Trip to a Zapatista Caracole
Feb. 7th, 2014 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI'm back from school. I'm still feeling sick. My mother said this only lasted a couple days for her, so I hope to be better tomorrow. In the meantime, I have a guy coming to buy my drumset tonight, in theory. The money will pay for a hammock for me when I'm in Chiapas.
This weekend, I will likely hole up in my room and do reading. I have pieces related to people of color in general (there's a piece by Bell Hooks, who is a postmodern feminist thinker on topics of gender and race) and Las Zapatistas in particular. I have an article about paradigms in the field of urban history. And I have a few books that I need to work my way through in the next few weeks.
At some point this weekend though, I need to get out and buy some girl scout cookies. Speaking of issues of gender, I will go out of my way to support girl scouts for their inclusive policies. And they have damned good cookies.
I had my first meeting today with the group I'm travelling with to Chiapas. Including the professor, there are only five of us. That's good in its way; I feel optimistic about learning to tell them apart visually and get to know them. We talked about our itinerary. As I was so very much hoping, we are going to spend a day at the Mayan ruin of Palenque! We will be travelling within a Zapatista caracole (Caracoles are the Zapatista governance unit; the name refers to a conch shell.) to a town that very few non-indigenous people are permitted to visit. We'll be travelling with the local folks for stretches, probably via sitting in the back of pickup trucks and bouncing along the trails.
I'm really excited about this; my first time outside of North America! I want some culture shock!
---
"The Zapatista caracoles and Good Governments: The Long Walk to Autonomy", from an online journal called State of Nature.
---
And this is the Mayan archaeological site we'll spend a day at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palenque
This weekend, I will likely hole up in my room and do reading. I have pieces related to people of color in general (there's a piece by Bell Hooks, who is a postmodern feminist thinker on topics of gender and race) and Las Zapatistas in particular. I have an article about paradigms in the field of urban history. And I have a few books that I need to work my way through in the next few weeks.
At some point this weekend though, I need to get out and buy some girl scout cookies. Speaking of issues of gender, I will go out of my way to support girl scouts for their inclusive policies. And they have damned good cookies.
I had my first meeting today with the group I'm travelling with to Chiapas. Including the professor, there are only five of us. That's good in its way; I feel optimistic about learning to tell them apart visually and get to know them. We talked about our itinerary. As I was so very much hoping, we are going to spend a day at the Mayan ruin of Palenque! We will be travelling within a Zapatista caracole (Caracoles are the Zapatista governance unit; the name refers to a conch shell.) to a town that very few non-indigenous people are permitted to visit. We'll be travelling with the local folks for stretches, probably via sitting in the back of pickup trucks and bouncing along the trails.
I'm really excited about this; my first time outside of North America! I want some culture shock!
---
"The Zapatista caracoles and Good Governments: The Long Walk to Autonomy", from an online journal called State of Nature.
---
And this is the Mayan archaeological site we'll spend a day at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palenque
