Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
All the entries posted in October.
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Home > Uncovering Mexico > Archives > 2006 > October
October 2006
Nothing is normal here
OAXACA — Once considered the most beautiful in Mexico, this city’s main square, or Zocalo, has been the scene of pitched battles, protest encampments and gallons of spray-painted graffiti since May.
On the morning of Halloween of all times, the Zocalo began its return to normalcy with a massive cleanup effort.
Yesterday the troops dislodged the APPO, an umbrella group of protesters who are demanding the ouster of Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz and who have used the Zocalo as their headquarters for months.
This morning, federal police in heavy body armor were cleaning up the square, burning huge mounds of garbage and ripping down protest signs. On the side streets under federal control, business owners painted over the scrawled graffiti that has marred this colonial city.
But despite the leisurely pace of events in the Zocalo, life is not returning to normal here. The plaza still resembles an army barracks, with hundreds of troops milling about, shaving with broken off car mirrors and standing in food lines.
A few blocks away, members of the APPO were meeting to plot strategy. They have decided to make the starkly beautiful Santo Domingo church their new headquarters and vowed to continue acts of resistance. Shopping carts filled with palm-size stones sat nearby. Meanwhile, supporters of the governor held their own march as rumors flew that the supporters would attempt to provoke the protesters.
Leaders urged calm, the one thing this former colonial jewel has lacked.
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Salsa dancing for dummies
Following through on a years-long promise to my wife, Nancy, I took my first salsa dance class this week. Salsa is an obsession here in Mexico City, and if I want to avoid looking like a complete fool at the city’s legion of salsa clubs I will need some professional help,
The class was a lot bigger than I was expecting — about 40 men and women. Even with the crowd, the instructor zeroed in on the gangly gringo from the get-go. As we plunged into a particularly complex move, featuring bewildering spins and footwork, he implored me to follow the advanced student in front of me. Stubbornly, I continued spinning when I shouldn’t and turning in almost perfect opposition to the rest of the class. The instructor grimaced as though I were causing him pain.
Later, with the entire class in a giant circle, he screamed at me from across the room to shake my shoulders, not my “pompis.� It took me a few beats to realize what he was talking about as he got more and more frustrated. Pompis are butt cheeks. I took it as a good sign that at least I was shaking something (and isn’t the point of salsa to shake your pompis?).
It was only by the end of the class that I shook the feeling of having entered a very deep pool and not being able to swim. The logic of the moves slowly, painfully became clear. But I figure I still need about six months before I dare to hit the dance floor in a club.
Mexican soccer’s roughest rivalry
Imagine Texas vs. Texas A&M and Red Sox vs. Yankees rolled into one. Add a dose a street violence and you get an idea of the rivalry between the Mexican soccer teams Pumas and America.
The two teams face off again at 4 p.m. Sunday at America’s massive home stadium, the 130,000-seat Estadio Azteca. It’s the latest chapter in Mexico’s most brutal sports rivalry.
Hard-core fans take things to another level when the two Mexico City teams play. Last year, fans fought a pitched battle outside the Pumas’ stadium, hurling rocks at each other. Before every game it seems, the fans vow to keep things nonviolent, but it rarely works. In March 2005, members of the respective fan clubs began a fistfight just minutes after signing a peace pact at police headquarters. Rumbles on Mexico City’s subway are expected on game day, which occurs just two times a season.
My wife and I were treated to some unexpected Pumas-America violence a month ago when we took in a game at Azteca between America and the lightweight squad from Veracruz.
On our way to the stadium, we saw a couple of toughs from America’s porra, or cheer squad (the word loses some of its edge in the translation), arguing with a carload of people in the pregame traffic. Suddenly one of the America fans began punching the driver, landing several hard shots to his head, and kicked the back of the car, leaving a big dent. We were speechless, and it wasn’t until we passed the car that our taxi driver told is it was because the driver was wearing a Pumas shirt.
The rivalry dates back at least until the 1960s, and perhaps stems in part from their proximity in southern Mexico City. Pumas are the official team of Autonomous University of Mexico, whose students and employees have spread their cause throughout the country and beyond. America is kind of like the Yankees of Mexican soccer, with deep pockets that allow it to sign lots of high-priced free agents.
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The scary world of Mexican cell phones
Cell phones are supposed to make our lives easier. That maxim apparently doesn’t apply here in Mexico, where new rules that go into effect Nov. 4 make calling to or from a cell phone something like a calculus problem.
There will be at least 13 different dialing combinations depending where you’re calling from or what phone system you use. For example, if you’re calling long distance to a cell phone from a regular phone, you’ll dial 045 before the number. If you’re calling a local cell number from a fixed line, it’s 044. But if you’re calling long distance to a cell phone and you don’t have Telmex, Mexico’s near-monopolistic phone company, you just have to dial 01 before the number. International businesspeople are cringing as I write.
Calls from the United States also have some rules: If you’re calling a Mexican land line, simply use the country code. But if you’re calling a cell, you’ll need to throw a 1 between the country code and area code.
Needless to say, many Mexicans are up in arms over these Kafkaesque rules. Business cards will no doubt have to be enlarged to fit all the possible combinations.
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Blackout nation
When the power went off for perhaps the sixth time that day, the office worker in the Nicaraguan Ministry of Tourism nearly lost it. Apparently, she needed to send an urgent e-mail, but her computer screen remained stubbornly blank. “Santo Dios!� she screamed. “I can’t take it anymore.�
Nicaraguans are at their wits’ end with a grinding energy crisis that results in numerous, daily blackouts. On the humid Caribbean coast, the power goes out daily from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m., bringing air conditioners and fans to a halt. In the colonial, tourist city of Granada, it’s from about 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. And in the capital of Managua, blackouts can strike at anytime, disrupting normal business and frustrating thousands who depend on computers to do their jobs.
The energy crisis has, of course, become an issue in the upcoming presidential election. Daniel Ortega, the old Sandinista leader, blames privatization (a Spanish company called Union Fenosa has run Nicaragua’s electric grid since the system was privatized in 2000). Ortega also looks to cheap Venezuelan oil from Hugo Chavez as a solution, and he has used direct agreements with Chavez to boost his popularity.
As it stands now, Nicaragua can’t produce enough of its own energy through dams or geothermal plants, and it can’t afford the petroleum needed to run its plants at capacity. The biggest fear is that a blackout will strike on Election Day (Nov. 5), leaving the system open to manipulation.
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Lost in translation
Nicaragua, one discovers shortly after arriving, has an almost complete lack of street signs. The streets, I am told, actually do have names, it’s just that they haven’t been used in so long that nobody remembers what they are.
Getting directions is a surreal experience. Here’s the official address (it is on the letterhead) of my hotel in Managua: 30 meters south of the Restaurant La Marseillaise.
That’s all well and good, but only if you know where that restaurant is.
Another hotel in Managua had this tortuous address: From the Hercules Gym, one block south, one block east and 2½ blocks south.
Even the taxi driver got lost trying to get there.
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Rumsfeld visits Nicaragua
More Nicaragua news: Donald Rumsfeld is in town, headlining the seventh annual conference of defense ministers of the Americas in Managua. It will be interesting to see whether he makes any comments about Nicaragua’s upcoming election and the possibility that Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega could return to power.
American officials like Ambassador Paul Trivelli and Congressman Dan Burton have come under fire in the Nicaraguan media for what is seen by many here as meddling in the country’s internal affairs. The U.S. is widely considered to be behind an effort to unite right-wing parties in Nicaragua to ensure that Ortega doesn’t win. Ortega leads the polls but not with enough support to avoid a second round of voting.
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Nicaraguan pitcher captivates nation
I’m down in Nicaragua covering next month’s presidential election, so I figure that politics will be dominating the headlines. So, what’s the top story in this morning’s papers? The five-inning, rain-shortened no-hitter tossed by Boston Red Sox rookie Devern Hansack.
His performance brought screaming headlines and front-page pictures to Managua’s largest dailies, which complemented their coverage with features on Hansack’s family. Hansack is from a fascinating part of this baseball-mad country called the Autonomous Region of the South Atlantic, a largely empty, starkly beautiful area on the Caribbean coast.
The area is made up of a mix of descendants of African slaves and Miskito Indians, and English is the lingua franca along much of the coast. The region is highly inaccessible, except by boat and plane, and for many years was largely beyond the reach of the central government in Managua.
Part of the reason Hansack’s feat is a big story here is that it came out of nowhere – two weeks ago 28-year-old Hansack was playing double-a ball. But Nicaragua, where baseball is more popular than soccer, has also been starved for a big-time Major League Baseball star for years. It’s been awhile since favorite son Dennis Martinez dominated for the Expos, and current Nicaraguan star Vicente Padilla is not among baseball’s elite.
If Sunday’s outing wasn’t an aberration, Hansack could be the next big Nicaraguan star. And as a Boston Red Sox fan, for whom this season has been one giant disaster, I certainly hope so.
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