Last week there were 3 other students at the language school besides the other 4 on my program. We all became pretty close and had at lots of political discussions over really great Mexican food that the food cooperative/ Tienda made for us. We try to speak in Spanish as often as we can but it's hard when me and our friend Paul don't speak it well enough to have extended meal-type conversations in Español. However, I am getting to the point where I can understand the majority of what's going on, and even laugh at jokes people make in Spanish. I am very proud of this but my week definately followed the "two steps forward, one step back" saying about learning languages. It can get very frustrating. However, I'm really glad I didn't back out of coming on this trip just because I didn't know Spanish. It is not offensive to the folks at the Caracol because now that they know me they know how much it frustrates me and they understand how important la lucha (the struggle) is to me and how it's going to affect and improve my organizing work back in Nueva York. Also I think lots of folks are pretty entertained by me and my crazy "Jew-hawk" as our other gringo friend Pablo ("Paul" in California) calls it. Also after seeing my tattoo, they have taught me how to say “bat” in not only Spanish but also Tzotzil (“murcielago” and “sots”, respectively.)
One thing about Oventic is that all the gringos go by their Spanish-ized names if possible. It would be really awkward to call Carlos "Charlie" or Pablo "Paul" or Jorge "George". In Oventic, I am "Bet" since it is hard to pronounce the “TH”.
Anyway that brings us to my Spanish class... the teachers and other folks who work in the Caracol are called "Promotores" (promoters, duh) which is sort of awesome. My promotore, Pedro, is really insiring. I am his only student because I am at such a lower level than the other 4 on the program... its so awesome because I get much more instruction. Usually what happens in class is that Pedro teaches me about Zapatismo and Zapatista history, and he asks me about dynamics and the history of social movements back in the US… my sixties class is very much coming in handy. It is perfect because not only am I learning about things that I care about and came here to learn about, but also he's asking me questions that I really really want to be able to answer, which is motivating. I've actually gotten pretty weepy and moved in class before. For example, this one time he was showing me photos from a book about the Zapatistas and he asked me which was my favorite. I picked the picture of Zapatista women resisting a government army with their hands, strangling these huge men... it was so moving because the look of fear on the soldier's face showed how much the sheer will of the mujeres was so much more powerful than the expensive weapons the men were carrying. Pedro said "Los militares tienen arma pero no tienen dignidad." (The soldiers have guns but they don't have dignity.")
It is really amazing this "dignidad" of the mujeres... even the very young girls in the secondary school have a much higher level of confidence and life purpose than girls in the US. There is one dude on my program from Yale (we have an abbreviation for his ignorant statements... "TSY"="That's So Yale") thinks that the secondary school is narrow and propaganda. There are many problems with this idea, one being that the Zapatistas teach in a critical pedagogy format (like Pablo Friere, for those of you who are familiar with "Pedagogy of the Oppressed") and facilitate towards critique and many voices, but also I diagree with this dude because even if it is propaganda, it is so much more healthy of propaganda than the shit we're fed in the US. Tom says that the US has a much longer time for identity formation than there is indigenous culture, which ends the identity crisis around age 13. Many Zapatistas don't get to go to the secondary school because of needs in their home communities (it's a boarding school) and also there is no high school. So students really go straight into training for their professions.
There is something us gringos call "Zapatista time" which is basically the principle that the Zapatistas generally operate on a different time schedule than people in the US. This is even more tramatic than any other subculture joking that they are always late to things. Tom, the director of my program and my politics/Mexican history teacher, says that indigenous culture generally privileges "contento" or contentment, over punctuality and efficiency... a really cultural way of resisting capitalism. It did not take long after he said this for us all to notice how present this concept acutally is at the Caracol. Last Friday I started feeling like I had a pretty bad cold, and by Sunday I realized that it was a really full blown throat/chest infection. Anyway Pedro couldn’t find me before class because I was taking a nap, and I overheard him and Carlos talking and Pedro said it was better that I kept sleeping… Another time Pedro decided that we should take an hour an a half break so that he could do an errand in San Andres, but then he was 40 minutos late and when he came back we just resumed class like it was no thing. I am really tempted to stay here forever (don’t worry, they probably wouldn’t let me), if nothing else, for the sense of time and contento. It’s great to have the mutual respect with teachers where you can just adjust your schedule according to your personal needs.
Today for class, me and all the other gringos and the promotores worked in the milpa, which is a plot of farmland that grows corn up on the mountain. It was pretty fun to take a break from intellectual work and do something concretely, physically productive for la lucha. It is also always fun having informal time with the promotores because we always end up teaching them what American pop song lyrics mean and it is hilarious when Inez says things in English, since she just does it to be funny in this really dry way… none of the Zapatistas speak English (they are already bilingual in Tzotzil and Spanish) so it’s just her fucking around with us and making fun of how gringo we sound. Anyway we ended up having an abbreviated class later where we learned about the Revolutionary Law of the Zapatista Women, which was essentially their women’s caucus’s list of demands. We were pretty engrossed in eating cookies (and laughing at the exaggerated way Inez pronounced the word “cookie” LOL.)
The other class we have is the one with Tom, which is in englsih and for which we have to do lots of readings about Marxism and Neoliberalism and Mexican politics etc. All my teachers at SLC have prepared me really well for this class, so at least if I am the student who is more behind in Spanish I am less behind on the political side. On Fridays we have the “emotional check in” with Tom during which we also have the opportunity to do “Criticism/Self Criticism” which is a technique of revolutionary groups and left organizations in lots of countries. Today was a good learning experience in how it works, because as I was confronting another student about condescension and respect, he got defensive, and Tom took it as an opportunity to talk about the technique’s history and use, and how people are not allowed to respond to their criticism. It ruled also because the student had just insinuated that I was “touchy” around him (aka hysteric woman stereotype with illegitimate feelings) and Tom defended me with a deeper contextualization.
The last thing I wanted to talk about was the group projects we’re working on with the Secondary school students. My group has 3 students and until yesterday also Carlos, a Nashville native who in his middle age up and moved to Guatemala to do volunteer work with an organization that fights for folks who work at the garbage dump, and to run a small used bookstore there, which he uses for organizing. He is an incredibly kind and fun person (who really reminds me of Irene from SLC’s community partnerships office!) and I’m glad I got to draw a very finished portrait of him before he left. Our group’s subject was the 1997 Massacre at Acteal, where a paramilitary (armed by the government) attacked a church where a few dozen Zapatistas were praying, and brutally murdered tons of people including children and pregnant women. We decided that for our final presentation that I would do drawings explaining the story of the event and the kids would describe it. It is turning out to be a lot of work trying to figure out what this church looked like… but it was cool to learn that Diane had actually been there when she was on a different abroad program in 2006. It is really fulfilling though to do some really nice drawings for the Zapatistas about their history. Many of the murals at Oventic are by students who’d been on my program so I guess this is my way of making art for their struggle as well. Here’s a wikipedia entry about the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Anyway we had a group meeting right after Carlos left so the age dynamic shifted and what ended up happening is that I drew a bunch of portraits of the students and let them keep it after I took a picture. I didn’t give Pedro the one I drew of him but now I am regretting it so I think I’m going to give it to him for a goodbye gift.
ok I should probably go... I have to go buy a spanish-english dictionary while I'm still in San Cristobal. I've been borrowing one from the Caracol library but I'm going to have to give it back before I have my homestay in Tlaxcala in a week and a half.
Amor y Revolucion,
Beth
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