I've been violated! (finally)

The other day I embarked on the dreaded 10-hour bus ride from Quito to Cuenca. Here's the foreshadowing: Everywhere you look, and everyone you speak with will tell you to be careful because it is fairly common to have someone try to cut into your backpack and steal whatever they can.

Despite my extreme paranoia that generally keeps me safer than most (thank you New York!), a young guy tried to steal my camera during the ride. He was in the seat in front of me, after moving around a bit because I kept shifting my bags. I was being extra vigilent. But the guy climbed under his seat from in front of me, and reached all the way back and cut through the bottom of my bag, which was between my legs and only barely extending under his seat. I was certain no one from the front or the back could reach my bag, yet about an hour into the ride, I felt the almost anticipated slight shuffle at my feet and stood up and saw the guy crouched under his seat looking up at me. I shouted very loudly and he had quite a look of fear in his eyes. I kept shouting so everyone on the bus could hear very clearly, and when I looked, everyone was standing and looking over, putting the ball in my court. While holding him by the scruff of his t-shirt collar, I checked my bag and saw the camera body and the smaller lens missing so I demanded them and other passengers pulled them off the floor and offered them to me. Clearly my spanish lessons have not taken hold because the only word I could conjure was mas! when telling him to turn over the other pieces of my equipment. I shook him around a bit and made the bus stop and had him and his female partner kicked off the bus I-don't-know-where.

So in the end I lost two Nikon camera batteries ($30 each) and 5 rechargeable AAs. But you know what I'm most mad about?—and I'm really struggling with this— is that I didn't pummel him bloody. Keep in mind I am a guy, and I was raised in New York, where people start swinging at the slightest cross look from a stranger. Although I was aggressively shoving him around and shouting curses in my most aggressive voice, my only leftover emotion is disappointment in myself for not just totally beating him senseless—as he well deserved by any standard. Ok, any "guy" standard. Ok, ok, any "guy raised in NY" standard. I'm learning, through a few good testing opportunities throughout the years, that my aggressiveness only goes so far. I'm a little afraid of actually punching someone and although it sounds weird, even to myself, it bothers me. Not because it's good to punch people, because it's really not, but because if you're going to stand up for yourself in ways that genuinely keep you safe, you need to know you have the goods to back it up—hopefully never needing to use them. I dunno, that's my theory anyway.

So I haven't been kidnapped so things are good, although I think that's more of Mexico thing. (And wouldn't that suck: "Your family pays a ransom of 8 million or we kill you!" - Um, Sorry.. my family has about $250.76, will that do?)

But after being her for two days, I will say that I really like Cuanca. It's very colonial—every single street is cobble stone— but culturally urban at the same time. I actually watched an old gentleman impatiently tap his keys on the counter for service in a restuarant. To me, that's a good thing and something I would NEVER have expected to see anywhere in Central or South America. The people seem friendly, educated and relatively aware that it's 2009. I could stay here for a little while..

Life and Death is Relative.

This morning I heard a chicken strutting around outside under my window and wondered whos it was and if the cat would have a little fun with it. I didn't think much more of it because there are chickens everywhere you look here in Otavalo. It's the defacto meat, eaten by everyone pretty much every day. This is a very rural and indigenous town and many people keep their own chickens. Of those that don't, they buy them live daily and cook them the same or next day. It's just how it is. NO ONE buys frozen meat of any kind—it's not even available if you wanted to. The good thing about this is that the meat here is fresh and organic. All the food here is. In the States, for any product to fulfill the definition of "organic" (or even "healthy", for that matter) would require all sorts of exceptions to the way our food chain brings food to our tables. Because we have such an extensive and complicated food delivery system, designed through capitalism-inspired market forces to have only a few producers provide for many millions or people (customers), any exception to the standard procedure is very costly.

If you looked at the most extreme definition of organic you find that in developing countries, most food fits that criteria—at 1/4 the cost of pre-packaged, processed foods in the states.

There are downsides, of course. No one gets rich in the food industry here, as there is no food industry outside of the big cities. Also, the risk of accidentally driving into a grazing cow is quite a bit higher here than in the States. In fact, it's a daily risk. So much so that drivers have taken up the habit of honking at anything that has the potential of possibly entering the roadway. Ferel dogs (of which there are many), people standing on the sidewalk looking in store windows, floating bags, intersections with people or other cars or not. In fact, to cover the bases, drivers—all of them—simply honk about every 10 seconds.

Feed is also a cost that isn't accounted for by people raising animals. So every morning people bring their cows, pigs and chickens to their favorite grassy area and let them feed and whatever grows from the ground. It doesn't matter if the land is public or private, if it's not being used, it's a good feed lot. Even thin patches between roads and storefronts are good enough to drop off your animals for the day. And so you commonly have chickens, pigs and cows grazing inches away from the roadside. So the chicken you bought at the street market that morning is in fact "organic" and has left a wonderfully small footprint on the planet, but has also helped to create havoc in a community that has over the years come to accept many instances of havoc by embracing a culture of "anything goes". And if you follow a certain line of thinking, this leads to interesting examples of cleanliness, building methods, child rearing, time management and commitment, noise and a total lack of personal drive to achieve something "better"—something so ingrained in the culture of the U.S., that it filters everything everyone does at all times.

So I come down for breakfast and go into the kitchen to say hello to Rosita, the indigenous woman who cooks the meals here, and see a pot filled with fresh chicken parts, waiting to be cooked. She knew that I knew what transpired that morning, and looked at me with a half smile knowing the visiting gringo would find the events foreign. What I also saw in her look was a recognition of the relationship between life and death and The Way Things Are.

One of the things that makes living in the U.S. so comfortable is that much of the cultural, financial and physical infastructure is devoted to putting a wall between us and The Way Things Are. It's easy to defend it by saying we are more "civilized" or "safer" than cultures that don't have these walls. But our system doesn't change the relationship between life and death, it just hides it—and in fact promotes and imposes it very harshly in other countries.

And if death is a natural and important part of life, what are we gaining by living in denial of what life really is?

A Little Catch Up

Fast-forward five months. I was arrested in Mexico City, spend two nights in jail, two nights in federal prison and eight nights in immigration detention. I was also exposed to the joke of a court system Mexico provides in its "democracy". All for no reason other than another gringo got caught in the system and everyone wanted to have a chance to squeeze some money out of him. I learned that corruption in the Mexican government filters down to almost every low-level employee. (Almost) And the people not directly engaged in it essentially support as The Way Things Are. Especially corrupt in a big, glaring way, is the entire police force. It is a sad example of human nature and I am embarrassed for the Mexican people and, like many educated Mexicans I spoke with, not terribly hopeful for a future of true democracy there.

I will say that oddly (or luckily) some of the most friendly (and interesting) people I've met in Mexico were in the prison. If you've traveled out of your home country, you know the sensation of being the obvious outsider. Try being the only gringo in el Reclusorio Norte Prison in Mexico City. Fucked up.

I've also completed an article and photo story for a new non profit magazine about micro finance. I met with the family of Lucia Reyes in San Miguel las Tablas, outside of Mexico City. You can see the article here: http://www.allencraigphotography.com/microfinance-article/AllenCraig_Microfinance.pdf

Anyway, I am now in Otavalo, Ecuador, where my posts will begin again infrequently. Shortly I will head further south to Cuenca.

Just a photo. Kinda interesting.

This photo to me represents a fantasy image of Mexico I think many Americans have been brought up with. And the fact that I have a photo of it shows that, at least to some degree, the image is representative of real-life Mexico.

But when you travel a bit and learn about people's lives—The makeup of their government, the culture they are born into, the options available to them, you start to understand that this image, this reality, doesn't represent Mexico. It represents life as most people lead it. Well, a heck of a lot of people, anyway.

In the U.S., it's very easy to shelter yourself from the millions of fellow citizens who are in fact poor. But unless you travel through parts of the country that don't offer "points of interest", you'll rarely see what struggling people go through every day. In the U.S., people that are considered poor are represented as caricatures on TV, and where else do we form our impression of the world? In Mexico though, as in many other countries, the poor make up a huge portion of the population, so it's harder to keep them hidden. Or rather, easier to be exposed to them. Or easier to be one of them.

I'm not sure if I have a point to make. But you have to at least admire the ingenuity and general attitude of so many people who can get by alright with so little. They walk out of the house with clean clothes, they have friends, they work hard, they go on vacations, they raise families. OK, here's a point: maybe as us Americans start considering what we need to do confront global warming or to be involved in a healthy social world order, we might reconsider how dearly we hold our exceptionally high level of daily comforts and the global costs of protecting them. Maybe a few sacrifices wouldn't kill us after all.

In any case, I just think it's a cool picture.

Interestingly random pictures of a small Mexican town

A few weeks ago on the way to shoot a microfinance group in a small town a couple of hours outside of Mexico City, I held my compact digital camera partly hidden in the crook of the car window while driving through the town. With just the tiny lens facing out, I blindly clicked away when I thought something might be good to capture. Just to collect the feel of the town. What I ended up with is an interestingly random pictorial of life in small town mexico.

http://www.allencraigphotography.com/Lumix-DriveBy_WebGallery

Remember that even though they are just snapshots, they are copywrited snapshots, so please don't take any.

Tonight there was a thunderstorm so I went for a walk around the neighborhood, relishing the fleeting last quiet moments here as semana santa draws to a close. After a week of relative calm I'm not looking forward to tomorrow morning. Although I did just discover a vendor in the Metro on the way to my morning EFL class that sells different flavors of Nature Valley granola bars for 5 pesos for TWO! That's about .17 each. I'm bringing an empty backpack with me to my class mañana.

How far a peso goes and what $40 gets you

Street cleaners are out in full force in the early hours in Mexico City with those tree branch brooms. They seem to work well for larger garbage, like leaves or discarded jugo containers, but they whisk right over the smaller stuff, like the layer of dirt and dust that loosely covers everything that doesn't move in la ciudad—and many things that do. Like the dogs. I'm a big "pet every dog that you cross paths with" kinda guy, and the dogs here are so dirty, so beaten that the image of all the yuck and disease that would be on your hand is too much to overcome. And so I suffer from dog envy. I see 'em, they give me "the look", but I have to walk away. It's killing me!

I've been teaching a small class at the KPMG offices in Polanco—the money part of the city. Next door is the "tree building". Kinda cool. I love any effort to bring nature into the otherwise cold environment of a city. But I will admit that the idea was probably a lot cooler on the drawing board than it appears here. Maybe it's the implimentation—just a square with a tree sticking out. As if the guy with the office brought in a nice plant that he thought would spruce things up a bit, not realizing that this plant was a TREE. Maybe he stopped paying attention, maybe he wanted to see how far things would go, maybe he wanted to piss his boss off, but eventually the tree could not be contained and a window had to be removed to allow this thing an outlet. And now you have the tree building. I wonder if there are birds that make the tree home, and if so, are they aware of the uniqueness of the situation? Do they get a ribbing from their bird friends? And do they ever sneak into the mail room to make copies of their little bird butts?

In the photo, you can also see a snippet of a pesero driving by—very small and very rickety cramped buses that cover the streets of Mexico City, sometimes in swarms. I should do a whole photo essay on them. (Note to self: plan photo essay on pesero culture.) They are not quite as crowded as the metro, and you pretty much jump on as they half-heartedly slow down for you where ever you are. Outside of the smaller residential streets, you almost never have to walk more than a block to find one. (It's figuring out where they go that's the challenge.) I believe they are owned by the drivers, who adorn their area with their own take on interior decoration—often essentially an alter to the Virgin of Guadalupe, including speakers hand-cut and wired into whatever spot they could manage to cut into, blasting every form of latin music imaginable, including salsa, thankfully. Best thing: although they no longer cost the one peso from where they got their name, they do only cost from 3 to 5 pesos.

As I alluded to in the past here, I've been having some "issues" with the Mexican judicial system, as it is. The good news is it's all over. I've posted a picture of the official form, printed on that dot matrix printer literally held together with rubber bands, that confirms my case being closed, sitting on top of what has grown to be my file, hand-stitched together with string, as they do in the "courts" I took this shot right in what passes for a courtroom—where you're not supposed to get past the disinterested guards downstairs with a camera, less actually take photos in the "courtroom". Speaking of the Mexican judicial system (do I capitalize "Mexican" in that context?) Did you know that there's not even a system in place to fine people for speeding? This goes for almost all "infractions": if you don't bribe the policía on the spot, their only recourse is to either let you go, or arrest you as if you just robbed, say, a Sanborn's. The whole judicial system facade is not even fully fleshed out—they don't even bother because what laws that are actually defined in what ever "constitution" they have are in no way systematically enforced. The only "law and justice" that everyone understands is in place is that policía go about each day looking for opportunities to take in bribe money. Literally, it's encouraged of them from higher-ups. I've even heard that the captains extract payments from the lower level police, which even further reduces their incredibly low wages. So if you get pulled over while driving and feel good about being able to drive away without further hassle after slipping the officer with 40 bucks, I say look at this way: your $40 didn't get you out of an otherwise legal predicament (cool!), it was simply a bribe imposed on you by someone who's been given the authority to seek out or create situations where you will be feel compelled to give him money. I simply don't understand the psychology that allows such so many people to not only accept this, but to actually alter their lives and dreams to accommodate this. But then again, I'm a healthy, fairly educated, upper middle class white guy raised in the U.S. There's a lot I don't understand.

But I think I am starting to understand the relationship of a careless and repressive government that goes very far out of it's way to allow sustenance to a majority of it's population and the almost resigned-to-their-fate mentality of that populous. I am surprised though, at how "third world" Mexico can be and how vast the differences are between our cultures.

Covert Photos at Teotihuacan

Long time no post. I have an interesting 12-day detention/prison story to tell, but it's still evolving and I'm still formulating my thoughts about the Mexican judicial system. I will say this: many of the wretched things you may have heard about Mexican prisons are true. I'll write it up soon I think.

I had planned to sleep in the Teotihuacan archaeological site so I could be there at sunrise and get some pictures lit by that special sunrise light. When I went on Sunday, they wouldn't let anyone in after 3pm because of some unnamed official delegation. So I decided to walk the parameter and scope out the grounds. I saw many, many trucks filled with military police. They were both in the park and out in the surrounding area. So I figured climbing into the site that night might be a foolish idea. In my walk, I did see that official delegation enter with the usual parade of black and white SUVs. I later learned that it was French President Sarkozy who was visiting the site.

I was happy when I found a promising spot in the Palacio de Tepantitla, a part of the ruins separated from the main site and enclosed in its own fencing. I found it right as it was getting dark, thankfully, after walking for 3+ hours around the circumference of the main site twice. Hopping the fence, I walked around and did my own private tour of the site, viewing a closed off, delicate piece of wall partially restored. When I settled in to my sleeping spot, I realized it was much colder than I hoped it would be. I brought a Mylar heat shield thing for camping, but it was not a pouch as I thought, so it was a pain in the ass to keep over me. It was a little small and krinkly-loud as hell. Soon, the sound of the Mexican night came alive. Barking dogs. From every direction the sounds came. Some close, some far, some in groups, some alone. I tried to imagine the types of dogs behind each bark and listen for a relationship between the barks. Maybe, if that beefy Rottweiler stops, the squeaky two mixed breed terriers will calm down and... It was no use. Although the barking patterns continually evolved, they did not let up the entire night.

I didn't sleep much, as expected. Without needing an alarm, I awoke at 4:30 am, gathered myself and pulled off as many of those tiny prickly plant tufts as I could and hoped back over the fence. I walked back up the road (with the sounds of barking dogs just staring to temper ) to the previously-discovered spot in the barbed-wire fencing that I figured I could climb. I got over the fence and walked, stepped, hopped and ducked my way in the general direction of where I thought I wanted to be when the sun came up, every once in a while flashing a little flashlight I brought to check the ground. I made it to where I was hoping I would (based on my hand-drawn map) as the big orange moon was setting. It was gorgeous! But the sun didn't come up for over an hour after that, so I had to huddle there, over analyzing every sound while shivering. I was on the north side of one of the temple platforms—mini pyramids with flat tops—that surround the Pirámide de la Luna. It seemed that after day break the security people are not actively looking for trespassers, but rather just waiting for the gates to open. I had the place to myself for about an hour and a half as the sun finally came up. It was the perfect covert operation. The pictures were pretty good, but not super spectacular—although there's no other time to see light hit the pyramids this way. I was also fortunate enough to hear the takeoff of and eventually watch a hot-air balloon that slowly floated just over and through much of the site. It made for a few neat compositions, but also lent a gentle feeling of eye-winking camaraderie. I knew the people in the balloon could see me running around taking pictures of the structures and including them from time to time. I imagined that they acknowledged me and I liked sharing some of the moment with people who made an effort to experience this special place in a private and unique way—like me.

Once the sun is up, it's so bright that it's impossible to get a properly exposed image. It's hot and bright as heck out there... When I got home, I was so exhausted and hungry and insatiably thirsty...but content.