Monday 26 July 2010

Museum of Popular Culture, Coyoacán

Schematic map of Mexico showing the typical regional styles of dress, from early-mid Twentieth Century.

Boy, did I get my packing wrong for this trip.  I thought it would be hot, with a couple of hours' rain most afternoons.  Apparently this is how the weather used to be, but climate change is here and we have had quite a bit of drizzle most days, occasional thunderstorms mostly in the afternoon and evening, and today we have had at least 5 hours of continuous quite heavy rain. It isn't exactly cold - but certainly not T-shirt and short skirt weather either.  For my various outings today, I wore the only long pants I brought, which are the ones I would normally wear with a smart top to go out in the evening - but I have no smart tops with me, and in fact packed only one long-sleeved top for the Mexico stay. So I called that into service and put my shower-proof jacket, which I fortunately dug out of retirement and threw in the suitcase as a last minute afterthought, on top.  Later on I bought a scarf at the Coyoacan Artesanias market to keep my neck warm!  

I decided to head to the Museum of Popular Cultures close to home,  in the centre of Coyoacan, late this morning, as Herzonia was not available for a walk and Barry was not up for a major outing.  It has been renovated since we were here last and in its newly opened spaces had a special exhibition of images and symbols relating to Mexican identity, in the context of the bicentenary of Mexican Independence and the centenary of the Mexican Revolution, both being celebrated this year.  Creating a nation from all the different regions shown in the map above, with their different Indigenous populations, religions and traditions, required quite a bit of national myth-making. The exhibition looks at many different aspects of this process, from male and female stereotypes through food, music, costume, national heroes, etc.  

As well as the exhibition, there was a series of events which seem to constitute a kind of folk fair, featuring handicrafts, food, lectures, traditional music, songs and dance called .La Guelaguetza - Viva Oaxaca  (here is where I tell you that Oaxaca, the state with a very large indigenous population, many wonderful handicrafts and many different musical traditions, is pronounced "wa-ha-ka").  Entry to the guelaguetza  is free as opposed to the roughly $1 charge for entry to the museum proper.

Clay Musicians on display at the Museum of Popular Culture.

There is a new mural on the outside wall between the two exhibition halls, evocative of Mexico's strong mural tradition but executed by some of today's Mexican graffiti artists. A film shows various stages in the preparation and construction of the mural, with people working with spray cans on large moveable scaffolds - a bit different to the scenes from the movie "Frida" showing Diego Rivera at work  (do get this Salma Hayek movie out on DVD if you haven't already seen it - it's really good!).  Oddly enough, given that this reference just popped into my mind, on Sunday we were at the Institute where those murals were painted and where Frida Kahlo met Diego.  Barry mentioned this to me and I figured I'd better put in something about that.  More of Sunday's exhibition probably on my next post (or at the end of this one) 

If you go to the link below you'll see the photos I took at the exhibition, please ignore  the first shot which I don't seem to be able to remove.  Later in the day I returned to the Museum with Barry to see a concert of music and dance from Oaxaca as part of the guelaguetza, and this shot shows a local poet acknowledging the singer Diana Velasco, who was actually pretty good and sang between each of the dance sets.  (as usual, if clicking doesn't work, copy the link and paste into the address line of your browser.  Also note you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.)


I tried videoing a range of the items on display but quite apart from the fact that Picasa won't load them from my memory card, they are hopeless and not worth looking at in any case.  Videoing an activity seems to work a lot better than trying to pan across a lot of still images, I have discovered.

I found many of the images from the mid Twentieth Century were extremely evocative - and I only started developing a conscious interest in Mexico in the '70's after I met Barry, so they must have seeped into my consciousness long ago.  There was a large section dedicated to the stereotypical masculine charro and ultra-feminine china poblana.  Loosely translating from the information at the museum, the china poblana was a  traditional fokloric feminine representation that gained prominence in the first decades of the 20th Century , immediately after the Mexican Revolution.  Beautiful mestizas, coquettishly dressed in petticoats and embroidered regional outfits, with accentuated feminine traits, riding side-saddle,   provided a counterbalance to the exaggerated masculinity of the virile charros.  With the growing urbanisation of the Twentieth Century, these stereotypes remain as folkloric icons rather than any kind of reality.  

The shot of the set of display photos of little kids dressed  up in these styles also evokes what one sees a lot of on the streets around here - the little ones don't seem to mind getting dressed up even for an ordinary Sunday outing.  These days one sees more kids dressed up in superhero  or furry animal costumes than traditional folkloric garb, though there are still a few - apart from the children of some of the Indigenous vendors or beggars , who wear their style of dress totally un-self-consciously (and look comfortable and grubby and unkempt, with their hair uncombed, unlike the dressed-up little ones.)


In this video I took of some of the dancing at the Oaxacan concert this afternoon here is one style of - there were many costume changes and many different dances to enjoy, but given my upload problems you'll have to live without them.  I need to do some research on compressing videos and finding a site to upload them to, as it takes an age to get them up on the blog directly, and my attempts often fail.

If you are particularly keen to see some more, email me and I will send you the odd video directly.






The stage and seating for the concert was mostly covered by a series of large canopies, extremely fortunate for performers and audience alike as it poured the whole afternoon.The booming rain on the canopies also has affected the sound track. At one stage when we may have all been feeling a bit chilly, one of the organisers appeared with a couple of bottles of Mezcal, which is produced by artesanal methods in Oaxaca, and poured tiny plastic cup  tasters of it for whoever he noticed in the audience.  It certainly is warming - a flavour like tequila but much more smoky.  After one sip I passed mine on to Barry. The amount of clapping in rhythm and singing along increased noticeably!

Needless to say, there is a bookshop at the Museum and Barry ended the day there, picking up two heavy bags of books.  We thought about dinner then, so I left him in the queue to buy a rotisseried chook at a place a few doors away and took one bag and one umbrella home with me and had prepared some veggies for a bit of balance by the time he got back.

Monday 19 July 2010

Back in Mexico - Central de Abastos, July 17, 2010







 A few of the bewilderingly many types of chilli on sale at the Central de Abastos

I don't know that my life in Melbourne is any more boring than my life on the road, but somehow when I am home I never get around to blogging about my adventures at Queen Victoria Market, lunches with good friends, new babies in the family and my circle of friends, the classes I take, the operas, concerts, plays or movies we see, or picnics down by the Yarra. However, once we arrive on the other side of the world I am immediately struck by its exoticism and a strong desire to share its difference from home with everyone I know, so here I go again, chronicling my adventures here in Mexico.

We chose to stop over in Berkeley after our Melbourne-San Francisco flight to get a better- priced non-stop connecting flight on to Mexico than any available on the day we arrived. It also enabled us to drop off two large suitcases at the house we will be renting from mid-August until Xmas to have less to schlep to Mexico, and to do some paperwork on campus, which will expedite the procedures when we arrive for our extended stay just before Barry's semester begins. Sonya and Philip had generously invited us to stay over at their lovely house in the Berkeley Hills, complete with a glorious view across the Bay to the Golden Gate bridge, clear on the afternoon we arrived but deeply shrouded in fog the next morning when we left for the airport again.

As soon as we arrived in Mexico on Thursday night we felt right at home in the apartment, which feels like our home in Mexico. We popped out to the local Superama (part of Walmart's Mexico chain) to get in a few breakfast things  and grabbed a late dinner at VIPS, a Mexican family restaurant chain which also seems to be associated with Walmart and is often co-located. (Barry tells me that they used to send people around the tables asking if you needed anything from the supermarket while you were dining there, quite a good service especially for people who don't like to grocery shop!) They have introduced a "light" menu - they list calorie counts and grams of fat for these items, but not the saturated fat content that I need to compute points using the Australian Weight Watchers system (I went back to meetings and counting points as I had put on a few kilos and had climbed above my goal weight, so decided to stop the rot before it got worse. After a few weeks on the programme in Melbourne, I am just about back to goal weight but aim to get off at least another 3 kg, where I have mostly been for the past several years, to get really comfortable in my jeans.) Somewhat to my surprise, the dish I ordered, fajitas, was really nice, very un-oily, with the small sides also being low fat, so I estimate it was an acceptable amount to eat within my points allowance.

Bulk lollies on sale at the Central de Abastos: fortunately coloured sugar is not a serious temptation for me

On Friday we had breakfast with a US colleague of Barry's at a café overlooking the Plaza Centenario in Coyoacan, and later Barry bought some new shoes as the one pair he is travelling with need new soles. Buying shoes here is quite hard as the sizing doesn't cater well for wide feet (nor for large sizes for women: many styles I have looked for over the years stop about 2 sizes smaller than my feet). As Herzonia pointed out, looking at Diego Rivera murals you can see that many indigenous people have feet like tamales, short and fat, so it seems odd that they only make shoes for narrow feet. But it is nice that we saw many shoes made in Mexico, including this purchase - when did anyone last see a pair of shoes actually made in Australia?

Then Herzonia took me to the Mega Supermarket (a Mexican-owned chain) in the car to do a major grocery and fresh food shop, and also helped me get local phone chips to use while we're here - the prepaid deal supposedly available for my iPhone is not good value for only one month, so I am using it on WiFi only and am again carrying my old phone with the Mexican chip. I hope to get a better deal in the US so I can revert to having just one device to carry with me.


 One of hundreds of stalls selling fish and seafood at the Central de Abastos

Today is Saturday and in the early afternoon Herzonia and her cousin Vicky had planned a trip to the Central de Abastos, the big Wholesale and Retail Market, so I was able to join them. We covered only the fish market and the section dealing with things like nuts, seeds, spices and lollies. I used the iPhone to take lots of photos and videos , I think they're of lesser quality than my camera delivers, but the main problem is I have no idea how to shoot a coherent video! But the ones I am posting do give a great sense of the colour and movement. I bought some fillets of huachinango (red snapper) and will report next time on how they taste - but the prices are less than half typical supermarket prices and there's no doubting the freshness.

I seem to have posted the wrong video below, but it took so long that I am loath to delete it!

First impressions of the fish market : sorry about the poor quality and bad technique!


Vicky bought some mojarra - the guy scaled them before I thought to video him, but I caught the rest of the fish preparation and some of the banter that goes on in markets everywhere: let's hope this is the right video!


I seem to have got a bit confused between Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery and where I actually loaded the iPhone images and videos and whether I have uploaded them to the web, but I am excited about this post so am going to publish without a link to the very questionable quality videos, wherever I may have posted them. I promise to try and get myself better organised by the next post!

Sunday 18 July 2010

Local Colour in Coyoacán, July 2010


This morning, Sunday, I walked to the local meeting of Weight Watchers, where I was delighted to find I could follow everything the leader said and most of what the members shared. There were a couple of people who spoke too indistinctly for me to follow, but overall it was really a good meeting, though as the systems used here and in Australia differ quite a bit, I can't get much guidance on computing Aussie Points from Mexican food labels. Never mind, my estimation is OK for the most part.

As I exited the meeting, I saw the woman with her hammock cart which resembles a fully rigged sailing ship - I saw it from the car yesterday so was delighted to find it on the street where I could catch a couple of photos. The meeting place is right across the road from the Viveros (the nursery which grows all the trees for the public parks in the City). So after the meeting I walked a couple of times around - it boasts a 2 km tan track, very busy on Sundays, with families, joggers, walkers and watchers. In the open areas groups of people of all ages were practising various martial arts and bullfighting.

I walked home via El Jarocho, my favourite coffee place here, where a skinny cappuccino costs about $1US. I took the rest of the photos I am linking you to within 2 blocks of the coffee shop - the food stands demonstrate why Weight Watchers is so needed, as do the many shots taken in the local panadería , and the artesanías on the street, while perhaps not as high quality as those in some of the better markets and shops, are really tempting. All this is within a few blocks of where we are living, the same apartment we have rented several times in the past for up to 6 months at a time. Now I see them on the web, I realise the iPhone photo quality is not as good as my camera takes, but they do give a sense of the local colour. I hope you enjoy them: here is the link to go to or to paste into your browser. By the way, the odd-looking bald dog at the end is a native Mexican variety that you may have seen in Frida Kahlo's paintings- I think it is called an escuintle, I will check with Wikipedia before posting.

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/bjoymarsh/20100718LocalColourInCoyoacan#