we finally boarded the train I recalled that 30 years ago the Yugoslav rolling stock all seemed to have been purchased at second hand from the French or Italian lines. And these were the same cars!

But we didn"t board at 10, or 11. It must have been about midnight when our train finally arrived and I had to drag the piano case down the platform and wrestle it onto the train. We found our compartment, made up our beds, and squeezed into them as the train pulled into the Serbian night. I thought better of having drunk that beer after my second (but not last) visit to the toilet (30 years had not improved the amenities there, either). But finally, about 2 AM I settled into a deep sleep.

I woke up a short five hours later in Montenegro. The train was due into Podgorica at 8, but didn"t arrive until 9:30. So I had a couple of hours to see the mountainous terrain covered with snow. We could have been in the Rockies. Janko told me that he"d never seen snow in Montenegro. So it occurred to me then, do I have bad luck, or do I bring it? Can this small country survive having me live there for five months?

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This morning as I walked along the main road along the beach in Acapulco a sidewalk rep for a tourist cruise approached giving me the opening lines of his spiel. I kept walking, saying in Spanish that I was leaving today but otherwise giving him no more attention than I give most of the shop owners calling out "¿Algo especial, amigo?" or "¡Barato, barato!¨ But as I walked off I heard him say in English, ¨Do you have a temperature, friend?¨ My immediate thought I leave to your imagination. But on further reflection I realized that the tour-boat rep was right. I had a bad attitude. People come to Acapulco to have fun, and I wasn´t having any.

Of course, part of the problem is that I´m here with my SHU group so they can have fun. These students have shown that they can work well together, I´ve seen their ability to deal collectively with issues and have been impressed. Most of them have done well in their classes at Universidad Internacional. But they can also, individually and collectively, call into question the notion of legal majority at age 18. We traveled to Acapulco with a gorup from conservative and Christian Bridgewater College and the two groups contrasted sharply. Yesterday, for every excursion, Bridgewater had assembled ahead of time, and Seton Hill assembled late. On our return from the exclusive beach where we spent much of the day, the Bridgewater students watched as the last of the Griffens straggled onto the bus from the restaurant where I had run to find them.

But Acapulco dramatized part of Mexico today that I would have understood at second hand from Cuernavaca. Acapulco is one of Mexico´s world-famous resorts. La Tortuga, where we stayed, is an older hotel--undoubtedly an eye-popping marvel in its day. My balcony provides an incredible view of the bay and also of the bars and discotheques that line the main road. But Tortuga´s hey-day probably came about the same time as Jane Russell´s. Budget sensitive tourists who stay there mix with Mexican families on vacation. The same holds for the beach across from the hotel. Mexicans mix with the great white tide yearning to para-sail and tan.

In Acapulco all the world is divided into two parts, residents and tourists. Last night I had supper with the three guys from our group. Afterward we visited a supermarket (Super Gigante) which, like supermarkets in California offer a variety of liquors, but unlike California it also offers Cuban cigars. The four of us hailed a cab for the return trip to the hotel and I was in the midst of establishing the fare when another cab pulled up and the cabby approached us telling us that our cab was not allowed to serve us. It seemed strange to me that a cab from another town would have driven into Acapulco, but before I reazlied how lame that ideas was five (5) more cabs arrived, surrounded the first cab, and all of the drivers got out to join the dispute. We decided to walk. Soon enough another cab picked us up and we learned from the driver that blue cabs serve exclusively tourists. Yellow cabs--the type we had almost entered--can only serve residents. The only mystery that remains is how so many drivers could more or less instantly have so quickly identified four white males including a tall Irish kid and two blonds, all of wearing shorts and sandals and standing outside the Hard Rock Cafe, as tourists.

But an even better example of the role that tourism plays not just in Acapulco but in Mexico generally came from our night out at the Palladium. This is a well known discotheque in Acapulco that were given the chance to visit with a discount off of the hefty cover price. (When Hector, our guide, asked who wanted to go, everyone in the Bridgewater group said ¨no¨ simultaneously and everyone in the Seton Hill group said ¨simultaneously.)

The Palladium is something to see. It sits on a hillside and the side of the club facing the bay is made of glass. The tiered semi-circles of tables surrounding the dance floor end at walls covered with graffiti and projection screens. It offered all the spectacle you could ask for--lights, smoke, fireworks on some nights, and really, really loud music. It was the kind of place where you could have as much of any drink you wanted as long as it had alcohol in it. The kind of place where you never had to light your own cigarette. Where, when you washed your hands in the bathroom someone turned on the water for you, squirted soap in your hands, and handed you paper towels. As usual, I had one drink, but I never finished more than a third of a glass before another full one appeared.

The Palladium offers a metaphor for Mexico today. Lots of Mexicans serving lots of Americans and well-off Mexicans. Except for the servers, the discotheque could have been anywhere. The music, the setting, the spectacle all had the goal of making tourists comfortable enough to leave dollars and euros in Mexico. I approve of the goal, but bout that the Palladium or any number of world-class resorts will have much impact on the real problems of Mexico´s economy. A few blocks from the Palladium Mexicans live like they do in the rest of the country. Family members all work together to accumulate enough to keep from falling further behind the rising cost of living.

Of course, tourism continues a long tradition for Latin America. Guaman Poma, a Quechua-descended chronicler of the conquest of Peru, wrote in the century following the conquest that when news of the New World empires reached Spain the cry went up throughout the country, ¨Plata y oro,¨ ¨Silver and gold.¨ Latin America´s resources have since then proven irresistible to the developed countries. In addition to their abundance, the gold, silver, coffee, and oil are also conveniently located in the midst of a cheap labor market. Today tourism to Latin America inspires the cry, ¨sol y playa.¨

Posted by at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I´m sure that readers of Blue Monkey will quickly agree that the distinction between culture and civilization still carries the taint of ethnocentric and racism. German intellectuals from the romantic era to the Nazi interlude took for granted that Germans possessed a special civilization (Kultur) that set them apart from other people. Western Europeans generally saw ¨primitive¨ peoples as falling short of civilization if, indeed, they were capable of attaining it. Anthropology appeared in the late 19th century as a science of culture, that is, the study of people that the Europeans had colonized.

But the old distinction still has some life to it. Civil society appeared when economic surplus enabled large groups of people to live in dense settlements. The surplus made possible impressive accomplishments--hierarchical structures in government, religion, the military--paid for through the expropriation of labor. Teotihuacan, the destination for the SHU group last weekend, displays these accomplishments in its dramatic remains. Two large pyramids still stand there, apparently the sites of religious rituals and accompanying human sacrifice. But enough of the rest of the city remains to show that the people there laid out broad, straight avenues, lived in stone homes with something like indoor plumbing, and practiced a lively commerce. Civilization can stand for the most significant collective accomplishments of a people.

Culture, on the other hand, is the way people live day to day. On this trip my students have become the most ardent researchers into this field. Especially some of the young women have taken advantage of some of the, well, advantages offered by residence in Cuernavaca: the lower drinking age, the plethora of discotheques, the abundance of Mexican young men who want to meet foreign women for friendship. My operative education theory is, as long as they´re speaking Spanish when they go out, they are doing homework.

The students can, and will, share their own stories. But one of my male students developed a generalization from his empirical research that is worth sharing. ¨Mexican girls won´t let you get close to them when you dance. You get too close, and they back off or slap you. Mexican guys like dancing with American girls because they can really close in on them. ¨He´s a careful student, so I´m sure his insight is valid.

I value the research of these students. It would be easy for a shallow observer to conclude that cultural differences did not exist--to believe that one had somehow stumbled into a very, very poor part of California. After all, you can hear American music and see advertisements for American goods everywhere you go, and you can go to Wal-Mart of Costco to buy those goods. The climate and terrain closely resemble southern California. And Mexicans apparently do all the work. No wonder it feels like home.

Posted by at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The group from Seton Hill arrived in Cuernavaca without incident on Saturday, January 1 and quickly settled into the program here at Universidad Internacional. The families who came to the school tp pick up the students all seemed pleased to meet their new ¨hijos¨(well, mainly hijas) and the students obviously reciprocated the warmth. By the next day, when we went on an excursion to Taxco, I overheard one student say that her cheeck was raw from kissing new acquaintances. By Monday most had become adept at calling taxis and asking before they got in, ¨¿Cuanto cobra a...?¨ and then negotiating adjustments if the prices quoted is not the usual 25 or 30 pesos.

I, however, haven´t been kissing all of my new acquaintances because 1) a lot of them are men and 2) I´ve met a lot of people in three days. Mainly I´ve met administrators at the university. By Tuesday, I had met the head or orientation, the director of relations with families, the course coordinator (because almost all 12 of my students have to have schedule adjustments), the head of the Spanish department, the principle administrator, the financial coordinator, and at least five more administrators whose functions I never really grasped. Most have assistants. Some have several.

Let me pause to explain that the University Internacional is a large, well-run, and very successful language institute. It offers courses in Spanish from the most basic to very advanced, and also courses in Mexican and Latin American history, culture, and literature. There are also courses in English for Mexican students. But university should not confuse visions of any institution so grand as, say Seton Hill with its 2,000 students. At this moment the student population here is 180, and in the peak season (during the summer) it reaches 500.

My rough estimate (counting assistant and secretaries) gives the university something like 40 or 50 administrators. In my view that makes the UI organization a bit top-heavy. One of my fellow directors (who lives at the residence where I live) shares that view when we discussed this briefly. He has brought students here for many years, so he knows this program well and obviously values it. But in discussing the organization of the school of the selection of families to care for students he makes it clear that operating decisions are made through personal relationships and with a view to spreading the advantages of the school as widely as possible.

Of course, it´s also true that in Mexico there seem to be many hands turned to not that many tasks. For instance, the absorption with security here results in the usual walled residences decorated with razor wire and warnings about walking the streets after dark. But the presence of private security guards also surprises me. When I walk the quarter mile to school in the morning, I pass two or three private guards between my residence and school, and at the school there are five more. Or, go into any shop and you find lots of clerks to help you buy whatever the store has to offer--one to greet you, one to show you the goods, one to ring you up multiplied by every ten square feet in the store.

UI itself provides yet a further example, drawn from a little higher in socio-economic scale. Recall that the university has 500 students at its maximum. But it employs 400 people. That, means, of course, that class sizes are consistently small--no more than five to an instructor in a language class, and often classes are one on one. I´m sure these examples can be extended to most types of employment and can´t surprise us too much in a country that suffers from 51% poverty rate and struggles with widespread under- and unemployment.

Alma Guillermoprieto has compared the network of reciprocal relationships developed by the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) during its 70 years in power to the hierarchical systems typical in pre-Hispanic society. PRI extended benefits to those with fewer resources in exchange for support, creating a pyramidal structure of society and state power. But I wonder if the Aztecs explain the administrative system at UI. One of my fellow directors suggested something different when he characterized the system at the school as ïmperial.¨The imperial system that the Spanish brought to New Spain included a flourishing bureaucracy--one that survived in full force into republican Mexico. Mexico´s late-nineteenth-century president/caudillo, Porfirio Diaz, recognized that one major condition for revolutionary instability in Mexico was empty pay envelopes for army officers and bureaucrats.

Of course, I don´t have on hand any Aztec or Spanish organizational charts. But I can provide a suggested historical analogy. One of the odd features of my current sojourn in Latin America is that I continue to read Balkan history. Charles I of Spain, under whose rule Mexico was conquered, was the first Habsburg to rule Spain, and event though Habsburg rule in Spain ended in 1714, it continued in the Austrian empire to 1918. The meddling of Austria-Hungary in Balkan matters is well known (if nothing springs to mind, read any textbook explanation of World War I). Misha Glenny´s The Balkans (2000) gives this telling example of Habsburg governmental process. When the Austrian Empire occupied a contiguous portion of the expiring Ottoman Empire in 1878, ¨just 120 Muslims administered Bosnia and Hercegovina, Thirty years later...a grand total of 9,533 bureaucrats were running the two provinces.¨ (268)

So, the Habsburg dynasty connects the Balkans and Universidad Internacional? Depend on it! And that won´t be the last connection, either.

Posted by at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)