After the last update, Michael, Cassidy and I went to San Juan Juqila, a small pueblo of about 500 indigenous people in the Cierra Norte, a five hour bus ride from Oaxaca city. The bus is a CIPO project, and so we got to ride for free. We arrived late at night at the home of a family which was relatively well off, owning the only restaurant in the pueblo.

The houses are all built of sun-baked adobe bricks, which rub dirt off on your clothes. There is always a layer of dust everywhere, which turns to mud in the almost daily rains. The pueblo is on the side of a steep valley, with a view of other pueblos across the chasm. All is green and lush. The clouds fill up the valley like a sci-fi monster, growing visibly as you watch, until all is white, cold, and wet. (Click on the title to read more.)

We arrived on a Friday evening, and were told that there was nothing for us to do until Monday. We visited the church, and wandered around the steep paths connecting homes and small shops. We talked with Iziquiela, the mother, and her children, Marco Antonio, Julio Cesar, and Sara. Marco and Julio were outgoing and quick witted, while Sarah was shy, and the other brother was so reclusive that I can´t remember his name. The children took turns caring for the baby, Jonatan.

On Monday, I was due to go to the next pueblo over, San Juan Reforma, to teach the children how to use the computer. I woke up early in the morning with bad diarhea, but took an immodium so that by the time Mauro came to take me to Reforma, I was well blocked up. I was invited to 'almuerzo', which usually means lunch, at 8am. I had trouble eating the piece of chicken in chile sauce with tortillas that was offered, but I knew that to refuse would be a great offense. Chicken is rare, and considered a special gift, so I did my best to clean off the bone. I went back to the small house where the computers were kept to wait for Mauro who was looking for the keys. Mauro came and took me to a nearby house where I would be staying. It was not completed, consisting of bare concrete, with two double beds inside. It looked uninhabited. I waited there the entire day, but Mauro never returned. Feeling uncomfortable sleeping alone in the house, I made the walk back to Juqila alone in the dark, using my new headtorch. Two eyes shone out of the bushes at me, but sank away when I shined the light in them.

I returned the next day to check on the progress of the key. Mauro said that we would have to call a meeting with the people who wanted to learn, to see what time they could meet. That night we would make an announcement over the loud speaker to call a meeting. I returned to Juquila and Michael and I went with Marco and Julio to their land to clear weeds. The weeds looked like giant ginger roots, clinging to the side of a steep slope. It was difficult to get a foothold, and I often fell backwards when a root would finally give way. We took a break for lunch at about 3pm. After lunch, Marco and Julio started a war of throwing pinecones at each other. We joined in, and much hilarity ensued.

In the evening we returned to Reforma. Mauro, Cassidy and I went to the house of another CIPO member, Procoro, and the four of us went together to the office where the loudspeaker was kept. A youngish looking man was sitting behind a desk. Procoro proceeded in very deferential language, asking politely if he could announce the classes. It was decided that people would be asked to sign up on a list for the time when they could attend.

When Cassidy and I got back to Juquila, we were told that there was going to be a fifth megamarcha in Oaxaca, and Felipe, Marco, and Michael were going to catch the bus in the morning. Cassidy and I decided to stay, having planned to start teaching classes on Thursday, and doubting that we could make it back in time. Iziquiela kept saying that if no one signed up to the list, that we might as well go back to Oaxaca. I got the impression that she was getting tired of feeding us all.

Wednesday, Cassidy and I went with another family to their land to help cut and carry firewood up the slope. We brought her sheep to graze near the road while we went down the slope. They carry heavy loads by wrapping a piece of rope around them, and putting the wide strap in the middle on their forehead, essentially carrying the weight on their necks. I tried this a couple of times, before I realised that my neck was not strong enough, and that I was going to do serious damage to it if I persisted. I realised that I could put the strap on the back of my neck, and ropes around my shoulders to carry it like a backpack instead. It was still heavy, and difficult getting it up the steep slope.

We noticed stacks of timber that looked like it had been cut with a table saw. Hearing sawing sounds, we were curious how they managed to get a table saw down the slope. We walked over to see that they had rigged up a chain saw with a frame attached to the middle of the blade, keeping the width uniform.

At the end of the day, we untied the sheep and headed back home. The sheep kept stopping to graze by the side of the road. The Senora showed us that we only had to hit the two females lightly on the rear with a small stick to get them moving again. I was doing well, and was a few dozen meters down the road from the rest, when I heard a thundering of hooves behind me. Before I could turn around to see what was happening, the male rammed me hard in the tailbone. I screamed in fright, while the others had a good chuckle at my expense. He had not hit my well padded rear, but had hit the bit of bone that curls under at the end of the spine. It hurt so much that I was struggling to keep the tears back. The sheep had a leash of at least 4 meters on him, so I wondered why no one had stopped him, or warned me what was about to happen.

Cassidy and I returned to Reforma to check on the list of students. Not a one had signed up, and the keeper of the loudspeaker seemed to be gloating. 'Ya saben', he kept saying... 'they already know'... they didn't need a couple of gringas telling them how to use the computers. We started to head back to Juquila when we were stopped by a woman in the road. She invited us into her house for a chat. The walls were shiny black with soot from cooking on wood. She said that her husband had wanted to learn how to use the computers, but he didn't know that he had to sign up on a list. I got the impression that we were being sent a clear signal that there was a factional dispute in Reforma, and we would have to sort that out before we could get anywhere. I was feeling well defeated by the alpha males of the Cierra Norte, and not prepared to do battle.

I was grumpy as hell when we got back to the house in Juquila and had a bit of a tantrum at Cassidy when she left a mess of peach juice on the floor of the bedroom. 'You can go back to Oaxaca if you like, you don't have to wait for me', she said in response to my request that she clean up her mess. I decided that was exactly what I would do. I was starting to get visions of clean sheets, hot water, and real food in my head, and it seemed like buried treasure was within my reach.

I waited one more day, to see if Michael was going to return, but he had missed the bus. Dinner that night consisted of 'calite', or the leaves from the chayote plant boiled in some salt water with lime and chile, and eaten with tortillas... as always. It was their 'meat', she said, because it had so many vitamins. I left the next morning, determined to get back home as soon as possible. Michael was still at the CIPO house in Oaxaca when I arrived. We talked about what had happened, and he tried to convince me to go back with him. Not a chance, I said. As soon as he left, I went to the internet cafe and booked a flight from Mexico City for the next evening, July 8th.

I went to the Planton for what I thought was the last time. I bought some scarves as gifts, and watched the movies CIPO was showing on a white sheet. We were meant to return the sound system so that it would not be destroyed or confiscated by the police if they raided again. After the movies, Mojo started playing CD's and announcing them as though it was a radio station, 'rrrradio getza'. This went on until 2 in the morning. Tatanka was worried about the stuff, but said that it was more important to defend and support the autonomous space. You never see anything like this in the US. So we waited and listened to the music of rebelion until the wee hours. Small gangs of young men with metal pipes and machetes patrolled the tents. One struck his machete on the ground and it gave off a brief shower of sparks. Many of the teachers had gone back to their communities to keep a promise they had made to their families and their students, so the Planton seemed bare compared to how it had been before I had left.

When we got back to the CIPO house, Lila had called from San Juan Cotzocom. She wanted me to come join them there to help them negotiate with a collective of women weavers who wanted us to sell their clothes in the US. Having eaten proper food, and feeling much stronger, I decided to see if I could cancel the flight. In the morning, I checked the email, and found that I could cancel with only a $7 fee. The bus for Cotzocom left in an hour I was told, so I hurried to pack my bag, call my mom to say I had cancelled my plans, and head out.

The bus took 8 hours over windy, bumpy roads with precipitous drops on one side, and cliffs with evidence of rockslides on the other. I managed to sleep on a large bag of hard bread that was stacked in the back. I arrived shaken and carsick on the outskirts of the pueblo. This one was larger, with about 2000 people. Varo got on the bus, having been working cleaning weeds in the field. He gave me a big hug which felt comforting and welcoming after an abusive journey. We got off the bus and ate tamales at a nearby house. They had driven the CIPO truck up so that they could give driving lessons. Varo brought the truck and took us to the house where we stayed for the next week.

This house had no gas stove, only bricks on which metal bars held pots over burning wood. They had two toilets, one composting, and the other just a hole in the ground. The composting toilet had a concrete seat which divided in two parts, presumably to separate urine from feces, but this was far from automatic. Water for washing was a series of buckets which were filled from a hose every morning. Chickens, turkeys, and dogs wandered around the small compound of four buildings on the top of a hill. There were some strange looking birds which Varo said were 'popavos', or a mix of chickens 'pollos', and turkeys 'pavos'.

We met with the collective of women, many of whom did not speak spanish, and the others were ashamed to speak it, prefering Mixe, the indigenous language of the region. Much of our meetings were spent waiting until someone decided to tell us what they were talking about. They are anxious to find new markets for their clothes, because they are too shy to sell it themselves in Oaxaca, and so they are forced to sell to 'coyotes' for whatever price they offer. We gave a short class on selling to tourists, giving them phrases in spanish they could use to explain why their prices were more than the machine made clothes. Only two of the twenty women were game enough to try a simulation.

That afternoon, a young man turned up in the meeting and began to speak on behalf of all the women. He was not afraid to speak spanish, and immediately offered his services as mediator for all matters, including money. We were suspicious, and said that we were unsure of the role he played and if he was trusted by all the women. After the meeting we spoke privately with some of the women. Some trusted him, some did not. He had been involved with the collective before, and had been in collusion with a man who had been stealing from them. He had not stolen, he said, but nor had he told the women that they were being robbed.

The next day we were going to show them how to use the sewing machine, and how to make a pattern from other clothes. They were practicing on the treadle machine when an announcement came over the loudspeaker. The CIPO truck had gone over the edge of the road into the canyon, and had turned over. Lila was frantic. We set out immediately to find a ride. We walked into the town center where some men were sitting idly, and laughed at us as we hurried down the street. We found a truck that was heading out. On the way out, all of the roads had the same steep edge, and Lila was preparing for the worst. When we arrived, the truck was on a shoulder, nearly perpendicular to the road, but the slope ended only a couple of meters down before evening out into a small field of dead tree trunks. All were unharmed. They had tried to pull the truck out backwards, but it had just dug a hole in the mud, so the plan was to turn the wheel downwards and cut the barbed wire that was holding it up. It worked, and after clearing the tree trunks, the truck was driven out of the field. We learned later that Sylvano, the same young man that had comandeered the meeting the day before, had been the driver. We were told that he had an illness that made him dizzy at times, and that even without that, he was overly confident and egotistical, like all young men. Lila and I had enough information to loathe him thoroughly.

The next days were spent idly. We tried to give reading lessons, but found that pride was a major obstacle, and the women did not really want to learn. So we tried to help them with the weaving. Varo had a go at the loom, which consists of various shapes of sticks which are swapped to trade two sets of strings, inserting the weaving thread between them. I found that the only thing I could do to be genuinely helpful was winding balls of thread.

On the day before our departure, the women bought four chickens from a passing truck. They were slaughtered before our eyes by slicing through the neck with a kitchen knife. The struggling body was held down for a good few minutes before being put in a bucket to bleed. The bodies were dunked in boiling water to loosen the feathers, and then plucked, gutted, and carved. The live chickens in the yard would peck at the bodies at all of these stages, including when they were still kicking. They seemed to have no recognition that this thing was one of their own. They even ate feathers. The dogs were amazingly restrained, only eating what was left on the ground for them.

We decided that we would buy a box of clothes that CIPO had bought earlier, and only paid half the going price. We would pay half to the collective, and buy the half that CIPO had paid, and take the clothes to Tucson to see if they would sell. The women wanted more of a guarantee. They wanted a promise that we could give them a regular income so that their husbands wouldn't have to work so hard, and they could buy things like a sewing machine and a truck to take the clothes to Oaxaca. They said that the most they could give us was 15 pieces of clothing every two months. Even at a premium this would mean only $3000 pesos split between the 20 women. We said we would just have to see how we go.

We arrived back at the CIPO house late, with two women from the cooperative. We went down to the Planton for a while and watched some new movies, one about globalization struggles around the planet, and one about the struggle in San Salvador Atenco. We got back to the house late again, and got to sleep around 1:30 am. At 3:15 or so, we were woken by a Canadian visitor. The police were expected to raid the house at any moment, and we had to evacuate. We loaded up the truck with files and folders, and all our belongings and fled to a nearby house of a member.

That was last night. So far, no police have showed up, but we are going to sleep at the other house just in case. Today a meeting is supposed to start with representatives from all the different communities.