Back on the Gringo Trail. In a large way. We're in Puerto Escondido right now. It's a town of about 50k on the southern Oaxacan coast. We were in Puerto Angel last night and Oaxaca city for three nights before that. Puerto Escondido has been for some time taken over by backpackers, beach bums, surfers, and (is there such a thing?) surfer groupies. Lots of shops selling T-shirts, shorts, bathing suits, sarongs, etc. You get the picture.

A little about the trip from Veracruz now. The road goes inland (west) from Veracruz on a rather flat and very hot coastal plain that may have once been dominated by marshes. Then you start to climb and climb and climb through the clouds and the funny thing is when you get to the top, you don't go back down. You stay on the plateau from which you reach Puebla and Mexico and it cant be more than one km before the terrain changes abruptly from mountain humid subtropical rain forest to arid and semiarid desert. The region is also dotted with volcanoes, some of which have snow-covered peaks.

It stays pretty much desert through the mountains going into the city of Oaxaca. Nothing for miles around except the road and the occasional car or bus (with maniacal bus driver of course). Anyway, just before getting into the city as we descended into the valley and arrived at the last tollbooth, there were suddenly people everywhere. Cars lined the road and people camped out on the sides looking like they were waiting for something to happen. When we got to the tollbooth there was nobody there and we didn't pay. It turns out that there is a large strike headed by public school teachers and other groups. They had taken over the tollbooth and were letting people pass for free!

When we got to town we caught glimpses of other protesters while looking for a hotel. After checking in our curiosity took over and we tuned in to watch the news. There were no less than four reports, easily taking up the majority of the news program, about the strike. Curiously, after watching four reports on it, we had no idea what it was all about. The so-called journalists not once interviewed anyone from the protest nor listed their demands. Typical. It was a clear effort to turn the population against the protest and from the way most folks around us were talking, it seemed to be working. We eventually made our way to the different locations where they were camped out and found out what was going on. The government has gone back on promises made last year for public education. The larger issue is that they're trying to privatize public services starting with education, as well as the electric and oil company. None of the merchants we spoke to seemed to know or care about any of this.

I have to say we were impressed by the determination of the protesters to block the city center by camping out there for what could be weeks. I haven't seen that kind of public activism in the US for core issues that governments try to slide through quietly (read: Patriot Act, Patriot Act II, etc.). One of their activities that made the news was that they tore down all the political propaganda on the main street into town and burned in a large bonfire. I think the government is starting to get a bit uneasy. We spotted a few military trucks outside the main protest site at the city center and just hoped nobody did anything stupid.

All went well and it looks like public activism, the core of any democratic society, is alive and well in Mexico. What's more in question is the effectiveness. The main political parties, in reaction to the organized movements, have formed an alliance to thwart any real political opposition at the polls. A move that has rendered the upcoming elections for state government null and has served to radicalize the protests. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Anyway, while all this is going on, the town is full of oblivious foreign tourist scouring the city for that one piece of gold or silver jewelry, that special shawl, or pottery, or whatever artisan piece that is going to "tie together" their living room or study with exotic decorations from afar and will regale their guests with quaint anecdotes of how and where they were acquired.

What's funny about Oaxaca is that all this overshadows another very good reason for the city to be known. Benito Juarez, who led the reform wars and finally triumphed in installing liberal reforms in the mid 1800's that, among other things, redistributed land and made public education free and compulsory, grew up as a young man and rose to prominence here, eventually becoming governor of the state and Mexico's first (only?) full blooded indigenous president. I'll have to write more on the indigenous-hispanic dynamics that pervade Mexican and Latin American society in a later post. Anyway, Juarez's is a remarkable story and the only thing to commemorate it here is the house where he lived and worked as a young man has been converted into a small (very small) museum. Juarez' famous maxim is worth writing here even if poorly translated: "The respect for the rights of the other is Peace." You see this at monuments to Juarez all over Mexico and hear it in the contemporary political discourse that some of the citizens of this and other cities choose to engage in.

After Oaxaca we drove south toward the coast to Puerto Angel. The 250 km drive takes five (5) hours!!!. You climb out of the valley through cactus and keep climbing through pine, and clouds and when you come out of the clouds on the other side it's through mangoes, palms, bananas, and lots and lots of humidity. It seems the rains have been late in arriving and the entire coastal area is dry and very very hot. We finally managed to sleep sometime after midnight and a couple of showers.

We'll probably go back to Puerto Angel tonight and continue on to Chiapas tomorrow. For now, we have the obligation of sampling for the first time in our lives the waters of the ocean a certain Balboa had the gall to claim to have "discovered". My comparison and contrast of the Pacific versus Atlantic will be forthcoming.