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November 29, 2006
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
Another thing I learned last weekend. Mexicans, at least (maybe this is common to hispanohablantes), differentiate when indicating with their hands the size of things that are:
- people
- animals
- things
The first, heights of people, is demonstrated with the index finger extended and the rest of the hand closed. It's like you're making a "we're number one" gesture, and then locating it in space to show how tall someone is. The finger is held vertically, not horizontally.
For animals, height is demonstrated by the open hand, with the fingers together. The palm of the hand is like a vertical axis, with the palm facing the side, not facing up or down. The first one seems strange to me, but this one seems downright awkward.
For things, the same hand shape is used and held with the palm facing down, generally as we gringos would tend to indicate the height of any thing, animate or inanimate, person or animal.
Posted by crispy at 06:00 AM | Comments (3)
November 28, 2006
Mole Poblano
I learned so many things over our Thanksgiving intercambio de culturas to share with you, but the first is going to be this way that Mexicans refer to their diverse ethnic mixture.
First, you have to know what mole poblano is. A brief description is that it's a very complex sauce made from 10-20 ingredients, including chiles and chocolate. A more involved description might tell that it was allegedly created by a nun for a visiting bishop to her city of Puebla, where the people are refered to as poblanos and where the well-known Battle of Puebla took place (the reason cinco de mayo is celebrated). This sauce is traditionally served with turkey (mole poblano de guajalote, the national dish of Mexico), but I can highly recommend a vegetarian version that I've enjoyed at Casa Fuerte in Tlaquepaque that is kind of a cheese enchilada in mole poblano.
As interesting as the history and diverse availability of mole poblano is, it is the complexity of the sauce that is used to give a sense of la raza here in Mexico. Most people are aware of the mixing of the indigenous folks with the Spanish that went on, but the blood of Mexicans has also been refined by other groups (French, Irish, German, Chinese, etc.) throughout the history of the country, with each group having its own reason for coming to and staying in Mexico. The United States might be referred to as a "melting pot," due to its multiethnic nature, but it's really more like a Whitman's Sampler in comparison to Mexico. In the United States, you have the Italian section of town, the Chinese district, the Irish neighborhood. Here, people from all these different backgrounds really did "melt together" to form a more consistent mix.
It is interesting to note that of the most of the ingredients of mole poblano de guajalote, besides chili, chocolate and turkey, are not indigenous, although that is not true of all the many different types of moles, such as the famous versions associated with Oaxaca, like amarillo, colorado or negro.
Posted by crispy at 11:57 AM | Comments (1)
November 21, 2006
La época de oro photos: part two
L to R: Maria, Melanie, Ignacio, Alana
(Ladies of the English-Speaking Ligation)
More, more, more.
Martha and Eligio, Shawn's Co-Workers
Shawn With Patti, Co-Worker
Pili, Another of Shawn's Co-Workers
Shawn's Former Student, Adrian, and His Wife, Karla
Exchange Student, Devin
Male Go-Go Dancer, Elvis (From Venezuela)
Elvis, Not Yet Having Left the Building
[on the right is a cool lesbian DJ, but we're unsure of the other two; names TBA]
Our Bouncer, Rigo
Posted by crispy at 08:20 PM | Comments (3)
November 09, 2006
Mexico City Legislature Approves Civil Unions
The Legislature of Mexico City voted on Thursday to legally recognize civil unions and the mayor is expected to sign it.
Read the Associated Press story in the International Herald Tribune.
Posted by crispy at 09:49 PM | Comments (1)
La época de oro photos: part one
Andreas and Salvador
As promised, a few photos from our recent party.
José Luis, Andreas and Larry Foster
Alberto, Shawn and Roxana
These folks (above) are our neighbors from across the hall. Those poor people.
Hector (Shawn's trainer), Alejandra and Rubi
Fernando and Brenna
Posted by crispy at 03:56 PM | Comments (3)
November 07, 2006
The Right Choice
At USC, I took a course in African-American literature. I was one of three or four white kids out of some 30 students, which kind of made my experience like the center of a bull's-eye target. I was a minority in a group that was in turn, a minority within the scope of the greater lilly-white campus population.
I got to read a lot of great books in that class, books that are American classics, despite the fact that they tend to be kept off the reading list of general American literature classes under the guise that they appeal to 'special interests.' Unlike the students in the class that had been dealing with that kind of systematic racism their whole lives, I was getting pissed off for the first time that Zora Neale Hurston was talked about as a great Black anthropologist but not a great American anthropologist. I could be incredulous that Hemmingway is considered American literature but Ellison isn't, while most of my classmates had learned long before that their literary tradition was considered literature of dissent, standing against, not among, our national literature.
Coming to understand how that little trick is used to foster the perception of minorities as being on the fringe made me angry. I had not been dealing with that anger all my life, so I had the ferrocity of a convert. I had not spent my entire life being beat down repeatedly by people who smiled and claimed only to be trying to preserve American values, the intention of the founding fathers or God's 'Master Plan.' I was fired up and ready to fight. So you can imagine my surprise when one day in class, one of the more opinionated and feisty students in the class said he had had enough and couldn't wait for the day that he could pack it up and move to Africa, abandoning his place among the ranks of the struggle.
At the time, I wondered if he was a coward and a quitter. This guy was really smart and had the charisma of Don Juan; the idea that he didn't want to exploit the American system for all he could shocked me. Thinking that he would be happier in a continent plagued with poverty, disease and war instead of in America, even as a member of the downtrodden minorities, really stunned me. In a classroom where we spent most of our time discussing the struggles of people against prejudice and hatred in order to bring about a more just society, he seemed to be admitting defeat and calling the sacrifices of all those people before us into question.
Yet his position was not one of defeat. In fact, it was because he was strong that he refused to stay in a country that didn't appreciate what he had to offer and instead only wanted to put up road blocks in the way of his doing what he wanted to do because of stupid insignificant crap like skin color. He was going to do great things and enjoy his life, and it would be a lot more efficient to go somewhere that he could accomplish that without all the unnecessary barriers. There are, after all, enough hurdles in life that you can't avoid, so why waste time bothering with ones you can simply leave behind?
I've thought of that guy and his convictions many times since then. I often wonder as I sit here at my computer writing about Mexico if he ever made it to Africa. Before, as a good American, I didn't want to lose someone like him, but now that I look at things with older eyes, I hope he did make it to Africa. Sure, Africa isn't free of problems, including racism, but at least he'd not be having to live as a second-class citizen, de facto or de jure, in the land of his birth.
In watching the returns from the elections in the United States, I feel justified all over again in leaving the United States, and Colorado in particular. One hears time and time again people who rail against same-sex marriage indignantly protesting their being called homophobes, claiming that they don't hate gays, they just believe that the word 'marriage' should apply to one man and one woman. Often, as was the case with George W. Bush, they claim that they endorse offering same-sex couples rights made available to heterosexual married couples, but through 'civil unions' and not 'marriage.'
Given the opportunity to do just that on Tuesday, voters in Colorado both added a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage (Amendment 43) and rejected a referendum (Referendum I) that would have created a new legal relationship that would permit same-sex partners to enjoy some of the rights enjoyed by heterosexual married couples. Again, this would not be all the rights straight married couples have, like being able to file joint tax returns. No, it would have just been basic stuff like such as being able to visit your partner in the ICU if they were critically ill, or being able to retain ownership of jointly held property in the event that one partner dies.
I can't begin to count the number of people that have told me that they don't think it's fair that gay couples don't have those rights, even if they don't 'believe in' same-sex marriage. I mean, if I have the right to visit Shawn in the ICU if he's in a severe car accident, how does that hurt anyone else or their marriage? Yet this referendum lost in Colorado, 54% to 46%. Interestingly, polls before the election suggested that this referendum would pass. Were the polls just wrong about the voter turnout? Or did people not want to look like homophobic bigots to pollsters, but didn't mind letting their true colors show in the privacy of the voting booth?
Reasonable people can disagree as to what constitutes a marriage, and not everyone that would vote against allowing same-sex marriage is a homophobe. Yet on Tuesday, seven states (last election: eleven) added constitutional amendments to bar same-sex marriage when isn't even necessary, since the state constitutions already consider marriages to be between a man and a woman only. For example, in Colorado, C.R.S. 14-2-104 states that, "a marriage is valid in this state if: [...] (b) It is only between one man and one woman. [...]" Why add an amendment to the constitution if not simply to send a message to same-sex couples that they are second-class citizens and that the voting majority has decided that it is okay to discriminate against them?
So to the voters of my former home state that voted for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages and voted against the creation of the new legal relationship of civil unions to provide only some of the benefits of married couples to same-sex couples, I call you hateful, small-minded, homophobic bigots. I think it's high time to hold these people accountable for how they vote, and to not let them hide behind a polite smile, denying that they're not bigots, and that they only want to 'protect families' or 'uphold traditional values.' They want to discriminate against a group of people systematically through the law, and that's just mean-spirited and hateful.
To our friends that argued that things aren't so bad in the United States, I say that yes, they are. The people of the United States are making their voices heard, and a whole lot of those voices say that they hate gay people. They also hate Mexicans, Asians, Blacks, poor people, Muslims, Jews and a whole slew of other folks that threaten them because they're from somewhere else or they believe different things. All these people are made to be second-class citizens in the United States, and instead of decent people standing up and saying that it's wrong, there's no end of justifying their bigotry. It's disgusting.
Instead of engaging in what seems to be an increasingly futile fight, I too said enough is enough and abandoned my place in the ranks. I cut my losses and moved to Mexico, and now I face a bunch of different challenges. But at least here, people aren't voting to take away my rights, or worse yet, smiling at me and telling me what decent people they are while they do it.
Posted by crispy at 10:23 PM | Comments (4)
November 06, 2006
Explosions in Mexico City
Three bombs exploded early this morning, Monday, 6 November, in Mexico City. They were distributed around the city; one was at an electoral tribune (Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación), another at the offices of the former party that ruled Mexico for decades, the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) and another at a bank office (Scotiabank). Another bomb was deactivated outside another bank branch, and police were investigating a backpack found outside a Sanborns.
A PRI representative commented to radio station Formato 21 that he believed that the bombs were used by groups trying to destabilize Mexico before President-Elect Felipe Calderón is sworn-in on 1 December, but no groups have yet claimed responsibility for the bombs.
[read more in English about this story in English | en español]
Posted by crispy at 11:14 AM | Comments (1)