Wow, its amazing how the list of blogs on Indyblogs has ballooned in the last few months, I think as a result of the Indyconference in February. When the story about the conference appeared on the global site, about a month later, with links to indyblogs and my blog and other bloggers that were there, a bunch more imcistas were like, hey, i have a blog too!
Anyway, that was an aside before even starting. Uh... anyway, pues si... oh yeah, i was going to talk about my plans. I think maybe ive been reading too much stuff by Subcommandante Marcos, his style of tangents and postscripts and riddles is perhaps rubbing off...
So, I feel a lot better today. Its quite amazing. The cough is still with me, of course, like an old friend. But the other stuff is mostly disappeared. So, I'm going ahead with my original plan and going off to the village of Oventic tommorrow morning.
Oventic is one of the seats of the Juntos de Buen Gobierno, 5 places of governance which the Zapatistas set up in 2003. It was also the 2nd Aguacaliente, a gathering place where they invited people from the rest of mexico and the world for a conference, i think in 1995 or 1996. I'm still a little hazy on exactly what happened when in the 20 year history of the Zapatistas (yes, 21. they started organizing in secret in 1984, 10 years before they hit the spotlight on january 1, 1994). But I've now, just this week, seen 3 documentaries and am reading a new book called Ya Basta! which is the collected communiques of Marcos, I think everything he wrote for the public since 1994 that was not fiction (he also wrote some collections of stories, and also some children's books). He's an amazing writer, with a really playful but intellectual style.
Anyway, pues si, I am going to Oventic and the conditions will be rustic, as they say, so i may not be online again for a week. My original plan was to be there 2 weeks. But I have heard even more than I heard before that the school there is good for learning about the Zapatistas but not the greatest for spanish. So I might come back after a week and go to a school here in San Cristobal. Or I might stay in Oventic. And even if so, I will probably come into town on the weekend anyway. its only 40 minutes away, i hear.
I'll be sleeping in a hammock and i hear its really great and muy tranquilo. Jacob from SD indymedia wrote about it in his blog, he was there about a month ago. (livejournal doesnt seem to have permalinks to individual blog entries, stupidly enough, so i cant link you straight to the oventic entries he wrote. just scroll down till you find them, if youre interested. he wrote a lot.)
oh, other news: I met Paco from Chiapas Media Project and showed him and a few people from Chiapas Indymedia the rough cut of my Juarez documentary. They had lots of really great comments and advice about it. The mexicans brought up some stuff that was totally right on, that I hadnt thought of before and was embarrassed about, but I had never thought what a Mexican audience would think of it. I was always thinking of the audience as being all gringos. and still i think the majority will be. but it would be nice if the film didnt totally offend and alienate mexicans, no? claro.
Yesterday I went over to the office of Chiapas Indymedia to let Paco make a copy of my Bolivia DVD. He said it would be very interesting to the indigenous people here that he works with. I'm glad I could bring it here to yet another interested audience. Then we went over to Timo's house (Timo is part of Chiapas Indymedia) to watch the first cut of a video that he and Nancy are workign on about International Financial Institutions like the World Bank and IMF. Its going to be good. They have a lot of work still to do but its a good project.
So, yeah, just so ya know, i'm fine, and not seeing a blog entry for a week doesnt mean ive died of dysentary (neccesarily), it just means i'm out in the campo. (country) Hasta luego!