Impressions of Mexico One student's spring term abroad Archived article from Apr 27, 2001 By David Portilla   (David Portilla, a Rutgers College junior, is spending the spring term in Mérida, the capital of Mexico's Yucatán state. Focus asked him to keep a diary to share with university faculty and staff.) Friday, Jan. 5 My arrival in Mérida, Mexico, came at the end of a four-and-a-half-hour plane ride from Newark to Cancún, and then an equally long bus ride from Cancún to Mérida. I spent the entire time in flight reading a novel without a thought of home. Then I spent the entire time crossing the states of Quintana Roo and Yucatán practicing, in my mind, some Spanish expressions I might be likely to use with the taxi driver and at the hotel once my bus pulled into Mérida. So, before I had even arrived in Mérida (or Mexico), before I had met the family I would live with for four and a half months and before I offered up more than a sentence of Spanish, I somehow knew how perfectly the semester would progress. Then my expectations were exposed to reality. Everything was strikingly different from home, and this surprised me as if, in the midst of my harebrained preparations, I forgot or, probably more accurately, ignored that the world doesn't operate on the model set forth by New Jersey. Two days of pessimism and depression ensued. I had no gym to frequent. I had no schoolwork. And I barely knew the family I saw every morning at the breakfast table. I felt far removed from everything that I had come to think of as normal and comforting. Monday, Jan. 8 Today, the group of five of us (four flying the Rutgers banner and another from Columbia University) began taking preliminary classes for six weeks before the new semester begins at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (UADY). The routine of schoolwork has helped combat the plethora of changes. In fact, schoolwork is almost all that I can say is the same as at home -- not counting, of course, the Wal-Mart, Sears and SAM'S Club that are down the street. I am beginning to feel increasingly more comfortable and increasingly less as if I'm on vacation. Rutgers College junior David Portilla at the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán Photo courtesy of David Portilla Friday, Jan. 26 -- Saturday, Jan. 27 Our group traveled to Tekax, about a one-and-a-half-hour bus ride south of Mérida, and just when I thought I had settled in, again I felt heaved into a new set of circumstances. Tekax is very different from Mérida. While Mérida is a city of 600,000, Tekax is a town of several thousand. While the streets of Mérida are full of the exhaust from buses and Volkswagen Beetles, the streets of Tekax are a whirlwind of dust, bikes, taxi-bikes and stray dogs; on rare occasions, a car weaves through. As soon as we walked into the market, we attracted attention: five obviously American students, led by a Mexican professor and Jorge, a Mexican student, walking amid sides of beef, chickens hanging from their feet and an occasional cow's head. A group of women surrounded us, tried their best to look miserable and asked us for money. I thought we must look like kings, with our Fossil watches and gold necklaces. Our professor, Alfredo Enríquez, rented a pickup truck that would have stopped passing inspection at home 10 years ago. We hopped in the back and 20 minutes later jumped out, into a reality not only removed from Mérida, but also from Tekax. Chacmultún is a Mayan pueblo of 13 buildings, most with dirt floors, mud and wood walls, and palm roofs. A cinder-block church, painted pink -- as far as I could tell, the only building with electricity -- was built by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in an attempt to win votes in the most recent presidential election. We had come to teach the children how to read a clock. But only half spoke Spanish; the rest spoke Maya. Their grandparents (who spoke only Maya) stood in the background, and their expressions seemed to say, "What you're doing means nothing here." Even now as I sit in Mérida, comfortable and relaxed, I'm not sure we should have gone to Chacmultún. I fear that we used Chacmultún and the children simply as examples of what we had learned in our classroom lectures. I'm sure our visit was met with mixed and confused feelings on the part of the families there, although I'm also sure the milk, fruits and juice we brought were welcomed. As I work through these reflections, I think that I might be more confused than anyone from Chacmultún. They seem to know that a clock is important only if they have the chance to leave where they were born. That might be the reason one of the fathers leaned over to James, my fellow student, and asked, "¿Puedes llevarme a los Estados Unidos?" (Can you bring me to the United States?) Sunday, Feb. 11 I just arrived back to Mérida from Mexico City. Again, I was reminded that Mexico is a country with distinctly different parts. Mexico City is huge, crowded and intimidating. Yet it is also entrancing. The city drains my energy, probably because of the pure intensity. Vendors holler, cars incessantly honk and the smell from food stands floats through the labyrinthine streets. Even to be a passenger in a taxi is stressful. I would love Mexico City unconditionally if only I could reduce the smog and the ominous threat of crime. Sunday, Feb. 18 Last night was the most fun I've had since I've been here. Vinny (a fellow Rutgers student), Jorge (a student at UADY) and I walked downtown, had a soda and walked some more. We ended up sitting in the main plaza just watching the street musicians and talking amongst ourselves. Afterward we walked from the downtown up Paseo de Montejo, which is the main boulevard in Mérida (supposedly modeled after Paris' Champs Elysées). At the start of Paseo de Montejo, there is a small plaza where a stage had been erected and mariachis were playing to an energetic, local crowd. We made our way through the quagmire of vendors, trying on silly-looking sombreros and asking the prices of almost everything. Then, the three of us converged in front of a table that held a selection of conch shells. We started blowing into the shells, doing our best to imitate Piggy from "Lord of the Flies." I was doubled over in laughter when Jorge (well read, of course) tried his best to conjure up a British accent in Spanish. At first we couldn't muster anything more than sputtering whistles. But soon we were experts, wailing loud, ear-piercing calls into the crowd. We became an instant attraction, encircled by gawking toddlers and parents alike. Not wanting our fame to fade so quickly, we traversed the length of Paseo de Montejo, passing the most popular sidewalk cafés and bars in town, and for the rest of the night we were proudly the town's criers. Saturday, Feb. 24 Today the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN; Zapatista National Liberation Army) began a 15-day caravan, which starts in the southernmost state of Chiapas and will conclude at the famous Zócalo in Mexico City, in front of the Palacio Nacional. Yet life here has carried on as normal, even though my revolutionary fantasies thought it wouldn't. Jorge, who is 24 and majors in history at UADY, thinks Subcomandante Marcos is somewhat of a farce. Marcos, Jorge says, is trying to speak of a united cause for groups of people that are often in violent conflict amongst themselves. Fernando, who is my 21-year-old neighbor and majors in tourism business, is enamored of Marcos. I often see him wearing the shirts that boast Marcos' masked face and famous pipe. He thinks Marcos is an intellectual and admires his ideas -- the same ideas Jorge scoffs at. Another neighbor, Don Antonio, is in his 60s. He fears violence, yet thinks that without the Zapatistas the government would surely abandon the indigenous people, only building a pink church, for example, during an election year. He thinks that for Mexico to change and modernize, the indigenous people need to change and modernize with it. Myself, I'm not sure. The conflict seems deeply rooted in many years of history. I don't think that it is fair to overhaul the indigenous lifestyle, nor does it seem right to leave the pueblos without running water and bathrooms. Saturday, March 17 Jorge and I spent the night having one beer over the course of two hours at a rooftop bar that overlooks one of the busiest streets in Mérida. During one of my first conversations with Jorge, he told me about the Green Party in Mexico. I remember being shocked because he talked with such enthusiasm and passion that I was unsure of his motives. Why was he bothering to talk to me instead of a Mexican friend? I only understood weeks later when he told me why he isn't pleased with his job as a teacher at Harmon Hall (an English-language school). His students are just like most of the kids in Mérida, Jorge told me. They are eager to search out cultural icons from the United States. It's a symbol of coolness. It's a contest to see who will be the first to know the newest trend. Their favorite pastime is going to all-night techno parties. As a result, Jorge has few friends in Mérida."I just like to chat, like we're doing now," he lamented. I had thought that political consciousness was high in Mérida, that everyone had an opinion. My mistake was that my conversations were limited to Jorge and Fernando -- two grand exceptions, as I'm learning. Tuesday, March 27 I enjoyed my class today. The class is called "The History of the Evangelization in Yucatán," but we didn't talk about that. Instead, we talked about what is happening in the country and what is in the newspapers. This departure from the planned subject was great, because I really have no interest in the history of evangelization. Yet I'm fascinated by what is happening in Mexico right now. Normally, this class consists of a lecture by our professor, while I covertly try to fold the day's paper into creative squares small enough to be hidden from his ominous stare. But today, the class was a two-hour conversation. We talked about a special session of Congress that was being held to allow the Zapatistas to address the legislature. We talked about our professor's experience in the United States. We talked about Umberto Eco and about an interview by Gabriel García Márquez with Subcomandante Marcos. The class put me in good spirits. It has become obvious that of everything I miss from home, not talking much is what hurts the most. I do talk with the family I live with and with kids at the gym. But this amounts to nothing more than 15-minute tidbits of small talk. Today and the other night with Jorge, I talked about the same things I would have talked about at home. And it feels as if these are two of the few times that I haven't felt lonely since I've arrived. And, if for only this reason, I'm dying to go home. I'm dying to do nothing more for an entire day but just talk. Conclusion I think it would be difficult for a die-hard American to travel and live in other countries. I've traveled to only two different countries, but in both Mexico and Costa Rica, criticism of America abounds. If the criticism is not public (in the form of television advertising and billboards), then it is private (found in conversation and experience). I didn't arrive in Mexico as a die-hard American. Like many of my peers, I don't always agree with the decisions made by the government of my parents' generation. But I didn't arrive here as an anti-American either. And, because of this ambivalence, I was struck off guard when the local critique of the United States persisted. My thoughts became childish. I would listen to my Mexican counterparts criticizing the same issues my friends and I had criticized at home. And then I would feel a frustration, like when I was younger and people used to pick on my brother. It mattered not if I had picked on him moments earlier about the same idiosyncrasies -- he's family, and I couldn't stand family being treated that way from the outside. Here in Mexico, at times, I wanted to explode and say, "Listen, don't talk about my country like that." But I didn't. I did, however, learn that it isn't so easy to hide what I am.

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