It is Friday evening in Chicago in June. The destination is obvious for most young professionals out to have a good time: meet friends, old or new, - have a drink, make a memory.
But my adventure transported me to Tlacolula, a small village in Oaxaca, Mexico, and began in a basement on the southwest side of Chicago, one block west of the 5700 block of Austin.
Presuming I was meeting with a source, one source, I was met with a family sitting together around a table in the 7 o'clock light. An assembly line of friends and relatives gathered with scissors and paper in hand were working to make beautiful an event they are planning. Crafting their decorations by hand, en masse, their welcoming to me promised a night of ethnographic bliss, a taste of Tlacocula's Mezcal, and a palpable aura of love I will never be able to shake.
It's probably a good time to tell you this isn't one of those cliche tales of appreciating differences.
The mission was to report on an issue plaguing another country through the eyes of its local immigrant population.
I hadn't planned a list of questions. I went in with an objective: find the impact of political, trade, and economic issues in Oaxaca I've heard about, read about, and traced to, at that point, no particular person in our city.
By picking the state of Oaxaca instead of merely Mexico, I did place a far fetched goal in front of me. Yes, I trusted I would find a group from Oaxaca eventually, but I thought it would undoubtedly reveal itself through my political research.
By picking the state of Oaxaca instead of merely Mexico, I did place a far fetched goal in front of me. Yes, I trusted I would find a group from Oaxaca eventually, but I thought it would undoubtedly reveal itself through my political research.
Making contact by phone through broken Spanish across a chain of Oaxacan leaders in the Midwest diverted me from dowry political insight to the human experience I wanted to know about. It was their calling to God that linked all of of my interviewees, and their worship was something I'd never before seen.
I walked into the basement under the shared umbrella of Christianity, Catholicism even. Was it strike one against my report? Didn't I think a Oaxacan would not practice Catholicism? Speak Zapoteco? This was Catholic assembly and English was spoken.
But the service was for Tlacolula, and its "El Senor" (town crucifix) which had come back from Oaxaca last year to Chicago home of my source, Jose Guadalupe Marcian. And their mission, to build a home for El Senor, taught me from the moment we met that thirty years or so into their establishment in Chicago, they are still seeking home away from home. It is as much for their home town J.C. as it was for them.
What I read on paper, on screen, and inferred from the countless eyebrow raises I encountered when asking the dozens of pedestrian Mexicans if they'd ever met a Oaxaqueno in Chicago: "NO" - I knew so little about them after thinking I'd known so much.
I met new friends, drank their Mezclan (always have two if you have one), and heard about home, their two-faced friend, and got the feeling it was a group of loving people and on their best behavior.
The crazy thing driving away that night was that I sensed the welcoming outpour of amistad transformed our meeting into what I can only call ethnographic... having won their trust, they won mine, and "Best behavior" didn't refer to them, it spoke for humanity.
I walked into the basement under the shared umbrella of Christianity, Catholicism even. Was it strike one against my report? Didn't I think a Oaxacan would not practice Catholicism? Speak Zapoteco? This was Catholic assembly and English was spoken.
But the service was for Tlacolula, and its "El Senor" (town crucifix) which had come back from Oaxaca last year to Chicago home of my source, Jose Guadalupe Marcian. And their mission, to build a home for El Senor, taught me from the moment we met that thirty years or so into their establishment in Chicago, they are still seeking home away from home. It is as much for their home town J.C. as it was for them.
What I read on paper, on screen, and inferred from the countless eyebrow raises I encountered when asking the dozens of pedestrian Mexicans if they'd ever met a Oaxaqueno in Chicago: "NO" - I knew so little about them after thinking I'd known so much.
I met new friends, drank their Mezclan (always have two if you have one), and heard about home, their two-faced friend, and got the feeling it was a group of loving people and on their best behavior.
The crazy thing driving away that night was that I sensed the welcoming outpour of amistad transformed our meeting into what I can only call ethnographic... having won their trust, they won mine, and "Best behavior" didn't refer to them, it spoke for humanity.
I am touch by your ability to set outside your comfort zone. This is a lesson for us all. Now lets go continue to change the world.
ReplyDeleteI am impressed the initiative you are taking to find stories.
ReplyDeleteReading this made me think how tricky/risky it is for aspiring journalists to generate leads and built rapport with the community without the benefit of press cards/back up from a well-known newspaper or tv station. I wish you well with your future career.
ReplyDelete