Patrimonio

When Oscar and Wilhelmina remark on how nice Mexicans are to their kids, Sean and I like to point out that this is because--let's face it--their children are cuter than anyone else's. 

Last week at the kids' school, we celebrated the Day of the Revolution. Let your mind drift to what you imagine or remember learning about Mexico, 1910...Porfirio Díaz is a dictator, the people call for change and Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa (and others) lead them in revolt.

Two Adelitas--female soldiers immortalized
in the "Adelita" folk song--do some 'splaining.

Oscar's pal Carlos chillaxin between battles. The little fires
around the school yard were meant to lend an intimate,
"rebel camp" feel to the event.

The train (seen behind the kids here)  is a big part of the
iconography of the Day of  the Revolution. Apparently
rebels often rode the rails to the front. I bet Porfirio
Díaz wished he hadn't built that darn railroad...

Lots of folk songs and dances celebrate La Revolución.

Oscar was Belisario Domingez, a senator.

Wilhelmina and Lore helped in the kitchen and took
advice about facial depilación.

Also for El Día de la Revolución, there was a big parade (yes, another one!) in the Centro. It was mostly school kids dressed up like heroes of the revolution. All of this ancestor-homage was reminding me of the Day of the Dead....

Senators, soldiers, and slogans.

Do not mess with these soldaderas.

Campesinos with machetes.

Wonderful paper-mache-headed guy.

A salute!

He might be on the wrong side of history,
but he's having fun.

Senators, soldiers, and senoritas.

These rebels came singing.

La policia made a (loud) appearance.

The train, along with some student nurses.

More nursing students, with some
very take-charge-looking ladies.

This canon boomed out pop music,
Gangnam  style.

I don't get the revolutionary connection, but it's pretty.

These cuties look very ready for change they can believe in.

This group enacted a battle every half-block
or so. One kid would set off a bunch of
firecrackers and the government soldiers would
go down. Rebels and bystanders would cheer. 

No clean-up for these horses. Good idea!

Más musicos.

More train, too.

A secondary theme of the Day of the Revolution parade was, apparently, physical fitness. Several schools showed off their moves.

Martial artists.

Martial Aztecs? (Or Olmecs, or Toltecs or...?)

Jump-ropers, followed by...

...pyramid-makers, followed by...

...American footballers.

Jugadores.

Girls, too.

These guys popped wheelies,
but cracked no smiles.

At the end of the week, we went to an incredible first-year birthday party for Jesusito. (He's the grandson of Doña Lesvia, the son of her son Rodolfo Jesus, who died just before Christmas last year, when Jesusito was 20 days old.) We wondered if first-birthday parties are always such a big deal, or if this party was especially grand because of the circumstances.

La entrada to the party.

The amazing cake.

This was a fun race. Everyone sang a song
about a worm and the kid-worms tried to
wiggle their way toward the finish line.
(Segmentation was a common problem.)

Another fun game.

Here's how people here have solved the age-old problem of turn-taking with piñatas: first, there's often more than one (everyone gets a chance) and second, they sing a song that delimits the whacking-time allowed each child. Wilhelmina typed the song out for me so we can use it at home:
Dale dale dale, no pierdas el tino,          [Give it, give it, give it--don't lose the knack!]
porque si lo pierdes,                               [Because if you lose it]
pierdes el camino,                                  [You will lose the path!]
ya le diste uno,                                       [You just gave it ONE]
ya le diste dos,                                       [You just gave it TWO]
ya le diste tres y su tiempo se acabó!     [You just gave it THREE...and now your time is through!]

Jesus liked to ride the piñatas. (There were
TEN piñatas at the fiesta!)

Oscar took his turn.

With his frosting mustache, his beautiful mama, his friends.

Though he died last year, Rodolfo de Jesus was surely present at his son's party. His in-laws (Gabby's parents) had left messages for him on posters on the walls. Here's what the posters said:

Thank you, little son-in-law
For leaving us this great treasure
And as you already know
Today he completes his first year....

Flaquito ["Skinny"--his nickname]
The piñatas are of characters that you liked the most
And the cake is your favorite, too
And everything is just as you like it, here in the grandparents' house...

Behind Gabby and Jesus, you can see the messages for
their beloved dead.

It's an Educación

The kids are getting sex education in school--like, getting it repeatedly and ongoingly--and Sean and I are being reminded (repeatedly and ongoingly) how comparatively lame sex education is in their previous school in Utah. And in the being-reminded, we are also thinking about how the, um, climate of U.S. prudishness (shall we say), has made us more prudish than we'd realized.

First of all, the fact that human sexuality even exists as a school subject here in the elementary grades? This was surprising to us. In Utah, the kids get a "maturation" talk once a year starting in the fifth grade; this little lecture does not address humans having sex at all and is NOT a co-ed experience. The girls get a menstruation tutorial; apparently the boys get a heads up on wet dreams (though in a sex-mention-free way that is a little mystifying); for both girls and boys, mood swings and the need for deodorant are emphasized.

There's the fact that here, the topic is covered so comprehensively, as part of biology. Wilhelmina has done an illustrated poster of fetal development; other classmates covered menstruation, puberty, and conception.  She has written reports on contraception and sexually transmitted diseases (and pasted some really grotesque Google images into her reports.) Talking about this this morning, Wilhelmina told me that during the maturation talks in Utah, if a student asked a question about sex, the teachers were required to abstain from answering it.

Sex ed here includes discussion about the social and cultural context. Leafing through an official Chiapas state textbook, I see that the sex/gender distinction is covered in Chapter 1; Chapter 2 explains the unfair "doble moral" (double standard) that results in girls having more "prohibiciones" related to their bodies and their sexual conduct; Chapter 3 includes a section titled, "Sexual rights are human rights."

Finally, sex ed here includes discussion of pleasure and love. Both kids have been officially reassured about the thorough okayness of masturbation; as a result of recent lectures Oscar has been talking about how the loving feelings that a person has for a spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend are different from the ones you might have for a "regular" friend. He's completely convinced of this.

However, he's still unclear about his assignment for Thursday...he says he's supposed to find out some stuff about sexuality (from the Internet? A book? Interviews??) and bring it with him to class. Driving the kids home from school on Friday and pondering Oscar's assignment dilemma, I suggested to Sean that perhaps we could locate a copy of "The Joy of Sex" in a bookstore.  Sean's idea was a Spanish-language "Kuma Satra."

"Kama Sutra?" I said.

Wilhelmina sighed audibly from the backseat.

We've got a lot to learn.

Party On

On Wednesday Sean said, "I just got some news that's going to make your weekend." Our landlady is installing a bathtub? No. "But there's another big festival this weekend, at the Iglesia de San Diego."

So on Friday night we bundled up (getting cold here now) and headed out to the church. First, we did a circuit to check out the offerings: food (churros, pizza, potato chips, some kind of stew, elotes, more churros), games (foosball, arcade games), and rides (kiddie cars, carousel, plus a ride that had the Savior painted on it and, aptly, lifted the riders up into the air on neon wings (La Ascención-Arama?)).

We fueled up on churros and hit the foosball first. That was fun, and we played for longer than I have ever played. Just as we began to consider the possibility of a carpal-tunnel epidemic within the family, we were drawn away from the table by the announcement of the main entertainment in front of the church: the lucha libre!

El Gato attacks! 

Filled with religious fascination, the boys watched
the fight between El Gato and Abuelito.

The church formed the backdrop
for the fierce cat-on-grandpa action.

Incredibly, one of the fighters had to be carried out of the ring! Dios mío! 

Later, inspired by comic violence, we hit the shooting gallery. We were all such good shots we drew a (small)(and short-statured) group of admirers. In the interest of fairness, two videos: the first is of one of Oscar's shot; the second is of one of Wilhelmina's.

The rest of the weekend, we went to three different birthday parties. We must be hitting our social stride. 

This is a picture of one of the luchadores
being carried away. But it also represents
the experience of having been to
three parties in one weekend!
A blurry, groovy feeling.

Days of the Dead

This past week we were all wrapped up, mummy-like, in Day of the Dead activities.

You know how people always talk about The True Meaning of Christmas? Evidently you can get the wrong answer on that one.... But the meaning of the Day of the Dead? I'm not sure it's possible to be wrong about the meaning of this beautiful, ancient, modern, strange, and familiar tradition.

On Tuesday, a desfile of the dead battered their way through the streets.

On Wednesday, we went with Tom and Jo to the main plaza to see an exhibition of altares.

Then we went to kids's school. The kids presented a wonderful play in which all of the main characters of the Mexican tradition were welcomed to the fiesta for the dead and the living. (Oscar was one of the cadejos, the devil's dog. When he and the rest of his pack dropped to their hands and knees and raced toward the other fiesta-goers, the little kids screamed very gratifyingly.) The older kids read legends while a smoke machine chugged plumes of smoke from behind their chair. (For this, Lore was a nurse in a legend I didn't quite follow; Wilhelmina was La Quemada, a woman who disfigures herself -- throws coals from the tortilla maker onto her face - -in order to test a suitor's love.)

Behind this little vampire in the audience,
Las Catrinas made their onstage entrance.

El Catrín.

El Choko, a shepherd boy who runs along
the mountain tops and lures people into
following him, eventually tricking them
into running off cliffs!

La Llorona x3. 

Los sombrerones.

Las Calacas.

Los cadejos.

Las Nahualas (beautiful women, they can shift
shapes and here are shown in jaguar form)

(Another ?)

Los duendes (mischievous elves to
watch out for).

La Quebrantahuesos, a woman who was
unfaithful and was cursed (her skin got
really bad, among other consequences).

All the dead have arrived at the fiesta.

Paola reading the legend of La Quemada.

Lore comforts the HIDEOUS La Quemada
while a familiar  cadejo looks on.

Afterward, we had a feast prepared by the kids--tamales, corn, pan de muerto, squash, pumpkin soup--and the director of the school insisted that we take home a big container of leftovers.

This is the founder and principal of the school,
the loving, lovely, and chaos-loving Eloina. 

The next day, Thursday, we went to Doña Lesvia's house for a small service in her house. Everyone is still so heartbroken about Rodolfo de Jesus's death 7 months ago; there were a lot of tears. We all cried too--for Rodolfo de Jesus, for Grandpa Dave who died in October, for my parents...we miss them.

The altar of the Zuñiga-Aguilar family.

Singing and crying.

After the service, we had a feast and laughed a lot at the jokes we were able to comprehend.


On Friday morning, we went to the cemetery. (There are a LOT of photos below, and not all of them are great (because I took most of them, not Sean, and because I used my phone), but it's hard to put aside even one. After all, graves are people, too! And I loved the beautiful profusion of the cemetery that day.)

It has been wonderful to feel the dead so close to us this week.

Finally, look at these angelitos with their home-made masks.