¡Feliz cumpleaños, Virgencita Morena!

Mexicans seem to always be celebrating something. Fireworks go off at odd times, entire families dance in the street, and in almost any town you can count on finding old men plunking away on marimbas in the central square. On Friday night in Oaxaca City, I was finishing up my mole negro on the patio of a restaurant in the zócalo when a massive crowd surged around the corner across the park, led by a 10-piece band. They stopped a block from us, and with a shout, struck up a loud banda song. Almost everyone in the crowd, at least 200 people, grabbed a partner and started to dance. Those left on the sidelines raised bottles of mezcal above their heads and sang along.

We quickly paid the bill and hurried over to see what was going on. Just as we got near, the singer in the band shouted "¡Vámonos!" over the music and the throng turned and began stumbling off toward the cathedral. Intrigued, we followed along behind. After a few blocks, the group stopped and the same ritual was repeated. Although we were a little hesitant at first, being the only touristas in sight, we soon got swept up in the good time. After we'd been dancing for a few minutes, a guy approached us and, incredulous, exclaimed in English, "You don't have any mezcal?!?" Once we had been introduced to all of his friends, hugged, photographed, and thrown back on the "dancefloor" with new partners, we ended up having mezcal poured down our throats while the crowd shouted "¡uno, dos, tres, cuatro...!" Luckily for me, since mezcal tastes like barbecued turpentine, our new friend was so inebriated already that the majority of the alcohol ended up on my shirt. We eventually found out that they were partying in honor of the anniversary of the founding of their university. "And a lot of us don't even go there!" confessed a girl nearby as she took a swig from an empty bottle. We ended the night at 1am, dancing and singing in front of the dimly lit Catedral de Oaxaca, and wondering why we didn't live in Mexico.

And that was just a random excuse to have a good time. I also happened to be in Mexico for possibly the biggest festival of all, the Fiestas de la Virgen de Guadalupe, several weeks leading up to the December 12th Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. In honor of the Virgin, thousands of Catholics from all around Mexico engage in pilgrimage. Some groups go only a few miles, riding in trucks adorned with paintings of the Virgin, sending a runner ahead of their vehicles to carry a flaming torch the whole way. Many people, however, travel for days. Literally millions of people go to Mexico's capital to pay their respects at the Basilica of Guadalupe, where the miraculous first image of the "Virgen Morena" is housed. Apparently, there is even a three-month-long pilgrimage on foot from Mexico City to New York.

In San Cristobal and Tuxtla Gutierrez, the faithful took to the streets at night, mounting processions to various churches and cathedrals. The groups were all led by a truck carrying a young girl dressed as the Virgin in the back, followed by a mariachi band escorting dozens of people carrying candles and singing. Traveling all over the state on my coffee cooperative visits, I came across more and more pilgrims slowing traffic as they made their way on seemingly random journeys from Veracruz to Tuxtla, from Motozintla to Tapachula.

One night in Tuxtla, I walked out of my hotel to find the world's strongest concentration of Mexican stereotypes marching past me towards the town's Guadalupe temple. At the head of the parade, an enormous balloon-covered yellow tow truck dragged a banner announcing that the parade was sponsored by a local horchata factory. This was followed by a pickup carrying a full marimba band, followed by another truck whose bed was filled with mariachi musicians, all playing at top volume. A group of men carrying a life-size poster of the Virgin came next, leading a girl wearing the Virgin's trademark green shroud, and hundreds of women dressed in traditional flowered skirts and lacy white blouses, carrying lilies, singing hymns, and chanting G-U-A-D-A-L-U-P-E over and over. Then came a fleet of at least 30 balloon-encrusted taxis in various states of disrepair, arrhythmically honking their horns. Bringing up the rear was a white, mid-60s VW bug, covered in loudspeakers, announcing: "¡Estamos aquí para celebrar la Virgen de Guadalupe! ¡Felicitaciones Virgencita Morena!" ("We're here to celebrate the Virgin of Guadalupe! Congratulations little brown virgin!"). All that was missing was the mezcal.

Photos from my time in Mexico are here.

It's not that stones are mute

No es que las piedras sean mudas,
sólo guardan silencio.

It's not that stones are mute,
they just maintain their silence.

-Humberto Ak'abal

Browsing the shelves at a bookstore in Oaxaca City a couple of weeks ago, I happened on a photography and essay book on Guatemala. It fell open to a black-and-white photo of a beautiful young couple at their wedding, tight-lipped, stiff, staring resolutely at the camera. As I leafed through the book, a quote from the K'iche' poet Humberto Ak'abal caught my eye: "It's not that stones are mute,/ they just maintain their silence." In two lines, he articulated my experience of Guatemala. Before I came to Xela this summer, countless people told me how friendly Guatemalans were, how helpful and warm. I arrived expecting the infectious sense of humor and generosity that I remembered from trips to Mexico. After a couple of months of work throughout Western Guatemala, I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me. It's not that highland Guatemalans are rude, or unfriendly at all. It's just that being obliging is a form of defense, a deflection learned by people who have been conquered, enslaved, and killed for hundreds of years. It has been hard for me to tell the difference between civility and compliance in a culture whose conservatism is both innate and imposed.

For the last three weeks, I have been working in Chiapas, with a long weekend vacation in Oaxaca. The unlikely contrasts between Mexico and Guatemala led me to reflect on the stoic Guatemalan character that has challenged me during my first three months in the country. A cultural, economic, and political divide runs along the Guatemala-Mexico border. On the ride out of the mountains from Xela, the only noise came from the bus itself, belching smoke and creaking at every turn while its passengers sat quietly gazing out the window or slumped forward in an exhausted torpor. Crossing the trash-clogged river to Chiapas swept us into a world of paved highways, loud laughter, air conditioning, and spicy food. The contrast between Ciudad Tecún Umán in Guatemala and Tapachula in Chiapas was heartbreaking. In Tapachula, couples kissed under the shade of the trees filling the zócalo, musicians played in front of sidewalk cafés, and shouts from an anti-domestic violence rally carried for blocks. Walking around town in the late afternoon heat, I felt intoxicated by the colors, smells, and sounds of life bursting around me.

Physically and demographically, Chiapas is as close to Guatemala as any state in Mexico. In fact, its highlands were once part of the Sixth State of the Federal Republic of Central America, along with much of Western Guatemala. It is Mexico's poorest state, with a large indigenous population and a history of armed conflict. But the social history of Guatemala has marked it in ways that I only realized once in Mexico. The most telling difference, in a convoluted way, is the fact that in Guatemala you will almost never see someone begging on the street. Although Mexico is relatively wealthy, in Chiapas and Oaxaca, it's commonplace to be approached by people asking for help, appealing to your sense of communal duty. Indigenous Guatemalans have learned to survive by turning inward, and, as Ak'abal writes, by recognizing the power and defiance implicit in maintaining their silence.