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caroenqueretaro · 7 years ago

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Día de los Muertos en Oaxaca

Here’s a journal entry I had to write for class about my experience celebrating Day of the Dead in Oaxaca:

When I talked to my dad about our trip to Oaxaca during the Day of the Dead, the first thing he asked me was “Whose grave did you party on?”. I think (and hope) that he was mostly joking, but the sentiment behind his question is one shared by many people in the United States. I’ve talked to people in our group who have had trouble explaining the holiday to friends and family back home or feel uncomfortable about it themselves. Many unfamiliar with the celebration see it as morbid, creepy, irreverent, or lump it in to the same category as Halloween. I’m grateful I was able to celebrate Day of the Dead in Oaxaca because it gave me a better understanding of Day of the Dead as a celebration of life and an incredible manifestation of the Mexican values of family, food, community, and humor.

Watching the Disney movie “Coco” as well as reading articles about Day of the Dead was very helpful in getting a better understanding of the holiday before our trip to Oaxaca. We learned about the significance of the ofrendas, altares, and cempasúchils that we saw all throughout the streets of Querétaro, as well as how Day of the Dead has become more commercialized and westernized in recent years as it has taken on more aspects of Halloween. My favorite article we read was by Octavio Paz. His writing on death was poetic, unique, and described very well what I think the differences are between the Mexican and U.S. views of death. He writes, “The word death is not pronounced in New York, in Paris, in London, because it burns the lips. The Mexican, in contrast, is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love. True, there is perhaps as much fear in his attitude as in that of others, but at least death is not hidden away; he looks at it face to face, with impatience, disdain, or irony”. I think this quote really explains why the holiday is hard for us to understand. Mexican culture has a fundamentally different view of death than we do. Mexico’s relationship with death is not solemn. I have seen this played out during conversations with Mexicans here in Querétaro. Overall I feel the Mexican culture is more apt to use humor to make fun of things they feel they have no control over. This is an idea that Octavio Paz explores often in his work.

The night of November second, our group had the opportunity to visit a graveyard in Santa María del Tule, Oaxaca. The atmosphere inside the graveyard was like that of a carnival. There were hundreds of people of all different ages, food vendors, live music, and almost all of the graves were decorated with candles, food, and flowers. Families sat huddled around graves of their dead relatives, eating mole and drinking tequila or mezcal. There are a few scenes from the graveyard that especially stood out to me and encapsulate what the holiday is in my mind. I remember standing and watching three young boys dressed up as skeletons running around spraying silly string on each other and the surrounding graves while their parents looked on, smiling. I couldn’t imagine my little brother being allowed to do that in a graveyard. I also saw an old man stoop down to pour a shot of mezcal on top of a loved one’s tombstone and then drink the rest. This act of “sharing” a drink with someone who had passed away seemed so intimate that I was ashamed I had watched him from afar. I also heard a dad leading his young daughter by the hand through the graveyard in the dark and singing a happy tune with the words “tumbas, tumbas, tumbas”. I was not taught lighthearted songs to sing in graveyards as a child.

My favorite memory from the graveyard in Oaxaca was when a small group of us was approached by a woman named Adrianna. She came up to us and offered mezcal from her plastic coke bottle. She welcomed us and pointed over to about ten of her family members who were all seated around the graves of her brother and father. Adrianna explained to us that she really does believe that on November second the spirits of her ancestors come and spend time with their family and eat the food they have laid out for them. Her favorite part of the holiday is the “convivencia”. This word means coexistence, community, and spending time together. Most people at that cemetery knew each other because they were all from the same small pueblo. We paused our conversation several times so that she could greet friends and neighbors. Her family all lived in the pueblo and would be buried together in this cemetery. During Day of the Dead, Adrianna was spending time with family, friends, and neighbors both dead and alive.

In a quiet moment at the cemetery, Brianna asked me what I thought of all of this. I looked around at the tight-knit community celebrating the lives of those who had passed away and realized that actually I had participated in something similar before. Aspects of it reminded me of Easter with my mom’s family. Every year at Easter after church my grandparents, aunts, and uncles pack up the car with buckets of fresh flowers from my grandma’s garden and visit the local cemetery. They live in a small town, so they know a lot of the people buried there. First, they visit the graves of my great grandparents and other family members. Towards the end of their visit, they’re putting flowers on the graves of almost anyone. I remember being “introduced” to old neighbors, friends, and even my mom’s old marching band teacher. The mood is not depressing. Everyone is working together to fill buckets with water, calling out from the graveyard “hey! look who’s buried here!” and exchanging funny memories and gossip. Some people in our group said they had never been to a graveyard before and that their families never talked about loved ones who had passed away, but I had my experiences in the cemetery with my relatives to compare with Day of the Dead. Easter trips to the cemetery are different than Day of the Dead because my relatives don’t believe the people whose graves they are visiting are literally present with them. They do, however, value the “keeping alive” of people buried there through telling stories to younger generations just as the Mexicans do. Also, both my family and the Mexican families I met are enjoying each other’s company at the cemetery and the spirit of “convivencia”. The two trips to the graveyard remind me of one another because of the celebration of family and community and honoring those who have passed away. These aspects of Day of the Dead embody my favorite part about Mexican culture- the emphasis on breaking bread with friends and family. I don’t think Day of the Dead is creepy or morbid. There is something beautiful and cyclical about making new memories together as a family in a graveyard- a place where memories dwell. I loved “partying on people’s graves” and “conviviring” with the dead (so to speak), and want to carry on aspects of the holiday when I return home.

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toldnews-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/travel/dont-call-it-tex-mex/

Don’t Call It Tex-Mex

HOUSTON — This city’s Second Ward is full of temptations for Adán Medrano, a writer and chef who lives just a few miles southeast.

The Mexican-American neighborhood is home to the perfect flaky tortillas at Doña María Mexican Cafe, scratch-made in flour or corn, and ready to be folded around eggs with the fine threads of dried beef called machacado. It has the off-menu roasted tamales at the Original Alamo Tamales, with blackened husks and caramelized edges of masa and meat. And there’s Taqueria Chabelita, where the owner, Isabel Henriquez Hernandez, makes pinto beans whose smoky intensity comes not from pork fat, but from a slow char in a hot pan.

For Mr. Medrano, who grew up in San Antonio with generations of relatives on both sides of the Rio Grande, this is all his comfort food, his culinary heritage, his comida casera, or Mexican home cooking.

Just don’t call it Tex-Mex, he said. He prefers to describe it as Texas Mexican, which is also how he describes himself.

Texas Mexican is the indigenous cooking of South Texas, according to Mr. Medrano, 71, whose second cookbook, “Don’t Count the Tortillas: The Art of Texas Mexican Cooking,” will be published in June by Texas Tech University Press. It’s the food that’s been made by families like his on this land since before the Rio Grande marked a border, when Texas was a part of Mexico, and long before then.

Don’t get him wrong: Tex-Mex is a cuisine that should be respected and celebrated, he said. It’s just that Tex-Mex standards like queso and combo fajitas piled high with chicken and shrimp don’t speak of home to those whose Texas roots go back some 12,000 years.

“That’s not our food,” said Mr. Medrano, who has spent the better part of a decade defining his cuisine, inspiring a growing number of Texas Mexicans in the process. “We don’t eat like that.”

You can find Texas Mexican here at Mr. Medrano’s Houston go-tos, and at decades-old San Antonio West Side lunch spots like Old Danny’s Cocina, or even newer favorites like El Puesto No. 2 down the street. It’s at Maria’s Restaurant in downtown McAllen and at Cafe Amiga in Brownsville, both run by granddaughters of their founders.

It is dishes like chicken poached with striped green squash and corn, the tomato-noodle soup called fideo, and gulf shrimp and cactus stewed in a mix of dried red chiles. It’s the simple ground beef picadillo or the beef-and-potato stew called carne guisada, both subtly seasoned with a pounded paste of black peppercorn, garlic and cumin, which Mr. Medrano describes as the Texas Mexican version of the Cajun holy trinity.

It is what Juan Hernandez, of Doña María Mexican Cafe, has always described as “mama-style cooking”— the mama in this case being his wife, Anna Hernandez, who grew up a block away from the restaurant and is a co-owner. Mr. Hernandez would never call the food she makes Tex-Mex; in fact, it inspired Tex-Mex.

That began in the early 1900s, when local Mexican-American home cooking was first adapted in restaurants run “by Anglos for Anglos,” Mr. Medrano said. In the 1970s, writers started referring to that hybridized cuisine as Tex-Mex: refried beans as smooth as pancake batter; chili made with powdered spices and stock, instead of the carne con chiles based on whole dried red chiles; fajitas with anything other than the skirt steak that gave the dish its name; and extra cheese on everything.

The idea of distinguishing Texas Mexican from Tex-Mex came to him after he enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America program in San Antonio in 2010, after careers in producing and writing for television, and awarding foundation grants to nonprofit arts and education projects. Mr. Medrano, who also founded San Antonio’s annual Latino film festival in 1977, originally took the classes for fun, he said, but they led him to an epiphany: After decades in the shadows, his food needed not just a champion, but a name.

Mr. Medrano didn’t want to use the word Tejano, because it is sometimes used to highlight Spanish colonial ancestry rather than native heritage, and because spelling Texas with a J instead of an X is a European practice.

He came up with a better term after learning about the distinct regional cuisines of Mexico, realizing that he had essentially grown up with one of his own. “You have Oaxacan Mexican, you have Jaliscan Mexican,” Mr. Medrano said. “Why not Texas Mexican?”

His initial research on the history of this food became his first cookbook, “Truly Texas Mexican: A Native Culinary Heritage in Recipes,” published in 2014.

Since then, Mr. Medrano has traveled the region, cooking, lecturing at schools and museums, and gathering knowledge from chefs, anthropologists and home cooks, many of whom are quoted in “Don’t Count the Tortillas.” (This summer he will even make carne guisada tacos at a Fourth of July celebration in Moscow, at the residence of the United States ambassador to Russia.)

Mr. Medrano is also the executive producer, writer and host of a forthcoming bilingual documentary, “The Roots of Texas Mexican Food,” slated for release this fall. (He is pitching it to TV providers in the United States and Latin America.) The film focuses on Texas’ archaeological and historical sites, and on the women who have been the primary architects of the cuisine.

His work has been revelatory for restaurateurs like Sylvia Casares, a well-known Houston chef who operates Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen. “I had been searching for 20 years for how to describe my food,” said Ms. Casares, who is originally from Brownsville, at the state’s southeastern edge.

Ms. Casares met Mr. Medrano after he recommended her restaurant to a Houston reporter as a place to taste hallmarks of the cuisine, especially her enchiladas. Her crew makes hundreds a day the Texas Mexican way, each tortilla bathed in chile sauce and softened in hot oil before being rolled around its filling.

And what about the blanket of cheese on top? “There’s a little on there for looks,” Ms. Casares said.

Ms. Casares said Mr. Medrano’s work corrects both a lack of vocabulary and a lack of knowledge about history, even for some Mexican-Americans. “The problem with most people is they can’t get their heads around Texas’ indigenous foods,” she said.

Like many Mexican-American restaurateurs, she puts both Tex-Mex and Texas Mexican items on her menu. (Some dishes can overlap, or fall somewhere in between.) Most of her customers assume those that appear more traditionally Mexican were imported.

Yet these are not “south-of-the-border” creations, said Mr. Medrano: “Texas Mexican didn’t cross the border, the border crossed it.”

Until the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, much of southern Texas was Mexico, and for centuries before that part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. That’s why, to Mr. Medrano, the heart of Texas Mexican culture is an area that includes southern Texas — the Rio Grande Valley, Corpus Christi and greater San Antonio and Houston — but also part of the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.

Those lie on the other side of the Rio Grande, but they share the same terroir, which includes mesquite and pecan trees; thickets of yucca and prickly pear cactus; staples like squash, beans, potatoes, chiles and corn; and seafood from the river and the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a subtropical zone that also supported thousands of head of cattle that followed the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century.

In his research, Mr. Medrano was elated to find scholars who had occasionally used the term Texas Mexican, or had interviewed others who did. One of those was Mario Montaño, an anthropologist at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, whose focus is on food near the border. (His thesis was on barbacoa de cabeza, a cow’s head traditionally slow-cooked in a pit with hot stones, which Mr. Medrano’s family recently prepared on camera for his documentary.)

When Mr. Montaño grew up along the river in Eagle Pass, Tex., the water “was not a cultural separation,” he said.

Mr. Montaño describes this area’s cooking as influenced by centuries of mixing influences from trade, colonization and migration from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as by Mexicans living in southern regions moving north.

Yet Texas Mexican food is rooted in the cooking of the nomadic Indigenous groups that moved around both sides of the river for centuries before the Spanish arrived. Many of those peoples — who are now collectively known as Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation — moved into the Roman Catholic missions founded in San Antonio in the 1700s.

“What was here has given birth” to what Texans eat today, said Mr. Vasquez, noting that his ancestors were the ones doing the first hot-stone-and-pit cooking, often with unwanted cuts of meat like the cow heads left to them by Spanish.

The park has just converted 50 acres to farmland, which Mr. Vasquez hopes to help plant with native species, many of which are highlighted in Mr. Medrano’s new book. (It also includes a recipe from Mr. Vasquez’s mother for bison with blackberries and pecans, along with family recipes from the Texas artist César Martínez and the El Paso-born chef Rico Torres, of the modern Mexican restaurant Mixtli in San Antonio.)

This rich and living history is the reason San Antonio was awarded the rare City of Gastronomy designation in 2017 by Unesco. The city tapped Mr. Medrano to help create its application.

The recognition is a remarkable turnabout. The missions, after all, are only a few miles south of the plaza where Texas Mexican women were blocked from selling carne con chile from open-air stands in the early 20th century, while the dish itself was co-opted into chili. This is also where Otis Farnsworth, a Chicago transplant, opened his highly successful Original Mexican Restaurant, one of the first places serving what would become known as Tex-Mex.

Today, Farnsworth’s restaurant might be called out for cultural appropriation, or what Mr. Medrano calls “cultural poaching.” And Mr. Medrano does get angry at the lack of respect for his culture, the many ways in which Mexican-Americans have been wronged throughout history.

But he is generally driven by love for their cuisine, which delights him every time he sees a tortilla puff on a griddle, or catches the mingled scent of black pepper and cumin.

“We need to share the beauty of the food,” Mr. Medrano said, “and if we do, the world will be more beautiful.”

#tourism and travel news #traffic news cincinnati #traffic news colorado springs #travel news a12 #travel news a30 #travel news kings lynn #travel news m6 #travel news rossendale #travelblog #zermatt travel news

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danasukontarak · 8 years ago

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Dana’s Travel Diary: Paradise, No Passport Required

I’ve known my friend Krystal since we were seven years old in the second grade. I’m not sure if our friendship was initially based on anything deep (we both liked ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Arthur’), but over the years, we’ve grown together. We have a truly similar sense of humor and decades’ worth of inside jokes. This February, she turned 28, and for her first official “Ladies’ Birthday Trip,” we (along with our other BFF/my roommate, Kiara) went to Puerto Rico. We would be flying into San Juan, staying in Carolina, and exploring several other areas mostly along the northern coast of the island.

The three of us had been to Miami for Kiara’s 25th and Los Angeles for my 26th. We’d also traveled to Denver and New Orleans together last year (plus our friend/neighbor Traci), so we were all confident that we wouldn’t annoy each other too badly over the course of four days with limited personal space.

We flew to San Juan by way of Chicago (a cold and stupid route, but the cheapest) and arrived at 5 A.M. At this point, I realized I made the rental car reservation for 10 A.M., but we headed to the rental place anyway. They were able to accommodate us early, but the price we paid was steep. We had to drive a huge Dodge Ram pickup truck. Correction: I had to drive a huge Dodge Ram pickup truck. It also had a big ass “Allied Car & Truck Rental” sign on the side. Thanks, Misael!

We found the condo we stayed at through AirBnb. Much to our grin-less chagrin, there was a union workers’ protest directly in front of the building next door, so every morning brought honking horns and Spanish chants that rhymed “luchar” and “lugar.” (Note: we learned that they’d been there all week, and they were also there during our entire stay.)

Our first excursion was to El Yunque Rainforest, where the truck came in handy. The many potholes on the winding mountain roads that led up to the rainforest were no match for our chubby Caucasian truck. We saw a few small waterfalls, one of which we got close to by climbing over rocks in an area clearly marked by a sign reading “DO NOT CLIMB THE ROCKS.”

There were many marked areas at which we were able to park and gaze. The views were spectacular from our height.

On the second day, we drove about an hour east to Luquillo Beach. The sand was like tan powdered sugar, and the water was calm and blue. This was genuinely the nicest beach I’d ever been to. The water was crisp, cool, and toted absolutely zero weird debris. I’m not used to nice things, so I definitely expected a jellyfish, some seaweed, at least a beer can or a condom wrapper. There were none to be found. Just beautiful palm trees, pleasant waves, and cute kids. Luquillo Beach also has a stand that serves pina coladas, rum punch, beers, and empanadas. We went all in (which later came all out, of me, into a hole I dug in the sand). Cheers to discrete public vomits!

On the way back from the beach, Krystal drove. She misinterpreted a road sign in Spanish, and thought the speed limit was 65 mph, with a minimum of 55 mph. We found out after getting pulled over and ticketed that the speed limit was ordinarily 65, but 55 for heavy vehicles, i.e. our big body Ram.

The next day, we went to Old San Juan. We’d read that parking was difficult in this area, and that turned out to be correct. Street parking is virtually nonexistent. The roads are narrow and cobbled, and it looks like a place where once you find a street spot, you never, ever move. We ended up parking in a lot with a 7-foot height clearance, which barely missed fucking up the top of our truck.

Old San Juan was gorgeous, full of colorful buildings and historical sites. We visited El Morro, a 400-year-old fort by the water. We also saw the Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery, which is apparently the final resting place for a number of Puerto Rico’s most prominent residents and natives.

From Old San Juan, we headed west to Arecibo to visit Cueva Ventana, a large cave atop a limestone cliff that is a popular tourist attraction for both Puerto Rican natives and visitors. Tours are all guided, and our tour group appeared to be mostly Puerto Ricans. We were the only non-Spanish speakers, which required our guide to explain everything twice. Oops.

The guide explained that the caves were full of wonder, in the form of cockroaches, bats, spiders and snakes. We entered with hard hats and flashlights, and were instructed not to shine our lights at the ceiling of the cave, where bats slept in clusters. The guide shone an undisturbing red light up to illuminate the bat clusters. They were far less appetizing than pecan clusters, as far as clusters go.

When we finally reached the famous window cave, we took turns taking photos. I asked the guide if anyone had ever fallen out of the cave, and he said no, but let me know that if I wasn’t careful, that day could be the first.

On our last day in Puerto Rico, we spent the morning at Isla Verde Beach, which was not as nice as Luquillo but walking distance from our condo. It began to rain after about an hour, so we packed up and headed to San Juan’s botanical garden. This was a pleasant, peaceful conclusion to our time in Puerto Rico. The highlight of this excursion was definitely the peacock we saw, but the sad part was that it was caged.

The weather in Puerto Rico was similar to Miami - rain storms that hit hard but last just a few minutes. The weather sat around 85 degrees every day, and I returned browner than before, for sure.

If you are planning a trip to Puerto Rico (from the U.S.), remember: no need for a passport! Here are a few tips that might come in handy!

1: Learn basic Spanish - This would’ve saved us some heartache when interpreting road signs. Between Krystal being half Panamanian and me taking 3+ years of Spanish in school, we managed alright. But I did witness a few instances of “stupid Americans” being totally lost in the sauce when asked a simple question in Spanish (”What time is your reservation?”).

2: Go off the beaten path to save money - Compared to the trip I took to Mexico, all prices in Puerto Rico seemed pretty much comparable to prices at home, i.e. NOT cheap. The farther we got from the capital, the better the prices seemed to get for basic things like food and water.

3: Try food native to Puerto Rico - My favorite dish was seafood mofongos, which is mashed plantains with garlic and butter, served with shrimp, scallops and octopus.

4: Be prepared to pay tolls - They’re pretty much on every highway to every city in Puerto Rico. Our rental car was equipped with an E-Z pass, which you will definitely need if you plan to drive ANYWHERE.

#travel #travelseries #travelwriting #wanderlust #puertorico #sanjuan #danastraveldiary

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culebral · 8 years ago

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REALLY LONG CHARACTER SURVEY.

RULES. Repost, do not reblog ! Tag 10 ! Good luck ! Tagged by: my dash Tagging: fuck off

BASICS. FULL NAME : R.chard G.cko. NICKNAME/S : R.ch, R.ch.e, R.ch.e R.ch, R.cardo, R.chardo, Four-eyes, Specs, Glasses, etc. AGE : 29 years young. BIRTHDAY : 11 | 03 | 87. ETHNIC GROUP : Caucasian/ White. NATIONALITY : American. LANGUAGE/S : Fluent english and ancient Xibalban dialect. SEXUAL ORIENTATION : Heterosexual. ROMANTIC ORIENTATION : Gray-Heteromantic. RELATIONSHIP STATUS : Single. CLASS : Upper Class. HOME TOWN / AREA : Kansas City, Kansas, U.S.A. CURRENT HOME : Classified. PROFESSION : Co-runs a truck stop. Mid-boss, Lord of Collecting Tribute. Due to the sensitive nature & illegality of undisclosed vocations, he’ll exclusively state he operates a roadside service station without divulging its locale.

PHYSICAL. HAIR : Thick, dark, and sable hair; frontal crest ( located on the crown part of his head ) is just a tad bit longer than the rest. EYES : Ice cold eyes that seemingly burn holes into whatever they’re affixed to. NOSE : Greek nose, straight as shit. FACE : Oblong broad with a strong af jaw. LIPS : Thin and parched, almost always in the shape and form of a line. COMPLEXION : Pale. No different than he was before, truth be told. BLEMISHES : None. SCARS : He had a shit ton of scars on his legs and arms as a sprout but they’re gone af now. TATTOOS : He doesn’t go for that shit, no. HEIGHT : 193 cm . WEIGHT : 112.4 kg . BUILD : Beetroot. Wide shoulders, large chest, a tad bit of tummy ( just a tad ) with narrow-ish hips and legs. FEATURES : Dedicated, ambitious, Intelligent, ambitious, perceptive, ambitious, reserved, ambitious. ALLERGIES : He had a peanut allergy before but he doesn’t anymore. USUAL HAIR STYLE : Depends. Usually well-kept but the fringe gets in his face if not kept tame by pushing back with gel. USUAL FACE LOOK : Indifferent. There is seldom any trace of varying emotions on his face; he hides them well. No way of knowing whether he wants to kiss you on the lips or bite you on the face, proceed with caution lol. USUAL CLOTHING : Black blazer, white button collared shirt, black slacks, ties ( again, black. ), and metal capped oxford shoes.

PSYCHOLOGY. FEAR/S : Powerlessness, loss of control ( lol ), failure. ASPIRATION/S : To get out of that bank robbin’ ditch, d UH. Wants to get out of being considered second best, tbh. POSITIVE TRAITS : Intelligent, Rational, Idealistic, Patient, Organized, Observant, Profound. NEGATIVE TRAITS : Nitpicker, Greedy, Selfish, Dishonest, Secretive, Manipulative, Vengeful. MBTI : (INTJ) The Architect. ZODIAC : Pisces. TEMPERAMENT : Choleric SOUL TYPE / S : Thinker. ANIMALS : Tiger ( outlined here ) VICE HABIT/S : Cigarettes, binge eating, and finding faults in people. FAITH : Agnostic, raised Roman Catholic. GHOSTS ? : Doesn’t give a shit. AFTERLIFE ? : Nay. REINCARNATION ? : On the fence. ALIENS ? : Doesn’t give a shit. POLITICAL ALIGNMENT : Left. ECONOMIC PREFERENCE : Indifferent. SOCIOPOLITICAL POSITION : Depends. EDUCATION LEVEL : High School graduate, some university.

FAMILY. FATHER : Ray G.cko ( deceased ) MOTHER : ew. SIBLINGS : S.th G.cko ( older brother by one year ) EXTENDED FAMILY : Eddie Cruickshank ( Adoptive uncle; Good friend of Papa G.cko back in the day.) NAME MEANING/S : The Germanic first or given name R.chard derives from German, French, and English “r.c” (ruler, leader, king) and “hard” (strong, brave), and it therefore means “powerful leader” while a g.cko is a lizard from what i’ve read. HISTORICAL CONNECTION ? : To be determined.

FAVOURITES. BOOK : Anything from cultural studies to true crime. He doesn’t really do favorite certains in this department. MOVIE : The Wild Bunch, María Candelaria, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Godfather, Network, Dracula, High Noon, Stagecoach, Salon Mexico, Scarface, The Rico Brothers, etc. 5 SONGS : Famasloop — Choro Dance, Tito & Tarantula — after dark ( spanish version ), Federale — The Blood Flowed like Wine, Blues Saraceno — Criminal, Bauhaus — Dark Entries. DEITY : Hephaestus, Blacksmith of the Gods, Lord of the fire, forge and volcanoes. And even though he’s got the vast tendency to be underestimated by most, he is brilliant and ingenuous being known for his gruff and calculated exterior who, more often times than not, has built his way out of trouble without any guidance of the sort. MONTH : March. SEASON : Autumn. PLACE : Texas for now. WEATHER : Scorching desert hot. SOUND : Guns firing, static on the phone and/or television, tires screeching on the road, hissing in the distance. SCENT/S : Cigarette smoke, gunpowder, new car. TASTE/S : Fresh blood on your tongue, the upshot of smoking one too many cigars, and all american provisions, bruh. FEEL/S : Snake scales, that chill running down your spine as someone’s watching from afar, and a punch in your gut. ANIMAL/S : Lizards, snakes. NUMBER : 2. COLOUR : Black, White, Red.

EXTRA. TALENTS : Picking locks, planning jobs, fixing cars. Referencing shit. Getting on people’s nerves, his brother’s especially and overthinking. BAD AT : Keeping stable relationships with other people. Shit’s been hitting the fan real fucking fast, not even gonna lie lmao. TURN ONS : Women’s legs and feet may or may not be at the top. TURN OFFS : Where do I start, lmao . He’s what I personally like to call the protoype of shallow as fuck. HOBBIES : He likes to draw. Binge watch movies and cartoons, throwin’ knives, fixing stuff. TROPES : Asshole with a heart of gold according to the show ( it’s a load of fucking bull ), Heartbreaking, tear jerking childhood with a boozehound dad and no mom. Smart nerd glasses wearin’ guy does all the work but doesn’t nearly get as much credit as he deserves according to the show squared. AESTHETIC TAGS : Cigarettes, desolate roads, moonless skies, static, the faint sound of the tv going on all throughout the night, ashes and smoke, tumbleweeds, fast food, roadhouses, motels, hard liquor, firearms, vaults, gloves, video tapes, skin magazines, snakes, cactus, broken vinyl records, music cassettes, true crime news headlines and/or articles, money, blood, classic cars, eyes, fangs, eye glasses, hands, beer posters, crime scenes, tire marks on the road, ashes.

FC INFO. MAIN FC/S : Z.ne H.ltz ALT FC/S : B.ll Hader and Quentit Tangerino. OLDER FC/S : None YOUNGER FC/S : L. B.n.t VOICE CLAIM/S : Z.ne H.ltz GENDERBENT FC/S : No.

#RAP SHEET. ❜ ʷʰᵃᵗ ᵃ ᶜʳᵒᶜᵏ. ⎭#long post cw #TOP DOG. ❜ ⁿᵒ ᵐᵒʳᵉ ˢᵒʳʳᵒʷᶠᵘˡ ʲᵒⁿᵉˢ . ⎭#sensoring the fuck out of his name #don't want this shit anywhere near the f.ndom tags you tykes know why #👀👀👀#well #some of you lmao let’s keep that underwraps #stems of season ew #i mean two #II. ❜ ᵒⁿᵉ ᵏⁱⁿᵍ ᵗᵒ ʷᵃᵗᶜʰ ᵗʰᵉ ʰᵒʳˢᵉᵐᵉⁿ ᶠᵃˡˡ. ⎭

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worldfootprints · 6 years ago

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Famed for its artistic traditions in weaving, pottery and painted wooden animal carvings known as alebrijes, the Mexican city of Oaxaca is also brimming with contemporary art. Museums and galleries dot the central area, particularly north of the Zocalo, the central plaza, but Oaxaca also has a thriving street art scene.

On a recent trip, my family and I explored by bicycle the bounty of artwork painted, stenciled, pasted and sprayed onto the city’s walls. We booked a half-day tour with Coyote Aventuras, and our guide Diana Shai led us through the city’s narrow, crowded streets, on a four-hour exploration of the city’s street art. The varied artwork generally fell into three categories: woodcut posters with political images, day of the dead murals, and artists’ large signature pieces.

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Indigenous Political Protest

Oaxaca, which sits in the foothills of the Sierra Madres in Southeastern Mexico, was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and is known for its Colonial architecture and strong indigenous roots. The Zapotec and Mixtec, who lived in the area for thousands of years before the first Spanish arrived in 1521, continue to exert a significant influence culturally.

On a recent warm Monday morning, we met our guide Shai and collected our rented bicycles near the Plaza Santa Domingo, a hub of woodblock and printmaking activity. We stopped first to examine a group of political posters wheat pasted onto a nondescript wall, many signed by The Revolutionary Union of Art Workers (URTARTE), one of the many art collectives in the city that makes eye-catching political art.

Journalists at Risk

The first poster depicted one of Mexico’s first female journalists, Leona Vicario, who fought for independence and was heralded as “mother” of the country. The black and white image is comprised of detailed woodcuts using intricate shading to produce a striking image of an upright woman, holding a puppet meant to represent a priest. Beneath Vicario, a bent-over politician licks the words spilling from her typewriter. Though Vicario died in 1842, she’s addressing a more modern problem in this depiction, as is evidenced by the words “pedophilia,” spiraling out from her typewriter.

Further down the wall was another woodcut poster, similar in style, commemorating a modern journalist, Maria del Sol Cruz Jarquín, an Oaxacan who was killed last June while covering an election campaign. “Mexico is a dangerous place to be a journalist,” explained Shai.

The Committee to Protect Journalists backs up those allegations with facts. “Mexico is the deadliest country for journalists in the Western hemisphere,” according to CPJ research. In 2018, “at least four were murdered in the country in direct retaliation for their work.”

Commemorating Murdered Protestors

The next poster we examined, also on the same wall, was of a young woman holding an enormous heart with the number 43 at the top. Made in a similar style as the others, a detailed black-and-white woodcut, Shai told us the number represents the 2014 disappearance (and presumed death) of 43 students in the southern state of Guerrero who were headed to a demonstration commemorating a 1968 massacre of protestors. An official investigation claimed the local police gave the students to a drug cartel, who in turn, killed them. Most people do not believe this explanation and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who assumed office in 2018, has ordered a new investigation.

Heart 43 Students photo taken by Eliza Amon.

Another striking poster, dense with symbolism of corruption by politicians and the church, caught my eye. “Without corn, there is no country,” was the translation of one phrase embedded in the intertwined skulls and devils. Shai told us the poster is addressing the passage of NAFTA, which harmed corn production in Mexico. Farmers could not compete with U.S. prices and many local, small farms went out of business as Mexico began importing substantial amounts of corn from the U.S. At the center of the poster was a rat, symbolizing the (former) president and a dinosaur, indicating the “old” regime.

“Graphic arts are a weapon to tell people about the real version of the news,” Shai said. And indeed, with her help, we learned a tremendous amount about the politics and violence of the area and the local resistance to corruption organized by artists.

Day of the Dead

After Shai’s detailed explanations about the symbolism and the meaning of the posters around Plaza Santa Domingo, we bicycled five minutes Northeast to the Barrio de Jalatlaco, a quiet, historic neighborhood, to look at a different type of street art. Shai told us the neighborhood had strong traditions around Day of the Dead, which was evident from the many murals painted on businesses and houses.

Day of the Dead, or Día de los Muertos, is a Mexican holiday honoring memories of the departed, who are believed to awake and celebrate with the living on November first and second.

The Temple de San Matias Jalatlaco, a 17th-century church, anchors the neighborhood and the plaza serves as a gathering spot for the festivities. Across the cobblestone street is one of the most striking murals in the neighborhood, spread across two walls of the corner building. Skeletons are drinking, chatting with each other, and one athletically inclined skeleton does a split near the roof.

Around the neighborhood, other houses hosted ‘Calavera’ murals joyfully depicting skeletons engaged in all kinds of activities— listening to an MP3 player, climbing a tree, and pulling carts to name a few. Some referenced the household altars people create every year on Day of the Dead for their deceased family members, which usually include flowers and food.

One of my favorites depicted several women skeletons with long black braids, cheerfully drinking with their arms slung around each other. Shai told us that it commemorated a special parade for women that takes place nearby during Day of the Dead.

Womens Parade photo taken by Eliza Amon.

Other Murals

With Shai in the lead, we quickly found our way to a mural commemorating María Sabina, a traditional healer, who used psychedelic mushrooms in her ceremonies. Sabina originally opened her ceremonies to Westerners, including allegedly celebrities like the Beatles and Bob Dylan, but the involvement of Westerners ultimately corrupted the traditional ceremonies.

Sabina, painted with a black dog above her head, believed plants had personalities and expressed emotions, Shai explained as she pointed to the plants depicted to her left that are meant to express seriousness, anger, and creativity in the heads that top their abstract bodies.

Tucked in an alleyway nearby we discovered another large mural, notable for the image of a spaceman floating above the desert as he pulls his heart from a square hole in his spacesuit. A statement about technology and nature, the graffiti-style mural speaks loudly with brilliant colors and larger than life, juxtaposing imagery.

When we asked Shai about the greater meaning or symbolism for the spaceman, she shrugged. Artists paint what inspires them and that can range from specific political messages to broader themes or commemorations that are more personal to them. With Shai’s help, we were able to decode and contextualize Oaxaca’s street art, which enriched our understanding of the city and the experiences of its people.

Spaceman photo taken by Eliza Amon

Rats and Astronauts: Street Art in Oaxaca Famed for its artistic traditions in weaving, pottery and painted wooden animal carvings known as alebrijes, the Mexican city of Oaxaca is also brimming with contemporary art.

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biofunmy · 6 years ago

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