H O P S C O T C H

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2008-08-03

Back from Mexico City as of last week.

On the street, so many entrepreneurs. Young Mexicans with speaker backpacks blasting Hotel California in the metro cars, giving their pitch and leaving for the next car.

Men with big bunches of helium balloons, walking around with a metallic cloud above their heads.

Vendors selling bags of potato chips drizzled with hot sauce. Selling chiclets, chiclets, chiclets. Selling beads.

We stood out heads taller than everyone. Paler. Odder. Not Mexican.

There are so many trying to make it through the so-called informal economy.

I learned about the 'legitimate government" of Andres Manual Obrador. Can you imagine if instead of conceding Al Gore set up his own legitimate government that ran parallel to George Bush's. They recently shut down the federal legislature for 2 weeks, smoking cigars in the federal building.

There's a different degree of freedom that goes hand-in-hand with a history of crushing violence. Any minute, something could happen. The word 'muerte' is everwhere. It is much more matter-of-fact, without morbidity. Just muerte.

I still don't know anything about Mexico. Picked up little pieces of Spanish along the way. Saw Frida Kahlo's house. Had the best Mole Sauce ever. Climbed the pyramids of Teotihuacan. Visited the colonial city of Cuernavaca. Viewed few murals of Diego Rivera depicting the scenes of the decimation and enslavement of the Indians and the effects of Spanish colonization.



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