NEW/OLD THINGS UNDER THE MEXICAN SUN
I arrived in Cabo in the middle of November. My Mexican friends immediately took me to their favorite beach, Playa Palmilla.
They pointed out the place where, in August, three men were gunned down, shot to pieces by automatic weapons, as they were sitting in the shade.
Two Mexican tourists were wounded.
On December 19, tourists catching early planes at the Cabo and La Paz airports saw the bodies of six men hanging from three different bridges.
Two bodies were found hanging from a bridge in Las Veredas, near Los Cabos International Airport. Two bodies were found hanging on a bridge on the highway between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo. Two other bodies were found hanging on a third bridge near the La Paz airport.
January and February saw the assassination of a police commandant, the assassination of the Human Rights Commission in La Paz and three police officers on the La Paz Malecon in front of a large number of residents and tourists.
In early April, tourists returning to Mulege from Coyotes and Burros Beaches passed the bodies and heads of two decapitated young men and the body of a third young man who was shot in the back of the head and kicked out of a rapidly moving vehicle, and left on the side of the Baja Peninsula’s main highway.
As recently as July, 2014, Baja California Sur had the lowest homicide rate in all of Mexico. In 2017 Baja California Sur became the state with the highest rate of homicide per capita. There were 701 homicides or 110 per 100,000 inhabitants giving Baja California Sur more homicides per capita than any non-warring nation.
This year looks like more of the same.
Gringos are not in danger from the cartel violence.
The total number killed on vacation in all of Mexico has declined to the point you are statistically more likely to be murdered at home by a family member.
And yet, the tourist industry’s and government response to cartel violence in Baja California Sur puts everyone, including gringos, in danger.
They have flooded the area with police, soldiers and marines.
This has done absolutely nothing to stem cartel violence.
But now there are thousands and thousands of uniformed thugs extorting everyone who looks like they’re carrying/using cannabis.
Most of the gringos and locals look like they’re carrying/using cannabis.
I was stopped and extorted by Baja California Sur state police, in La Paz.
And, inevitably, in times of cartel massacre, it’s almost impossible for everybody and anybody to buy mota/cannabis.
They pointed out the place where, in August, three men were gunned down, shot to pieces by automatic weapons, as they were sitting in the shade.
Two Mexican tourists were wounded.
On December 19, tourists catching early planes at the Cabo and La Paz airports saw the bodies of six men hanging from three different bridges.
Two bodies were found hanging from a bridge in Las Veredas, near Los Cabos International Airport. Two bodies were found hanging on a bridge on the highway between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo. Two other bodies were found hanging on a third bridge near the La Paz airport.
January and February saw the assassination of a police commandant, the assassination of the Human Rights Commission in La Paz and three police officers on the La Paz Malecon in front of a large number of residents and tourists.
In early April, tourists returning to Mulege from Coyotes and Burros Beaches passed the bodies and heads of two decapitated young men and the body of a third young man who was shot in the back of the head and kicked out of a rapidly moving vehicle, and left on the side of the Baja Peninsula’s main highway.
As recently as July, 2014, Baja California Sur had the lowest homicide rate in all of Mexico. In 2017 Baja California Sur became the state with the highest rate of homicide per capita. There were 701 homicides or 110 per 100,000 inhabitants giving Baja California Sur more homicides per capita than any non-warring nation.
This year looks like more of the same.
Gringos are not in danger from the cartel violence.
The total number killed on vacation in all of Mexico has declined to the point you are statistically more likely to be murdered at home by a family member.
And yet, the tourist industry’s and government response to cartel violence in Baja California Sur puts everyone, including gringos, in danger.
They have flooded the area with police, soldiers and marines.
This has done absolutely nothing to stem cartel violence.
But now there are thousands and thousands of uniformed thugs extorting everyone who looks like they’re carrying/using cannabis.
Most of the gringos and locals look like they’re carrying/using cannabis.
I was stopped and extorted by Baja California Sur state police, in La Paz.
And, inevitably, in times of cartel massacre, it’s almost impossible for everybody and anybody to buy mota/cannabis.
In early January I was crossing the plaza in front of the old mission church in downtown La Paz when I saw way too many pictures of their young, hopeful, and yet, doomed faces.
They’re young Mexicans, some only children, who have been arbitrarily detained and disappeared while going about their daily lives.
At least 30,000 people are missing in Mexico.
Criminal groups in Mexico kidnap, torture, dismember and even dissolve their victims in acid, and the remains are often dumped in clandestine graves.
The police and government claim that these people disappeared because they were involved in drug trafficking, or prostitution.
This is a lie.
Recent investigations have shown police, army and marines are disappearing more people than the cartels.
They do this to terrorize the people of Mexico. They do this in the hope that the Mexican people will be too scared to rise up.
I had stumbled on a demonstration by family members of of the disappeared in Baja California Sur.
There were three Pacenos (people of the city of La Paz) with a simple, cheap public address system who denounced the government and police of Mexicans for abducting, raping, torturing, killing, disappearing their children.
As they spoke to a crowd of about 100 people the police and military SUV’s with uniformed thugs with automatic weapons circled the plaza, their numbers steadily increasing, until the vast majority of vehicles circling the plaza were military and police.
The people speaking faced the police, soldiers and marines and denounced them for being criminal thugs, complicit in daily atrocities.
They denounced them for depriving their loved ones of a grave, a grave they could visit, a place they could be with their loved ones on the days of the dead.
They denounced the government for refusing internation assistance in the exhuming of mass graves and the identification of the dead.
They denounced the government for making the families search for the disappeared and making the families pay for costly DNA identification.
They denounced the police and army for threatening them when they refuse to end their search for their loved ones.
They said the police, army and marines are always threatening to make them disappear.
And yet, they say they will continue the fight until there is justice.
And I believe them.
There is, now, a new/old thing under the Mexican Sun.
In September, 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College, in the state of Guerrero commandeered a bus to attend a protest in Iguala - an annual event that commemorates the 1968 massacre of students and civilians in Mexico City by government forces.
The students' bus was reportedly intercepted by police.
According to Mexican federal authorities, members of the Guerrero Unidos drug gang allegedly slaughtered the students, who were delivered to them by the police, or according to other indications, state actors themselves disappeared the students," a report (PDF) by the Open Society Foundations (OSF), a global network of pro-democracy and human rights organizations, said.
The families of the 43 students, people with nothing further to lose have entered Mexican politics.
The families of all the disappeared are entering politics.
They demand justice.
They confront the police, the army, the marines, the government – fearlessly.
Their movement has a life of its own.
There is no telling where it will go.
They’re young Mexicans, some only children, who have been arbitrarily detained and disappeared while going about their daily lives.
At least 30,000 people are missing in Mexico.
Criminal groups in Mexico kidnap, torture, dismember and even dissolve their victims in acid, and the remains are often dumped in clandestine graves.
The police and government claim that these people disappeared because they were involved in drug trafficking, or prostitution.
This is a lie.
Recent investigations have shown police, army and marines are disappearing more people than the cartels.
They do this to terrorize the people of Mexico. They do this in the hope that the Mexican people will be too scared to rise up.
I had stumbled on a demonstration by family members of of the disappeared in Baja California Sur.
There were three Pacenos (people of the city of La Paz) with a simple, cheap public address system who denounced the government and police of Mexicans for abducting, raping, torturing, killing, disappearing their children.
As they spoke to a crowd of about 100 people the police and military SUV’s with uniformed thugs with automatic weapons circled the plaza, their numbers steadily increasing, until the vast majority of vehicles circling the plaza were military and police.
The people speaking faced the police, soldiers and marines and denounced them for being criminal thugs, complicit in daily atrocities.
They denounced them for depriving their loved ones of a grave, a grave they could visit, a place they could be with their loved ones on the days of the dead.
They denounced the government for refusing internation assistance in the exhuming of mass graves and the identification of the dead.
They denounced the government for making the families search for the disappeared and making the families pay for costly DNA identification.
They denounced the police and army for threatening them when they refuse to end their search for their loved ones.
They said the police, army and marines are always threatening to make them disappear.
And yet, they say they will continue the fight until there is justice.
And I believe them.
There is, now, a new/old thing under the Mexican Sun.
In September, 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College, in the state of Guerrero commandeered a bus to attend a protest in Iguala - an annual event that commemorates the 1968 massacre of students and civilians in Mexico City by government forces.
The students' bus was reportedly intercepted by police.
According to Mexican federal authorities, members of the Guerrero Unidos drug gang allegedly slaughtered the students, who were delivered to them by the police, or according to other indications, state actors themselves disappeared the students," a report (PDF) by the Open Society Foundations (OSF), a global network of pro-democracy and human rights organizations, said.
The families of the 43 students, people with nothing further to lose have entered Mexican politics.
The families of all the disappeared are entering politics.
They demand justice.
They confront the police, the army, the marines, the government – fearlessly.
Their movement has a life of its own.
There is no telling where it will go.
Often it seems that Christianity has run its course in Mexico, and the country has become post-Christian.
It seems that way when you watch Mexican Television.
It seems that way when you pass La Paz’s main cathedral, on the edge of La Paz’s Centro, on Christmas Eve.
Mexicans still comply with the forms. They’ll cross themselves when passing a church or religious shrine.
And yet, church attendance has been steadily declining.
The main cathedral of La Paz was never finished.
It never will be finished.
It is already a huge, monumental ruin.
On Christmas Eve it was massively, mostly empty.
It seems that way when you watch Mexican Television.
It seems that way when you pass La Paz’s main cathedral, on the edge of La Paz’s Centro, on Christmas Eve.
Mexicans still comply with the forms. They’ll cross themselves when passing a church or religious shrine.
And yet, church attendance has been steadily declining.
The main cathedral of La Paz was never finished.
It never will be finished.
It is already a huge, monumental ruin.
On Christmas Eve it was massively, mostly empty.
My friends in Cabo are Shivis Gay Tan, and Jorge Delgadillo.
She’s a psychologist. He’s an anthropologist..
They do sweats, temezcals at the big hotel.
Many of the big hotels have built sweat lodges/temezcals.
They’ve also done this in Cancun.
And yet, Jorge says the ones in Cancun are a lot more theatrical than the ones that Shivis and Jorge do in Cabo.
In Cancun it’s all about who’s wearing the biggest, flashiest Indian head dress. Who’s wearing the most ostentatious American Indian outfit, he says.
The sweats\temezcals in the big hotels, inevitably have something of theatre to them. And yet, Shivis and Jorge bring their authenticity.
Every Sunday evening at Temazcal Tonantzin Tlalli, Shivis’ and Jorge’s own sweat in their own sweat lodge way out in the desert, they have fierce sweats, they have their own archaic revival.
Terrence McKenna wrote of the archaic revival.
When civilization/modern life becomes nothing but a thing of death and disease, the Human impulse is to find/revert to a way of life that is in alignment with our evolutionary history, a way of life that is closer to the heart.
In the sweat lodge of Shivis and Jorge there is shamanism, song and the medicine we are longing for.
Shivis and Jorge also sing their medicine songs at the peyote ceremonies.
On a very beautiful beach, somewhere between Cabo San Lucas and Todos Santos there are all-night peyote ceremonies conducted by a Huichol, (Wixaritari) Maracame (shaman).
For the Wixaritari, Peyote symbolizes life, and the acquisition of transcendent, shamanic and artistic powers.
It appears in most all Wixaritari art.
Peyote is true, traditional medicine.
It heals
Peyote is a gift from the gods.
With peyote humans can enter into mystical realms.
With peyote humans can be more than human.
With the Maracame were about a dozen young women and men who attended to the about 100 people attending the ceremony.
They distributed the medicine. They attended to those who vomited from the medicine. They accompanied those who sang their peyote songs with an ancient water drum.
And the peyote songs were so beautiful - sung with fervor - sung with hope
And I wept.
She’s a psychologist. He’s an anthropologist..
They do sweats, temezcals at the big hotel.
Many of the big hotels have built sweat lodges/temezcals.
They’ve also done this in Cancun.
And yet, Jorge says the ones in Cancun are a lot more theatrical than the ones that Shivis and Jorge do in Cabo.
In Cancun it’s all about who’s wearing the biggest, flashiest Indian head dress. Who’s wearing the most ostentatious American Indian outfit, he says.
The sweats\temezcals in the big hotels, inevitably have something of theatre to them. And yet, Shivis and Jorge bring their authenticity.
Every Sunday evening at Temazcal Tonantzin Tlalli, Shivis’ and Jorge’s own sweat in their own sweat lodge way out in the desert, they have fierce sweats, they have their own archaic revival.
Terrence McKenna wrote of the archaic revival.
When civilization/modern life becomes nothing but a thing of death and disease, the Human impulse is to find/revert to a way of life that is in alignment with our evolutionary history, a way of life that is closer to the heart.
In the sweat lodge of Shivis and Jorge there is shamanism, song and the medicine we are longing for.
Shivis and Jorge also sing their medicine songs at the peyote ceremonies.
On a very beautiful beach, somewhere between Cabo San Lucas and Todos Santos there are all-night peyote ceremonies conducted by a Huichol, (Wixaritari) Maracame (shaman).
For the Wixaritari, Peyote symbolizes life, and the acquisition of transcendent, shamanic and artistic powers.
It appears in most all Wixaritari art.
Peyote is true, traditional medicine.
It heals
Peyote is a gift from the gods.
With peyote humans can enter into mystical realms.
With peyote humans can be more than human.
With the Maracame were about a dozen young women and men who attended to the about 100 people attending the ceremony.
They distributed the medicine. They attended to those who vomited from the medicine. They accompanied those who sang their peyote songs with an ancient water drum.
And the peyote songs were so beautiful - sung with fervor - sung with hope
And I wept.