Social Cohesion Blues

News from Oaxaca

A hundred years ago my old very old friend Carleton Beals, who happened to be in Mexico as I am now, penned, along with his Gringo friends, a letter of the most exquisite Spanish (of which I, unfortunately, am quite incapable), informing the Mexican People that, although he and his friends would never presume to interfere in the decision of a free people, they must nevertheless protest the slanders that suggested that the murals of Orozco, Rivera and others brought anything but glory to the reputation of this proud land.

The murals were vandalized anyhow. The vandalizers included José Clemente Orozco himself, a principal creator of these frescoes. Was it that he considered his murals mediocre in the abstract, or considered them mediocre because they didn’t satisfy the politics of the vandalizers, or is it that the very fact that these murals, rather than promoting any type of social cohesion, provoked the opposite? Knowing Orozco I'd choose this last.

But who am I to say. I was last in Oaxaca over forty years ago. It's not for me to decide who's naughty or nice or who should make what decisions. Just to describe the changes I've noticed and what they might mean, not for Mexicans alone but for all of us.

Starting with the Zocalo. In memory and tourist lore it's a lovely tree-shaded square by the Cathedral with a bandstand at the center, surrounded by cool arcades and cafes. Today it looks like this:

It looks like this because it's been occupied by striking teachers and teachers’ organizations who sit under tents in the broiling heat; some are conducting workshops. And I'd tell you how disquieting it all is — it's what the guy who rents my room tells me — except my memory of the Old Zocalo is of mingling with the Indigenous people who had come down to demonstrate, knowing that our presence might keep the cops from beating the crap out of them. (They got the crap beat out of them after they'd left the square; later the Government sent in 10,000 paramilitaries to crush them.) And my memory is of sitting on the square with a coyote watching us; of a ridiculous middle-class man trying to pick a fight over some slight or other. These days the job of preserving Old Oaxaca as it once was has been taken up by the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, the only place I've seen a metal detector. The staff does a brilliant re-enactment of an old-time bureaucrat.

The Middle Class are still trying to pick their fights. Only not on the Zocalo:

I said I wasn't going to get involved; except whenever you charge a meal in Mexico the staff respectfully asks if you wish to leave a gratuity of 10, 15 or 20 percent, assuring you your contribution is purely voluntary. And how can one avoid the choice between showing solidarity, or contempt? And since either constitutes a political statement, how can one avoid being seen as interfering in the internal affairs of a proud people? In the airport in Mexico City a waitress tried to strongarm this Gringo into a not-so-voluntary tip. I left her a small fortune in change—solidarity ain’t solidarity if it doesn’t hurt at times.

There are only two sorts, here: those who loudly denounce the newly elected president and those who keep quiet, like those quiet lines you saw waiting before the polls at nine a.m. this Sunday past, or the quiet occupants of the Zocalo going about their revolutionary business. Is keeping it to yourself a prise de position in itself?

Then there was this kid I caught slapping up a poster on a wall, late at night:

We were both nervous. He explained that his act was to build up his portfolio for submission to the Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico City. He explained that “here in Mexico we have a system of justice that is very corrupt,” that the image was of a judge, etc. I later learned that the outgoing president had himself recently denounced the corruption of the Supreme Court. The kid was up to making revolutionary art, but for institutional purposes. Likewise the older, defeated party was called the PRI, the Revolutionary Institutional Party. Not a bad idea, whatever one might think of the execution.

A hundred and ten years ago or more the painter Jean Charlot woke up early his first day in Mexico City and went out to find the streets full of no-one but Indigenous People: sweeping, making deliveries, on their way with someone's breakfast. Two hours later it was nothing but genteel White people. Some days I wake up early and I step outside, and the streets are filled with SUVs.

WOID XXIV-07

Thursday, June 7, 2024; revised June 15, 2024.