Zócalo

Today, we returned to Macuil to see if we can finally get settled in there.  Before catching the bus, we headed to the 20 de Noviembre market in downtown Oaxaca to pick up some things for Margarita’s aunt and uncle and to the Zócalo to withdraw some money.

Unfortunately, we were racing against the clock and didn’t really get to enjoy either place, but it was nice to see that the Zócalo seems to have returned to normal after all the protests and construction and whatever else that had been going on in the previous years.  I personally don’t really understand everything that was happening to know how well-founded the protests were, how legitimate the construction was, etc., but I am happy to see the Zócalo back like it used to be; it is such a pretty spot.  And it was completely packed with people when we were there.  I look forward to going back during our next trip to Oaxaca City and enjoying it at a more leisurely pace.

Phone Line

Well, no good news for getting our own phone line in Macuil.  It is possible, but we will have to wait 45-90 days, or maybe longer.  So, that option is out, at least in the short-term.  If I am going to be using dial-up then, I will have to find someone who doesn’t mind sharing their phone line.

Satellite remains another option, but we need a meter-by-meter flat space to install it, a strong surface (not the tin roofs we have here), and a clear line of sight to the south.  So, it’s not like the Sky dishes which I have seen attached to sides of houses and basically wherever.  Still, the satellite people will come out in 3-4 days if that’s what we want.  It sounds good (if we can find a spot) and I’m tempted, but I would still like to know what is up with the library (do they have satellite access?) and why it is out and why the secundaria‘s runs slow.

Breakfast

One of things I miss while I am in Oaxaca is breakfast.  It’s not that Oaxacans don’t eat a morning meal, it’s the differences in what is likely to be served.

In the US, we have many dedicated breakfast foods which are predominantly served in the morning:  bacon, eggs, sausage patties, pancakes, waffles, bagels, cereal, oatmeal, cream of wheat, toast, English muffins, breakfast pastries, etc.  Sure these items can appear at other times of day and IHOP serves breakfast all day, but they are prototypically foods for the first meal of the day.  And not only are these foods associated with breakfast, but personally at least, I have come to expect my first meal to usually be taken from this menu.

Here, this isn’t the case.  There seems to be much less of an association between particular foods and certain meals of the day.  (I would say that eggs skew toward being a morning food here, but that is at best a trend, rather than something more categorical.)  As a result, today at Margarita’s sister house, for our first meal we had chicken in a green sauce.  It was quite good and I’m not going to refuse food that required no effort on my part to prepare, but still, it struck my American sensibilities as an odd thing to be having at 10 in the morning.

Part of this clash with my preferences may be my own doing, however.  Here, meals are spaced out a bit differently than they are in the US.  People often start their day around 6 or earlier with possibly coffee (or some other hot drink) and a little bread, a meal that can be referred to as [cafeto'].  This is followed by a big meal around 10am [xtììlà], another big meal in the afternoon around 3pm [yhuugwe], and then the day is finished off with something light, again usually coffee and bread [cafeto'].  (Actually, there is a dinner meal [xiella], too, around 6 or 7 when men return from the fields, but it’s not something we’ve been typically eating; a late yhuugwe carries us over until the nighttime coffee, usually.)

So, if I would get up early enough, I could convert the 6am nosh into a breakfast more familiar to me, like cereal and milk, or even just stick with the local coffee and bread.  Then when the 10am meal comes, I might be psychologically prepared to have something that seems more lunch-like to me.  As it’s been going though, I’ve been getting up later and am offered the 6am food and 10am food back to back, which is too much food for me first thing in the day, and again, odd food to start the day with.

After xtììlà today, however, I did score one of my favorite Oaxacan food items:  sugar cane [ettia].  It’s something I was really looking forward to and I can’t believe we have been here over two and a half weeks without any.  But luckily, as our meal was winding down, Benjamin was starting to get antsy, so I took him out for a walk.  We went by a place I had seen before that was offering bags of sugar cane pieces (and other fruits) and I was able to buy a bag for 10 pesos—I wasn’t even charged a gringo tax.  The sugar cane was really good and juicy; I wish I had some more.

Back to Oaxaca

Today we returned to Oaxaca City to check out the possibility of our own phone line, investigate other Internet options, collect some things we had left there, and get caught up online, which, once we get settled in, is what I spend most of the day doing.

Dial-Up Access

The Internet is still out at the library and I haven’t heard about any improvements at the secundaria.  So, if we are going to stay here for long, I’ll need to get my own Internet setup.

Macuil is too remote and small for DSL, which is too bad.  I’ve been impressed with Telmex’s DSL service in larger metropolitan areas.  I particularly like that their modems seem to come automatically with wireless service, although I wish it wasn’t automatically password protected.

So with no satellite in my back pocket, I am left to try out dial-up.  One problem will be finding a phone line that I can use.  It’s nice the town has been hooked up with phone service, but the house we are staying in hasn’t been.  I’ll have to find someone who doesn’t mind me tying up their phone.

And of course I haven’t been on dial-up in years.  I try to remember just how slow it is and brace myself for the worst.  After finding a temporary location to check it out, I find that dial-up turns out not to be so horrible; it is certainly workable.

And actually, there might be certain advantages to working at sublight speeds.  It would help me not overload the web-dictionary with too many bells-and-whistles which might render it impossible to use in Macuil, with slow and inconsistent Internet access.  It would also force me to find the most efficient way of packaging those bells-and-whistles that are necessary.  Finally, there is the added benefit that it might limit the amount of web-related goofing off that I can be tempted to do.  Maybe.

So, I feel cautiously optimistic, but am still not convinced how it will all work out.

Hard Hat Required

An unexpected occupational hazard for me doing research in Oaxaca has been low ceilings, doorways, beams, overhangs, gutter supports, etc.  Historically, Zapotecs are a shorter people (although this is changing with improved nutrition—Margarita’s generation is noticeably taller than her parents’ generation and her generation’s children are taller still, with many of the guys coming close to my height, which at 5′ 10″ isn’t all that tall by US standards).  Most of the houses here, however, have been built to those shorter heights, and as a result I am forever putting lumps and gashes on the top of my head.

So, something I like about the new place we are staying is that there are only about three places I can hit my head:  the doorway going into the bedroom, the doorway going into the hallway leading to the kitchen, and the doorway into the kitchen.  All things considered, that’s not too bad.  Doorways are a natural place to duck and once I’m into the rooms or out on the porch, I’m in the clear.

In contrast, at Margarita’s uncle’s house, in addition to low doors there are numerous low beams.  And some doorways are really low:  if I wanted to get through the doorway standing up to where we sleep, I would have to remove my head.  So at his house, I often duck to avoid one obstacle and hit the next, or I sometimes I don’t duck down quite enough.  Her uncle has joked that I need a helmet for his house.  I wonder if I can put that down as a necessary equipment purchase on a grant application?

Support Your Local Government

Besides the day being filled with cleaning and getting the house ready, we also met with the cabildo, a group of five men who are selected for 18 month terms to administer the workings of the town, acting as mayor, treasurer, etc.  An additional nine men are chosen to take care of other duties around the town, such as serving as police.  These 14 men make up the autoridad municipal.

So, today we met with the cabildo to let them know about my current project and that I would be around.  It was the earliest they could meet with me since they had been occupied with festivities for La Asunción.

I was a little nervous before meeting with them, but the meeting went really well.  Thankfully, I had already met the man who is currently serving as the presidente municipal (mayor), and he was familiar with what I do.  Overall, they seemed very supportive and welcoming, so I feel hopeful about the current project.

Zapotec Homes and Gardens

Today, we got our own place to stay.  We are renting a property in Margarita’s neighborhood [Barriu Lattsi'].  We had been staying with her aunt and uncle, who are just two houses up and across the street from the new place.  It will be nice to have a place to ourselves, but since we haven’t figured out a good solution for the Internet yet, it may just be a temporary move, or something we end up using only on visits to Macuil.

There are no typical floorplans for housing in Macuil.  As Nacho pointed out to me when we were visiting his nephew who was working on his own new house, there are no codes, building inspectors, or restrictions of any kind.  You can build however you like, but at your own risk.  Most people adapt their housing to fit the available space (oftentimes, children are building on their parents’ property) and do the work piecemeal, adding a room here, a building there.  This leads to a frequent phenomenon I see which is windows that open onto other rooms or are otherwise in less than ideal locations.

While there is not uniformity—no housing developments here—there are certain common themes.  As seems to be common throughout Mexico, the entire property is often blocked by buildings and/or surrounded by a fence.  Usually, there are several distinct buildings [yú'ù] on the property, possibly representing different generations of a family, but frequently just dedicated to different functions (eating, sleeping, showering, etc.).  There tend not to be interior rooms.  Most buildings and rooms (even those with a common wall) open directly to the outside.  This is changing with newer builders often opting for having multiple rooms and interior doors, but it is not yet the predominant pattern.  Floors and walls tend to be cement or adobe or brick, which could be trouble in case of earthquakes, which are not totally unknown in this region.  Thankfully at least, most buildings tend to be low, only one story or two maybe, and roofs are lighter, typically made with wooden beams supporting lamina (tin sheets).  These are unfortunately noisy when it rains.  One advantage to the house we are staying in is that instead of tin sheets it has what Margarita called lamina asbesto (which sounds a little worrisome, but for different reasons).  They are thicker and not metallic, so they don’t magnify the pounding of the rain, but instead dampen it.

Most properties have a kitchen, bedroom (or bedrooms as needed), an all-purpose room and a bathroom area.  (Historically the bedroom and all-purpose room would have been combined into a [yú'ù xeeni] ‘big room’.)  Kitchens are the most likely to be separate structures since they are built to have open fires.  Usually the fire is just built on a raised platform that is open on the sides.  There is a raised tin roof above the fire to let the smoke out.  Since the smoke isn’t otherwise contained, the rafters, wall by the fire, and other parts tend to become blackened and smoke-cured over time.

The kitchen [cocina] is the only room that is heated, which is fine if you are going out to work in the field all day or you are working hard at housework.  You can sit by the fire while you eat and then hide under blankets at night, when it does get a little chilly, especially in the wintertime.  I am worried though about what happens if your job is to sit in front of a computer, not working up a sweat.  Right now the days are warm, but later in the year, I’m not sure.  Or what if I want to work after sunset when it can get cold?  Maybe I will be thankful that my laptop puts out a lot of heat.

One thing I do like about housing here is that the toilet and shower are usually housed in separate compartments, often with their own individual doors.  I think that is a great idea and something I would adopt in the US if I ever had the chance to design my own house.  I have seen a few houses here try to adopt the American model of having a bathroom with the shower and toilet in the same room, but it doesn’t seem to work out well since there is no tub for the shower or walls to keep the water out.  Separate is a better a way to go.

The one room I don’t fully understand is what I am calling the all-purpose room.  It is usually a large room which as far as I can tell doesn’t get much day-to-day use.  Margarita tells me that my perception may be a little skewed, since we have mostly stayed with older couples as they are likely to have room for us, and also because with emigration Macuil’s population is aging.  These rooms may have seen more use back when there were still children living at home and when people had larger families.  Today though these rooms don’t seem like places where people typically go and hang out.  Casual visitors are usually invited to the kitchen.  Altars are typically maintained in the all-purpose room and that seems to be their current daily function.  Otherwise, the rooms seem kind of like storage (but only along the walls), or maybe have some beds for guests.  And if someone hosts a posada this would be the room that would be used.  It would also be used I suppose for wakes and novenarios.  So, now they seem to be largely ceremonial spaces with a few practical encroachments.

The place we will be staying at is newer built—most of the dates inscribed in the concrete are from the late 80′s, and it is a little different from more traditional properties.  Everything is contained in one building on the property, though again, most rooms open to the outside rather than having interior rooms.  It is a two-story building, although we’ll mostly be using the upstairs.  It contains one large room which serves as a bedroom and another room which serves as the kitchen.  Both open out onto a shared balcony.

The kitchen is quite different from what I am used to seeing here.  There isn’t just an open area for a fire.  Instead, it looks like there is an enclosed space for building a fire with a PVC pipe chimney, but no one we’ve consulted so far about it is sure about how to use it.  And I don’t know if the fire would be solely for heating—the space for building the fire is too small to cook in—or if you might be able to cook on the platform above the fire.  When the owners visit we can ask them—we’ve gotten the keys from one of their parents in the meantime.

An exterior staircase leads down from the balcony.  I’m guessing an all-purpose room is down there on the first floor, but it is currently filled up as storage by the owners.  At the back of the house on the first floor is the bathroom, containing a sink, shower, and toilet, each in their own separate stalls.  The owners had walled off an interior bathroom connected to the bedroom but that was as far as they had gotten, so right now if nature calls at night it means a trudge outside and downstairs.  (Or there is the chamber pot solution, which are still used here.)

Overall, I’m looking forward to a place to ourselves.

Chinantec Country

The Internet is still unavailable at the library, so my quest for the Internet continues.  Today, it takes me for the first time into Chinantec country.

As you travel north-northeast from Oaxaca City towards Tuxtepec, you start out in Zapotec speaking areas, before you cross over into areas where people speak Chinantec [Xtiisa' Xiida].  Macuil is right on that border, the last Zapotec speaking town before entering into Chinantec areas.

It is hypothesized that the Zapotec and Chinantec languages are ultimately related to one another.  They are part of a large stock of languages called Otomanguean, which includes the Mixtecan languages and several other, smaller groups.  This group has a similar time depth to Indo-European and Zapotec and Chinantec are quite distant relatives within the group.  So, pointing out that MacZ and Comaltepec Chinantec spoken in the next town over are ultimately related is interesting, but the relationship is not at all obvious.  It’s like noting that English and Farsi or Spanish and Hindi are related.  You would probably never notice it in passing.

I have long wanted to visit these Chinantec speaking neighbors of Macuil and see what the similarities and differences might be.  So, when Margarita’s uncle said he had business to conduct in San Pedro Yolox [Ta'gwe] the next town after Santiago Comaltepec [Elli'a] and that they had working Internet access, I jumped at the chance.

We followed the dirt road out of Macuil, traveling through some pretty country, as generally seems to be the case around here.  We had to drive through two rivers to get to Yolox and there was a pretty little waterfall right before we entered the town.  As we went, Chinantec towns started coming into view on the mountains opposite us.  As such, we saw the towns in the reverse order that we would go through them.  First, we could see Rosario Temextitlan, the town beyond Yolox that we didn’t go to.  Then we could see Yolox and finally Comaltepec, which we arrived in first.

In Comaltepec, I found that things don’t look all that different in Chinantec speaking towns of the Sierra versus Zapotec speaking towns in the Sierra.  There was nothing obvious that would give the town away as Chinantec speaking, until someone actually opened their mouth.  The buildings and architecture looked the same.

I thought people might dress differently, but they didn’t.  In the Tlacolula Valley, for example, traditional Zapotec dress, at least of women, is quite different than that of Macuil, and there are even striking differences between towns.  In one town, they wore skirts held on with red belts decorated with pompoms, while in a neighboring town they wore brightly colored silk (or silk-like) blouses and skirts.  The few traditionally dressed women I saw in the Chinantec areas wear the same thing as traditional Macuil garb (which in both cases seemed to be found mostly with women over 70):  a one piece dress a little below knee length, an apron, and a rebozo wrapped around the hair or head.  In both areas, younger women, maybe in their 50s and 60s, typically forego the dress in favor of pants and sometimes lose the rebozo as well.  And below that, the women mostly seem to wear contemporary Western dress.

So, my first impression at least is that the language differences didn’t seem to represent much of a cultural divide.  Although the groups don’t share a traditional language, they do share many other cultural similarities.  This recalls the Siete Regiones (7 Regions) of Oaxaca that are often discussed:  La Sierra, Papaloapan, Istmo, La Cañada, La Valle, La Mixteca, and La Costa.  As such, maybe groups within these regions share more features based on their proximity and similar environments than they do with groups in other regions.  So, it may be that the Chinantecs and Zapotecs of the Sierra are culturally more similar to one another than either are to Zapotecs of the Valley or Chinantecs of the Valle Nacional area, which is lower in elevation and hotter and more humid.

There was one difference I noted, though it was one I expected based on having seen Chinantec kids in Macuil, who go there to attend the secundaria.  As I sat there at the Internet place, the kids who were there using the other computers were all speaking Chinantec among themselves.  In Macuil, that is just not something you find.  There may be quite a bit of passive knowledge, but you just don’t hear kids spontaneously speaking Zapotec, not to their peers, and not even to their elders really.

As for the Internet access, I finally got something decent.  The business had its own satellite dish and was running about 4 computers with it.  The speeds were not as fast as I’ve seen in Oaxaca City with DSL—a kid next to me was trying to play YouTube videos, but they would play a second or two and then pause—but it was respectable.  I spent much of the time investigating what my options might be for Internet access in Macuil.  While Sky does offer satellite Internet access in other countries apparently, it doesn’t look like they do in Mexico, which is too bad with all the Sky dishes I have seen here.  There is satellite access via Satélite Uno, which runs equipment from Hughesnet, a company operating in the US.  This seemed to be what they were running in Yolox.  The problem is that it is a bit expensive, but also, thinking back on it, this seemed to be what they had at the secundaria in Macuil.  They had the same router in both places, but at the secundaria it was much slower.  So, I might be willing to sink the money into the satellite dish for some highspeed-ish Internet access, but I need to know it will work.

One final observation:  as we left after dark, I was amazed to see the vertical spread of Yolox.  With the street lights on, it was easy to see where the town began and ended, but the climb from the lowest light on the mountain to the highest one must be immense.  Several hundred feet difference in elevation?  I don’t know, but it seemed much greater than Macuil’s and more than Abejones’ [Eyhu'ni], another Zapotec town which can be seen off in the distance from Macuil.  The lights of Yolox did form a pretty pattern, though.  They were spread out like a bell, widening out as you went down the mountain, with a nice crossbar-like shape towards the top.

La Secundaria

Macuil has Internet access.  This is quite a change from when I first visited the town in the late 90′s and early 00′s.  Then, there was very limited phone access, with a couple of lines offered through a store in the center of town.  Whenever a call would come for someone, an announcement would have to be made over a loudspeaker for the person to come and call back or wait for a follow-up call.

By the time I came again during Christmas 2004, the town had pooled together and received phone access through Telmex, with most individual households signing up for a phone line.

And when I visited last year, I learned that there was Internet access available through the library.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to check it out firsthand because the library is only open on days school is session and we were here during summer break.  Fortunately, today is the first day of school in Macuil and Oaxaca City as well.  And if I didn’t want to wait, this year there is, in addition to the library, a little business that offers Internet access for 10 pesos/hour.

Unfortunately, access is down for some reason, both at the library and at the store.  Though quite far from one another, they seem to share some a connection.

So, I haven’t had Internet access since August 13th, when we were in Oaxaca and I am getting desperate.  I can live without various modern technologies.  I don’t have an iPod, unlike some of the kids here.  I haven’t driven a car since I have been in Oaxaca nor have I used a cell phone since we got here and have only once or twice wished I had one so Margarita and I could call each other and figure out where to meet.  And I haven’t even had those thoughts recently, since Macuil’s really not big enough to get completely and inconveniently separated.

And I haven’t missed TV, even though I probably watch too much of it back home.  It had been nice watching some of the Olympics in Oaxaca City.  I don’t usually care too much about such things; it is hard for me to get worked up about the accomplishments of someone who just happened to have been born in the same country as me (or went to the same school as me, etc.).  But it is fun being around Mexicans routing for their countrymen, since they are generally the underdogs.  Also, it was nice to see them be happy for other countries’ athletes, like Michael Phelps, instead of taking an us vs. them attitude.

Still, now that we are here in Macuil, I don’t really miss TV, and I could watch more if I wanted (and the occasional updates I have caught about the Olympics have been nice).  Broadcast access is pretty minimal.  We’re up in the mountains and only one channel comes through.  This year, however, I have noticed a proliferation of Sky Television satellite antennas.  So there is more TV access now than ever.  I am curious to see what’s available, but I haven’t been in anyone’s home yet who had it.  Even if I did visit someone’s home who had it, I’m not sure I would see it.  In general, there is not really a tradition here of having a living room like space with a TV that you can just plop down in front of and watch.  Most of the TVs I have seen have been tucked away in bedrooms, a place to watch a little news before falling asleep.

So, while I am surviving, and in fact enjoying, being separated from many technologies, I am dying without the Internet.  I need it to check in with my family, check on my house, my finances, what is happening in the world, and of course to work.  I have just about hit my limit for being offline.

Thankfully, Margarita’s uncle offers to take me up to the secundaria, the junior high, to see about using the Internet there.  They have their own access separate from the library’s apparently.

The secundaria is pretty far up the mountain, at the edge of the town.  It was built up there to provide it plenty of space for workshops, to raise animals, and the like.

When we arrive during the late morning, the kids are lounging around outside, dressed in their school uniforms.  We have arrived during the late morning meal time.  Macuil, unlike many towns, has a full secundaria, with teachers to teach all of the subjects.  Other towns I have been to have telesecundarias, where it seems that at least some content, such as English instruction, is conveyed via television.  As a result, kids from surrounding towns come to Macuil to attend the secundaria.  And now, as Macuil’s population is declining, the school must rely more and more on such students to continue.

The teachers seem to be gathered under an awning eating.  We wait around for them to finish.  Margarita comments that the secundaria looks pretty much the same as it did when she attended the school.

After a while, the teachers and administrators finish, and after a little consultation, we gain permission for me to use the Internet.  I am lead to a room that is full of pretty new looking computers and am grateful for the opportunity to finally get connected.  For some reason, the connection turns out to be rather slow, but at least I am able to touch base with people.