Editor’s Note: The following are excerpts from assistant culture editor Andrew Beale’s blog about his self-funded travels in Mexico. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
June 20
Revolutionary idea: Refuse all help from the government. This is the policy of Zapatista groups throughout Mexico. They refused to accept materials from the government to build concrete floors and tin roofs for their houses. Many of them sleep on dirt floors and have no running water.
The Zapatista uprising Jan. 1, 1994, marked the true beginning of the Zapatista revolution. Armed rebels attacked and took over government installations throughout the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Many of the rebels were armed with nothing more than sticks.
They rode to war on public busses.
June 22
An interview conducted at Albergue Jesús el Buen Pastor de Pobre y el Migrante, Tapachula, Chiapas: Subject is a 27-year-old man who wishes to remain anonymous, hereafter referred to as “Sujeto.”
Sujeto was born in El Salvador and brought to the United States when he was three months old. He lived in Los Angeles over the course of his life. Seven years ago, he was arrested on a firearms charge.
Sujeto said it all happened when a store he was working at was robbed, and during his shift his friend was shot. Sujeto ran to his friend’s car where he retrieved a pistol and returned fire. He was sentenced to seven years in prison on an attempted murder charge.
When released from prison, Sujeto was deported to El Salvador, a country where he had no family and had not been to since he was three months old. Immediately upon leaving the airport, gang members accosted Sujeto to cut open his shirt, so they could look for gang tattoos, but Sujeto of course had none. Had they found gang tattoos, he said they would have killed him.
July 5
While I was in Caracol Oventek, a Zapatista community where I studied Spanish for a week, I heard two parables about the differences between capitalist society and the way of life of the Tzotzil, the indigenous community of the region.
Here’s one: A man is winding a clock outside of his house. Another man sees him and laughs at this silly, monotonous task. Returning to his house, this man decides that he also wants a clock for his wall.
Instead of buying a clock from the store, this man puts an artichoke on his wall. He keeps time by pulling a leaf off the artichoke whenever he feels like it and keeping track of how many leaves are gone. In this manner, he always knows the exact hour.
As my compañero de clase said by way of interpretation: “Eat when you’re hungry. Sleep when you’re tired. Do stuff when it needs to be done.”
July 6
I want to see the world from inside Club Med. I want to fly to Paris and refuse to go more than a mile away from the Eiffel tower. I want to go on a pub crawl in Athens that’s only open to Americans.
I want a cultural experience in Central America without the dirty parts or any guilt for not wanting these people in my country. I want to see the native people in their silly clothing from a tour bus window. I want to drink Starbucks in Chiapas, Mexico. I want to eat at a Hard Rock Cafe in Africa. I want to stay at a Hilton hotel on every continent.
I want to give spare change to beggars in China and feel really good about myself for it. I want to pay a series of tour guides $150 an hour and feel slightly ripped off.
I want to do a weeklong meditation retreat in Thailand and tell all my friends how it changed my life. I want to repeat the same sentence in English five times to an Egyptian street vendor, in the hopes he’ll understand me if I just talk louder and slower. And when I come home, I want to tell all the pretty rich girls how I just went on the craziest adventure ever.
See all of Beale’s travel blog entries online at DailyLobo.com