Get a kick out of Juarez

Every year a committee of professors comes down to visit the program – basically, to see what their universities’ students are doing and to see some of the border for themselves. And so, on November 1st, students, coordinators and visiting professors got together to discus some of the BSP 2007 experience so far. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed and felt at home in a liberal arts atmosphere. I guess it showed, though, since one of the visiting professors told me that I speak like a professional student. If it means more dinner conversations about “the current global phase of catastrophic systemic breakdown”, count me in. There’s something about the whole “inquiry and analysis as lifestyle” thing that I find as exciting as a zip-wire over a canyon and as comfortable as a childhood blanket.

And nowhere but here could that lifestyle have blended so delightfully with a student’s social life as it did at the fiesta given in celebration of the program’s 10th anniversary. Nowhere but here could I – all within the space of an hour - dance to corridas with my Papa, to salsas and merengues with my professor, and to the Macarena, Great Balls of Fire, and Rock Around the Clock with a bunch of fellow students and our 40+ year old Mamas. And nowhere but here would I have been forced to blush through a solid 3 minutes of mariachis singing Las Mañanitas (Mexico’s “Happy Birthday” song) to me in front of 80 people.

My real birthday celebration, though, didn’t come until this last weekend, after a very long week. Academically, it was long because I had to: write another newsletter issue, write a rough draft of my field-study ethnography, research for an immigration policy position paper, set up interviews for research into the economic impact of mono-/multi-lingualism, give a presentation on my field study, and create the third layer to a group mapping project. Which, somehow, all took part amidst my little brother’s birthday party, spending what are usually class-hours chatting sprawled out on a neighbour’s lawn (we left our 4-hour class after the prof was over an hour late), and, most notably, the two evenings I spent with Manuel, a salsa instructor from the UACJ.

On Wednesday we went out for coffee. Or at least planned to before remembering that people don’t go out for coffee here. Instead, he nursed a chela (beer) and I enjoyed a pina colada while we played a rousing 2-hour game of bilingual Scrabble. After that I went with him to watch the Malambo latin dance troupe practice. I filmed their show on Thursday night. This is a serious, formal, well-trained group. They’ve invited me to practice with them. They’re levels ahead of me but they said, “So we’ll make you better” so… here’s to working myself to the point of exhaustion over the next few weeks to drastically improve my dancing skills. Just by watching and dancing socially with the troupe members I’ve learned new moves. None of which, sadly, were used on Saturday.

For my birthday, 11 friends and I (and two complete strangers who tagged along with one of them, whose effect on the intimacy of the evening I was initially less than pleased about) went dancing to eat at Taboo, a place that seems to have more identity issues than your average TCK. It is a wonderful, cushiony world of carpeted walls and low, curtained tables, and is home to delicious Indian/Mexican/Italian/American/French food. On Saturday, this meant having the best cold chai of my life so far, as well as an absolutely divine plate of super-spicy mango chicken served with vegetables over white rice. Other palate-tingling offerings of the evening included the best apple pie I’ve ever had (thank you, mum, for sending it 1000+ miles cross-country!) and 2 3-person hookahs, one a decent apple and one a mixed-fruit flavour that oddly enough felt best blown out the nose instead of the mouth (seriously, it was like breathing silky velvet). Other highlights of the evening included dancing to the restaurant’s bhangra selection and, in keeping with the unwritten rule that says that large groups of women can’t get together without doing at least one incredibly silly thing, seeing how many people we could pass a single pull from the hookah to via a “kiss” before the smoke disappeared. This is, may I just say, quite hard to do when people keep laughing out big puffs of the stuff. Our record, though, was 3 three people.

Anyways, we eventually left Taboo and headed to Ole, where a few of the girls knew the son of the club’s owner. Thus, we end up not just in the VIP room, but in another more private room attached to the VIP room. We got amazing free drinks out of it, but beyond that it was kind of disappointing. The guys said we were boring because we didn’t drink enough, and we thought the guys were boring because all they wanted to do was drink. And as for my actual birthday on Sunday… Aside from doing a little research and having a lovely dinner with my host-family (it was great fun trying to teach them how to use chopsticks and translating their fortunes), I went to my first live professional - real, not American - football game.

I met up with two other friends before the game and together we wandered around the practice fields watching local club teams play for an hour or so. It was great. I’d forgotten just how much I really love watching football, and how there really is something beautiful and magical about the sport. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it generally involves a bunch of atypically attractive men for 90 minutes.

Anyways, it was a decent game. ‘Kind of boring for the first half, but the last 20 minutes of the match were fantastically charged. And oh-my-goodness do the Mexicans know how to cheer. There was an entire section devoted not to the fans of a particular team but, instead, to their “anti-fans”. The calls were vicious. Aside from the fact that I heard more profanity in the last half of the game than I have in the entire rest of my time here, I was particularly intrigued by one call, “se caen por el hambre!” Literally, it means, “They fall because they’re hungry”. Called out whenever a player fell, the spirit of it is that they fall because they’re hungry because they play so badly that they never win and, thus, don’t earn any money and, thus, can’t afford to eat and, thus, they get weak and fall because they’re hungry because etc., etc., etc. Leave it to Mexicans to bring social class considerations into a football match.

Leaving the match, a friend said she couldn’t walk behind me anymore because she hated seeing people check me out. I actually hadn’t really noticed it myself. Generally it pisses me off to no end that any response on the woman’s behalf here is seen as an instigation of further action and, thus, to be left alone you have to walk around with your head slightly down so as not to even make eye-contact with people. I find that, as a social institution, to be incredibly demeaning. It is already a rare and precious thing enough to have a day – or even a few hours or minutes - when one actually feels attractive and confident just as oneself. It is, therefore, great to have a day when I am comfortable enough in myself to not feel bothered by the many whistles and honking and kissing noises and soft calls – when I can walk around with my head held at a normal, self-respecting level. At the risk of sounding arrogant… it feels great to be able to step out of myself (of my fear and hostility) and recognize it all for what it mostly is - men appreciating a pretty woman – and actually laugh and smile at the attention. Which, honestly, has only happened once down here.

But that one time felt like such a release. Because let’s face it: we all want to be appreciated as women. Definitely in more appropriately demonstrable forms, but… well, at the very least it’s damn nice having constant male-advice on your outfits. Just three whistles today? ‘Not wearing those jeans with that shirt again. Lots of honking and a few calls of “Si fueras mia, reina!”? That’s more like it.