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The Last Election, 2008, 12″ x 12″ – collage & foto by smith

went out this morning to find our street blocked by an empty bus. walked block to main thoroughfare, found it and its side streets all blocked by dozens of abandoned buses and big trucks. walked in middle of empty main street block south to 3 avenue intersection and flashed on Twilight Zone – the highways all 3 directions were empty, blocked by empty buses and trucks. in the middle were a crowd of people yelling and chanting slogans.

came back, told lady, went out 30 minutes later to see, and men were manually rolling the buses from their blockage. traffic was starting back up. the crowd was gone. looks like folk hereabouts have a lot of experience in disrupting the official flow of things, as well as a lot of practice getting things going again. the blockage was very well done, well thought out, efficient. god knows where they got all the buses, or what they were protesting.

couple weeks ago college kids hijacked some city buses and took them to the university – they were protesting a peso rate hike (10 cents to us, a dollar to them). there was a several hour shoot-out between the protesters and the police.

we’ve seen at least 6 protest marches in 7 weeks – just by chance, we haven’t gone looking. massive political graffiti everywhere – big, little, high, low, endemic, ubiquitous.

it’s refreshing to be where people are trying to take back their lives from government gone wrong. it’s hard to say one politician is more crooked than another because that implies some are more honest than others and i have trouble using politician and honest in the same paragraph, much less the same sentence. but politicians here in mexico seem more openly brazen about misuse of power, more thuggish. maybe because they’ve been at it longer – thousands of years. a lot of dissenters here are “disappeared.” they say that because since they’re never seen again, we really don’t know they’re dead. they also say the revolution was never won here, is still going on.

we met with a lawyer today and started our application to live here. this is the nicest place we’ve been. it’s warm in the sun. cool in the shade. the trees come in endless variety, many with blooming flowers. people are nice. buildings colorful. the underclass angry, rebellious. and it’s really cool to look north, east, west and see mountains as we walk the city streets. we’re a mile high, yet look up to mountains almost all around. . . the Sierra Madres – the Mother of mountains.

while lady was sick abed, i did a collage with fragments of graffiti and adverts torn from the city walls – The Last Election (foto above). made my own piece of Centro Oaxaca wall. also added stuff to my 1st collage (foto below).

Disease Warning of the Week: TV is the new TB – it eats your mind instead of lungs.

And remember, politicians taste just like chicken – because they are. try one.


Caution – Derechos Humanos, 2008, 23″ x 27″ – collage & foto by smith

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