{"id":1383,"date":"2017-03-20T10:04:10","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T17:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=1383"},"modified":"2017-03-21T08:30:10","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T15:30:10","slug":"how-was-oaxaca-well-since-you-asked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=1383","title":{"rendered":"How Was Oaxaca? Well … since you asked"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"How was Oaxaca? That\u2019s what everyone asks each time I return. It\u2019s a polite, succinct question<\/strong> and what\u2019s expected in return in the form of an answer is something similar in character, such as: \u201cIt was great, thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

And after dozens of trips to Oaxaca I\u2019ve learned to limit my answer to what people are expecting, sometimes adding a short augmentation: \u201cIt was great, thanks. Complicated, but great.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most folks leave it at that and move on in the conversation because in reality only a small percentage of our fellow humans want to hear about our vacations (even though for me Oaxaca is not a vacation; nonetheless, most of my friends see it that way).<\/p>\n

The other day, though, someone asked me in Spanish about my recent trip, from which I returned home a week ago, and when I delivered my stock answer she then asked: What do you mean when you say complicated?<\/strong> Qu\u00e9 quieres decir cuando dices complicado?<\/em><\/p>\n

So, I told her.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I told her about  the single mothers from the children\u2019s shelter that was closed nearly a year-and-a-half ago when the state accused<\/strong> the founder and her family of mismanagement and physical and sexual abuse. I have stayed in touch with some of the mothers and continue to photograph some of them and their kids.<\/p>\n

One of the mothers has put her son and daughter in two others shelters run by the Catholic church and now lives in a 12-by-12 room paid for by an older doctor who seems to use her for sex and companionship but doesn\u2019t want anything to do with her kids. The children are the product of a marriage that went bad when the husband\u2019s business failed and he began to drink. He beat her, locked her in the house and made her dress like a man so that other men wouldn\u2019t look for her.<\/strong> I took her to lunch and when we walked by the house in which I rent a room she sat on the steps and began to cry, saying the beautiful colonial building reminded her of the happy life she had before her husband became violent. On the day before I left, we met again briefly in a tiny chapel near her room so I could see her daughter. The doctor won\u2019t let me visit where she lives. He appears to be jealous. The daughter has grown taller in the year since I last saw her and in the chapel she modeled a paper mask she\u2019d made in school as her mother and I sat in a pew. I made a few frames of the girl. The mother took my hand and we sat in silence.<\/p>\n

Another of the mothers lives outside of the center of town. She works every day, cleaning houses in the morning, cooking food in the afternoon to sell at her daughter\u2019s school during recess and doing haircuts in the evening. She and her kids \u2013 a 13-year-old boy and an 11-year-old daughter \u2013 also live in a single room, this one about 10 by 15, for which they pay 600 pesos a month. The neighborhood is poor-ish and safe except for one thing: There is a guy on her block who is killing cats and dogs.<\/strong> He poisoned this mother\u2019s two dogs and then her cat. When the mom got another dog, he ran it over in the street and left it to die from suffocation, the result of its shattered ribs piercing its lungs. The mother wants to make a poster to hang from the front of her building that will say: Beware! We have a neighbor who kills.<\/p>\n

The mother has a new dog now, the uncle of one of the dead ones. To keep the dog from being killed, she keeps it on a small plot of land owned by a friend. We walked there one morning carrying a heavy plastic pot of gruel made from noodles, tortillas and rice and a bag of day-old bolillos \u2013 dogs love bread, she told me. It\u2019s a 45-minute slog, most of it up a steep hill. What I lacked in breath when I got there, I gained in view. A half-dozen dogs live on the land, which also features an unfinished cement house. She fed the dogs the bread and gave them water she\u2019d collected from a well we passed on the route, hung around for about 10 minutes and began to walk back. Ninety minutes of walking for 10 minutes of dog time.<\/strong> She loves this dog as much as she hates her murderous neighbor.<\/p>\n

A third of the mothers I\u2019d only met a few months ago. She is a smart, street-savvy, tattooed young woman with a 5-year-old boy. This trip we met in her aunt\u2019s house, which sits a dusty rise overlooking the west side of the Oaxacan valley. The house is new, built of cinder blocks and concrete \u2013 all of it gray. The floor, the walls, the ceiling \u2013 all of it unfinished concrete. Were it not a two-story structure located above ground, it would seem like a bunker. An impressive black-and-gold metal door fronts the street. The second floor has a terrace. The roof grants an immense vista. The house is the product of 14 years of work in a San Diego suburb by the aunt\u2019s husband, who she last saw five years ago.<\/strong> They have two children, a boy 14 who wants to study gastronomy and another boy 5. The father needs another year or two in the States to finish the house.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n