[unspecified] Thursday, May 08 2008
We're back in the states! I was so excited when we landed in O'Hare and I could drink out of a fountain again... it's the little things... I was going to put up a long post about the week we spent at Zipolite, the beach of the dead, but after reading about the ending of abortion funding, I thought I would write about the travelling part, instead, as well as some history on Mexico. First of all, the country is 97% Catholic. Take that number at pure face value, because the definition of "Catholic" just means baptized. The is a 40% divorce rate, a 50% adultery rate (for the men [or so I've read]), and a very high rate of abandonment by the men in a migratory economy, leaving the women to take care of everything. At the turn of the last century, there were 3.7 million people in Mexico. Today there are about 98 million. That, my friends, is what we call a population explosion. Of that 98 million, at least 40 million live below the "official" poverty level. In the smaller villages, the indigenous girls get married off at the age of 13-15 to boys age 14-16. they have between 12 and 18 children. They do not use contraception, obviously, for a variety of reasons. They, like women all over the world throughout the ages, have figured out ways to end pregnancies, if necessary. But I would imagine it is generally easier to just have the children. Elsewhere, the Catholic kids do not practice abstinance, but they do follow the no-contraception rules, those being much easier to follow. There is, therefore, a large number of illigitimate children. The beggars in the streets always have many children surrounding them. Although this increases the amount of money they are collecting, I'm not sure that is the best reason to breed more children. Any idiot can procreate. The challenge is to do so responsibly. To really be willing to be a parent for the rest of your life. Long past are the times when having many children ensured your future. "We share a great goal, to work toward a day when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law..." Yes, every child a wanted child. Not wanted simply to fill some sort of bizzare psychological void, or welcomed because the parents need someone else to beat or do the laundry, or simply because gOD said "go forth and multiply", but because the commitment to raising a child has been made. Personally, I just wish everyone would just stop fucking breeding (not stop fucking, just breeding...) Anyhow, Mexico. We travelled throughout Chiapas, from Villahermosa to the astounding Mayan sites of Palenque, Bonampak and Yaxchitlan. On to the waterfall at Misol-ha, the beautiful water and falls of Agua Azul, then to the exposed site of Tonina, sitting amidst the ranches where once was a jungle. Several wonderful days at San Cristobol, central agitation point for many Zapatista demonstrations, to Tuxtla Gutierez and the Sumideron Canyon. Beautiful and depressing, jaw-dropping and nose-crinkling, inspiring and frustrating. The road to Bonampak cuts through the heart of the Lancondon Mayan Jungle. The Lancondon Mayans were the only indigenous group to not be conquered, as they lived too far in the jungle to be delt with. They only really came out about 50 years ago. Which was a mistake. Their numbers have dwindled to about 600, and they have a serious inbreeding problem, exacerbated by the fact that each man takes on 4 wives. Greed allowed them to sell logging rights to their land, and that has destroyed about 1/3 of it. Another 1/3 has been destroyed by "ejido" farming, collective farming, in which the only way to stake claim on a piece of land was to slash-n-burn it. That said, Bonampak was a very cool site, displaying beautiful murals of the Jaguar kings, a millenium and a half old. Yaxchitlan was even cooler, requiring a 1 hour boat ride into the middle of the jungle, and suddenly you are in the middle of this huge site that seems to go on forever, building after building, under jungle canopy, with howler monkeys screaming in the background (we watched them for a half hour!). I'm glad I saw it. It doesn't look the same once the jungle is taken away. San Cristobol. What a beautiful city. Lot's of foreigners here. Many as tourists, too many as foreign agitators. It amazes me that people have the audacity to come to another country, take a political position, and then decide it is acceptable to try to tell a foreign government what to do. I have no more right to go down and agitate on behalf of the indigenous in Mexico than our government has going into Guatemala and threatening military intervention every time they go against US business interests. Like we don't have enough political activities to keep us busy at home. Deforestation, health insurance, decent education, abuse and neglect, not to mention our own much-maligned indigenous population. Maybe our problems just aren't as romantic as those baklava-shrouded Zapatistas... I see that my post has gotten much longer than I planned, so I'll go now. I'm glad to be home, and I feel lucky to be an American, even if we have a moron for president.
