Raul Gatica

I return to the Zocalo to find Cristobal and David in hopes of scoring an audience with Raul Gatica, the leader of CIPO. They are already at the CIPO office. A pickup truck rolls through the Zocalo. Juan, a campensino I met previously is riding in the flatbed. He recognizes me and tells me to get in. Raul is waiting for me.
 

Spanish is Juans second language.  He is Mixteca.  I promptly teach him all the vital English words like "toaster oven" and "hoobestank" which mean "hello" and "your stepping on my foot" in that order.
 
The thing about Raul is that he fears the paramilitaries here will kill him. He claims they have tried before. Certainly they have killed others in his organization. Thus, you cant actually ask for a specific time and place to meet him. You cant call him and the CIPO office will not tell you if he is in or not. A bit of serendipity is required. Juan in a pick up truck is mine.
 
Two white chicks are sitting in the front cab of the truck. We arrive at the CIPO house. Claire and Ciara pile out. They are students from California and travelling Mexico to meet with human rights groups. They hope to write an article on how different rights groups are structured and the success or failure those structures bring. More importantly, Claire speaks fluent Spanish which she perfected during five months in Cuba.
 
Inside the CIPO house Raul Gatica is busy preparing his people for a series of protests across the state. He will later claim that he is not the boss, merely part of the consensus building process. Still when he speaks other people listen with big eyes and then around a lot. The difference is lost on me.
 
Gatica leaves momentarily and returns calm and focused. His boyish smile and animated eyes make for a handsome face. He seems strong if not powerfully built. In poetic phrases he lays it down for us.
 
"The jails , the hospitals, and the cemetaries are filled with the indigenous. 75% (his stat) of the people suffer from malnutrition. They have diseases that have cures: disentary, smallpox, and others. The jails are filled with our people, forced to cultivate marijuana (wonder if they are forced to smoke it too). We are hungry, margianalized, and without jobs. That is where are crimes are born."
 
Gatica claims that the goverment builds highways and damns over indigenous towns without reporations, sells their communal forests to paper companies, fail to provide basic services such as clean water, electricity and schools, and generally dont include them in decisions that deeply affect their lives. Then there is the violence.
 
He brings out large photographs mounted to stiff cardboard. The first is of a dead man, his obese stomach lined with blood soaked bullet holes. The next, a pregnant woman beaten down, her baby lost. Men, they claim are paramilitaries, getting into a clearly marked police truck. The one that scares the most somehow, shows a group of men with white shirts and dark sticks (they claim machetes) amongst a crowd of panicked villagers. Behind them, a man with deranged eyes fires a machine gun into the air. There is a deep sense of panic, chaos, and fear in that photo. This is in broad daylight by the way.
 
We ask Gatica if he is afraid. "Of course I am afraid," he says. "I am afraid all the time. I am sad. I am angry. For that, I fight." But he has a strategy. Gatica doesnt go anywhere without a gringo. He says the government doesnt like shooting gringos. Mexicans are a different story. So Gatica asks for white skinned volunteers to accompany him. A few days from now, the group asks me if I would like to accompany Raul for a reunion with his people in the Zocalo. I politely refuse as I will be very busy picking lint from my belly button.
 
Regardless of my human shield status, I like Gatica. He is charming and speaks in lyrical phrases of justice and open heartedness, of the beauty of the forest and the human spirit. Its good stuff. That and some guns and he may get what we wants. But what specifically he wants is difficult to discern.
 
CIPO represents indigenous people across the state and is managing disputes in at least 28 towns. Worse, each town seems to have specific problems. In San Isidro, a forest is in dispute and peaceful organizing has been met with violence. In a town near Vera Cruz, a highway has paved over an indigenous community. In Jualtulco, an indian way of life is being transformed into mega hotels with frosty big gulp cups brimming with salty migaritas. In Tuxtapec (not sure on spelling) a hydroelectric dam put 20 communities under water. The people were moved from their original towns without electricity into other towns without electricity.
 
Generally, CIPO seems to be trying to build an indigenous protest force that can universally represent indian rights. Its sort of like the ACLU in a country that doesnt have working courts or Jewish lawyers. Gatica claims that they have taken photos documenting the killings and beatings. "We know the killers," he says. "They are from the next town over."
 
The courts have done little but the paramilitaries seem to stay busy. Just days earlier they raided a CIPO house in Jualtulco, says Gatica. And the police drove them there, he says. Seems strange to carpool to a beat down. You have your own machetes but you cant score a ride. Lame.
 
"We dont hate North Americans," he explains. Its nice of him to include Canada so the Americans arent singled out, but i get the drift. Those damn Canadians. You cant turn your back for a minute.
 
"But we do have sadness because our government robs the people here," he continues. "When the North Americans come here, much of what you have is the result of robbing our people."
 
So what does Gatica want?
 
"We are not against everything," he says. "We are against ideas that only think of money and not people. You cant eat money." Of course you arent supposed to eat people either, but i refrain.

And like that our time is up. Gatica must return to planning a week of protests, starting tomorow. I ask for access to one of the protests. For security reasons or perhaps just because they are terribly disorganized, they wont tell me which town. Regardless, the next day it is arranged that I will travel by bus to the mountain town of Tlaxiaco (pronounced however you feel like it. Its not going to be right, trust me) for a grand protest filled with vandalizing cars with people in them, taking over government offices, and kidnapping giant passenger buses. And the food was good too.
 

This is the main plaza nestled between two churches in Oaxaca City.  It is rather serene in this picture.  In a few days it will be filled with angry campensinos and then with riot police firing tear gas.  The story to come...
 

I leave you with a quote from Gatica. "Peace will not happen by luck or miracle. We must have direct action for peace and justice."

Rich Street Kids

The other night i met some high school kids who live in the street here. they come from educated and most likely, wealthy stock in mexico city. like many priveledged folks in america, they are unhappy with the injustices of their economic system and identify romanticly with the poor rather than their own background.


David, 18, has one more year left of high school in Mexico City. He sleeps in the streets of Oaxaca this summer and works for a local human rights charity, CIPO. A sweet and soft spoken boy, his shirt says "blow up yuppies." He listens to American electronic music on his MP3 player.

David and cristobal, my new street friends, are very bright and sweet people. cristobal has a tremendous command of english and is serving as my defacto translator. he has introduced me to members of a human rights group here that defends the rights of indigenous campesinos (poor farmers) called CIPO.


David, 18, has one more year left of high school in Mexico City. He sleeps in the streets of Oaxaca this summer and works for a local human rights charity, CIPO. His English is superb and he has been my defacto translator the last two days. His shirt says Stop War.

I think Mexico is like America would be if it didn't desimate its own indigenous people beyond an ability to fight. The indians here are in a perputal struggle with more western and wealthier interests. There are constant land battles. The police, wealthy landowners, and corrupt politicans seem to use violence and intimidation to increase their land holdings and of course their wealth.

There is a constant tension in the countryside between indigenous people and the wealthy bosses. There is also a socialist ideology here that runs deep in mexican political blood and popular culture. Che gueverra is a hero. Pirate radio stations are strewn across the country and have been for 50 years. It's a tradition as much as a movement.


Not exactly sure what it says yet but i sense its not pro capitalism.

There is deep resistance on the part of the indigenous people to join the global economy and ways of life. They rightly fear their culture will have to compete with American and European cultures and will not retain its purity. Similarly they do not desire to take advantage of the holes in the system they oppose. forming corporations out of their villages and hiring an army of jewish lawyers to aggresively pursue their land rights would be a start.


Leonor, 15, is from the indigenous village of San Isidro Aloapam. Her village suffered killings and intimidation from local strongmen during an ongoing land dispute. She creates videos documenting her town's plight with advanced computers at a nearby charity for human rights, CIPO.

the indians here are stuck with an unfortunate contradiction. their values oppose the idea of land ownership, yet it is only the pursuit of their ownership rights which can protect them from encroachers.

I was supposed to meet with the human rights group, CIPO, today to talk all of this out, but their offices were "invaded" by a group 40 strong, according to their representatives in Oaxaca City. They said the attackers removed 5 familes from the CIPO office in Jualtulco. The details and motivations are unclear at this time. i hope to find out more soon.


Getting your shoes shined is a popular past time in the Zocalo (central square) in Oaxaca City.

If This is Montezuma's Revenge He Can Have Texas Back

All my pictures will be online at
http://www.neilkatzphoto.com/projects/oaxaca


They have a lot dogs running about here, but not many Alaskan huskies on roofs.

Sorry it has taken me nearly a week to write to you all. The first half of it I spent with crushing fevers and food poisening. it took me only a day and a half to eat the wrong thing, namely a soup of turkey mole negro, a dark and complicated sauce (over 30 ingredients), popular here.

Before i start, none of the enclosed pictures are from this story because i didnt bring my freakn camera!

I went to a town of indegenous people about 30 miles outside the city and walked into a wedding, where i was promptly turned into the guest of honor. Chairs are brought out, a place at the table found, a rapid sequence of mezcal, tequila, and brandy served, and finally the offending mole.

I can not figure out in good consciuos how to turn it down without being rude. after a few bites of turkey (i have not meat in 7 years), my guide kindly takes the bird onto her plate. But i finish the sauce with relish.

Then I am whisked away to take part in playful ritual similar to the throwing of the bouqet in our weddings. The bride puts a rolled tortilla into her grooms mouth leaving it half out. Then he leans forward and she puts the other half in her mouth, an act that is like kissing. Then he bites into the tortilla and each eat their half. next the bride goes to honored couples in the family and they do the same ritual.


Ruins at Monte Alban. Bet they would have made em a bit bigger if they knew people would still be hanging about.

Well of course they call the wacky gringo over for a little fun adn me my guide get the treatment only i forget to bite, sending the tortlla to the ground and the room into fits of laughter. And its all on two video cameras. This is a town where the primary mode of transportation is a donkey cart, still they have video cameras for this moment. years from now this couple is going to say who the fuck was that guy.


Ruins at Monte Alban. They have lots of big sky here.

Not eight hours later i am asking what the fuck was in that mole. Montezuma´s storm comes on me like a plague from Egypt. If this is his revenge he can fucking have Texas back and take George Bush with him. I'll even thow in the dallas cowboy cheerleaders. Well maybe not all of them.

Three days of fever induced madness and the rest i will spare you. Still i only eat some vegetables and a few slices of bread a day, but boy do i look good. I weigh 84 pounds without my sneakers on. This is better than the coke diet and i have seen some people really succeed with that one.


Church of the holy something or other. They love Jesus here. And Jesus loves them.


Told you so. (Its time to return to the belief in Jesus)


Finally i venture outside. my eyes can no longer adjust to the light. i look like tom hanks in cast away. I stumble my way to one of the main markets here called 20 de noviembre, after the date of the mexian revolution in 1910. Old women and young women,
getting old in a hurry, line the entrance, sitting with stacks of large tortillas called tlaludas. the building holds a serpentine maze of stalls selling traditional (tipico) clothes and breads both regular and dulce (sweet). mixed amongst them is the odd cellular phone stall and leather pocket book stall. If there were any mexican jews there would probably be a corn beef stall, a quicky accounting booth, and a place to call your mother. But alas not.


El Bus. The only way to travel.

In the center are the food stalls, more spacious and better lit, a marketing mistake to be sure. Small children and old ladies sell a paltry array of avocodoes, tomatoes and celantro on fly infested blankets on the floor. The larger stalls sell cheese and meats or have a lunch counter for local fare, something sort of steamy, dark adn greasy.

Around a bend there is a long alley way reserved for meat stalls and here the problem becomes clear. Strips of meat, some in various stages of curing, turning into chorizo or perhaps meat puppets for the kids to play with, hang on thin metal rods or lay on dirty strips of paper. Flies find their garden of eden and no one is too concerned. The real issue is that oaxacans havent gotten the memo yet that meat needs refrigeration. Even if my Spanish were good enough i wouldnt tell them.


A little drunken swagger on the way home.