GOOD DEED BY OLD BRIT

TEHUANTEPEC, MAXICO: FEBRUARY 20
Adela's land borders land owned by Fernando's in-laws. Fernando and his wife search with Adela for family connections. They are joyously successful in their hunt. They have been introduced to each other by a fat old Brit on a baby bike.
My journey is worthwhile.

ABANDONED CENTURIES

TEHUANTEPEC, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 19
A dirt track follows Tehuantepec's canal. Adobe walls are tumbled. Old trucks rot. Lack of irrigation has beheaded a grove of coconut palms. In Fernando's childhood, these man-made oasis were treasures. They fed Tehuantepec for more than a thousand years. Fernando points proudly to a nearby hill. There the Tehuantepecs finally vanquished the Aztec invasion. Aztecs were softer foes than the supermarket trucks that feed people now and the young scorn agriculture. We drive back towards town and cross the old railway line.

FOUNDING FATHERS WERE BRITS

TEHUANTEPEC, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 19
This journey has taken me through every Latin American country other than Paraguay and El Salvador. Texas is the next frontier. I am nearing the end. Riding through Mexico, I must write my conclusions. Boris Corredor's criticism of the BBC kept me awake a while last night. I have been visiting Hispanic America fo thirty years. Hispanic Americans were accustomed to visitors from the US. Brits were viewed as different. We were quieter, less arrogant, better informed, more polite. I write in generalizations. An individual North American might be treasured. A Brit could be a real pain in the arse.
A change has taken place. We have become indivisible. Any attempt at stressing the difference is countered by a reminder that the Founding Fathers were Brits and racists.
There is a sameness.
Our cultural view of Latin America draws on the same sources.
We speak the same language, watch the same movies, read the same books, dance to the same Latin American rhythms.
There is more, of course: US support for Britain in the Falklands/Malvinas war. Britain's support of the US in the invasion of Iraq.
Our present alliance in Afghanistan.
President George W Bush is held in contempt through out Latin America. We Brits share in the opprobrium.

STRONG WOMEN

bodecia is master - men serve

DIATRIBES LOWER CHOLESTEROL LEVELS

government official's home


TEHUANTEPEC, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 18
In Tehuantepec, political activists spray diatribes on walls. My previous post on the BBC was a diatribe. My wife, Bernadette, will be cross. She has instructed me not to write diatribes. Diatribes are boring. Prawns with garlic and chili are Bernadette's favorite dish. I ate prawns with oysters for lunch with Fernando Peto. I ate prawns in chili sauce while answering Boris Corredor's criticism of the BBC. The prawns were big and juicy and delicious.
Boris and Adela are Professors of Literature. They speak perfect English. They choose to converse with me in Spanish.
My son, Joshua, criticizes the mistakes I make in Spanish.
I make many errors. However, writing a diatribe has made me uppity.
Perhaps diatribes are good for the soul – or lower one's cholesterol level?

Al JAZEERA: ENEMY OF PEOPLE

TEHUANTEPEC, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 18
Boris Corredor criticizes BBC World News. Why is it so bland?
The easy answer is that Prime Minister Blair and his supporters frightened the BBC's management. Blair was aided by a judge. The judge presided over an inquiry to BBC reporting of the build up to the Iraq invasion.
I suspect that the judge believed that he was serving the nation by protecting Government. In fact he furthered the distrust the nation has in its politicians and judiciary.
The judge was also parochial. He never considered the respect that the BBC once earned for Britain. In my youth, the terorised in far countries crouched over radios to listen to BBC broadcasts. The BBC represented truth. BBC journalists were fearless. The BBC was a unique link to a wider world.
This is the service that Blair and his Director of Communications, Alistair Campbell, sacrificed for short term political advantage. The judge who aided them betrayed his nation and all those served by the BBC.
His name?
Lord Hutton .
Does he sleep well?
And the journalists who once worked for the BBC?
Some of the best now report for Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera is financed by the Government of Qatar – a small Sheikdom in the Persian Gulf and a supporter of the United States of America.
The Qatar Government believes that financing a respected international news service earns them credit.
The US army slammed missiles into Al Jazeera's Baghdad and Kabul offices.
President George W Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera's offices in Qatar.
President George W Bush claims that the US is the final bastion of freedom.
To quote Kurt Vonnegurt (a great philosopher of the absurd): Ah, well...

TEHUANTEPEC, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 18
Such a great day makes travel delightful. I have neither climbed a mountain, trecked through jungle, nor slithered on a glacier. Nor did I spot a whale blow or glimpse a rear bird. I lunched with Fernando Peto and dined with Boris Corredor and his wife, Adela. Perfect bliss...
Fernando is a great guide to a good meal. More importantly, he is a kind man, thoughtful, and perhaps deprived of intellectual companionship beyond his immediate family. Tehuantepec was a small Hispanic Colonial town. Developers have destroyed or vandalized much of the original architecture. Fernando is fighting to protect what remains. Last year, he mounted a competition for architectural photography and is amassing a photographic history of the town.
The older photographs record the laying of the railway across the isthmus to the Caribbean. The railway was built to compete with the Panama canal. Brits were the engineers. The railway closed some ten years ago. Now it is being modernized to transport containers. Trains will run at 300 KPH. Queues at the Panama canal and fuel costs for the ;longer journey may make the railway profitable.
Fernando drives me for lunch to a four-table coqueteria outside of town. He orders cocktails of prawns and oyster. Oysters are plump, prawns are gigantic. We share a grilled snapper while Fernando recounts his most pressing anxiety.
Crime has odd side effects. In Mexico, intelligent crooks enter politics. Dopes make do with kidnapping.
Fernando's brother is a successful businessman. Fernando's younger son and one of Fernando's nephews share the same names. Fernando and his wife are frightened that kidnappers will mistake their son for his cousin. The cousin lives in Mexico City. They won't allow their son to study at Mexico City's university. Mexico University is the best in Mexico.

COLOMBIAN GREASEBALLS

TEHUANTEPEC, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 17
Boris Corredor prefers working as an editor to teaching. He is a short, square, vital man, hair thinning, eyes very much alive. We drink beer together, discuss the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Cuba, Hollywood images of Hispanic America, US publishers' choice of Hispanic American literature, the Magic Realism of such writers as Marques and Allende, politically anodine – safe.
I prefer Salman Rushdie. Rushdie has courage. He pierces his victims with an epe, slices them with a saber and finishes them off with a lead weighted cudgel – all in magnificent prose. For superb political invective and imagery, read his denunciation of Iran's Khomeini in the Satanic Verses.
Boris agrees. Or is polite...
Colombians are polite - though this isn't the Hollywood projection.
Hollywood Colombians are swarthy Greaseballs. They deal drugs and destroy America's youth.

FRIENDS, CHILDREN AND VIRUSES

professor of hispanic american literature, boston university


TEHUANTEPEC, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 17
I am in Tehuantepec to visit an orthodontist, Fernando Villalobos Peto. In 2006, I dropped my false teeth here in my bathroom at the Izmir Hotel. The plate shattered. Fernando mended it. We sat in his office and discussed writing and politics and travel and racism in Mexico and in England and I read a furious denunciation of Mexican politics written by Fernando. Fernando and his wife drove me home and introduced me to their two sons. The sons are contemporary with Bernadette's and my two sons. They dress similarly, listen to the same music, complain that their new computers don't work. Why? Because they download music from illegal sites infected with viruses.
No, we don't.
Yes, you do.
No, we don't.
Yes, you do.
Enough!
In 2006, I lunched as Fernando's guest at a restaurant on the banks of an irrigation canal. Fernando's eldest son, Juan Pablo, accompanied us. He is a history student at Mexico University. Food was outstanding. So was the conversation.
Sunday and Fernando's office is closed. I will meet him tomorrow. This evening I connect to the internet with WiFi in the hotel patio...And I interrupt a man working on his laptop at the neighboring table.
Fernando, the orthodontist, longs to write.
The man whom I interupt is a Professor of Literature and married to a Professor of Literature.
He is Colombian.
His wife, Adela, is Mexican and an Associate Professor in the Department of Romance Studies at Boston University. Adela's family came originally from Tehuantepec and Adela has inherited a huerto (irrigated land) here on the irrigation canal. She flies in from Boston tomorrow.

VERITABLE BODECIAS....

TO TEHUANTEPEC: FEBRUARY 17
Teenagers suffer from facial spots. Mexican roads have speed bumps. Sleeping Policeman is the traditional English term. The Mexican term is Topes. Some are painted yellow, others in yellow stripes. A majority have no paint at all. Drivers may be warned by a series of lines across the road or by road signs. Inevitably the traveler misses a warning. Braking hard as he hits forces a biker's pants into his crotch.
A long day in the saddle is a pain in the butt.
Today is a short stage. I am heading up the PanAmerican highway to Tehuantepec.
Tehuantepec is famous for fierce and strong-willed women (infamous to the macho). The women wear long skirts and stand upright as they ride the streets of Tehuantepec in motor-trikes. Veritable Bodiceas...

FAIR TRADE AND STARBUCKS

TAPACHULA, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 16
I drink Corona larger while attempting to close my ears to the Mexican weep-music emanating from the plaza. My companion is the leader of Oaxaca's association of small coffee producers. So many people make fortunes from coffee. My companion instances Nescafe and Starbucks.
He asks why must small farmers starve.
I don't have an answer.
Fair Trade?
Trade is seldom fair.
At finca Los Andes, I learned Starbucks' regulations.
No small grower could afford a fraction of Jim Hazard's investment in eco-purity.
Even gaining an organic lable demands frequent inspections and is beyond the individual grower's purse. Nor is a cooperative practical. Growers distrust each other. Inevitably one or other would use fertilizers. The cooperative would lose its certification.
I listen and sip my beer and hide my skepticism as to an alternative of artesaneria made from coffee prunings,

SONGSTERS, CHESS AND COFFEE

TAPACHULA, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 16
A songstress in a long white dress finishes her set in the plaza. The crowd claps. I watch two portly men in late middleage play chess. They are dressed in short-sleeve synthetic summer-shirts, trousers shiny at the knees and worn trainers. They sip water abstemiously. I am happy to have reached Mexico. I order a second beer.
A gentleman at a neighboring table passes me a newspaper. I inquire whether there is any good news.
Naturally not – though the lead story recounts daily arrests of small-town mayors on charges of corruption.
So we enter into conversation.
We are joined by a dark-skinned man. He is the leader of the association of Oaxaca's small coffee producers. He speaks passionately – no matter the subject. He is keen for members of his association to supplement their income with artesaneria made from coffee prunings. He shows us photo-copies of a vase sculpted from shards of old truck tyre. I order a third beer.

A CELEBRATORY BEER - OR THREE

TAPACHULA, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 16
Saturday evening and I drink Corona beer at a sidewalk cafe in Tapachula. Tapachula is celbrating the half-century stage and screen career of the city's best known actress. The juvenile male-lead in a popular soap opera drones praise for thirty minutes. He is followed by a procession of male songsters. All wear Hollywood Mexican dress: big hats, embroidered jackets, gun belts, boots and breaches.
Readers inquire why I never mention music. Because Latin American pop is a crime against humanity.
Sure, salsa or meringue is fun background for a short holiday romance. Be bombarded for four years with its repetitive rhythms and you pray for silence.
As for Brazil, I suffered four days of musical hell whilst traveling by boat down the Madera River to Manaus and Rigaton is Central American rap.
I loathe rap. The beat is offensively aggressive, My son, Joshua, argues that I should listen to the words. He should write them down. I will read them.
As for the poetry of Mexican folk pop and Argentine tango, I prefer a bad book.

A SORT OF VICTORY OVER OLD AGE

RETURN TO MEXICO: FEBRUARY 16
Saturday afternoon and I am alone at Guatemalan Immigration and Customs offices. I cross the border, dismount and kiss the road: Mexico to Mexico via Tierra del Fuego. A Honduran tourist at Mexican Immigration overhears the brief account I give of my travels. He asks permission to photograph me beside my bike. Mexican Customs officers invite me to rest a while in their office. They ask the usual questions:
Surely I didn't ride all the way on the small Honda?
Which country did I prefer?
What country had the most beautiful women?
Which food was best?
Where was I most in danger?

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS AN OLD MAN

PATTY'S BEACH BAR, ZIHUATANEJO, MEXICO.
The portrait on my web page was taken in the garden of our Cuba home in the very early 90s.The Dutch photographer, Arnaud Nilwik took the picture. Arnaud illustrates record covers and articles for glossy magazines. He can make anyone look good - even me.
My wife, Bernadette, criticized the author's photograph on this BLOG. I have had my hair cut and have replaced the portrait with a possibly younger looking me. The photograph at the top of the BLOG is small. Here is a larger version. It is a self-portrait taken at the beach bar where I write all day. Hopefully Bernadette will think me reasonably cute.

PAIN OF PARTING

biker and moll


FINCA LOS ANDES: FEBRUARY 16
More farewells, more pain of parting. Olga tells me that I am family: that I must return. Jim has honoured me by sharing his passions (and his worms). And I am joyful. What if? no longer occupies even the smallest corner of my head. To the contrary. Now there is a Thank God.
Thank God that Jim and Olga have Los Andes. No member of my family, certainly not I, could have achieved what Jim has achieved. Here, in a land ripped apart by a vicious internal war, he has created a place of hope and laughter and a shared pride in achievement.
Yet, as I ride slowly and carefully down the cobbled lane, I wonder that no one of Mark's five children wanted to make this their home, wanted to inherit their father's achievement and take it further.
As for me, Mark and Helen crocheted a rug together in the evenings at Los Andes. It is the one possession of theirs that I long to possess.

FREAK WIND AND TEARS

wood stove and good cook


FINCA LOS ANDES: FEBRUARY 16
I will leave before lunch. Jim drives me uphill in the early morning. He planted Cyprus on one slope. Last year a freak gale felled every tree and blasted on down a narrow gorge to strike a planting of macademia nuts.
Jim shows me the trees spilled as if they were spillikins: Yes, he had wanted to weep.
We head back to the house for breakfast.
Children play football on the field below the school.
A woman tells Jim that the coffee harvest is complete.

A DISTASTEFULL ROLL

better of house


FINCA LOS ANDES: FEBRUARY 16
The house at Finca Los Andes is comfortable. I lie in bed and wonder. I wonder that I brought the tea seed out of Kenya.
I had my instructions as to what I should say were the Customs to stop me at Heathrow. Except to the seed, Heathrow was never the danger point. At most, British Customs woud have confiscated it.
Kenya was critical. In Kenya I was committing a crime.
What would my uncle have done had I been arrested?
The seed was important to him – hence the arrangements in London. My safety was a minor side issue.
Not a pleasant thought...
And I recall another time when my uncle used me. It was a more distasteful roll.
My uncle knew that I would never refuse what he asked.
That was our relationship.
He has been dead nearly thirty years.

STARBUCKS AND WORMS

FINCA LOS ANDES: FEBRUARY 15
The tea picked on Los Andes is certified organic. Coffee is sold to Starbucks. Starbucks insist on eco-production. In my uncle's day, water flowed through the coffee factory, washed the beans and flowed back to the stream. Now water is used again and again before being held in tanks where the sediment settles. The sediment is spread in long shaded trays and covered in black plastic. Worms are introduced into the sediment. Juice from the trays is a natural fungicide; the sediment becomes a powerful natural fertilizer.
Infected by Jim's enthusiasm, I dig my fingers into the sediment to sample density of worm population.

A RISK WORTH TAKING

coffee hard-pruned

FINCA LOS ANDES: FEBRUARY 15
We have visited the school and the office and the health clinic. Jim introduces me always as Mark's nephew. I sense the atmosphere between Jim and the indigenous population as one of mutual respect and understanding. Jim is not a boss in the traditional sense, nor is he paternalistic. Imagine an elderly tutor in semi-retirement.
He is proud that one of the field foremen is a woman.
He is proud that the tea pickers are self-organized to be most productive.
I suggest that a workers' cooperative is vulnerable to expropriation.
Jim says, “Surely that is a risk worth taking.”

MARK OLIVER: CIVIL ENGINEER

FINCA LOS ANDES: FEBRUARY 15
Jim drives me through the lower slopes of the finca and we walk a forest track to the hydroelectric plant my uncle installed. Mark harnessed waters from two springs. The fall is some 300 feet and has generated 5 kilowatts with minimum maintenance for close on forty years. I recall lunching with Mark in London and his describing the installation. He had no training as an engineer. Jim describes it as a remarkable achievement.
We drive back to the house and swim in the pool before lunch. Small birds dart amongst the blossoms. Mid-sized birds are marginally more sedate. Butterflies drift on a light breeze.

A VERY CIVIL CIVIL ENGINEER

FINCA LOS ANDES: FEBRUARY 15
Jim Hazard is a quiet, polite, thoughtful man, mid-seventies, slim, bearded, upright. Anglo Guatemalan, he is a civil engineer by profession. By passion he is a husbander of land and of those who live on it. He has organized Los Andes as a workers' cooperative. The cooperative runs a savings bank and a store and owns a mini-van which, when required, the finca hires. The finca covers 1500 hectares. Coffee and tea are the main harvest. Macadamia trees have reached their first fruiting and there is a quinine plantation. The top portion is cloud forest and borders a nature reserve that rises to the peak of Atitlan. This is great bird watching territory (Questzales are common). Los Andes supplies forest guides. Check the web site for room rate and a bird list: www.andescloudforest.org