A Million Minutes in Africa

OK, moving right along. We made it to Oaxaca on the night of the 16th. The last few miles in the pitch black surroundings on hairpin turns sure were fun.

Oaxaca has a big art scene. Lots of art galleries, and local art is hanging on the walls of all the cafes, restaurants and bars. I liked it.

The morning of the 18th we heard a brass band playing. It was so loud, it sounded like it was in the next room. Turns out it was in the next block. The 20th is Revolution Day in Mexico, but for some reason they were having a children´s parade celebrating the holiday on the 18th. Hundreds of kids, ages about 3-7, were dressed up like Pancho Villa, mustaches and bandoliers included. (The girls lacked mustaches, but they did wear bandoliers over their frilly long skirts and white peasant blouses.) Brass bands played in between the different school groups marching. Now that´s entertainment.

Next we went to visit the nearby Zapotec site of Monte Alban — more pyramids! I love them pyramids. Alas, our camera´s memory card went boom and erased all of our pictures from that day. We replaced the card but didn´t have the energy to climb back up all of the pyramids again. Just took ground level shots. Maybe next time.

From Oaxaca we went to Juchitan, an ugly, windy, dusty, miserable excuse of a town with the only appeal of being halfway to our next destination. We try not to drive at night, so we picked this place out as being a convenient stopover. Funny thing, when the town is nasty, the prices of hotels go up. I guess they know that you are not going anywhere else, so, ha-ha, they got you.

Then to Zapatista country. We stayed in the town of San Cristobal de las Casas in the house of Sub-Comandante Marcos. He was a great host, despite all of the rhetoric about revolution- blah, blah, blah. But seriously, it was interesting to be in a place that was a focal point of recent revolution. The idea of organizing peasants, who clearly live in difficult conditions i.e., no electricity, running water, or even sidewalks for crying out loud, seems very logical. I can not talk more about this intelligently, suffice to say they have been marginalized at least since the time of coffee plantations; that is, at least according to the coffee museum which was more about the socio-economics of the bean than about tasting a good cup of joe. They were taken advantage of by the growers and coffee middlemen who made buckets of money. Not that there is anything wrong with making buckets of money, just spread it around a little if you do not want a revolution. Strange that there were celebrations of the November 20 revolution by Zapata and company, but the Mexican government gets all uptight when someone else takes the same page from the book.