This final week wound down fairly uneventfully. I volunteered two more days for the Edelo Cultural Center which I started the Friday before, but I didn't really do a whole lot for them. Mercy, the woman I worked with there, decided to speak less English around me to make me practice my Spanish a bit more, which was good for me.
On Tuesday, the gang at Gael's decided to go out to a movie and invited me along. It was completely fantastic. The way "going to the movie's" works in San Cristóbal is quite different then in The States. I never saw a huge cineplex, or even a small independent theatre as we would think of them back home. Instead, all of the films I saw were projections in little rooms off of cultural centers. These centers are essentially art house hang outs that serve coffee, beer, pastries, have art shows of local artists and in general focus on art that is focused on the local culture.
The movie we saw was called ¡Viva México! and it was amazing. I highly recommend it to anyone, particularly to Americans. It was about the Zapatistas (surprise, surprise), but focused on Marcos' trip around Mexico back in 2006. His goal was to unify other small groups struggling for justice against a very corrupt government. I recommend this highly to Americans in particular because in my travels over the past several years, extensively focused in The States, it is very clear that there is a level of dissatisfaction with our own government's morality and workings that goes entirely unchallenged outside of griping and little protests that are forgotten as soon as the litter is cleaned up the next day.
The film was impressive for me mostly because of Marcos' message in it. The campaign he was heading up is called El Otro Compaña, or The Other Campaign. The film begins in LA with the Mexicans trying to scrape a living together selling food from carts on the sidewalk. They talk about what injustices happen there and is apart of a subcategory of El Otro Compaña called El Otro Otro Compaña, The Other Other Campaign. It then cuts from there to the indigenous Mayans struggling back in Chiapas. It follows Marcos from there to the Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Colima, among other places up to Mexico City.
It shows Marcos giving his speeches, which are quite inspiring, authentic, and impressive, about the nature of the government's tricks and tactics and how his beliefs coincide with whatever struggle each local group is battling. In Mexico City, he embraces the struggle of gays and lesbians and the small business owners among others. It is the small business owners who provide the climax inadvertently when a riot breaks out and the small group is able to push the police out of a neighborhood being threatened by them, Atenco. The brutality the cameras catch the police delivering when they finally blitz the area is disturbing and telling of exactly what all of these people are struggling against. If I can, I would love to send the DVD up to The States.
As it turned out, two days later I ended having drinks with the director and producer in their home. I spoke with the producer, Daniela, about touring through out the US using my former film contacts and she seemed quite interested. Around the same time I came in contact through Facebook with a man who has reopened The Bing in Springfield as a music venue, but hopes to do films soon as well. It seems a tour may come of this in the next year or so, hopefully, so keep your eyes peeled.
Also that same evening, I visited the home of my teacher, Cristian. He lives in a collective community which are quite popular in San Cristóbal. It is a very progressive and liberal city that leaves most places I've seen in America well behind it in energy conservation and environmental consciousness. They lived in buildings built with found materials, and looks like they live in a tree house. The washer for laundry was operated by an exercise bicycle that spins the tumbler as you peddle. They were working on finding ways to power all of their lights this way, and storing the excess energy in batteries.
Contrasting that I witnessed an extremely depressing sight at the edge of town the next day. I was looking for fuel for my camp stove and was reluctantly guided to a Sam's Club on the edge of town. I have been in Walmart and Sam's in America and its never cheery for me, but seeing it here was ten times more depressing. It was like witnessing the invasion of American corporatism and its beginning, or the modern day landing of Cortez. Very few people were shopping there, and everything there was junk from abroad.
I left and went a few blocks down to the large Mexican market. Mazes upon mazes, sometimes under corrugated tin rooves, sometimes out in the open air, but filled with a good local feel of people selling stuff they had. Mostly it was food they had grown, but some of it was just as cheap and plastic as what Sam's was offering, but somehow it was reassuring.
I wrapped up my week preparing to hitch out the next day and finally see what hitching in southern Mexico was really all about.
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