I hate to say it, but I'm kind of over it all. Maybe it's just because there's only a week left, and now I'm getting anxious to get home, and if I actually had another 3 months or something, I'd feel differently, but that's not the case. After the initial honeymoon phase, I've decided that at least half the people here are total fucking retards and have no standards for anything. I sit outside and talk to people and can actually feel my brain being affected with atrophy. Mine and Jaisen's new favorite game to play in our room is to sit and talk about how dumb everybody is. At least he's fine and I still get along with him. We're getting along fabulously in fact, and dare I say, I'm going to miss him.
Anyway, Parking (the club last night) was really fun, and we ran into some other people there from school (not total fucking retards)that also just happened to randomly go there last night, so that was cool. The music was painfully loud, but good, and Pepe (the weird, but nice, Spanish guy, and yes, his name is actually Pepe) bought a bottle of tequila and kept feeding me shots. After the third one, the bass was actually starting to make my stomach quiver, and the lights being totally frantic and trippy, I got a little disoriented. It was a very strange sensation. Jaisen kept telling me to "hook it up" with somebody all night. He volunteered to "take one for the team" and sleep on a couch in the TV lounge if I brought somebody home, but there was no one brought home. Deneise also kept encouraging me to "go dance with somebody, have a good time!" Do I really seem that pathetic? Methinks not, but we all had fun. And I danced a lot.
This afternoon a bunch of us went downtown to see the Felipe Calderon. He's the conservative party's presidential candidate. I was so not in the mood to go, but we sort of had to. Our professor gave us a big lecture about how this was such an historic event, and we had to go. We got there at 6:30, and by 9, the fucker still hadn't shown up, and if I had to listen to his aides, or whatever, try to fire up the crowd and start yet another chant for one more fucking minute, I was gonna kill somebody. So I quietly slipped out and took a cab back home. It's not like I was gonna understand anything he was saying anyway. It was an interesting crowd, though. A lot more kids and families it seemed like than at the Obrador rally. Which could have also had to do with the fact that it was a Saturday and not a weekday. There were also quite a few older people, and as my professor noted, "everybody here is about 4 shades lighter than at the Obrador rally." Subtle shifts in skin tones seem to be a big deal here, and what a lot of racism is based around. I guess we all have to hate somebody, so if we're all the same race, we'll figure out something to be wrong with everybody else. So, there you go. Obrador had better t-shirts and flags too.
I am so exhausted. I had a really hard time going to sleep last night despite being totally dead on my feet. Hopefully I'll get a good night's sleep tonight. And this time next week I'll be on a bus home.
Oh, and my goose, or duck, or whatever she is, had her little goosey babies this week. They're cutest little, tiniest, fluffiest, yellowest things you ever saw. 4 of them have already died, but the others seem to be doing all right. And the other baby duckies born a few weeks ago are getting so big already! They just grow up so fast.
5 comments:
I'm kinda surprised your professor hasn't told you more about the skin color thing. It is still racism. The darker your skin is the more likely, in the eyes of Mexicans, you are to be indigenous (ie an Indian). When the Spaniards first came to Mexico, there was an institutionalized divide between the Spaniards and the natives. Later when pure Spaniards were BORN in Mexico they were called creoles and were considered lower on the totem pole than the Spaniards, although not as low as the Indians. Of course, people started to inter-marry (or, at least, inter-screw) and their offspring came in a variety of combinations. Indian-Spaniard, Indian-Creole among others. Even Arabs, Chinese, and Africans (ie slaves) got into the mix. And the Spaniards actually had different names and even CHARTS to identify the different combinations and they were actually ranked according to their acceptability. The more Spanish you were, the better.
We have talked about it quite a bit. He did a whole lesson on it in class one day. I just hadn't mentioned it in the actual blog before.
D'oh!
Anyhow, what I meant by all that is that they don't consider everybody in their country the same race.
How's that for beating a dead horse?
Can't wait to have you back!
Yes, you're right; that makes sense. I knew I was grossly simplifying the argument, but I guess I did it on purpose to convey how stupid I thought it was.
Consider that horse beaten.
Last time we were in Mexico, Mandy and I went to a small museum outside Mexico City. One of the thing they had on display was exactly what Meredith mentioned - a chart that described what the offspring of various types of people are called (i.e. if a mestizo married a creole, what their child would be classified as). Not only did they show every type of permutation, they then showed where they would rank in status and class. Very interesting.
Victor
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