Oaxacan update

I try to keep posting as much as possible while here in Oaxaca, but you know how things go. Field research is always pretty busy, and internet connections can sometimes be pretty damn slow. Any more excuses? I have them. But things are going well down here. Me and Vero have been in Oaxaca for a month now, and have been working to get everything done. I have 4 of the 12 interviews that I need done. One more is set up for today. This kind of work takes time…it’s not as if we can just show up at people’s houses and interview them and be done with it. Ethnography requires relationships–at least good ethnography does. Still, I am limited by time. Two months is a decent start, but nowhere near sufficient for really solid ethnographic work. That’s the difference between PhD work and MA work: time invested.

But the interviews are going well. My project is all about history, and the ways the community members of Atzompa use photographs as historical objects. It’s pretty fun to sit around with people and look through their photographic collections, talking about what they mean, all the memories, etc. So that’s going well.

The street tacos here in the city have been exemplary. No need to wait in some restaurant when a couple guys in front of a large flat grill can give you 4 tacos in two minutes. The only thing is that I have to cut down on drinking sodas. For some reason Coke always sounds so good in Mexico. But it’s bad juice.

And the rain has started. There is nothing better after a blazing hot day than the cool afternoon rain. It doesn’t matter if you get soaked; it feels really good.

Today we’re going back out to Atzompa. I have one interview, and I am also going to go with the Archive team to see how things are with Atzompa’s documents.

Oaxacan evening

-R.A.

Monte Albán last week…

More about Archaeology at Atzompa

Here is an April 14, 2008 article from Las Noticias about the excavations at the Cerro de Atzompa.

*Note: if you need to translate it, try Google Translate for a rough version of the article.  It’s not perfect, but it helps get the main point across.

December 2007: INAH Annoucement about archaeological work at the Cerro de Atzompa

Here is a December 2007 announcement about the archaeological work at the Cerro de Atzompa, which is located just south of the community of Santa Maria Atzompa:

Sector clave para comprender Monte Albán.

Oaxaca festeja este diciembre el XX aniversario como Patrimonio Cultural de la Humanidad con el anuncio de los trabajos de exploración del conjunto monumental de Santa María Atzompa —en el aledaño Cerro del Bonete—, con los que se busca desentrañar algunas de las incógnitas que todavía rodean a la metrópolis.

Nelly Robles, directora del sitio arqueológico, señaló que Atzompa —junto con los conglomerados de Cerro del Gallo, El plumaje, Monte Albán Chico y El Mogollito—, rodean el espacio principal de la gran urbe. Y una de las cuestiones a resolver será conocer si funcionaba como un “barrio” sujeto a Monte Albán o como un centro urbano independiente.

The rest is here.

-R.A.

Day 9er

We have been in Oaxaca for nine days, Veronica and I. Things are going well. The water started filling up the reserve well tonight, and I happened to catch it just in time so I could run up to the roof to fill the tinaco to get the maximum amount–water only comes once a week, as far as I know.

And now we have a mosquito net, and that makes life a lot easier. Trying to battle sancudos while sleeping is next to impossible.

We found an extra plastic pitcher in the living room. That was good luck, since we don’t have to buy another one now. Last year we bought all kinds of things for the house and they have seen been lifted via the old five finger discount. I remember buying some pretty nice glasses last year too. So it goes.

The teachers are striking, both in the zocalo and around the shopping centers. Either yesterday or today they shut down 80 percent of the businesses in one of the largest shopping areas in Oaxaca City–this according to the newspaper Las Noticias. That would be like shutting down 80 percent of the stores at the Glendale Galleria in L.A. Many angry angry people. But overall, things are still fairly tranquilo with the whole strike/protest issue. There are tons of teachers in the zocalo, but nothing anywhere near what occurred in 2006 seems eminent.

We have already been out to Atzompa several times to visit with friends from last year. Construction on the church is done, and the colectivos are as busy as ever. The number of tourists who visit, however, is still pretty dismal. And that’s a bad thing for a community like Atzompa that depends a great deal on incoming tourist traffic.

I am still waiting on IRB (the Institutional Review Board at SDSU) to give me my final approval for my research project. That has been taking some time. Until that happens, I can’t start my actual project, so I am in somewhat of a holding pattern at the moment. But that’s okay, I’m keeping myself busy by taking plenty of photographs, drinking lots of Gatorade, and reading the two ethnographies that were written about Atzompa before my advisor, Dr Perez, did her work in the 1990s.

It has only rained one day, really. And that day it really came down, as it does during the peak of the season, which is coming up.

Someone died from a fall in Parque Llano last week. There was road construction going on, and there were 30 foot trenches right next to the sidewalk. There were no guard rails or any fences. Just a backhoe, a huge hole, and the sidewalk. A man fell in, and a few days later he died in one of the local hospitals. The project continues on…although they might be close to done by now. Haven’t been by to check in a few days.

I have come to the realization that the 15 peso “Oracion a nuestra señora de San Juan de los Lagos” candle does not deter mosquitoes (sancudos) one bit. But it does look pretty when it burns.

I am trying to keep up on my field notes. As of yet it little of it is directly related to my actual thesis research…but it’s a good idea to keep up on those notes regardless. One never knows. And when I say “one,” I mean me.

-R.A.

Jalatlaco dusk

-R.A.

Santo Domingo

-R.A.

This is from just outside the main entrance to Santo Domingo, right in the tourist district of Oaxaca City.

Templo de San Matías in Barrio Jalatlaco

This page talks a little bit about the church that is just around the corner from where we are staying in Barrio Jalatlaco.

-R.A.

Mitla Corner

Ryan and I visited Mitla yesterday and had such an amazing time. I took this photo from the structures known as the “Church Group”. The site is a bit small, which also means it’s a lot quieter since it’s less traversed. It consists of a few palaces with adjacent rooms. The colonial church sits directly on top of the site and was built using stones from the ancient structures. This is the south-west corner of the palace closest to the church.

-Veronica

Mitla May 25, 2008

-R.A.

from barrio Jalatlaco in Oaxaca…

Jalatlaco, the barrio where we are staying, is and old Zapotec town that dates to at least 1521. I read that on the side of the church just around the corner (it’s dedicated to San Mateo I think…better check that). I don’t know how I managed to walk by that church everyday last year without finding out more about it. Jalatlaco has been around for a while. The church itself dates to the XVII century, and was renovated in the early 18^th century. People still use these places, as opposed to many of the old places back home, which often get relegated to a strange funereal kind of status in which people pay to just go look at them. Sometimes tourism is a strange idea. Weird colonial era desire to go around the world looking at romantic things from a nonexistent past. Who knows?

-R.A.

Noticias: Problema social afectará Monte Albán

This short article from Las Noticias discusses the effects that the socio-political problems from the last few years have had on tourism rates for Monte Albán:

Las movilizaciones sociales en el estado afectan al sector turístico, de tal manera que si hay amenazas para boicotear la Guelaguetza e instalar un plantón en el Zócalo de la ciudad, el riesgo de bajar los registros de visitas turísticas en Monte Alban, es latente, aseguró Nelly Robles García directora de esta  zona arqueológica.

Read the rest here.

Archaeology in Mexico and the U.S.

Here is a short article by University of Arizona archaeologist Gillian E. Newell about some of the basic differences between Mexican and United Statesian archaeology.  Since a part of my work down in Oaxaca will deal with this, it’s a subject that I need to do considerably more research about.

Globalized migration and transnational epidemiology

by Margaret A Handley and James Grieshop

During the latter part of the 1800s, the union of migration and epidemiology first surfaced. In that era, the changing shipping patterns that put more people from cholera endemic areas into London, as well as the isolated occurrence of two cholera cases among recent immigrants from Germany to London, bolstered John Snow’s belief that cholera was transmitted from person to person.¹ Other studies in more recent times that have focused on migrants from Japan, first to Hawaii and then to mainland US, provided evidence for ‘lifestyle’ theories (including migration) for risk in relation to chronic diseases.² These and other exceptional studies in the history of epidemiology have focused on migrants, and have important insights into the causation of disease in two very different but equally significant ways—through the ‘isolation’ of migrant communities and through their ‘assimilation’ to group behaviours in the area to which they migrated.

Today, in the 21st century, travel by millions of travellers (migrants and others) is far easier than in the 1800s. In the case of migrants, the widespread accessibility to means of travel and the availability of new technologies for staying connected to home and community of origin has resulted in transnational communities. Although members of these communities may be physically present in only one, they often ‘live’ in two places. Connections via communication technologies also are reinforced in some cases through the rapid transport of food from home to the new community.

This form of migration which can be thought of as transnational or globalized migration, is now revealing new connections between migration and epidemiology. This photo-essay concerns the importance of transnational migration to epidemiology by way of example—through words and pictures of an ongoing investigation into the sources of lead poisoning in a community of migrants (and immigrants) in Seaside, California originally from central Oaxaca, Mexico.

The study began as a local investigation into sources of lead poisoning among children of immigrants who were routinely screened for lead in a small community clinic in California. Whereas the most likely source of lead was thought to be the ongoing use of lead-glazed ceramics among migrants from Mexico (a classic example of an apparent isolated practice/risk factor among a migrant community), the source was found to be related to contamination of foods in Mexico that was inadvertently transported to California through an ingeneous transnational migration practice that is increasing in popularity world-wide. The practice, called ‘envios’ (Spanish for send or transport) involves the frequent transport of prepared foods from Mexico to California. Envios in fact are ‘mom and pop’ express air transport businesses in which foods are sent from home in Oaxaca to home in California, often on a daily basis. Unfortunately, it was discovered that some of the foods contained lead. The as yet unidentified sources of the lead are currently undergoing investigation.³

Envios businesses in Oaxaca (Photo 1) make available home-cooked foods in the United States from Mexico. Home-cooked foods are requested and picked up by family members in California on a regular and sometimes weekly basis. These envios help maintain cultural systems and family connectedness despite great geographic distances.⁴ Photos 1 and 2 show two different envios businesses that conduct regular transport of foods including home-made tortillas, seasoned pumpkin seeds, seasoned fried grasshoppers, chocolate/mole and dried herbs, from Oaxaca, Mexico that are going to 20–30 families in over 10 cities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Photo 1: Envios business in Oaxaca.

Photo 2: Delivering home-made food to an Envios business in Oaxaca.

The typical method for transporting the foods is by air. Usually the food is packed into cardboard boxes weighing up to 70 pounds, taken to the airport and then transported and paid for as extra luggage by the courier. Photo 3 shows the air cargo leaving Oaxaca with the majority of packages not from tourists but from envios businesses. Photo 4 shows the envios after they have arrived in California.

Photo 3: Air cargo leaving Oaxaca containing mostly envios packages of food.

Photo 4: Envios arrived in California for pickup.

The epidemiological investigation into the sources of lead is now itself transnational, involving a case-cluster study with extended family members living in Mexico, of cases identified in California, to examine possible food-related sources and preparation practices. Although lead-glazed ceramic-ware is used to prepare some of the foods, those that have had the highest amounts of lead are not typically prepared with lead-glazed ceramics. We are also conducting an environmental study of the water, fields, and soils surrounding the abandoned mines in the area, pollution from the downstream run-off from the city and past use of lead arsentate pesticides in the area. The investigation also involves collaboration with the envios businesses. The owners of one of the businesses featured in the photos now figure prominently in the investigation into the sources of lead in their community in Mexico. They offered to let the investigators test foods prior to shipping-several were found to have high lead levels.

World-wide, export systems similar to the envios are increasing, thereby allowing families to stay connected through food culture. Although transnational migration is a continuum, there seem to be more opportunities for migrants to live transnationally than in the past. Consequently, epidemiologists must work with other public health and related disciplines such as anthropology, to define the scope of transnational public health. In this example, a transnational public health problem was identified which is now being investigated, but it is equally important to look for health benefits, such as healthier diets and social support, that are maintained through such strong ties with communities of origin.

Acknowledgement

This research was funded by UCSF Global Health Sciences.

References

1 Johnson S. The Ghost Map - The Story of London’s Deadliest Epidemic - And How It Changed the Way We Think about Disease, Cities, Science, and the Modern World (2006) New York: Riverhead Publishers.

2 Reed D, McGee D, Cohen J, Yano K, Syme SL, Feinleib M. Acculturation and coronary heart disease among Japanese men in Hawaii. Am J Epidemiol (1982) 115:894–905.

3 Handley M, Hall C, Sanford E, et al. Globalization, bi-national communities and imported food risk: results of an outbreak investigation of lead poisoning in Monterey County, California. Am J Public Health (2007) 97:900–906. http://www.oaxacalifornia-salud.org (this site is related to the investigation and information about the on-going project).

4 Grieshop J. The envios of San Pablo Huixtepec, Oaxaca: Food, Home and Transnationalism. Human Organ (2006) 65:400–6.

*Originally published in: International Journal of Epidemiology 2007 36(6):1205-1206; doi:10.1093/ije/dym027

From New America Media: “There’s Lead in My Grasshopper Snack”

Yesterday we had a meeting at SDSU with Dr Jim Grieshop and Dr Margaret Handley about the work that have been doing in Zimatlan, in Oaxaca. It has to do with lead contamination in chapulines–fried grasshoppers that are a favorite food throughout Oaxaca. This year we will be doing some collaborative work during the upcoming field season to look into the possible sources of the lead contamination.

Here is an article related to this issue about Oaxacan communities in the US who suffer from the effects of chapulines that contain high amounts of lead. The audio link at the top of the page is an interview with Dr Margaret Handley.

Planet.com-Atzompa-Flickr

Here is the way that tourism can function on a global scale. Atzompa according to Planeta.com.

Here is the Planeta Flickr page for Atzompa.

Lead-Poisoning in Atzompa

This is from a 2003 journal article about lead-poisoning in Atzompa:

Exposure to lead can be deleterious to most body systems, absorbed primarily through respiratory and digestive routes and interfering with cellular function and metabolism. The relationship between exposure and blood lead levels constitutes a dynamic process in which the blood lead concentrations are the product of recent exposure, excretion, and its balance in tissues. Elevated body lead concentrations produce harmful effects on hematopoietic, hepatic, renal, reproductive, and gastrointestinal systems (Silbergeld, 1990; Landrigan 1991, 1990).

The full article is here.  Just for a comparison with the previous post, which somewhat dismissed the issue of lead in Atzompan pottery…

Manos de Oaxaca

Manos de Oaxaca is a website dedicated to potters in Oaxaca. From the site’s about page, written by Eric Mindling:

Our warehouse is full of beautiful pottery, a rich gift to our times born of thousands of years of practice. But the reason Manos de Oaxaca exists isn’t for the pots, but rather the people who create those pots. The knowledge and life ways in the pottery villages have existed as such for thousands of years, a type of sustainability rare in the human world. As the industrial world moves into Oaxaca with its plastic buckets and aluminum pans, the pottery is disappearing. Through our workshops and journeys, pottery sales and this Web site, we hope to lend a hand to the culture of pottery and other arts by giving these artisans the opportunity to continue with their ancient trade.

Here is an excerpt from Eric’s 1989 visit to Santa María Atzompa:

Atzompa is, without question, the powerhouse village in Oaxacan pottery today. There are probably 800 actively producing potters in this village. The pottery they make finds its way to every little market in the state, selling well wherever it is offered. Much to my amazement and consternation, even in other pottery villages they use Atzompa pottery. The reason for this is that, 450 years ago, the Spanish introduced glazes and kilns to the Atzompa potters. As a result, their pottery is sturdier, fancier and easier to wash than all the unglazed, bon-fired pottery that everyone else is making. No one seems to have any idea or care that this green glazed pottery is high in lead. I do my preaching, but it falls on deaf ears. They say, “How bad can it be? Here we are.” And it is true, folks seem fine.

This was, of course, in 1989. While folks seemed pretty fine at the time, the effects of lead-poisoning have been well documented. Interesting that this characterization is still online…but then this site is dedicated to selling pottery to tourists. The rest is of Mindling’s 1989 text is here.

Meanwhile, the “coast is clear” according to CondeNast…

In the context of the political troubles that seem to continually plague Oaxaca, this recent article from CondeNast paints a particularly romantic picture of the lonely and isolated Oaxacan experience.  The turmoil of 2006 is covered, briefly, to explain the reason why the coast remains so far “off the radar.”  This is another representation of what Oaxaca is, from a certain point of view.  Read it, then compare it with everything else you come across.

Two Triqui Radio Reporters Murdered

On April 7, two female radio reporters from the Triqui community of Oaxaca were assassinated while en route to a statewide political meeting. The interesting thing here is the lack of mainstream media coverage. You aren’t going to read about this on CNN, Fox, or MSNBC.

From Reporters Without Borders:

The two young women were returning from doing a report in the municipality of Llano Juárez in the early afternoon when they were ambushed and, after being threatened with abduction, were finally shot with 7.62 calibre bullets of the kind used in AK-47 assault rifles, Reporters Without Borders was told by CACTUS, an organisation that supports indigenous communities. Investigators found 20 bullet casings at the scene. Three other people were wounded in the shooting - Jaciel Vázquez, aged 3, and his parents.

And this is from the Narco News Bulletin:

The two assassinated women worked for a community radio station called “The Voice that Breaks the Silence” in San Juan Copala where activists in January of 2007 declared San Juan Copala an autonomous municipality in a challenge to state officials. This declaration included the local Triqui movement united for struggle, MULT, which had been corrupted by the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI, in its Spanish initials). The new Triqui municipality, through its organization called MULTI (the Independent United Triqui Movement for Struggle), called for union of all Triquis and implicitly rejected the PRI and government paramilitary, thus breaking their hegemonic control in the region.

The incident has been condemned by UNESCO. The violence in Oaxaca has been consistent, yet the coverage of the events from the past few years has been limited. The difficult thing is finding a way to gain an understanding from thousands of miles away. Is that even possible? I always look for as many sources of news as possible, but in the case of Oaxaca, the choices are few. The only sources that are writing about what is happening down there are independent media outlets (such as Narco News and Reporters Without Borders).

My experience last summer in Oaxaca versus what was actually reported was very telling. A lot is lost in the transmission and translation of “news.” Maybe there is only time for this southern Mexican state when things get really really bad, as they did in 2006. I am trying to find out as much as I can before I go, but I have a feeling that what I can find online will differ tremendously from what is “actually happening” down there.

The main thing to remember is that there are always multiple understandings and experiences of the “truth” behind these kinds of events.

About a month

In a little over a month I will be going back to Oaxaca. The news from there has been sporadic and, well, not exactly tranquil. An assassination in Parque Llano, murders here and there throughout the state. Las Noticias, the online news outlet for Oaxaca, has been publishing numerous stories about violent incidents. I know that the archaeological project at the Cerro de Atzompa was stopped by protests–but I really have no idea who they were or why they did it. I know that the clay source for the people of Atzompa may be sold to a private entity, which would cause considerable strife for a community of ceramic producers. I know that the elections from the past year have not treated Atzompa well.

But what I really know is very little. It’s the darkened glass that Geertz talked about, and for the most part I am completely on the outside. I have a fraction of experience in Oaxaca, and in the end I know very little about it. I am an anthropologist, right? But what makes me different from a tourist? Is it all in my head, or is it my intentions? I can see why to some people, there is little difference between anthropologists and tourists.

I have been looking at tickets, and trying to get everything done in my classes on time to clear the way for leaving around May 15-20. I plan to be down there for around 3 months, maybe a little more. I have no idea what to expect. We (at SDSU) have all kinds of projects planned, but it’s never possible to predict exactly how things will play out. Just have to wait and see.

Press

Here is a link to a short article that was written about some of the work I have been involved with in Oaxaca.  It gets to the basics of what we are doing down there, but misses the mark on certain regards.  Overall, it’s interesting to see the ways that different forms of media can represent something.  See what you think.

back to Oaxaca…

In just a few short months I am heading back to Oaxaca with the SDSU summer field crew.  I am hoping to head down in the middle of May, just after I finish classes this semester.  It’s amazing to me that it was almost a year ago that I was last there.  Time flies when you’re reading books for graduate seminars…

Police Official Murdered in Oaxaca City

This is from the southern Florida Herald Tribune online today:

OAXACA CITY, MEXICO — Gunmen killed a bank police chief and his bodyguard as he jogged in a park on Wednesday in the southern city of Oaxaca. The hail of bullets also killed two other joggers and wounded a third, police said.

The gunmen appeared to be targeting Alejandro Barritas, who heads a police agency that guards banks and other businesses in the Oaxaca state capital. The dead included a plainclothes officer who was serving as Barritas’ bodyguard, and a man and a woman caught in the gunfire, an official said.

The short article is here.