Day 20
June 10, 2007
On Friday, Tana and I experienced a tradition unique to Zacatecas known as (something like) la callejoneada. From the word for “street” – calle – la callejoneada is a roaming street party that people have to celebrate birthdays or other fun occasions. It all starts with the band, which is typical for this occasion: four trumpets, two short trombones (I don’t know what to call them, they were shaped like trombones but instead of using a slide they had fingerpieces like a trumpet), a bass drummer and a snare drummer. Many times, a donkey is also involved. Not in the band, but for carrying the drink of choice that comes from this region, mezcal. It’s a pretty serious version of tequila that has more alcohol. It tastes somewhere between paint thinner and gasoline if you ask me, but I’m pretty sure people don’t drink it for its fine flavor… While the donkey carries the mezcal, everyone gets little tiny cups on strings around their necks, and then its time to hit the streets.
We met up with everyone (the occasion was one of Tana’s co-worker’s birthday) at one of the beautiful city parks around 8 or so, waited for people to arrive and for the band to warm up. After everyone was ready, the band started leading us on our route around the centro, with us dancing in line behind them! Sort of like a conga line, but less cheesy and a lot more fun. The bass drum set off car alarms as we went! Because it was Friday night, there were lots and lots of people out, and they all stopped to watch, and join in a little bit, as we went by. We waved to people on their rooftops and hotel-room balconies, we greeted people in their doorways, and we stopped in about three different plazas along the way. It’s a great way to make people smile, and to be reminded that life is good, that we are in a wonderful place with good people, and that we could learn something in the States about what it means to have a good time.
~
Yesterday the students at Fenix (my language school) took a field trip to a place called “La Quemada.” It’s the mountain-top site of an ancient city. Towards the end of the first millennium after Christ, Nahuatl tribes dominated the semi-arid highlands of central Mexico. This mountain-city rises steeply from the valley floor; it doesn’t take a military mind to figure out that whomever controls this mountain probably controls all of the valley below. Only priests and warriors (and their families) would have lived in the city itself, the rest of the pueblo (people; town) would have been farmers and laborers, living precipitously at the edge of death, paying their tribute to the gods and their leaders for protection. There is not that much left of the ruins themselves, a few rooms here and there, a wall for protection, and a pyramid-like structure that was the temple. But the views were incredible. And there is something about place. What does it mean to walk in the footsteps of peasants and priests a thousand years after their blood and bones have found their final resting place? What does it mean to stand still and look at the surrounding mountains, though not in fear of invading soldiers, or drought, or flood?
~
I have enjoyed the history and culture classes at Fenix in the afternoons. The other day, Don Arturo spent a long time disabusing us of the notion that Mexico is an old country. Of course, civilizations have existed in what is today called Mexico for millennia, but all of their accomplishments were effectively destroyed the day Cortez set foot in what he called Vera Cruz. Ironically, the history of colonialism in Mexico began in a place the Spanish named “The True Cross.” Of course, indigenous culture lives on to this day, and it thrives in many places, but there is no escaping the brute fact that Mexico is a colonial nation. A full eighty percent of the current population is mestizo/a (having a bloodline with both European and indigenous ancestry), living witnesses of the rape of indigenous peoples by the colonial powers-that-be. Mexico is young; it has not yet celebrated its 200th birthday, and it has endured many revolutions, civil wars, constitutions. The way Don Arturo explained it, Mexicans have struggled with both personal and social identity as a result of their mestizajo heritage, which has made the incredibly complex process of building a modern nation-state quite difficult.
As I said, here there is no hiding a dark colonial history; it haunts the architecture, the people, the places. In the US, we like to forget that we too are a colonial nation, founded not only on noble dreams of freedom and justice for all, but also on the near-genocide of indigenous peoples, the theft of their land, and the enslavement of millions to produce a thriving economy. As I sit drinking my coffee here in Zacatecas (coffee which was most likely produced unsustainably and unjustly, abusing the sweaty labor of another human being), I am left to wonder at the incredible price we are still paying for the decisions of our great-great-great grandfathers – decisions that we all continue to make over and over again.
~
Today is el domingo 10º ordinario, a Sunday in ordinary time. Pentecost is behind us, the coming of the Spirit fills our memory, and we have celebrated the Triune life of God. Hoy (today), we turn our eyes to the long stretch of ordinary time ahead. It is a season in which we are called to remember, and to give. To give others the gifts we have been given. To learn to trust that we in the church have all the time in the world, because time itself is God’s, not ours. Although I didn’t understand everything at Mass today, the day resounded with the words that God is with us even and especially in the ordinary. Dios ha visitado a su pueblo. Will we learn to wait with patience the coming again of our Lord?
