The rest of my photos from my trip are now online. This last batch is from Mexico City, Mazatlan, Chihuahua, and Juarez. It took way too long to get them all up there, but anyway, there they are. Now I can get on with more important things, like my film.

It's so strange, the shift in surroundings and habits this week. The biggest change is just being constantly exposed to the toxic infosmog of the Internet, tempted by it, soaking in it for hours and hours. Hot and cold running cyberspace, for free, whereas before, for 3 months, 1, maybe 2 hours a day all I could afford, money and timewise, to spend in front of a computer. And all the excercise I used to get, walking around strange cities.... Well, now that I'm done with this relatively pointless gesture of organizing and uploading all these photos, now maybe I can impose some discipline on myself, be productive and healthy and get my shit together.

from the PCASC mailing list:

Today, the White House sent CAFTA to Congress. The news was made
official in a USTR press release. This move follows on the heels of a
pro-CAFTA press conference held by President Bush this afternoon.

CAFTA could move to the floor for a vote as early as next week. If
you oppose CAFTA, NAFTA and the Free Trade Agenda, this is a time to
be on high alert. [and take action]

The administration is trying to buy-off Republicans from states with
a strong sugar industry, but the sugar industry announced that they
will not accept the deals offered by Bush so far. Remember your
history: NAFTA faced similar opposition but ultimately passed by a
one vote majority in a midnight vote on the House floor. We can't
afford to let up pressure on CAFTA.

Continuing my massive photograph bonanza in the wake of my 11 weeks of travelling, today I bring you a set of photos from San Cristobal de las Casas, in Chiapas, Mexico. I spent about 16 days in this city and took a lot of interesting photos. A good portion of them were of the great grafitti and stencils which are pretty prevalent and often political there. enjoy!

You may have seen a few of them before, but I have posted today the best of the rest of my photos from Guatemala. It's way too many, about 200, I am the first to admit, but it was hard to pare it down even that far. I had more than 300 to start with. What do you do when everything is beautiful and strange for 6 weeks and you want everyone you know to see just how beautiful and strange it was? Aren't I good to you?
Si, soy muy chido, si? ja ja ja...

Podscope is a search engine for searching the content of podcasts . When you get the results you can actually listen to the few seconds where your search word was said, right there on the results page. It apparently uses voice recognition, and it sort of works, though one of my test words was "Chiapas" (still thinking about the Zapatistas) and amongst the results was an item about podcasting wherein the person speaking said "chopping the sound off the end," and that evidently got heard by the computer as "Chiapas." But anyway, a very cool web tool.

Interesting. The constant march of progress. hah.

In solidarity with the EZLN who yesterday went on red alert, I just posted a collection of photos I took a bit less than a month ago while studying spanish in Oventic, one of the Zapatista Caracoles. I have over 800 photos I took in Guatemala and Mexico over the last 11 weeks that I just started going over today, but I decided to upload these first. Vive Zapatismo!

Enjoy and be inspired...

Holy shit! On the very day that I returned from Mexico (well, from that weird hybrid of Mexico and the U.S. called The Border), yesterday, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation has called a red alert! Amazing. Less than a month after I was in Zapatista territory, they are encouraging internationals to leave, writing: "national and international civil societies who are working in peace camps and in community projects are being urged to leave rebel territory. Or, if they decide freely of their own volition, they remain on their own and at their own risk, gathered in the caracoles. "

What's going on? The communique doesn't explain WHY they're doing this. Wow. Is this the start of some big new rebel armed operation? Or a new defensive posture based on recent violence perpetrated by the Mexican Army and the Chiapaneco paramilitary groups? Is it related to threats last month against peace volunteers, as I wrote about in this blog?

Pues si, anyway, I am safely back in Iowa, about as far from Chiapas as one could be, though the 2 places are simliar in at least one way: they are both definitely lands of corn.

So today is my last full day en la frontera, and a few minutes ago i was
heading toward el mercado en Juarez when I met this Mexican guy who told me a sad story. At first I thought it was the typical, 'hey i'm stranded, give me some money', story you hear on the streets of everywhere, in whatever language. But it was far too detailed and convincing this time for me to think it was fake.

The guy, Angel, said he'd been living in San Jose for 5 years, and elsewhere in California before that, but he got his driver's license suspended because his friend had an open container in his car. So then Immigration got hold of him, and flew him to San Diego for a hearing. The judge suspended his green card, and said you can either stay in jail and fight this in court and it would cost lots of money, or you can voluntarily be deported and have a better chance of reapplying for your green card successfully later.. So he chose the latter, but then they didn't just take him over to Tijuana, where he has family. They flew him all the way to El Paso and deported him to Juarez, where he's never been before.

Now he has to get a job, and meanwhile try to survive in Juarez, so he can get a bus to Tijuana, which is like 100 dollars or more. I gave him some money in exchange for letting me interview him, and he told his story on camera.

Okay, maybe the driving thing is a white lie. Maybe he was DUI. But even so, that's not a reason to deport someone who's been living peacefully and lawfully, with girlfriend and kids, for over 5 years in the U.S. And then to fly him halfway across the continent is ridiculous - he said they do that a lot because they think people will just try to cross again if they deport them straight south, where they might have family, friends, etc. So they take them far away, so its harder for them to sneak in again. This is cruel and unusual punishment, especially since this guy was legal. Absolute bullshit.

In other news, yesterday I did 3 interviews with members of Nuestras Hijas Regresso A Casa (May Our Daughters May Return Home), a group of mothers of murdered women in Juarez. I first met with Marisela, who is the co-founder and a leader of the group, and I think a lawyer too(?). She was extremely helpful: she called up 2 mothers and then drove me to their houses. The first was the home of Ramona, who is the mother I was with on the Caravan last fall. Her house is also where the office for the group is. It was great to see her again, and she seemed happy to see me. She asked about the other people who were on the Caravan with us and I interviewed her with a few update questions and things we hadn't talked about before. During the interview I kept thinking of how much better my spanish was than back then, when I really couldn't have an actual conversation with her.

After that she and Marisela showed me a little pirate radio station that they had built in back of the office. It was incredible. A little table with microphones, a mixing board and other gear, and the whole room covered with egg cartons for sound dampening. We went back in the office and I got some footage of the 2 of them pointing out where bodies of murder victims have been found, on the big map of Juarez that I had brought with me. They explained where the famous places were like Lote Bravo, Algodonero, Lomo Prieto, etc. Then after interviewing Marisela she drove me over to the house of Josefina, another mother. She was a little sick so we made her interview short, and then she explained how to get a bus back into the center of town, because Marisela had to bring her husband's car back.

I got back to el centro without difficulty, then found a place for lunch, and shot a bunch of b-roll of the streets, the long line of cars waiting to cross the border bridge, etc. Finally I walked back across that same bridge to my hotel and my foot hurt a lot, so I ended up just resting and going to sleep early. Since it was Saturday night I had had visions of going back into Juarezland (the central, party-area right across the bridge where El Paso youth go for underage drinking and other vices), and interviewing people on the street, getting some vox populi accounts. But I couldn't, I just stayed in, read and watched TV.

This morning I got up early and went to the campus of University of Texas El Paso, because I'd heard that it was right across the river from Rancho Anapra. Anapra is one of the poorest neighborhoods, on the west outskirts of Juarez. I took a bus up to UTEP and sure enough it was perched high on a hill looking over the muddy and grassy Rio Grande right into western Juarez. Kids were swimming in the river, even though it's horribly polluted. I got some good footage. Had lunch, came back to the hotel for a siesta, and then came into Juarez. Tommorrow I fly out of El Paso, so this is my last chance to do any more footage gathering that I want to do.

Nevertheless, I'm feeling pretty positive about the film now. I think I really got everything I need to make the improvements in the documentary that it needs. I was feeling rather discouraged yesterday morning after reading email from a compa

Well, I am back in the U.S.A., just barely. The border is really quite weird, in many ways. It is indeed a mixture, a culture of its own.

Yesterday I took the bus from Chihuahua City 5 hours north to Juarez. It was, in a way, the worst touchdown in a new place that I've had for my whole trip, probably, I realized, because I let my guard down. I thought to myself, subconcioiusly at least, 'oh, hey, i'm almost back to the States, it'll be easy.' So I didn't plan my arrival that well. I knew I wanted to stay on the U.S. side, because I had read hotels and food in El Paso are a better value than the ones in Juarez, but I wanted to be close to the border crossings, so i could go back and forth easily.

(I'm reminded of a story Subcommandante Marcos told, of talking to a migrant from Guatemala headed through Chiapas on his way to Gringolandia. Marcos asked, why don't you just stay here in Mexico, why go to the U.S.? The Guatemalteco said are you kidding? Mexico is the worst of both worlds: pay as bad as in Guatemala, but prices as high as in the U.S. For the North of Mexico, especially the border region, this is pretty true, I think. )

Anyway, so I didn't think too much, plus my guidebook has no map of Juarez, just a rough description of how to get into el centro from the bus terminal. So I got on the first city bus I saw headed for el centro, but where it dropped me off was not that close to the border, and i had no idea where to go exactly. I asked around, bought a map, and eventually slogged my way to the bridge - keep in mind, with my 70 pounds or so of stuff (I started with about 50 but with souvenirs and stuff my cargo has grown) on my back. I wish I had a photo of what I looked like when I finally found my way to a hotel in El Paso - dripping with sweat and disheveled as hell with my giant backpack and other bags. But before getting there I had to walk to the bridge, over the bridge (I didnt have quite enough pesos to get a taxi and I knew there was a branch of my bank in downtown El Paso. Why not just walk? hah.), several block from the bridge into downtown proper, find the bank, get some dollars, then find a hotel. There's lots of sort of rundown sad looking hotels down here, but i found one that's not too bad called Gateway Hotel. insanely expensive by the standards of what I've been paying (anywhere from 2 to 11 times more expensive) in Mexico and Guatemala, but I get a lot more. Water from the tap that I can drink! Hot showers! All day long! Toilet that can flush down toilet paper! Air conditioning!

AC? you bourgeois pig, you're thinking about me. Wait, listen - it was in the high 90s here when I walked across the border yesterday, and today, and for the next week, its supposed to hit about 104 F. That's hot. You pretty much have to have AC, or you die, here. And many do. Meanwhile I saw on TV this morning that the Pacific Northwest is in the middle of a cold wave with lots of rain and even snow in some parts. Wow. I'm sorry, my Portland friends, but that is good news for me. It makes me happy to be sweating my ass off in the nice hot dry Frontera....

So here I am, and its weird, hard to tell when to speak which language, sometimes. And this morning a funny a pleasing thing happened. I was eating a cheap breakfast in the hotel's cafe and I bought a copy of one of the Juarez newspapers, El Diario, which they sell in El Paso - in fact they have a Juarez version and an El Paso one, both in Spanish. Anyway, regular non-intellectual newspapers I can read pretty well now in Spanish. I still take forever to get through an article in La Jornada, cuz its more highbrow. But anyway I was reading El Diario and eating breakfast and the waitress said in spanish that they dont get many gringos reading the Juarez paper here, where are you from, Spain? And I said no, the U.S. and she was really surprised and said usually gringos read the El Paso Times, wow, you know spanish, and I said, well, I'm still learning.

It kind of surprises me that more gringos in a border town like this don't know more spanish. Actually, I bought that paper because I wanted to see if there was any recent news of any murdered women in Juarez. Nope, not today. There were lots of men killed in various parts of town, though, including the owner of a big bar called El Mango. Some guys just drove up and blasted him and then zoomed off, bullets ricocheting through the window toward the neighboring children's nursery.

Anyway. Today I have errands. Go back across border, call some potential interviewees. Go to a bank to pay my Mexican border exit fee (i think it's 13 bucks). Wander around, think about where to shoot more footage. Try to find a high building to shoot a panorama of the city from. But basically I'm not in a rush. Yestereday I realized I have a day longer than I thought. For the last week I was thinking, for some reason, that my flight out of El Paso was Sunday, but its monday. So I have 3 full days here. Hopefully that will be enough time to get all the footage I need. I think it will be.

This article from El Paso talks about the dissappearance about a month ago of a young school teacher in Juarez. Its the first thing I've read, amazingly, that suggests there are links between certain specific areas of town and certain stores, namely 2 music stores, where victims were going or coming from or in when they disappeared. Muy interesante.