so the fake two weeks of sun have come to an end and now i really understand the south mexican rainy season-it’s all the time. and my only pair of sneakers is wet so i walk around slipping and falling everywhere in my flip flops! or, a lo mejor, barefoot with the whole world laughing because who walks barefoot in san cristobal?

but it’s lovely purple-y grey blue clouds and steamy mountains rising up all around this tiny town in the altos of Chiapas. i am definitely enjoying the beautiful days although i am inside a lot. tonight i am going to a little film festival in TierrAdentro cafe, on autonomy and the right to indigenous people’s rights to the land. Tomorrow and thursday I will be in the escuela de las promotoras de derechos humanos de la mujer, taking notes for them. tomorrow night i meet up with the father of one of my close friends from Chile, who is Mexican, and lives here in San Cris. We’ll go out with his friend who is a blues musician, and his friend’s whole family. and then it’s off to the encuentro intergalactica zapatista for as long as i can take off my work here. So incredible to be two days away from a round table with Subcomandante Marcos and co.! Wow.

As for the artesano, creo k ya se acabo…There are a million gorgeous people here, all incredibly dedicated to la lucha, and I want to learn more than “how much my eyes say,” etc. etc. Anyways i need to go meet up with my friends from the Buddhist Center here, really neat hippie chav@s that are very in touch with themselves…more soon.

PS: Skip this if you want, but, my research proposal in case anyone’s interested?
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As new NAFTA-modeled free trade agreements for Latin America continue to dominate US political discourse, the effects of NAFTA are still being felt on the ground and especially in Mexico. This agreement seems to disproportionately affect underrepresented groups such as indigenous Maya women. What are the continuing effects of NAFTA on Maya women, and what do their grassroots responses say about the successes and shortcomings of this agreement? To determine the continuing effects of these neoliberal policies on women, I will investigate this question and relevant sub-questions though primary source gathering and oral interview methodology, later sharing the results with academic and activist audiences so that they might be communicated directly to the US in a visual way. The interviews will be approached with a third wave feminist perspective; however, the political sphere will not be overlooked in this investigation. These reports from the ground aim to be a basis for the masses of people in the US to judge for themselves the success and shortcomings of a hotly debated free trade agreement that effectively opened up Mexico to the neoliberal system and a increasingly globalized world. Although this sort of exercise has been performed before, the increasing relevance of NAFTA years later as a model of success makes it crucial for us to reexamine sectors of Mexican society that are often overlooked even by important provisions such as labor protections. Special attention will be paid to women-initiated grassroots responses to the effects of NAFTA and their continuing means and goals. Close attention will also be paid to the Zapatista movement during the Aniversario de los Caracoles and to its focus on (women) soldaderas and woman-led action.