Happy Columbus Day
This story is over 500 years old, and as up to the minute as tomorrow. Next Columbus day add another year, change a few details, and it will still be fresh. (Pictured is a Mayan house in the Yucatan.) Photography by Diana Ricci
On October 12, Mexico and the U. S. of A. pause in memory of the great sea captain Christopher Columbus (or Cristobal Colon, or Cristofo Colombo, or whomever), who quite by accident, while hopelessly lost, and just in time to save him from a mutinous crew, landed starving and sick somewhere off the coast of Yucatan. How you commemorate the event, depends on whether you identify yourself as a descendent of the perplexed and generous natives who aided him, or as an inheritor of the barbarous hoards that followed in his wake.
In Mexico, Columbus Day is a school holiday. While banks, government offices and businesses are open as usual, students and teachers use the opportunity to express their continuing opposition to a government which they believe denies them money for supplies and salaries, intellectual freedom, and -- in the case of one hundred thousand students recently denied admission to the Autonomous University of Mexico -- a place at the academic table. The "exclusados" (excluded ones) claim that they failed the entrance exam because --unlike their more affluent fellows -- they could not afford to buy the answers. The University denies that any such black market exists.
It so happens that we live on the street most often chosen for marches, whether to protest or to support the government. On Columbus day, we were witness to easily the largest single march we had yet seen (for more on teacher protest, see this column, "Watch Out For The Wind"). About eight people abreast, they took more than half an hour to shuffle past. They were carrying banners demanding a 100% salary increase (which would not raise them solidly into the middle class). They were demanding information on disappeared comrades. They were accusing the present Governor of at least condoning, if not ordering the assassination of teachers in Santa Maria Huatulco, near the mega resort being built on the coast of Oaxaca. Running along the sidewalks were several spray-painters, leaving behind them "Gobernador Asesino" (The governor is an assassin) on the walls of the official governor's residence across the street. Zapatista elements were evident. There were banners and shouts, songs and slogans. The Zapatistas are at their base indigenous: the descendants of the hapless folk who were unfortunate enough to be around when the Europeans' arrival turned their scariest prophesies of doom and destruction into objective history. "Five Hundred Three Years Of Oppression" banners, posters, and broadsides were everywhere. Many of these teachers teach in "Indian" villages.
The vast majority of Mexicans are "mestizo" (of mixed European and indigenous blood). Many, as I have personally discovered, are assimilationist: they believe that their cousins should be "brought into the twentieth century" or suffer the consequences. While they cherish the traditional dances and costumes, they reject the language and customs of their indigenous ancestors. Some are unconsciously racist. They say the campesinos of Chiapas and Oaxaca are being "misled" by the "white" Zapatista leadership -- ignoring Subcomandante Marcos' own statements that his orders come from the (totally indigenous) Central Committee. They point to alcoholism, chronic unemployment and illiteracy as causes, rather than as symptoms of the daily reality of life in the altura (high places). Many question why indigenous peoples need "special" teachers. In this, they are not much different in their attitudes than the average folks in our country.
There is a difference, however: with some exceptions, they all have relatives in the "tribal" areas. The villages that have been sacked by the army in Chiapas are populated by extended family members, and the excluded students in Mexico City share (along with urban entrepreneurs who have lost their businesses due to absurdly high interest rates) the despair felt by the campesino whose children will not learn to read again this year, because the teacher was driven off by the local cacique (boss) and his goons. (As in the U.S., teaching "people's history" is an affront to the power structure.) This accounts for some of the cynicism and the fatalism of many Mexicans toward their government, and for the inroads the opposition parties are making against the long-ruling Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI).
Oppression of native peoples and exploitation of their resources is not confined to Mexico. Anyone who has spent time in Pine Ridge South Dakota will easily recognize life in the Mexican altura. Anyone familiar with the poisoning of the Oglala aquifer while extracting uranium from the Black Hills will be unsurprised by the cancer rate along the maquiladora corridor at our southern border. Anyone familiar with the urban reservations in Los Angeles and Minneapolis will see the similarities to the garbage-dump shanty towns outside most big cities in Mexico. "Five Hundred Three Years of Oppression", the banners say. Many wonder how the native peoples of this hemisphere will survive year 504.
If you have comments or suggestions for Stan, you can contact him at:
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