Entries Tagged 'Graffiti' ↓

On Dec. 21, I described leaving the United States for México in my blog post “Memo from Mexico City.” I’ve since been living in the country’s southernmost and poorest state, Chiapas, intending to write a “Memo from San Cristóbal de las Casas.” That hasn’t materialized, because life is busy.

Now, though, I’ll dash off this quick, second post from Mexico City—also known as CDMX. By way of Viva Aerobús, I arrived back in the capital roughly a week ago to take care of crucial stuff, such as buying fresh New Balance kicks for running and picking up some PlayStation Castlevania games. Before I knew it, I was discussing education with teachers occupying the downtown Zócalo and watching black bloc throw rocks into government windows. As hard as I try to keep my nose in science fiction novels and my ears tuned to temperate podcasts about long-dead philosophers, such encounters seem to keep happening to me—as if I’m pursuing a slightly personalizing variant of a preternatural path that other Douglases have already snaked through, creating our mysterious, ongoingly synthesized web of time. You know how it is!

I’ll try to limit my metaphysical musings—the U.S. State Department would never have me author memo-cables—and focus on impersonally important events.

Educating everyone

Since mid-May, teachers from around México, primarily as part of CNTE—the National Coordinator of Education Workers, a powerful, protest-heavy offshoot of the country’s largest education union—have converged on the Zócalo plaza where the presidential National Palace is, and upon surrounding streets, occupying with tents and demanding the repeal of the 2007 ISSSTE law for the sake of sustainable pensions and wages. Reportedly this protest, which shut down several terminals of CDMX’s main international airport on May 23, coincides with teacher strikes in Panama, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil.

This past weekend, some—Section 22 of CNTE among them—wanted to stop the occupation because of the authorities’ tepid offers, but the rank and file, angry at trade union leadership for murmuring of retreating, surged despite heavy rain, seizing the stage at the union leaders’ meeting-place. On June 2, CNTE temporarily shut down the San Ysidro border crossing from San Diego to Tijuana, aiming to pressure the Mexican government. Now, negotiation with the federal authorities is supposed to continue at least into the late morning of June 4, perhaps later. The former Education Secretary of Chiapas, Javier Álvarez Ramos, once a teacher himself, told La Jornada on June 3 that CNTE must propose various possible solutions, and that President Claudia Sheinbaum needs to realize the vast majority of Mexican teachers are more than 40 years old, so the pension issues—such as age of eligibility—must be addressed.

In my view, Sheinbaum deserves admiration as Mexico’s first woman president, first scientist president, for her firebrand way of repeatedly standing up to Trump (albeit not on every item), and for her support of Mexican migrants and refugees crossing the northern border. On the other hand, however, her government continues to discriminate against migrants and refugees crossing Mexico’s southern border—such as those homeless in Tapachula—she resists raising taxes on the rich, and she’s made some other dubious decisions.

Sheinbuam, who enjoys a remarkable 80+% approval rating, has recently spoken in support of teachers in the abstract, but says budgetary constraints prevent her government from accepting CNTE’s demands. If you want to follow how the protests play out, I recommend tracking the CNTE tag on La Jornada‘s website.

I understand the teachers’ emphasis on specific financial figures, because people have to start somewhere, but sometimes, not unlike the Duffy character in James Joyce’s 1914 short story “A Painful Case,” I worry the Marxist money-über-alles stuff just has activists chasing their own tails across the centuries as wage-increases are met with price-hikes and the insistence that nothing but money can be the root of all evil continues to cloud people from seeing the social-emotional human relationships underneath the money, underneath the way our particular civilization (not the only one humanity has had!) happens to monetize, to gamify outgrouping, and obsess over moneytokens unceasingly (when was the last time you had a conversation about shame or courage to the same length people discuss property values, interest rates, or inflation? What if depictions of defense mechanisms were on the front of the business section instead of the NASDAQ? Okay, the stock market is a defen— Or to put it crudely: do lonely guys chase skirt to improve their skill at making money, or do they make more money to better chase skirt? So what’s fundamental here, pal, which is steering: pesos and pennies—or love and hate?)

But with all that background in place, what was the vibe on the ground at the Zócalo, when I went there on June 1?

The CNTE teachers seemed possessed of an almost otherworldly cheerfulness, beyond the overall increase in happiness that Mexicans have versus USians in general regardless of time, place, or protest. It reminded me of Occupy Dallas, when I brought water there nearly a decade and a half ago, or when I checked out Zuccotti Park wi—. The bullshit of extreme endosocial zero-sum seething anger and guilt and terror that dissociated populations don’t know surrounds and interpenetrates and saps them of motivation constantly, making them blame themselves and their genes instead of their tyrants large and small, was just gone, like poof, gone. Leaving smiles and jokes and abrazos (hugs). It was the another world is possible before the riot police show up.

One woman I spoke with, an elementary schoolteacher named Guadalupe, told me the photos of her schoolkids encourage her to stay at the encampment, to keep enduring the hard parts of it, because if she’s not paid enough to survive, how can she continue to nurture them? As in the image that opens this blog post, Guadalupe showed me, on her phone, pictures of her smiling kids, who looked like a Mexicanized version of the midde-schoolers I used to substitute-teach in Fort Worth and Seattle, or perhaps you could say my students were a USian-ized version of them. It really made me miss “my” middle and high school children—I still remember many of their names, years later, and wonder how they’re doing, where they are in the big web of time tracing around different paths, pulling this, repelling that, maybe finding strength as a heroic vampire-killer in some silly video game. Did any leave the United States, and if so, under what conditions—ICE? Somehow, of everything in this post section—the pensions this, the president that, the money over here, the taxes over there—the most important moment of visiting that tent was just sharing stories with Guadalupe in my stilted Spanish about my schoolkids and hearing about hers. That’s why we were both there, ultimately. Effort for humans and the future shouldn’t feel like a chore or duty, but fun, exciting, discovery (exosocial).

I talked to the teachers under the tent as best I could about how in the United States, the politicians and school administrators lie, claiming to the major media that at the poor campuses, respiratory pandemics are no worry, just open the windows, use the pink puffy soap from the bathroom dispensers. But the windows have been stuck shut for decades and the dispensers are soapless and smashed, little plastic shards all over the sticky, scuffed linoleum (or vinyl asbestos tile) floors. They said it was the same deal in places like Chiapas, Oaxaca.

An elementary school teacher named Ulises told me, when I asked what teacher unions in the United States need to know about the CNTE protests, that we have the same enemy: the multinational corporations, the supranational oligarchy. I asked Guadalupe if there was ever any issue with software copy-protection preventing students from accessing educational materials, the United States intellectual property regime. She said not with the pen-and-paper resources, which are easy to photocopy ad libetum, but occasionally, computer software presents her classes with various paywall hurdles. (My Spanish wasn’t good enough to get any further details.)

There was a younger teacher there at the same tent who knew she was the most attractive, as did everyone else, at least from the impersonal eye that no one really has (if you truly love someone, they’re the most beautiful regardless). She put down her phone and asked about me, learned that I’m a substitute teacher and a freelance writer/journalist, and so on.

Half-jokingly, she said I should return that evening with alcohol, and other flirty things that I couldn’t translate—except by watching the body language of the others and sensing the blushing of my warming cheeks. When she found out that I plan to stay in México for years, she held out her hand, fingers down, in a pretend offer of marriage.

Apparently the weeks of tent-life—the grungy, earthy nature of occupying—had turned the teachers’ humor rather ribald, for she then said, spacing out both her hands as if measuring a large fish, “I like big ones, though, you have to have a big one.”

So I reached into my slacks and whipped out—

—my phone. “Por cierto (Indeed),” I said, gesturing at the huge Samsung in its hardshell case, “¡es muy grande!“

That wit, which needs no translation, won me applause. I didn’t go back that night with wine, however, although perhaps I should have. Well, in some other multiverse. In this one, I had a major article (extra material) under consideration at Rolling Stone to edit.

First things first.

Factional feminists?

And now, a confusing story with, maybe, a simple solution. Or not.

Certain vendor areas in Alameda Central—a huge public park in downtown CDMX, said to be the oldest public park in the Americas—are reportedly disputed, and have been for a month or so, maybe longer.

The dispute was—probably still is—between two groups of artisans selling their merchandise. One is referred to as Mazahua indigenous women; the other, feminists. Already it’s a mess. The indigenous women can’t be feminists, and none in the feminist squad are of the Mazahua?

Meanwhile, there’s a third factor: the Mexican authorities. A May 31 La Jornada article, the only news item I’ve come across about this dispute so far, says that according to the Mazahua spokesperson Elizabeth, the Mexican government is establishing a ‘green zone’ to legalize heavy marijuana-smoking in the disputed area. Heavy marijuana-smoking that’s already taking place. And already taking place, too, are worse things, according to the article: too much alcohol, urination and defecation, and so on. I’ve heard from more than one person that there’s definitely a lot of ongoing drugs & whatnot in the area, but I don’t know the extent of any associated problems or who might be causing them. Apparently the indigenous vendors have asked for a crackdown, received nothing in response, and now have to police the area themselves.

Per La Jornada, the feminist vendors were upset because the Mazahua vendors had taken over the disputed turf, preventing them from selling their merchandise—moreover, according to local onlookers and a woman apparently sympathetic to the feminist vendors with whom I briefly and unskillfully spoke in Spanish during the May 30 clash, the Mazahua artisans stole some of the feminist vendors’ stuff, and/or got rid of it, trashed it.

This video I took on May 30 briefly shows a tussle over a banner (or item of clothing?) between two women, apparently from the two separate groups. It seems another woman—I’m guessing from the ‘feminist group’ a.k.a. ‘anarchist group’—successfully de-escalated the tussle. If I’m seeing that correctly, it’s an interesting, optimistic occurence not mentioned in the La Jornada article, which quotes Elizabeth as saying the “feminists call us Indians.” (I haven’t been able to discern what the woman with the bullhorn is saying in the below video.)

Making matters worse, the feminist merchants, according to La Jornada, got no help from the authorities regarding the alleged Mazahua vigilante policing/stealing, so they decided to make their ire known dramatically. During the May 30 show of force, they threw rocks at the Post Office, breaking something like seven windows, and added graffiti to its walls: Sheinbaum is not a feminist; Femicidal state; Down with the patriarchy; Street vendor mafia!

Why target the Post Office? Because it’s there, at/near the disputed turf, and it’s part of the Mexican government. Some onlooker locals—male—expressed dissatisfaction with this to me: the post office is for all the people, they reasoned, and while femicides, they acknowledged, are a serious problem, what does the Mexican snailmail have to do with femicides? One woman onlooker local was less polite in her slur-packed description of the feminist vendor group… Another likely reason for targeting the Post Office is the intersection in front of it is quite busy, meaning taking it over helps ensure publicity.

Publicity? The messaging, unfortunately, wasn’t clear, and it wasn’t just my subpar Spanish—some onlooker locals expressed confusion as well. What does alleged theft by the Mazahua group have to do with femicides? Of course, the graffiti was presumably meant to diss the Mexican government in general, including their (as everywhere) lack of sufficient prosecution of masculinist murderers/rapists. Not so much a diss to the rival Mazahua group in particular.

This May 30 video of mine shows rocks being shipped express to the Post Office windows by the feminist group. (I still don’t know what’s being said through the bullhorn in this video, either.)

Some floated theories as to other interests that might be behind the unpopular vandalism/architectural remixing. One Mexican local I spoke with suggested that perhaps right-wing saboteurs are infiltrating feminist groups, inciting actions that will damage their credibility among the majority. Someone else suggested that could be a machination to make Sheinbaum look weak or bad: See? The homegrown anarcha-feminists don’t think Sheinbaum’s any feminist of theirs, which means the president has no real mandate to speak for women.

Personally, while I think such speculations shouldn’t be discounted, I also don’t think anyone should just automatically rule out the possibility that the dispute is exactly what it appears to be: a turf war between two rival local groups. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

That said, the drone that suddenly showed up overhead was pretty spooky—I managed to film it for a few seconds, embedded below—but is that the flying device of an evil moustache-twirler orchestrating world events from within what looks like a mere taco truck, or just an overpriced sky-gizmo piloted by some bored tourist? Maybe it’s Stratfor’s, the creepy Austin-based private spy firm (now part of RANE) that I investigated and published articles about roughly a decade or so ago, including its myriad advising of multinationals, such as the Dell computer company, on how to do biz in México. Who knows?

Speculation can be important (when labelled as such), but it’s also cheap and easy—anybody can kick their feet up, spitball a few pet theories as to who the real moustache-twirlers must be, and call it a day. If I get a chance this week to talk further with either set of vendors, both of whom are out selling pretty much daily, I’ll update this post.

What’s my simple solution? Maybe if men stopped rapes and femicides, and stopped tolerating loose support or ‘joking’ support of such from their male acquaintances, or remediated their ignorance about such crimes, we wouldn’t have to decipher what this May 30 clash in front of Belles Artes was all about.

Except, maybe the graffiti on the Post Office would then just say something else—the two groups seem to have other things to fight over, after all. And are the over-the-top drugs mucking up public spaces really necessary? I don’t mean to be a prude, and I’m mostly in favor of legalizing your whatever, but why not tone it down? What’s the harm in being healthy? I know it’s a lot of work, but your best weapon in life/resistance is a strong mind.

Maybe I shouldn’t be expressing any opinions at all, and just observing. Witnessing the whole affair put me in mind of Star Trek. Those Voyager episodes with the ill-defined worldbuilding, for one thing: two stereotyped groups clashing on the planet of the week, no granular details required about their backstories. But besides that, the Prime Directive. You know, the rarely followed rule (in Star Trek or real life) that outsiders shouldn’t interfere with the internal affairs of other societies. I think witnessing—like some Ursula K. Le Guin anthropologist protagonist—is fair enough, and I don’t have any nuanced position on the Prime Directive, especially since as so many science fiction stories demonstrate that “mere” witnessing can, a la quantum mechanics, turn real quick into affecting “somebody else’s” situation. Well, I have nothing wise to say here, so moving right along.

There were a number of humorous juxtapositions that I’ll conclude this with. You know, if this were a srs bizness journadoodle article, like say about the Reorganizing Government Act of 2025, there wouldn’t be a bunch of meandering and certainly no out-of-nowhere pic of Captain Janeway from Voyager (nobody cares about Chakotay). But why can’t this just be a blog post? For me, a huge part of witnessing the May 30 scuffle was the bizarre juxtapositions, the web of life tangling up in ways that didn’t straightforwardly sell anybody’s metaphysics, except perhaps that of the surrealists.

For instance, bicyclists—some of them Rappi or DiDiFood deliverers—rode carefree around the feminist merchants’ blockades as pedestrians took quick detours and kept going, which La Jornada described with only some truth as walkers not being allowed to cross the intersection whatsoever. Some braver ones did. Anyway, it seemed surreal, as if for many passersby, the fire, the rock-throwings, the windows loudly crackling apart, the blaring bullhorns, none of that existed: it was just any other day in the capital.

To be clear, I wasn’t there the whole time, so La Jornada may have seen things I didn’t. For instance, La Jornada wrote that ambulances took some half-dozen people to the hospital, which may have been true—I didn’t see it, but I left before the scuffle ended.

Speaking of, that was another weird juxtaposition, the voyeurism: there was quite a semi-bored crowd circled around watching this whole affair like it was a baseball game or something. They’d occasionally walk a few feet over to the nearest food truck and buy some tacos, like a baseball fan grabbing a hot dog from concessions. Then they’d resume watching, perhaps commenting to their buddy next to them about how the “score” between the two groups was progressing. Rome Coliseum vibes.

Another peculiar juxtaposition. CDMX, like San Cristóbal de las Casas, has trash cans spaced perodically on sidewalks, a nice convenience indeed. While I was taking photos and videos of the feminist group’s show of force, I had an empty Electrolit—a popular drink here akin to Gatorade—in one hand. As I stood by a sidewalk covered in shattered glass, I proceeded to peer around, politely looking for a polite trash can to gently deposit the bottle into. Shards of glass everywhere, fires burning, people yelling, and still: Perdón, ¿dónde está la basura, por favor? (Excuse me, where’s the trash, please?)

Lastly, there was one particular Mexican food truck vendor dude there with a woman who seemed his wife. Asked about the scuffle, he told me this kind of thing—why not paint with a broad brush sometimes?—has been going on for years. He approached his discourse on the topic as though he were a meteorologist describing transient yet recurring weather phenomena. The feminists are mad about the Mazahua; the Mazahua are mad about the feminists; round and round; want an enchilada? Then he rolled up his newspaper and, listening to the feminist bullhorn yelling, playfully swatted his apparent wife on her culo.

Well, she didn’t seem to mind at all, or maybe I’m just an optimist. Anyway, describing protests as impersonal weather phenomena is sort of a common civic freeloader trope meant to ward off any potential engagement with the particulars of this or that incident. Strangely, being an outside-observer to this whole scuffle, made me see it a bit more like a civic freeloader, and less like the jouno-activist I am. And yet here I am writing up what particulars I managed to learn.

I wonder how many such scuffles go on, day in, day out, around the globe, minimally reported or not reported at all, the full story lost to the winds of time because no one quite crawled out on the web of ongoingly synthesized history far enough to snag the information before it was all gone, all lost…

Unique judicial elections

In the United States, all federal judges are appointed. But in several states, state-level judges are voted for. In Texas, for example, the judicial elections are even by political party. I have no opinion on whether judges should be appointed or elected or when or why; sadly, I’m under-informed on the entire issue.

But I’d be remiss not to note that on June 1, Mexicans voted for thousands of judges countrywide for the very first time. More elections for additional thousands of Mexican judges will take place in 2027, a staggered system. No other country, including Mexico previously, has ever voted for judges to such an enormous extent, so it’s quite the political experiment.

A Mexican friend who voted in the morning on June 1 told me that he and the other voters at his polling place could see information about candidates’ curricula vitae on their ballots, and that they were very enthusiastic and proud to be voting for judges. However, that’s too small a sample size to really know how it stacks up against reports that Mexicans are almost evenly split on the question of whether judges should be elected, with hundreds of judges refusing to participate in protest.

The astonishing experiment is something to keep an eye on, at the very least. Reports indicate there was low turnout—13%—and that Sheinbaum’s Morena party is winning judicial benches, including control of the Supreme Court. This would give Morena dominance over all three federal branches of government, which some are comparing to the 3/4-century of one-party rule by the right-wing PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), even though Morena’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador (ALMO), Sheinbaum’s predecessor, didn’t win the presidency, displacing PRI, until just seven years ago (2018).

Sheinbaum herself doesn’t see Morena’s victories as a problem. “Whoever says that there is authoritarianism in Mexico is lying,” Sheinbaum said on June 1. “Mexico is a country that is only becoming more free, just and democratic because that is the will of the people.”

Friends, FAQs, and farewell for now…

I’m staying at a hostel in CDMX a few more days before heading back to Chiapas. An elderly Christian proselytizer from the United States arrived at the hostel the day before yesterday; he says he has divine guidance and that he once prayed away a dread disease. Last night, he repeatedy warned me not only to refrain from upsetting Mexican drug cartels as a journalist, but to not upset Elon Musk or Donald Trump even just on Twitter, lest they come after me. I will not take his advice. An Eastern European woman listening to the conversation with a radiant Eastern European scowl informed the table—including him—that what he imagines Trump will do to tweeps such as myself (well, Bluesky), Putin actually does in real life to her compatriots. She also told him that some people pray hard and still die, so his God isn’t very divine. Eastern Europeans don’t fuck around.

On June 1, I hung out with Iván Maceda Mejías from Letras Con Locuras (Letters with Madness), the name of a radical mental health magazine put out by activists I discussed in my first CDMX memo. Find their second, April issue here. In the next few days, I should see Luis Gerardo Arroyo Lynn, a journalist with Mad in Mexico, an affiliate of journalist Robert Whitaker’s Mad in America. He’s a fellow vegan; well, I’m mostly vegan nowadays; travel can make it difficult at times, so I cheat a little, which I should probably find ways to fix.

I might even get to see a couple I met briefly at a downtown restaurant in December, who—in a very Mexican fashion that reminded me of rural North or East Texas—were suddenly concerned for this traveler’s well being, and invited him to their table, and gave me their WhatsApp contact info and told me to stay in touch. Why not? Maybe their curling paths crossed mine because the web of time is a variable phenomena myriad wills create rather than a Newtonian box we’re stuck inside clawing at the coordinate walls cynically because lightning or whatever supposedly birthed life … I don’t mean that If you pray hard enough, divinity will rearrange the whole universe to give you a sweet parking space, and protect you from Elon Musk and Donald Trump to boot; moreso, maybe the restaurant where I met the couple has really popular churros drawing people together because the chefs and everyone else are active participant-creators of this reality thing, except not as a metaphor: rather, it’s literally true. Not that your skin cells create/alter reality when you scratch your nose so much (though that too), but more those enigmatic perspective + will components we each uniquely have and employ to realize, actualize that which is around us, as do other powers not commonly described as living, to various extents (if that seems too hippie, picture something as impersonal as Aristotle’s Prime Mover). Somehow this spangled web we weave is easier to understand outside the United States, which sometimes feels trapped in formaldehyde.

To quickly answer a few questions I often get lately:

• Yes, my Spanish is rapidly improving. I began learning Spanish in Texas in elementary school; in high school, I flirted briefly with German and mostly switched to Latin, which I continued studying from that point on—as far as formal education is concerned—the only change being the addition of a few years of ancient koine Greek … except for a few days of French class in college, which I quickly aborted, finding that fancy language extremely silly and impossible for a Texan to pronounce. I had a few short-lived post-school attempts to learn Dutch and improve my fledgling Spanish.
  
  No, I won’t be translating at the United Nations any time soon. I can definitely have simple conversations about the weather or a menu, and if I’m “on,” I can do a bit better, sort of like a not-particularly-literate USian middle schooler’s grasp of English. I can read a lot better than I can converse, even discerning the main ideas of a La Jornada or Cuarto Poder news article without a dictionary, for example. On the daily, my difficulty isn’t so much vocab or grammar, as it is my ear acclimating to hearing native Spanish speakers talking at a zillion kilometers per hour. Remember, even the speech of fluent native speakers in any language is typically riddled with unnoticed grammatical errors, stops and starts, and circuitous ramblings that can throw off any learner who’s desperately trying to decipher every last word properly. I hope a year from now, I’m at the point where I can have some kinda-subtle conversations on topics more substantial than asking for directions and how much otro jugo de naranja costs. Now, if editors want news articles from México, I may have more incentive to study and practice…
  
  
• Yes, I hope to visit the United States. It’d be more feasible sometime between August and December, because reasons, but sorry, no promises yet. I think I wouldn’t bring electronics of any kind in, for fear of Trumpian border patrol confiscating journalists’ devices, now that I’m a rolling rock freelancer or stone or what have you. I’d just put my needed documents into an asymmetrically encrypted tarball, upload it to the secret X-marks-the-spot online, then buy a cheap laptop Stateside, put Lubuntu Linux on it, and download the tarball once back in anxiety-covered CONUS. Also would help with travel to win the lottery. I guess my biggest concern is that, while I’m there, Trump might decide to close the border on some pretext or because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed, making it hard to get back out, although I imagine he’d want to implement a tiered $ystem. Definitely need to visit and finish scanning some old documents and suchlike that I didn’t get around to dealing with when I left in December—and before the Golden Dome is erected to keep missiles out, USians in (whether just psychologically or by additional border strictures).
  
  
• Yes, you can still snailmail my Seattle PO Box—the same address on this blog’s sidebar to the right—and I’ll get a photo or scan of whatever you send eventually, and the magnificent human who checks my PO Box on my behalf can, in time, deposit checks or whatever else might need to be done with your old-school letter. There are a lot of people I owe snailmails and emails. I’ll reply soon; I haven’t forgotten! Just, moving to another country with another language, et cetera, takes a lot, while trying to keep up with news and everything else. Patience please, and thanks!
  
  
• Long-term plans? Idk, man, I have a vasectomy and no mortgage, no kids, what do I need long-term plans for? I’m gonna finish paying off my debt, slowly tapering off psychopharmaceuticals, and reading and writing. What else is there?

This blog post, Memo from Mexico City 2, by Douglas Lucas, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (summary). The license is based on the work at this URL: https://douglaslucas.com/blog/2025/06/04/memo-from-mexico-city-2/. You can find the full license (the legalese) here. To learn more about Creative Commons, I suggest this article and the Creative Commons Frequently Asked Questions. Please feel free to discuss this post in the comments section below, but if you’re seeking permissions beyond the scope of the license, or want to correspond with me about this post (or related topics) one on one, email me: dal@riseup.net. And gimme all your money!

June 1, Mexico City: Discussing teachers’ protest with Zócalo occupiers On Dec. 21, I described leaving the United States for México in my blog post “Memo from Mexico City.” I’ve...

Note: I took all of the photos in this post except the above, taken by Ricardo, and one below, noted as taken by Ricardo. I took the video of Iván playing electric bass; he took the video of me doing the same.

Update #1: The inaugural issue of Letras Con Locuras has been published. Our meeting is described (in Spanish) on pages 68-71 with photos; the rest of the magazine is very exciting and vibrant as well!

Update #2: Regarding abuses in Mexican psychiatric/medical institutions, see also this Disability Rights International report, Abandoned & Disappeared, and their related video, both from 2010.

Last Sunday, at the Sea-Tac International Airport, I boarded an Aeroméxico flight headed for Mexico City (CDMX). That followed a sleep-deprived, caffeine-chugging week of intensely working on relinquishing my Seattle apartment: downsizing, donating, discarding, digitizing, and depositing (for long-term storage at a friend’s) seemingly all of my worldly possessions. I never would have accomplished that huge task without the exceptional help of my amazing Seattle area friends. No way. I can’t thank them enough.

And then, there I was: after nine years of living in Seattle and telling people I’d leave the country long term someday, I was finally stepping into the aircraft, listening to Spanish Christmas carols jingle out of the overhead speakers. The plane held maybe 200 passengers. Save for count-on-one-hand number of Japanese folks reading kanji, and count-on-the-other-hand number of white, presumably U.S. people, the whole rest of the metal tube readying to jet through the sky was filled with what I took to be Latin Americans. The flight attendants spoke in Spanish, the announcements were in Spanish—I was headed, as my mom would say, a long way from Gilmer, Texas. Maybe not as the crow flies, but certainly as the imaginary lines found on maps decree.

Just before the flight taxied toward the runway, the attendants tried mightily to close an overhead compartment, the door of which was stubbornly refusing to close without somebody’s strap from their backpack hanging out (not mine, I promise). So they just left it dangling out and closed the compartment that way. It was a subtle little telling detail of the sort fiction-writers prize that concisely gave a sense of how Mexico would be way the hell more laid back than the United States, where such a rogue strap might cause a U.S.-based airline’s flight attendant to bark at a passenger that the item must now be checked at their own great expense. (Decades ago, Southwest Airlines was probably this chill in the States, but no longer.)

When I wasn’t dozing on the flight—my caffeine withdrawal timer starting—I was reading Marty Friedman’s newly released memoir Dreaming Japanese. The astonishingly versatile, poodle-haired electric guitarist, known in the U.S. for playing with Megadeth, gave up his gig with the world-famous metal band at the end of 1999 and moved to Japan, where he rebuilt his career from the ground up, reaching the same or greater heights playing different types of music he was also interested in. It seemed an apropros read for my long-term travel since I’m getting a little sick of writing what sometimes feels like the same journalism articles (even though they’re not), for an audience that seems too precious to lift a finger about injustices but not too precious to then act confused on social media as to why things are getting worse (even though the audience is more effortful than my bad moods make them out to be). I’m hoping Mexico’s calmer pace will help me pour more prioritized time into writing science fiction.

We landed. I descended the plane stairs, my weighty blue backpack straining my traps, then took a shuttle to immigration. La migra is a concern even for some well-to-do USians because you might get a jock officer who wants to throw his weight around and make your cross-border life difficult. Luck of the draw had me standing in front of a little circular desk, at the center of which sat a very Mexican woman with a full complement of rock’n’roll-looking tattoos on both arms. She seemed bemused by this pale man, at merely 5’10” still taller than most Mexican guys, in front of her, with his hair certainly longer—nearly every Mexican dude has short hair (so as not to distract from needlessly carrying that heavy machismo burden). She asked if I spoke Spanish. “Un poco” (a little), I said, hedging my bets. She let out a stream of rapid Spanish, but I caught enough to understand she wanted to know my job, a standard border question. I’d planned to say Maestro (teacher), but I blurted out Escritor autónomo (freelance writer). Both are true, but in the U.S. anyway, the former sounds less sketch. She sort of looked at me like Really? Really? Because if you wanna prove it, my shift ends at— But more important than any of that (half in my head, I’m sure), she gave me the full six months on my visa, which on rare occasion, ornery guards do not dispense.

After immigration, before getting my suitcase, I took the above selfie, because 2024. Visited the money-changers in their garish little temples right outside the airport, then taxied to my hostel, got set up, and decided to find dinner before collapsing into a deep, caffeine-withdrawal sleep.

As luck would have it, I found Luvina, a vegan bar with U.S. and local(?) heavy metal driving sound waves from the overhead speakers into my skull—quite like Seattle’s Georgetown Liquor Company not far from m̶y̶ ̶h̶o̶m̶e̶ my former home. Once a few communication difficulties were surmounted—the polite waitress unnecessarily apologized for not speaking English—I ordered a plate of nachos with queso and soy chorizo atop. Including tip, that cost me a grand total of $5 USD. At the excellent Georgetown in southern Seattle, the equivalent would probably run you $30 USD. And people are asking why I went to Mexico?

Yeah, WTF am I doing this?

Well, I purchased my airfare prior to the 2024 U.S. presidential election going to Trump, so it wasn’t that, although Teflon Don shouting about bringing back institutionalization (lock up those with severe mental health issues, or perhaps a history of them, whether they like it or not, potentially forever) and about (illegally) staying in office past another four years did accelerate me somewhat. So did just about every non-MAGA USian’s lack of response. In 2016, his victory caused a flurry of panicked messages on U.S.-based email lists I’m on—even civic freeloaders (non-activists) were freaking out and exchanging contact info and also buying toilet paper, wait, no, that was the pandemic. Worriedly exchanging contact information might not be Zapatista-level resistance, exactly, but the complete absence of even that bare minimum in 2024 was unsettling, as if everyone had silently agreed to just doormat for MAGA (“focus on other things”), give ’em the green light to stamp the gas pedal all the way down, which they will. Activists might argue that in 2016 they marched down streets yelling, and civic freeloaders might argue that in ’16 they give $50 to this or that milquetoast nonprofit, so why bother doing the same in 2024 when it didn’t work in 2016? But there are other, better options: see how Romania, Georgia, and other countries are currently responding to reactionary takeover attempts in their lands. Even when they’re “tired” or their “head hurts” or they’d “rather watch comedians,” they’re risking their friendships, their jobs, their freedom (facing arrest or murder). Civic freeloaders, sometimes even activists, in the U.S. refuse to admit that they too can take such actions and regain dignity, selfhood, esteem. Therefore showing people counterexamples and options from beyond their familiar borders should be normalized. Like, say, this blog post.

Georgia showed up for itself, Ukraine showed up for itself, Romania Showed up for itself, Syria showed up for itself. None of them waited to be helped, they picked up themselves and fought against corruption and impunity. They didn't beg, they didn't make excuses for themselves. They showed up.

— Anonymous (@youranoncentral.bsky.social) 2024-12-03T13:41:37.725Z

If you'd like the US to annul the 2024 election, then you should probably have mass protests BEFORE Trump is sworn in. Romania showed up for democracy, you can too.

— Anonymous (@youranoncentral.bsky.social) 2024-12-06T16:17:47.528Z

Again, though, politics didn’t motivate my move, if by politics you mean group affiliation (yoking oneself to teams). If you mean perspective or attitude, then sure, I’m seeking adventure. I grew a lot as a person by moving from Texas to the Pacific Northwest in 2015, so a decade later, it’s time to journey similarly, connecting with new sources of joy and knowledge, while pruning away some of the old, withered, under-performing ones. I’m not into the self-immurement thing where people literally build giant walls around their property and spend decades inside, waiting for death via their death-pledges (ever looked up the literal meaning of the word mortgage?). That said, I’ll probably be eating this paragraph—to a degree—at some point, because an increasingly not-young life lived out of a suitcase is likely not for me, either. No need to figure it out right now. Thanks to Border Tattooette, I have six months to work on eight goals, the areas of which are:

1. Fiction-writing
2. Money
3. Physical health/exercise
4. Organizing my life in various ways
5. Journactivism (it never stops)
6. Reading
7. Spanish
8. Mental health

Take me down to the Mexico City where…

At first CDMX—specifically, the Centro area—reminded me a bit of Queens or the Bronx, a world-city with a thousand smells, a million people on the sidewalks, and a zillion street vendors selling wares of enigmatic provenance—and then somebody zooming around automobiles on a motorcycle, triumphantly waving a boombox blasting AC/DC, or numerous other surprises. Except last time I was in New York City (to give a talk on election security at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference), just this summer, there was less of all that than movies make you think. The Centro of Mexico City, by contrast, really does have this U.S.-stereotypical “NYC stuff” everywhere.

Exploring the streets at one point, I passed a vendor whose stall caught my eye. Astronomy binoculars, astronomy laser pointers, and a bunch of radio gadgets like Baofeng VHF/UHF transmitters! Now why would astronomy gear accompany radio gear? I half-expected to see a Jules Verne-esque diving helmet or maybe Geordi La Forge’s visor. Another stall was just one of many offering software. Like some cyberpunk novel, or that Super Nintendo game Shadowrun. Yeah, let me purchase one of these chips for some nuyen, I mean pesos, and stick it into my brain to double my reflex speed, evade those Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics. You get the feeling you can find anything here if you look long enough, and indeed, seems people come from all over the place to shop in the Centro.

Most days this past week, the weather’s been ideal, easily 70 Fahrenheit in the middle of December, with the sun brighter than Texas. Sunglasses helped. As the week continued, I listened to organ grinders play their flat-sounding antique instruments and wondered if their controversial sound would grow on me. I bought La Jornada each morning—the New York Times equivalent in Mexico that printed leaked U.S. diplomatic cables a decade and a half ago—for 10 pesos (50 cents) daily and practiced reading at least the headlines. Primarily I focused on practical things, though, such as buying bandaids for a cut on my heel or finding a large hair brush since my bulging suitcase wouldn’t quite fit one. Whenever, wherever you are, you still have to go through each day accomplishing tasks, the incessant becoming Zen Buddhists talk (complain?) about. But every once in a while, you look around and think, Holy shit, I’m in another country!

Lots of little awkward moments to decipher, too. Things you ordinarily don’t think about growing up in just one country for decades. Do I pay before or after eating at a streetside restaurant? (Depends, but usually after.) How do I ensure the ATM gives me the right amount of MXN? (The screens of ones I used made everything clear, albeit in Spanish.) How the heck will I squeeze into this packed subway train? (By accepting that we’re all friends here, close friends.) A lady gave me the kiss-cheeks greeting I assumed was a European thing, how on Earth do I respond? (Just bumping cheeks seemed to suffice.)

Even if I weren’t deep into caffeine withdrawal, all the new learning would still have been enough to send me, each night, into deep slumber.

Mexican mental health activists and Letras con Locura

When I went to British Columbia, Canada alone in 2019, I thought it important to connect with local activists there involved in movements I participate in. That included Food Not Bombs and whatever radical mental health activists I could find. Doing the same thing in Mexico City made sense. Another benefit of meeting with CDMX mental health activists is that I could ask them questions about how the Mexican psychiatric system functions and malfunctions, something I needed to know for myself.

It’s approaching three years since I last discharged from a psychiatric hospital (for severe manic depression), a recovery I largely began thanks to a variant of EMDR called brainspotting. I still take lithium and quetiapine, but am slowly—very slowly—tapering down on each, with the assistance of simpatico clinicians in the States. But none were able to tell me if a rural Mexican pharmacy would have exactly “lithium carbonate (extended release)” or what. So I thought I’d ask the pros, the real experts when it comes to mental health: the survivors, others like me who’ve figured their shit out enough to help others in the same peculiar, stigmatized boat. While having a touch of depression can be trendy—see mentally ill gf memes—nobody of the so-called sane is exactly beating down doors with answers or invitations for those experiencing extreme distress, delusions/strange beliefs, or unshared perceptions (pejoratively, hallucinations; praised, revelations). If this is you, then, like people punched in the face and laughed at anywhere, eventually you have to show up for yourself and each other, or die. Resistance is existence.

Thanks to Luis Gerardo Arroyo Lynn, a journalist with Mad in Mexico, an affiliate of journalist Robert Whitaker’s Mad in America, I was put in touch with Iván Maceda Mejías, an activist here in CDMX. Later, on Thursday, I had dinner with Luis—at the same vegan bar, Luvina—where he patiently answered my questions and pointed me to a report, by Documenta in 2020, regarding human rights abuses in the Mexican mental health care system. It was great to discuss the subject with Luis, including similarities and differences between the United States and Mexico.

On Tuesday, Iván met me at my hostel. We’d planned to meet three other activists he knew a bit later for lunch, but right now we had some time to roam the streets, ostensibly looking for a cafe, talking and getting to know one another. Music is huge everywhere—my music-related belongings I listed on Craigslist and FB Marketplace for leaving my apartment drew more attention than any of my other items—but music in Mexico is ginormous: the Centro has infinite music shops selling electric guitars, basses, drum kits, horns, PA systems, the works. I told Iván about a nice cherry sunburst 5-string Jackson bass I’d seen near my hostel, and we discovered that we both play(ed) electric bass. He’s played in 20+ bands, far more than I ever have; I switched from music to writing in 2006. Nevertheless, I can still play a little today, so out the window went the serious topics of journalism, mental health activism, and the rest as we rushed to find a music shop where we could take turns playing bass.

After jamming out, Iván and I rode the subway to meet another activist friend of his, Santiago Cervera Gutiérrez, then proceeded to ride a second subway train to the Tlatelolco area, still considered part of the Centro. The subway cars were densely packed and they even had a separate train for women (with or without children) to take optionally—women could still ride the non-exclusive train if they wanted. Thought-provoking for sure, but probably it’d be better to actually punish male offenders and sink masculinism fully.

We got some food and my caffeine withdrawal (and intense introversion) must have been showing, because I got a few questions as to my quiet. It was all good and reminded me a little of peer support communities in Seattle where people openly check on each other, usually just a little, when necessary, asking somebody how they’re doing, instead of always saying everything behind people’s backs. Then Iván, Santiago, and I met up with Thania Fernández Arceo and Ricardo Sánchez, both of whom work with Colective Chuhcan, an organization of diagnosees demanding an end to systemic abuses in the psychiatric system.

Iván, Santiago, Thania, and Ricardo had been key to Radio Abierta (Open Radio), the first radio program in Mexico featuring, and run by, personas con algún padecimiento psíquico (people with some mental illness). The weekly show began in 2009. It shut down somewhat recently—partly due to that perennial problem, lack of funds—but the archives are available and members are now making a new magazine, Letras con Locura (Letters with Madness). It’ll be available online. Hey U.S., give that to your Spanish classes! The members had previously published another magazine, so they have a lot of experience. (The earlier was Toing, as in the sound a spring makes—akin to the idiom, a screw loose.)

In 2013, the New York Times wrote an excellent article titled “Ex-Patients Police Mexico’s Mental Health System” (paywall-bypassing archival link), featuring both Radio Abierta and Colective Chucan. I really recommend reading it.

Eating lunch in the Tlatelolco area (pictured atop this section), we shared our mental health stories as best we could, since my Spanish needs improvement and their levels of English proficiency varied. Speaking Spanish, I do a lot of just throwing infinitives around instead of conjugating the verb, or saying things that are close enough, like “¿Cambiar?” (To change?) when asking the person behind the counter if they have change for a certain billete (bill). But it gets the job done, for now. A cofounder of the Seattle chapter of the Hearing Voices Network (HVN) saw the photo of us at lunch and remarked that it looked the same as any HVN peer support gathering in the U.S., only Mexican. Maybe we all have more in common than we like to think.

I gathered from the activists that Mexico has less than 5,000 psychiatrists—by way of comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the number of psychiatrists in the United States, as of 2023, at roughly 25,000—each making, on average, a quarter million dollars a year, I might add. And while the U.S. is not quite triple the population of Mexico, it has five times the amount of psychiatrists. Not that I’m one of those “more services, no matter what they consist of” types, but the difference serves as a sort of barometer indicating how the topic in Mexico is less—how to put it?—official? For better or worse.

The activists told me Mexico has nothing like peer respites. That’s an objective in the United States to establish unlocked, bed and breakfast-like rest spots, staffed by psychiatric survivors rather than clinicians, that serve as a midpoint between today’s two options: tough out your extreme distress at home alone (with busy friends only able to help so much), or get locked up in a ward for weeks or months, very possibly losing your job, lease, and self-esteem. The U.S. has a few peer respites; I toured one in Georgia in 2018 when I covered whistleblower Reality Winner’s sentencing in Augusta. The movement in Mexico, Santiago memorably explained, is “in diapers.” Yet the offices of Radio Abierta at times served as a de facto peer respite for the show’s team, a place where they could air the program, but take care of each other, too. In King County (Seattle), two million dollars was awarded to found peer respites—but was then reallocated due to the pandemic. The respites my friends and I fought for there never happened. Between government funds disappearing, or grassroots radio funds drying up, seems neither alternative—money from The Man or money from playing in a band (or what have you)—is working so long as so many civic freeloaders/system loyalists refuse to defect toward participating themselves or until people get over their obsession with nonstop monetizing/trade. Activists can only turbocharge their productivity wearing superhero capes for so long till we crater too (though there are still ways to get freer, more magical). Suddenly it seemed Mexico and the U.S. weren’t that far apart after all.

We talked about a few other mental health topics. I mentioned the venerable Madness Radio, which airs in the United States on FM stations, Pacifica Radio, etc. To my surprise, the Mexican activists hadn’t heard of it. Now they have! The rest of what they told me were initial remarks or things I need to learn more about. Hopefully I’ll write about the relationship between U.S. mental health and Mexican mental health more formally in the near-ish future.

It was so nice to chat in person with other people who have endured extreme mental health situations. It’s so comforting, to be able to say something like, “Yeah this one time I was locked up, I had this roommate who was barely a teenager, and he’d sit in a chair all day every day in the center of our room, staring at the ceiling, smiling and not budging an inch” and have interlocuters chime in with similar experiences. Whereas talking with people who haven’t had the pleasure of being tackled, tazed, and syringed in the ass with antipsychotic, if you put salt on your food, or ask what time it is, they’ll typically say He likes salt or It’s 11:40. But tell them first that you’ve experienced manic psychosis long ago, and then put salt on your food or ask the time, and they’ll say He’s eating so much salt, must be because he’s bipolar or He’s really obsessed with the time, it’s got to be a symptom of his mental illness. Like, I can tell when goodhearted people are just looking out for me asking if I’m okay, as opposed to not-so-nice people trying to wield this kind of stuff against me, but it’s really wonderful not to have to even worry about it in the first place with company that’s, well, like-minded!

Leaving Tlatelolco, we saw graffiti asserting Fue el estado (it was the state). The graffiti blames the Mexican (narco-)state for the military’s Oct. 2, 1968 massacre in Tlatelolco. Provoked by presidential guard snipers, the regular Mexican military killed scores of unarmed civilians who were protesting the upcoming Olympics. More recently, the movement in Mexico to find the missing Ayotzinapa students has also used Fue el estado as a rallying cry. Those 43 students were disappeared in the Mexican state of Guerrero, disappeared while busing to the city of Iguala in part to raise funds to travel to this same place, Tlatelolco, for an anniversary march commemorating the Oct. 2 massacre. Imagine sitting in the plush corner office of some quarter-million-a-year psychiatrist in the States who can’t accomplish his own desired move away from Donald Trump, and telling him or her all that about Mexico. I’d much rather discuss it in CDMX with the Letras con Locura team. Note that the tragedies just mentioned weren’t unique to Mexico. With the backing of the United States, Operation Condor and military dictatorship ‘dirty wars’ plagued much of South America and beyond for a decade or more, roughly during the same time frame as the Oct. 2, 1968 massacre.

As I alternated between adrenaline and caffeine withdrawal, Iván, Santiago, and I finished the day at the Zócalo, the main, central square of Mexico City’s Centro. Before checking out the Aztec dancers, we watched the lowering of the huge Mexican flag in front of the El Palacio Nacional. Somewhere in that palace, Mexican’s first scientist president and first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, inaugurated in October, was assuredly discussing with aides how to respond to Trump’s tariff threats, or her new decree shielding the national textile industry (one of those La Jornada headlines), or some other world-historic matter. Iván expressed high hopes for Sheinbaum’s sexenio (the name for a Mexican president’s single six-year term). So did Luis, on Thursday, much more cautiously, but he expressed worries as well. Omar García Harfuch, he pointed out, Sheinbaum’s pick for Secretary of Security and Civilian Protection, is the son of Javier García Paniagua, who during the Mexican Dirty War headed the Federal Security Directorate, a secret-police spy agency known for killing and torturing students, political prisoners, activists. On Dec. 20, the George Washington University-based National Security Archive’s Mexico Project released a curation of declassified U.S. documents about the Dirty War in Mexico, presenting, the researchers say, a “clearer picture than has ever been available of the ‘systematic and widespread’ human rights abuses committed by Mexican intelligence, military, police, and parastate forces that targeted ‘broad sectors of the population’ between 1965 and 1990.”

What to make of Harfuch’s appointment is impossible for me to say, no expert in Mexican politics. Off the cuff, it reminds me of Kamala Harris chest-pounding like any GOP militarist on topics such as border control and crime. The days of presidents not totally given over to their countries’ national security powerbases are long gone, if they ever even existed. In that respect, Mexico and the United States once more seemed not so different after all. Yet Harfuch has been key to detaining organized crime leaders, as in Operación Enjambre, I’m told. Maybe it takes one to know one. Or maybe the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and horrors by his hand are hitting Mexico already. Family isn’t destiny; sometimes black sheeps become the freest spirits. Other times, despite the ridiculousness of the lazy claims that genes control your every thought and emotion, even the biggest rebel can find himself suddenly aping nearly forgotten mannerisms of a grandparent—I occasionally scrunch my nose up in disgust in a way that imitates, I’ve only recently realized, my late paternal grandfather. Sometimes I even do it this far from Gilmer.

Protesta Economica Feminista

On Thursday, walking back to my hostel, I passed a street vendor selling her handmade jewelry—and proselytizing for anarchistic feminism with signs she’d penned and laid out on the sidewalk. Stunned, I stood still, looking down and slowly translating, in my head, the longest one: “Economic independence is fundamental for freedom of women—without it, economic violence becomes a tool of control that perpetuates gender inequality.”

Smiling, she asked me if I had any questions.

I told her I was a freelance writer and journalist from Seattle. I wish I’d thought to ask for her opinion on the women-only optional subway train. Instead, I told her about #OpJane (¡Ellxs arrojan embotellas de fuego!) and said my female friends back in the U.S. would get a kick out of her signs. At this she brightened extra, nodding, and saying yes, please do that as I snapped pictures of her agitprop.

Heading in the opposite direction as the United States, where the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Mexico last year decriminalized abortion countrywide. The stronger and stronger Mexican women’s movement was hugely responsible for this landmark in the liberation of reproductive rights. As this article explains, they showed up for themselves and each other:

“The strategy we did in Mexico City was of a different order. … It was a legislative strategy,” said Marta Lamas, one of Mexico’s most prominent feminists. But “if you don’t have people on the street demanding and pushing, it is very difficult,” added Lamas, a political science professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who testified at the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation in the groundbreaking trial that upheld legalized abortion in Mexico City.

I cheerfully waved goodbye to the street vendor. Days later, I sometimes find myself wondering what her next sign will say.

Mexico, that is to say, the weekend

Red metropolises in the United States—such as Dallas/Fort Worth—are like weekdays at a tyrannical workplace; a U.S. blue port—such as Seattle—is like a weekday at a benevolent dictatorship workplace at best. The ol’ good cop, bad cop one-two. Canada, or at least Victoria and Vancouver based on my 2019 experience, is an ever bluer version of Seattle, a weekday at something approaching an actual liberal democracy workplace, with single-payer universal health insurance and no mass shootings, but still the systemic requirement that you trade your services to the powerful or beg for charity or die, with the idea that another way of life—inclusive sharing—might have long existed completely nonexistent in the supposedly sane minds of most.

Wage-slavery is still a paramount thing in Mexico, of course. But Mexico feels like it’s the f-in weekend.

Even with the Mexican military on the streets—at the behest of former Mexican president Felipe Calderón in 2006, who assigned the armed forces the leading role in his “War on Drugs”—CDMX, or at least the Centro, is a calm, chill place. The laid back attitude is ubiquitous. I saw a cop directing traffic while simultaneously yawning and checking her phone. “Mexican time” is a thing. Take your Marty Friedman Dreaming Japanese book to the vegan restaurant; in the States, you’d be in and out of the joint in under an hour, having barely read two chapters—in the Centro, plan on 90 minutes or more, easy, if you’re engrossed in your book. Why would the waitstaff bring you la cuenta (the check) when they could do plenty of other things and let you read? It’s refreshing but also curious to feel time slide around strangely. What I see on my wristwatch doesn’t compute with what’s going on in my psyche, like some sort of light-speed traveller.

When I went to British Columbia in 2019, I noticed the lower ambient stress levels immediately once I got off the ferry from Seattle. What the—is everyone on Valium or something? And then I realized USians are really just that high-strung, and often unaware of the tense environment they’ve become calibrated to. CDMX is like Victoria but even more so. My body seems to be registering the relaxation. Sure, there are U.S. corporate restaurants like Chili’s and Burger King, but they’re few in number and easy to avoid. The healthy meals I’ve obtained, lacking any “organic” labels, come in smaller portion sizes than their United States equivalents, and taste more genuine than U.S. organic-labelled food, for far cheaper, yet I really think the lack of ambient stress is what’s apparently caused 5+ pounds to fall off me in the past week. That’s just from looking in the mirror and the fit of my slacks, so I could be wrong, but probably not. And people are asking why I went to Mexico?

When I was relinquishing my apartment, my appetite was bizarre. Eating is an exercise in selfish mini-hoarding: packing on the pounds. Meanwhile, shedding all of my worldly belongings seemed, energetically, the exact opposite. So my body felt really confusing (not to mention the caffeine and shortchanged sleep). Here, it seems the widespread sense of safety is permitting my body to toss overboard some of my unnecessary fatty shielding. And while I ran miles and intermittent-fasted and all that in the States when I didn’t have an overdue journalism article deadline dominating my life, in Mexico City I haven’t done anything exercise- or health-wise besides walk around with a crazy blue backpack and lug a ginormous swollen suitcase, which, okay, is a lot. But still, like, was the problem the fish, or the fishbowl?

My friends are far away physically, but it hasn’t mattered much. I’m still messaging with ’em back in the States via SMS, Signal, social platforms, or email, although I’ll have to figure out eSIM(s) or whatever for my phone eventually (don’t get me started on that topic). I called a store in Seattle to follow up about something without even having to dial the country code. My Hearing Voices Network friend in Washington state prison has a Securus tablet permitting e-messaging—basically email—and I was able to attach some of the photos from this very blog post in correspondence with him. Our e-messaging goes swimmingly so long as the guard tearing out their hair reading my baroque sentences decides not to censor anything, which hasn’t happened yet, though that Nobel Prize for Literature panelist working at the prison is assuredly fed up with having to skim my writing.

I’ve noticed people older than I am tend to treat this kind of travel as some tremendous, irrevocable change, but younger people aren’t so thrown off by it. It’s becoming increasingly common to meet someone—as one of my friends in Fort Worth did—far away, the United Kingdom in her case, gaming online, and have a long-distance relationship. For her, it culminated in a month-long face-to-face meeting and even plans to migrate to his country. I mean shit, the notorious Seattle Freeze makes it hard to hang out with people in person in the Emerald City anyway. Is it really that big of a deal that I’m in Mexico for six months? And no, I haven’t decided what I’m going to do when my visa runs out in mid-June. Why borrow trouble? I’m on Mexican time. I’ll figure it out later.

On one of my last nights here in CDMX, crossing a wider intersection with more traffic and traffic lights than usual, I saw, in what’s akin to a bike lane, a young man and young woman rollerblading, moving in perfect sync with diagonally dancing legs as they held hands, sweaty fingers interwined, interlocked.

Last night I did have an awful nightmare. Sleeping in my tiny hostel room, I came to perceive that I was actually trapped in some sort of dumpster, and a garbage truck was about to destroy me forever. I started screaming my head off, so much so that an employee was called to check on me in the middle of the night. He (or she?) opened the door slightly, letting in light through the crack, as I, nude on the floor, tucked into a ball, looked up and mumbled, only English available to me, Nightmare, sorry, nightmare, sorry. “You sure? You sure?” they asked. Yes, nightmare, sorry. I’ve had night terrors off and on my whole life; I’m not sure what caused this one. Maybe loneliness or the fear thereof. Or maybe this whole adventure (and this headbanger’s diplomatic cable of a blog post) has required adopting some bravado, some acting like all this is easy-peasy, when really it is kinda huge.

I don’t particularly have time to think about it. Everything is so focused on practicalities presently. In not that many hours from now, I’m getting on another Aeroméxico flight headed for the Mexican state of Chiapas, where prices will be even cheaper, where I’ll meet up with a friend, where I’ll find an apartment. I wish I had some grand message to give you at the end of this mammoth post, but I don’t. This week has really worn me out, not in a bad way, nightmare aside; rather, happily, like going to a carnival or festival and then, tired, coming back—home.

Which is. Where?

You can answer that with your own cliché. I’ve got a ballooning suitcase to miraculously zip up, and a Spanish-everything plane to catch.

This blog post, Memo from Mexico City, by Douglas Lucas, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (summary). The license is based on the work at this URL: https://douglaslucas.com/blog/2024/12/21/title-goes-here/. You can find the full license (the legalese) here. To learn more about Creative Commons, I suggest this article and the Creative Commons Frequently Asked Questions. Please feel free to discuss this post in the comments section below, but if you’re seeking permissions beyond the scope of the license, or want to correspond with me about this post (or related topics) one on one, email me: dal@riseup.net. And gimme all your money!

Me (center) with Mexican mental health activists Iván (viewer’s right) and Santiago (viewer’s left), Dec. 17, 2024 Note: I took all of the photos in this post except the above,...

Note: In 2021 I’ll publish at least one blog post per week, whichever day I get to it. Here’s entry 8 of 52.

Note: Still working on Biden Part 2 of 2. It’s taking longer than I expected! If you want to help, here’s something I haven’t figured out yet. In this 98-second video clip, can you hear what the then-vice president whispers to thirteen-year-old Maggie Coons shortly before trying to kiss her (on Jan 6, 2015)? He starts: “By the way, if you want to know how important it is, being thirteen” and then I can’t discern the rest clearly. If you can (maybe try headphones?), let me know: dal@riseup.net Or leave a comment on this post.

Just a quick entry this week: five photographs I took in Seattle’s Industrial District West area. The view is from one of the trails I frequently run on.

The first four pics show a graffiti battle, in which the original artist(s), disbelieving in the coronavirus news, painted “COVID is a lie!” as well as a sickly physician, named Dr Stupid on his shirt, saying vaccines are harmless while holding a needle. Another artist(s) sprayed graffiti atop that, correcting “COVID is a lie!” with “COVID is killing people!” The second artist(s) also wrote a comment on Dr Stupid: Enjoy your Darwin award. The United States has now topped half a million deaths from COVID-19; it has far more deaths from coronavirus than any other country on the globe.

The final image I photographed from the same area. It shows, through chain link fence, multiple train tracks, what I believe is a port terminal, plus in the distance across Elliott Bay, the Space Needle.

Recently I read (forgot where) that people who live in this area of Seattle, like me, cut a decade or so off their life due to air and other pollution. I presume from the Ash Grove cement plant nearby, among other sources. The area is apparently also an EPA superfund site: extra money allocated from the feds in hopes of cleaning up an especially toxic area.

But back when I lived in Texas, prior to 2016, I always wanted to move to an industrial portion of Seattle. It just seemed right; I don’t really pay much heed to left-brain lists of reasons when choosing big life decisions; I try to listen to myself instead. The graffiti seems a fitting part of this landscape.

This blog post, Seattle graffiti about coronavirus, by Douglas Lucas, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (human-readable summary of license). The license is based on a work at this URL: https://douglaslucas.com/blog/2021/02/27/seattle-graffiti-about-coronavirus/. You can view the full license (the legal code aka the legalese) here. For learning more about Creative Commons, I suggest this article and the Creative Commons Frequently Asked Questions. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license, or want to correspond with me about this post otherwise? Please email me: dal@riseup.net.

Note: In 2021 I’ll publish at least one blog post per week, whichever day I get to it. Here’s entry 8 of 52. Note: Still working on Biden Part 2...