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Mangos, Mixtec, Oaxaca, healers, altars, maíz, indigenous feminists, line cooks, fluidity, wind turbines, courage and a million strands of thread.
Dear Cinthia,
I mostly remember the mangos: their sweet and sometimes pungent flavor, the way they tickle the nose and the snap of their skin as they’re peeled in the yard or under the palapa. Everywhere we went, we walked in mango shadows, and every person I met offered me the fruit. My hands and legs and chin were sticky with juice, my mouth sweetened. I walked with a mango in each hand, a mango in my belly, a mango on my lips. We watched the path to avoid slipping on fermenting fallen fruit, and to leave the bees to their feast. We talked, rested, ate and wandered under a canopy of mango leaves. We cooled off, re-energized, were introduced, relaxed and socialized over mango. As visitors, mango was our reason to stay or to go, our way to connect or avoid, symbolic of grace (or disrespect). Even when I was full from the last visit or tried to explain my mild allergy to mango skin, you raised your eyebrows at me and I got to peeling.
I remember pulling off of the highway to visit your healer. We sat in plastic chairs in the dry yard and sucked on mango seeds as we chatted. When we stood and walked to the altar, dust kicked up and stuck to my hands. The altar was in a dark room made of cement. Candlelight flickered on the face of the Virgin, and shadows moved over paper flowers, crumpled letters, a bucket of water and bottles of oil. It was stuffy in the little room, and I waited on the narrow bench while your healer finished praying. I cleaned my hands as best I could, and she asked me why I was there. I told her that I was travelling, and that you were showing me around this part of Oaxaca. She smiled and told me to return with three limes, basil and the egg of a gallina.
We were on our way to spend the night in your home, a place you had not seen in over a year. It was dark by the time we arrived, and we had to park the car at your neighbor’s and walk through the undergrowth, up a hill to your house. It was overrun with ants and spiders and those giant, blind insects that flew belligerently into the glare of our headlamps, careening drunkenly, then crashing violently to the floor in their clunky haste. You told me their name in Mixtec, but I don’t remember it. I scampered and bent to avoid them while you walked gracefully through the house. The home was simple and made of concrete. The furniture had been pushed around, and utensils and books lay scattered on the table. When we tried to change the light bulb, the ants had eaten away the wires and I was too jumpy to reach into the wall. Later we took turns bathing from a bucket under the waxing moon. You warned me not to put anything on the ground, but it was peaceful in the trees. As we slept, the sounds of the valley below wafted up, and I dreamt of barking dogs and the occasional squawk of a rooster.
When we tried to change the light bulb, the ants had eaten away the wires and I was too jumpy to reach into the wall.
The next day, we drove to the village. We passed a field of wind turbines standing like giant, angular watchdogs. I expressed my enthusiasm for green energy, and you told me how that land had been stolen. You told me how the people who live there suffer from headaches, and how all the cows are miscarrying. Later we drove through a pastoral landscape where large brown cattle dotted the hillsides, and the geometric plots drawn with barbed wire bungled the natural curvature and breath-like quality of the land. You told me about the ricos and laws and about change. You told me about ancestral ties to the land and ancient ways of life. I wondered about fluidity and adaptation, resistance and survival. You told me about racism and worldviews, and I pondered the armor of your activism.
When we arrived in the village, the women were excited to cook us breakfast. You had told them that I was visiting from the Foundation and wanted to learn about the organization. Around the comal, eating soup and tortillas, I felt the sinew of your work activate throughout the room. Daily ruminations and gossip flexed into a vigilante agenda: an old man was sexually abusing his granddaughter; a foreign company was trying to buy water rights to your muddy river; a rancher was threatening local farmers in a nearby village. Soon there were family members to talk to, schoolteachers to notify, denouncements to file and community events to organize. For the rest of the day, I listened as we walked through the village with the women. I learned of drownings and communal gardens, immigration and local medicine, baking collectives and river ferries. Your brother had spent a year as a line cook in South Carolina, and the rain was heavier than normal that season.
The next day, we drove to a village farther north. Along the highway you crouched low in your seat, and from time to time put on your disguise: an oversized cowboy hat and aviators. I wanted to laugh, and I couldn’t tell if you were being dramatic or not, or if you were trying to emphasize the danger and importance of your work. Some people think that you’re bossy, Cinthia, and I suppose sometimes it catches up to you. From what you’ve told me, it’s not easy being a women’s-rights activist in this part of Mexico, and there are days when your very life is on the line. You did boss me around quite a bit, telling me how to act in the villages (never refuse food) and to help out more in the kitchen (even when everyone else is watching the last World Cup game), but I like to think of you as a big, fiery heart, and that your gold-lined teeth reflect the passion that you have burning in your chest. I think it’s your love for what you know to be right and true that has encouraged you all these years, and kept you safe in the face of some angry people. Over a year ago, when those armed men—enraged husbands and macho ranchers—showed up at your house in the middle of the night and you were forced to flee, your love for the women you know carried you safely from that hilltop, and your own courage has ever since.
Over a year ago, when those armed men—enraged husbands and macho ranchers—showed up at your house in the middle of the night and you were forced to flee, your love for the women you know carried you safely from that hilltop, and your own courage has ever since.
You told me you are not a feminist, but an indigenous feminist, and that it’s your connection to everything around you that informs who you are. For you, it’s not just women who have rights, but every man, too, and every plant and animal—every drop of water in that muddy river of yours and every gust of wind that rustles the mango leaves in the yard. Every burst of laughter that I shared with you has a right, and so do the hours I spent under the palapa listening to other people’s stories, their words swirling around me like a million strands of thread, until I realized that we’re all huddled together under the same warm, heavy and sometimes tattered blanket.
In the next village, the women wanted to show me the community fields where they grow their maíz. The day was hot and sticky, and the sun hurt my eyes and face. We walked through the thick jungle to the sloped, exposed fields. From the crest of the hill, across the plot, I could see the rolling horizon, covered in trees and pulsing against the white midday sky. We walked slowly through what was left of the stubbed corn stalks and chatted about the heat and the recent harvest. Moisture from the night before evaporated from the soil and hung heavy and hot around our ankles. A woman handed me a cob of corn that had been forgotten in the last yield. It was heavier than I expected, and surprisingly cool. The kernels were a pale yellow, and covered with bits of dirt and dried silk. Out of each kernel sprouted a smooth, finger-like root, some purple, some green, each reaching and bending toward the earth below, until the whole cob seemed to move like a sea anemone. You explained to me that this is how corn grows in the wild, that “when left on its own, everything sprouts,” and that every kernel is a vessel for life.
Earlier that day, the women had been fighting and the group was divided; one woman was being abused by her husband and didn’t know if she could keep working. Another was being beaten for not making enough money. You listened while they spoke and cried and then reminded them of the maíz, and of all the reasons why they must continue working together in the fields. You reminded them that though their lives are hard, sometimes unbearable, it’s important that they continue to support each other—that sometimes it’s all they have. The air was so dense in that room, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I don’t know how you did it, but it’s like you hammered all that dense air until it cracked and fell to the ground, and you swept it up and threw it out into the yard. It wasn’t long before we were all smiling and cooking, and soon we made our way out to the fields to see where the maíz is grown.
When I first met you, I tried to explain to you that I was no longer working at the Foundation, that I had left it to travel. I came to you to learn and to be absorbed into your world, not to decide if you deserved another grant. I worry that to you I represented the North and privilege and all of the other layers of power that are a part of travelling internationally. But I hope that once you met me, you realized that though I am young and have no granting power, that I can’t support your work beyond sharing in mangos and conversation, laughter and listening, that the time we spent together was still worth something. Perhaps we understood each other in some intangible way, that we met each other somewhere sincere and vital. I’d like to think that we both know how to feel, Cinthia, and to relish in the absurdity of this life. We’re not afraid of it. Things are hard, but your eyes crinkle when you smile like they have a thousand times before. I still laugh when I think of how you raised your eyebrows at me as if to say, Eat the damn mango. Savor in the sweetness.
Yes, Cinthia, I will.
Clare Kritter is a San Francisco–based (soon to be Boulder) writer and herbalist. With a background in women’s rights grant-making, she strives to combine her passion for feminism, the written word and herbal medicine in pretty much everything that she does. Clare sees herbalism as a powerful way for women (and men) to reclaim control over their health and bodies, to reconnect people to their own cultural lineage of healing and to restore our innate connection to both land and place. You can read more about Clare at www.clarekritter.com.