pozole de pollo (or a big pot of soup)

Ok, I'll admit, I have been remiss in my writerly duties. In fact, so remiss, that I have yet to write the story I have been promising myself for weeks, much less the periodic insistence on this silly thing. Nonetheless.

Friday we took a trip to one of three state run battered women's shelters here in Mexico city. It's address is a secret and there are no markings that show it to be an institutional building of any sort. I won't even say what part of the city it is in, because, as is often the case, the batterer goes looking for his target. I was highly impressed by their comprehensive feminist approach to receiving women who are desperately trying to break a cycle of abuse, usually, as it turns out, for their children's sake more than for their own. There is a net for them to fall back on, and as they are channeled via other government agencies, they immediately have a social worker, a psychologist, a child psychologist for the children, legal aid, medical care, a nutritionist and accompaniment for all the bureaucratic paperwork that they need to do. Women and their children get only a maximum of 90 days, but as the director pointed out, many go home much sooner, thinking that "they taught him a lesson". Some who go home because they escaped without their documents, and say they are coming right back, never return, often murdered by their spouse. Despite what it sounds like, the installations, though simple, were quite welcoming, and there was plenty of light. One woman arrived with her three boys, for intake, as our group was touring. You could see the mix of terror and relief in her eyes. They sat nervously in the kitchen, because the first thing is to feed them, before any paper procedures take place. The little boys all looked around wide-eyed, their little shaved heads bobbing in unison. "You see?" she convinced herself, "we're going to be better, here, just wait, we're going to be fine, you'll see."

Before that one of my classmates asked , "how abused do you have to be?" She wanted to know why you didn't need to come in with broken bones and bruises. The response was unanimous, and forceful... "what is more damaging? fists or words?" We all know that continued verbal abuse (often coupled with physical abuse or the threat of it, which is perhaps more painful because it forces the victim to self-inflict pain, and to constantly self-censor) causes much greater lasting damage. Your body can forget pain, but your mind... I had been fine, up until then, had asked questions about the management, the functioning of the system. There were only 12 women at this shelter, with their children, it was not at capacity because vacations had only just begun and they expected the detonators to come after about a week or two of school vacations, because the women often hold on until they have met with the requirements of their children's school, and then after the rhythm changes, things explode.) In a city of roughly 25 million, this being the largest shelter of its kind, and there only being 12 women... well, needless to say it is mind-boggling to think of how many women are so entrenched in their cycles that they never make it out alive. That was when I started to cry. I didn't want to. I bit my lip and wiped at the bottom of my eyes. I twisted my face into strange contortions, but I couldn't stop myself from hurting for everyone and everything, and for myself, of course. I brushed more tears away, like a week ago at the movies watching I giorni dell abbandono (Roberto Faenza) and trying to keep my weeping in the realm of silent heaving, as the little girl asks her mother desperately to get up out of bed while she takes care of her little brother, hoping no one would notice quite how pathetically tragic I am. I know it is foolish, to be moved so easily to tears, but I try not to beat myself up about it too much either.

So Friday I met Julia, professor, film historian and friend to see Jodorowsky's Fando y Lis (1968) I tried to come at it with an open mind, I know he is supposed to be one of Mexico's film geniuses. I detested the film with such vehemence that my words can do no justice to the sentiment. It was billed as a man and a women who go on an interior journey to the mythical land of Tar to exorcise their childhood demons. It was a disjointed, masculine nightmare replete with comandeering women, forced humiliating homosexuality and an insipid, paralytic woman, that was marched around on his back, and tormented, mentally tortured, abused, left behind in a seething pile of mud teeming with naked bodies, dragged naked down the rocky mountainside, and offered up as a sexual entree to wandering men...and all she could do, throughout the entire film was whine meekly, "no me dejes, no me dejes, Fando.... Fando..." Please, you always trick me, don't use the handcuffs, please... Don't leave me, I love you. Her plaintive little voice alternately enraged, inspired lust and remorse in the male protagonist, and when he finally propitiated her (symbolic?) death, he lay down beside her grave, having promised not to forget her when she was gone, and let the detritus of the seasons, dead leaves and grass cover him. Nevertheless, in the end, he was still alive, and she was dead.

It was too much for me to take, too much hideous deformed reality to stomach for one day. I came home to rest. Especially after the films the day before, a short, a friend's thesis project and exam (will refrain from comment here), and an excellent, excellent tragic film from Mexico El violín (Francisco Vargas) which claims to be set in the 60's but is as valid for that era as it is for this. The most powerful moment is the closing scene, after the grandfather has defiantly confronted his impending death, "Se acabó la música" denying the milico his ultimate submission and humiliation, when the grandson, with the dead father's guitar sings a corrido about the Hidalgo men, who resisted and never came back. The music never ended, it wanted to say, the resistance never will either.


Saturday was slow, in the morning I went to the outdoor market that is around the corner, only on Saturdays, and dropped off my clothing at the laundromat. In the afternoon I went to see Perlita (Perla's daughter), and we talked and drank sangría in the sun for hours. Then finally, I made it to Marimé's only mildly lost (they came and rescued me... I would have found it after all, but they came out for beers). It was good to be with the girls, and we had wonderful Yucatecan food. Sunday was a lost cause. I did little but cleaning, schoolwork and of course, my daily walk. I made it all the way to the center of Coyoacán to realize that the throngs of people were the opposite of what I wanted, or needed, so I just kept walking, all the way through, up Carrillo Puerto, past the Yucatecan antojitos where Nina and Beto and I had a late dinner on Thursday, stopping at Tepoznieves for a nieve de limón, and continuing back up Miguel Angel de Quevedo, with a brief stop at the Superama. Now this may seem like no big feat, but given that my heel ailment has reincribed itself in my body, long walks must necessarily be coupled with stretching or else crippling pain wracks my body. I meandered through the supermarket, bought myself a bottle of Mexican wine (LA Cetto - we'll see how it is, a Petite Sirah) came home, and spent the afternoon doing what most relaxes me. Cooked.

Now I must say, the mole rojo I made last week was fabulous, and while our kitchen is tiny and has only two burners, I have managed alright. I made a large pot of chicken broth, and boiled carrots for later in the week, set aside half the chicken for salad, and pulled the other half for the pozole, then I boiled the hominy grains in the broth (now minus the onion and garlic) or a good hour or so until they softened. Meanwhile I had foreseen my need for American (or at least my brand of American) food, so I chopped up onion, chicken, pecans, apple and apricot, and mixed it with a bit of mayonaise. Meanwhile I was disinfecting the lettuce, copiously. I made myself a salad (having finished the last of the couscous that morning for breakfast with the bean, corn, tomato and bell pepper salad that we had planned for Marimé's, but that got left behind accidentally at the last minute.) using some more of the mix. Ah, lettuce, who knew one would miss it quite so much. I then chopped up onion, garlic, three serrano chiles and a quarter pound or more of (disinfected) mushrooms and set them aside to wait. There was fruit to be dealt with, and I made a marvelously exotic (to me) salad with Mamey (think dark red, texture of an avocado and with an almost syrupy sweet flavor), tuna (prickly pear, the fruit of a nopal) guayaba (guava - not the horrible pink Hawaiian kind, but the yellow, wonderful, aromatic Mexican kind), multiple Manila mangoes (the smaller, sweeter, yellow-skinned, flat-sided ones), halved green grapes, a pear, and fresh squeezed lemon juice over the top. Of course the benefit of cooking all afternoon is that you have no desire to eat. I then sauteed the mushrooms and set them aside for a topping for the morning quesadilla, and yes, it was wonderfully piquant, a kick start to the day. What I forgot to do, as I shredded some lettuce for the pozole, and let the pulled chicken soak in the flavor, was radish. Sigh. There is always something.