Defending the Patria

The culminating event of the bicentennial celebrations was the traditional military parade on September 16. Easily more popular than the elaborate spectacle of the night before, crowds began filling the sidewalks of Avenida Reforma from the early hours of Thursday morning. By 11, it was impossible to find a spot with a good view, so latecomers climbed trees, stood on upturned paint buckets, assembled perches from unused steel fence-barricades, and purchased homemade cardboard periscopes. The parade featured everything from a brigade of military nurses marching in lockstep to Navy speedboats being towed behind trucks, and column after column of soldiers in both historical uniforms and modern fatigues. Though the few soldiers dressed in the garb of campesino revolutionaries was attempted to recall the battles to preserve national sovereignty and forge a better country, it was the display of modern weaponry that drew the greatest attention. The sheer number of machine guns on offer seemed to suggest national virility: in surveys of Mexicans' trust in institutions, the military has consistently commanded the top ranking, despite its checkered human rights record. Effusive applause for the troops was both a reflection of this esteem and the product of a clear martial fascination.

Of course, the crowds also boisterously cheered the procession of street sweeping trucks trailing behind the parade.




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Touching the Bicentenario

On Wednesday, thousands of people streamed into the center of Mexico City to witness the extravaganza of the Bicentenario. But it was behind the barricades and cordons, away from the security checkpoints and lines of riot police, that the real celebration occurred. Calle Tacuba, blocks from the Zocalo, was a whirlwind of activity as vendors hawked everything from red, white and green wooden noisemakers to cheap plastic toys. On Avenida Reforma, it was impossible to walk 100 feet without being offered a tri-color mohawk headband for 15 pesos. Oversized clip-on Pancho Villa mustaches, historically inappropriate for the occasion, sold like hotcakes. At 6 PM, when the parade began to wind from Chapultepec Park to the Palacio Nacional, the loudest cheers were reserved for the icons of popular culture. "Arriba los nopales!" was the exuberant response to a float of dancers wearing cactus headdresses. Representations of street food vendors, maids, street sweepers, were all received more effusively than independence heroes or revolutionary martyrs. Later, Felipe Calderon would step to the balcony of the Palacio Nacional and, in the traditional "grito", proclaim "vivas" to the canonized figures of Miguel Hidalgo, Jose Maria Morelos, Ignacio Allende, Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez and others, it was the last viva that gave true meaning to the spectacle. ¡Viva Mexico! Mexico: brilliant and resilient, with an effervescently inventive popular culture. Mexico, alive and surviving.





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Spectacle

One hundred years ago today, Porfirio Diaz and Mexico City's high society celebrated the centennial of Mexican independence with lavish galas and sumptuous banquets. Beyond the bounds of the capital, however, discontent bubbled, and less than 2 months later Francisco Madero would begin the armed uprising that marked the start of the Mexican Revolution.

A century later, Mexico is not blithely ignorant of its problems. Economic stagnation, political incompetence, and a bloody and unwinnable war against narcotrafficking offer a grim backdrop to this fall's festivities. Yet the government has forged ahead with a bicentennial commemoration most characterized by excess. Over the past weeks, workers have erected massive screens and stages along Paseo La Reforma and converted the city's central plaza, the Zocalo, into an arena ringed with towers and spotlights. Beyond the parades, there will be musical performances ranging from Paulina Rubio to Los Tigres del Norte, and a massive fireworks display. A $54 million dollar bicentenary monument will not be completed until 2011.






The prodigality has provoked predictable resentment. But comments about how the money should have been spent--gratuitously reported in U.S. newspapers--miss the point. Governments everywhere have always invested excessively in such commemorations. Mexico has a particularly lengthy tradition of "nation building," and it was precisely because the first fifty years of independence were so troubled that Diaz--and his P.R.I. successors--invested heavily in didactic public rituals. This is not to say that Paulina Rubio will solve the country's problems, but to observe that this overblown commemoration is part of a lengthy tradition of state obsession. If the spectacle aims to enthrall and inspire, it is in the tens of thousands crowding the plazas where Mexicanness is truly celebrated.

Sunday

Away from the frenetic jostling of the markets, Sundays here have a half-speed feeling. There is an almost suffocating stillness, a torpor that reverberates down side streets and around desolate corners.

Cerveza

Few branding campaigns have succeeded in intertwining the image of product and country as have the long-running efforts of Grupo Modelo to make Corona synonymous with Mexico. That fizzy flavorless lager should become Mexico's most effective foreign ambassador is a testament to that relentless marketing, and the dominance of Grupo Modelo, and its competitor, Cervecería Cuauhtemoc, over the market has made "Mexican beer" equivalent with light, refreshing adjunct lagers.

Unlike the United States, where Prohibition crushed an artisanal brewing industry, there is little evidence that a wide variety of beer styles ever flourished here. The consolidation of Modelo and Cuauhtemoc by mid-century and the absence of a strong consumer market condemned the country to beer purgatory. This dismal situation began to change over the past 15 years, with the founding of The Beer Factory, a "Rock Bottom"-style brewpub, in Mexico City in 1997, and the brief-lived Casta brewing company, a bottled craft beer line.

To say there is now a flourishing craft beer scene in Mexico would be an exaggeration. However, the enthusiasm, diversity, and quality on display at this weekend's Cerveza Mexico artisanal exposition was a heartening demonstration that the nascent movement is gathering momentum. While craft breweries here will continue to struggle against the market hegemony of Modelo and Cuauhtemoc, whose control over distribution and resale agreements can border on suffocating, efforts to organize the industry to lobby against legislation that protects the monopoly are underway. Consumers are increasingly becoming aware of the possibilities as well, as the steady stream of Friday night customers at a small craft beer store in Colonia Roma will attest. The evolution of consumers' palates is also underscored by the decision of Cervecería Cuauhtemoc to purchase Casta, and has offer two of Casta's recipes under the label of Bohemia Trigo (wheat) and Bohemia Oscura (dark). Moreover, the influence of the U.S. craft beer movement has also trickled across the border, as demonstrated by the big, aggressive experimental ales produced by Baja California's Cucapá brewing company.

The slogan for the exposition was: "Alternatives that flow." While Corona may continue to claim the image of Mexico,
lagers with limes are no longer the only option.





http://www.manifiestoantimonopolio.com.mx/

http://www.labelga.com.mx/

http://www.cucapa.com/

Faith

I awoke to church bells this morning. Religion, or perhaps more accurately, faith, is an inescapable part of life here. Although devout Catholic practice is shaped by the corrosive qualities of urban life, it is a thread that runs through both quotidian life and national history.

On a weekend when Glenn Beck was proclaiming the United States to be a Christian nation, Mexico was preparing to celebrate the bicentennial anniversary of an independence movement begun by Catholic priests. If the ultimate realization of independence came about on a simple platform that officially affirmed Roman Catholicism as the new country's religion, observance and belief--then as now--existed in multiplex popular forms. Though it is not uncommon to see people carrying statues of saints through the streets or on the metro, by far the most prevalent indication of faith is the permeation of the cult of San Judas Tadeo. Small cloth medallions, cheap bracelets, grubby t-shirts all bear the image of the saint, often with the invocation "pray for me." As the patron saint of lost causes, the resonance of San Judas Tadeo among Mexico City's poor, living on the margins of survival--and often legality--is self-evident. More than the iconic Virgen of Guadalupe, it is the cult of San Judas Tadeo that more deeply reflects religion in the unequal and gritty world of contemporary Mexico.

At 8 PM I will hear the church bells again. The country's Catholic hierarchy, seemingly more concerned with vociferously protesting gay marriage laws than attending the needs of the poor, will continue to be--as it has for over two hundred years--the absent steward of an edifice built by popular practice.

Government by Quijote

In the past two weeks, the city government has imposed a plastic bag ban and the federal government has forbid the over-the-counter sale of antibiotics. Both measures run against long-standing common practice, legislating to the ideal rather than the real, even if both respond to legitimate concerns. The conditions that gave rise to the overuse of antibiotics, such as difficult access to medical care and the proliferation of pharmacies, are the same conditions that make such a prohibition nearly impossible to sustain.

Similarly, Mexico City's trash problem--a major component of which is the rampant use of cheap plastic bags--has long been the subject of regulations adhering to noble principles which are impossible to enact or enforce. In theory, it is prohibited to deposit trash on the street, and all waste must be sorted. In practice, the absence of a sensible collection system combined with the strength of old habits means garbage simply piles up on the corner.

Breakthroughs

Research breakthroughs can come in unexpected ways. Stray sheets in the archive, serendipitous connections, flashes of inspiration...

In the late 1940s, a pair of films were released in Mexico offering a dramatic--and slightly comedic--portrayal of the bus industry in Mexico City. These films, although a part of the golden age of Mexican cinema, are nearly impossible to find. Though I knew of their existence, I had no idea how to track them down.

As a regular customer at the Sunday market, I have come to know many of the vendors. The three butchers were particularly friendly. One morning as I explained what I was doing in Mexico, the youngest of the three, Gabriel, stopped me and asked if I knew about the film "Esquina, Bajan." Surprised, I exclaimed that I knew of it, but had never seen it. "I can get it for you," he replied. So it was that a few weeks later, I was handed a half-kilo of tenderloin and two much-sought-after DVDs.

Food on the Run

Mexico City is peppered with food stands, ranging from a simple table, handwritten sign, and basket of warm tacos, to more permanent brightly painted metal puestos serving pork or goat stew, quesadillas, hamburgers, or tortas. Such comida corrida is indispensable during long days when the trip home will often take several hours.

Security

One of the most pervasive perceptions of Mexico, and Mexico City in particular, is that it is a chronically unsafe place. This is partially the legacy of an especially sensational mid-decade wave of kidnappings-for-ransom and robberies, combined with the city's persistent reputation for inevitable petty crime. In the past several years, the capital has remained largely sheltered from the rampant drug-trafficking-related violence elsewhere in the country. Pockets of immense poverty located next to relative wealth, the city's tremendous anonymity, and the strength of underworld networks in peripheral areas mean that Mexico City will never be totally secure, yet neither is it as viciously unsafe as often portrayed. Many of the city's neighborhoods are no more dangerous than comparable cities in the U.S., though the fear - if not the reality - of crime is far more insistent here.

As I walked home from the National Archive last Thursday, two rail-thin young men cornered me against a parked car and rather aggressively extended their hands. "Give us a peso," they said. When I protested that I had none, they persisted, playing on fears of urban insecurity: "look, güero, we're asking, because it's better than taking your belongings."

Commemoration

In a little over a month, Mexico will celebrate the bicentenario, marking 200 years since the start of the insurgent movement that ultimately resulted in independence from Spain. Popular patriotism is tinged with the blackest cynicism, however, frustrating efforts to promote the event. Today's Mexico-Spain soccer match bordered on the farcical, from the "Bicentenary Trophy" that was at stake to the pathetically earnest television commentators. When a vapid blond sideline reporter asked a very bemused David Villa what he thought about the historic importance of the bicentenary match, the star Spanish striker could only confusedly mumble "Uh, happy?"

Inspiration

Research very rarely moves in a linear fashion. On Friday, intrigued by a document I had found, I returned to a topic that my advisor had suggested during my first weeks of graduate school. As I leafed through the card catalog the shape of a potential project quickly became apparent and a fascinating story began to emerge. After a fatiguing week, the excitement of glimpsing new possibilities reminded me why I chose to pursue history.

Writing on the Wall

"Jose - You were the best by my side and you gave me my life back, but I could not thank you for for everything you've done in person, so I will leave it here, hoping that some day you will come and read it."





The scrawlings of frustration, sadness, and mischievousness.

Expectations

Today marks six months since I arrived in Mexico. Over that time, very little has played out as I anticipated. Several archives have left me frustrated or disappointed, while I have found marvelously rich sources I never expected to find. My neighborhood has proven as wonderful as I remembered it being, while I have struggled to find my footing socially in the anonymizing flood of this city.

It continues to be an adventure.