Dear Al et al.,
    November 3, 2004
    Like many who remember Europe and Germany before WWII began, I can smell fascism , like cat piss in the garden.
    Just by coincidence our Mexican FM3s – the one-year tourist visa – expires this month and George went to the migra to see what we need for a renewal. Somebody in another office was playing “New World Symphony” on a CD, exactly as I was, when he left the house. An omen? George met with our buddy Rusbél (would you believe “Roosevelt”) who pointed out that since this is our sixth year as “tourists” maybe we should simply apply for residency.
    I’m not sure that decision should be taken as a serious a response to the election – after all, we are here already. However I admit that one daughter has gone off to live in France, and I am encouraging another, whose boys are still too young to be military or militant as may befall, to think about Canada. Much to my surprise, she told me all struggle is local – damn, where’d she learn that from?
    I am very sympathetic to your correspondents who wonder what to do, and I appreciate your very measured response. Like you, I believe in Choice, and this is one of those very intimate decisions.  I can volunteer to correspond with anyone who wants to discuss what’s involved in moving to Mexico, if that would be helpful.
    Also not so coincidentally post-election, I write to comfort myself. Here are both the pro and con of emigrating:

This Is The Way The World Ends…

    I was a teen-ager when I knew a special teacher (handsome, horny) who introduced the class to T.S. Eliot and then took several of us down to Truro on Cape Cod, when Truro was still an untouched coastal outpost. We, “creative writers” all, of the adolescent variety, went to bury a time capsule because we expected that an atomic  bomb (year: 1950) would soon obliterate all of Massachusetts and us along with it. Didn’t happen, so that may be encouraging???
    In honor of  the buried capsule, here’s mother’s post-election Crystal Ball reading. Bury it.

1. The US economy will collapse. The questions are how soon and how badly. Can we look for a “soft landing”? The debt that is now being perpetrated depends like all debt, on who will lend you the money and when they will ask for repayment. Third World and Latin American countries are very familiar with the cost of debt. Americans have not as a nation understood it, up until now. But who holds our debt? Individuals and nations who have bought US Treasury bonds; they are both domestic and foreign purchasers. The foreign purchasers now decline to buy more US debt. The second class of debt is trade balance of payments. Up until now, it has been in the interest of nations like China and Japan to permit the US to buy (import) more than it sells. Greedy greedy greedy. But that can not continue. China is the big factor. At the moment it is not in their interest to bring down the US but it may well be so soon, as the oil wars progress. Likewise Europe, who would benefit from oil-sales in euros.
2. Government services to the population will decrease. Bush said so. Small government means fewer services, and with little money, he can just claim services can’t be afforded. That means no national health care, no national social security (privatize!), etc.
3. Fascism will be made manifest. That’s partly because a war mentality encourages authoritarian control, and partly because conservatives who want “values” upheld want only the values they themselves espouse, which are restrictive, based on a biblical interpretation, anti-female, sexist, blurring separation of church and state, etc. You know. Those who currently (post-election) call for the Dems to stand fast on the Left have my sympathy, while those who say “compromise even more” do not.
4. Jobs will continue to vanish. International capital does not care who buys its products, therefore, it’s no skin off their noses if the Indians and Filipinos get more cash to buy cars with, and the Americans workers get less, especially since the lower foreign salaries (for the next twenty years?) mean a bigger profit.
5. The intellectual cream of the country will emigrate. Why should scientists and inventors stay – the climate is not in their favor, and the medical and scientific research facilities can only go downhill when they ass-lick the big corporations and the government as they now do. Honest research will be conducted elsewhere (maybe Cuba?) It’s of course clear that those bright students who used to enter the USA for university or graduate studies no longer choose to – in fact, many are barred due to their national origin.
6. Militarism will increase. One reason – the scarcity of jobs means that youngsters join the military for pay, and that is true all over the world, and already so for us. Secondly, there’s a terrorist on every corner (as well there may be, after all our attacks on innocent people) so we must Defend Our Country from inside dissenters as well as foreigners.
7. Sooner or later (when?) the East and West coasts will begin to think about secession. They have nothing to gain by supporting the ruined heartland which produces neither useful products nor edible foods. A university education is more likely when it is in the interest of the national economy to promote and pay for it – where will that take place? So the two coasts will do their own thing.
8. Sooner or later (when?) repression, poverty and/or despair gives rise to rebellion. That’s how it goes. People calling for the Dems to promote a winning strategy – whatever that is – do not reckon with the severe voter fraud and intimidation we already see, nor with the viciousness of the Republicans.
9. Global climate change will lead to some big migrations or at least severe readjustments. Maybe the north will be emptied – or maybe the south! Who knows. But something’s gotta give, and at the moment it looks like the tundra.
10. The evil empire, like all empires, will collapse of its own hubris and over-reach. The rest of the world may simply go its own way while ignoring the US’s needs and desires – this will happen when  the petrodollar gives way to the euro, when  other blocks of nations decline to trade with the US, when energy sources cannot be maintained, when potable water and food sources cannot be maintained. The USA, if very lucky, will fall to the position the UK is in now, and the UK, if very lucky, will get itself  more firmly involved with the EU, in effect turning its back on the USA. Many empires don’t die, they just fade away. Let’s hope for that, as the best outcome possible: not with a bang but a whimper.

Lila Downs Sings

    Lila Downs sings in English and Mexican Spanish. When she sings in English she calls it jazz, sadly unlike anything Ella Fitzgerald or Sara Vaughn might have sung. Lila Downs is Oaxaqueña, light-skinned, traveled and cosmopolitan. She comes to Mexico frequently to perform. Usually she sings in one of those Oaxaca theaters which charge an admission, maybe as much as 300p, which is like $30. Not worth it to me! Although some people here – and it seems like they must be middle-class ex-patriots and Oaxaqueños – just adore her. Newly renovated in the historic center-city stands an “old” theater, a small colonial-style architectural gem which on the outside sports a green dome and an engraved façade reading “casino”, indicating to me that the place served as a gambling hall for gentlemen once upon a time. Inside the renovated Teatro Macedonia Alcalá  the dainty floor space is surrounded by steep balconies which remind me of the models of  Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. But ornate, gilded, with marble floors below and cherubs above, the seats upholstered scarlet. All of this by way of saying, I don’t care where Lila Downs sings, others may love her, but as for me, she’s an arty  bore.
    Okay, so to get to the point, the other day our friend Ana stopped by for a visit, and she mentioned  Jaime Martinez Luna, who lives in Guelatao, the birth place of Benito Juarez, the Zapoteca who was president of  Mexico from 1858 to 1872. Jaime’s an excellent (Ana says brilliant) socio-political philosopher, whose work George and I came into contact with several years ago. He writes about Comunalidad y Autonomía, which of course means community and autonomy. That’s the enduring indigenous practice of local government here in Oaxaca, a style which is antecedent to the Zapatista rebellion by maybe five hundred or a couple of thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The system depends on a rotating unpaid service to the community, and  that the serving leaders be both responsible and responsive to the local community, which governs by one family, one vote. The “leaders” are people (men) who have done service all their lives in one position or another, and finally ascend to the highest responsibilities. Some essays by Jaime Martinez are available on George’s website, and some of them are even translated into English.
    So Jaime this past October was in town to read from his new book which is a compilation of the old essays revised and improved. Sadly we were away and missed the event, although since our return the local newspaper (Las Noticias) as well as the best national paper (La Jornada) have given recognition to the political system of Comunalidad y Autonomía in Oaxaca. The Chiapas Zapatista model, which has evolved beyond the Oaxaca model (now the Zapatistas have networks of communities, spiraling outward like snail-shells) is slowly gaining the global recognition it deserves; too bad members of communities in Oaxaca still shoot each other over land disputes, a nasty habit encouraged by the state government which doesn’t like comunalidad.  
    Ana reported that Jaime seemed functional and in better health than he’s been on prior occasions (he’s an alcoholic) and in a gossipy kind of exchange I informed Ana, since we’ve known of Jaime far longer than she, that he was also very involved in producing music in Guelatao. In fact, I have one of his tapes, called “Trova Serrana” (mountain songs). It’s composed-on-the-spot  folk music, most of this collection  by Jaime Martinez himself,  rural Mexican style, a celebration of the way of life in the mountain pueblos of comunalidad. I brought it out to show Ana, and as she was reading titles and the names of the musicians and performers, she suddenly exclaimed, “Lila Dawnz!” which is a perfect Spanish phonetic rendition of Lila Downs. Could it be? The tape was made in 1993. I said to Ana, Well, I doubt I would recognize her voice if that’s her, and Ana thought maybe that she could compare it to a Downs CD she owns. I guess Ana likes Lila Downs, but I didn’t say anything. The fact is that  simpering  jazz puts my teeth on edge, but now I have to reckon with a whole new situation: Lila Dawnz being politically correct to the point of participating in a local indigenous music fest, and with Jaime Martinez Luna no less.
    Ah. So that new CD? It offers  several songs Downs wrote for people’s politics. Middle class folks, like me, ain’t all bad.
    The young Lila Dawnz on a tape with Jaime Martinez says everything: That all politics is local, yes, and that all talent is local, too. Leadership is local and music is local and democracy is local and the exchange of ideas, no matter how we love our internet, and no matter how we curse the sell-out media – the true exchange is local, face to face, voice to ear. Bush has somehow by fraud gained re-election, and the nation is split, not in half exactly, but with a half taken out of the center, leaving the two coasts to float free like melting icebergs in global climate change.
    Guelatao de Juarez, the birthplace in 1806 of the well-loved Benito Juarez (who confronted the oligarchy on behalf of the indios and the common man), is a tiny town about ninety minutes uphill from Oaxaca City, in the mountains. The bus climbs the narrow hairpin roads which encourage me to take Dramamine, and I usually find myself staring at the upholstery of the bus seat in front of me while the bus twists upward. An occasional glimpse out the window shows the precipitous drop-offs and wooded mountains. At the entrance to Guelatao stands a sign reading “No property in this town is for sale.” By which is meant, the land is communally owned. Each family has its own home and yard and dog, but these homes are passed down within the family, and are not for sale to outsiders. If an ejido (land commonly owned) community agrees to the sale of  a piece of their terrain – maybe for a gas station, for example – that’s a community, not a private decision. In Guelatao it’s the community’s responsibility to look out for the woods, the small Juarez museum, the square and park, the fresh water trout farm, ailing Jaime Martinez  – all the town’s treasures.
    In other words, it’s not socialism or communism, it’s another way of life, based on the agreement as to what is the common good, and full participation by all.
    Discovering that Lila Downs visited Guelatao more than a decade before the re-election of George Bush in no way connects to my despair over the future of our nation.
    Only, I know that there are other ways to live, other ways to build.
                                                                                       …………………&# 133;…..

    I’m depressed. George is in a rage and wants the election declared fraudulent. Mexico is no paradise, although it contains the seed, like much of Latin America.  This means I think that wherever we locate, teaching our kids and grandkids is vital. There’s a longer road ahead than many care to admit.

Love to you and yours,
Nancy