Yucatan Diary Day 18
Holbox and Merida, Yucatan
by Ben White
posted 01/27/05
Maurice Ewing somewhere near Sisal, sound attack day five. They apparently cut fishing nets yesterday (oops)-not surprising as LDEO insists this is a fishing hiatus. Rental boat for us (the forces of good) is contracted and, so far, cleared. We´re a coming, Maurice. Dead fish get turned into (I mean relinquished to not transformed into) priest of Progreso.
With a contract quickly agreed upon between the boat skipper and I, we sat talking for an hour about the strange and wonderful critters of the world with the other willing skipper (standing by) and Juan Carateca. I didn’t get all of it, but they gave me the Mayan and Spanish names for some of the birds I had seen: mockingbird (who they say has eight, not seven or nine, songs), the brilliant black and fluorescent blue bird with the long tail like a cross between a magpie and a Stellars jay, the Baltimore Oriole, and the two types of hummingbirds (colibri) I had seen on the island. Also stories of the whale sharks that visit (up to 40 in the late summer!), how those other folks over on the mainland take largartos (crocodiles) much too small in order to sell for shoe leather. About the two types of monkey that live in the woods. And yes, of course, about the Mayan goblins the aluxes, or "duendes" one skipper called them interchangeably, whose existence is as sure as this fleeting life.
I made them laugh describing my bewilderment early in the trip when, one morning scouring the papers for any mention of our tussle with the Ewing, I saw a picture of lots of little things up beyond the treetops in the sky with a caption talking about langostas- lobsters. I was trying to look real hard to see if they were actually lobsters flying around and wondering how the hell they got up there when I finally figured out they probably call locusts lobsters too. Seems appropriate, as opposed to the way many north Americans drool at the thought of lobster or crabs or shrimp but become bilious at the thought of eating, say, locusts. Course they´re all bugs.
Driving back and forth from Merida to Holbox and back and forth along the little fishing villages of the coast makes me think of the search for petroleum, which is the force behind this seismic airgun technology I am fighting, and my complicity in racing all over the Yucatan peninsula burning that poisonous black stuff. As if to emphasize my dilemma, an odd thing happened at one point in the middle of the long straight road down from Holbox that slices for miles through the jungle. I am just cruising along, my arm out the window, no traffic for miles when, with no warning, WHAM!, a bird hits the window frame behind my left ear and ricochets into the space between my back and the seat- instantly a lifeless mass. Totally against character- I will even stop to look at newly killed wildlife just to see how they are put together and admire them- I quickly grabbed behind my head and, without even looking at it, threw it as far as I could into the trees, with a shudder. Little feathers were everywhere. I looked at one carefully. It was the loveliest green. That is one little person my trip to the Yucatan did not help.
So I start trying to dodge everything. Mainly yellow butterflies with the size and erratic flying of bats. The sun is intense, and as I drive along, long silver snakes of mirage in the road in front of me glitter, slither, and then disappear.
I want to tell you about a restaurant in Holbox. (In case you are wondering how I can do things like enjoy food and walks on the beach when something as horrible as the Ewing blasting is going on just over my shoulder, my only defense is that this work is what I do all of the time, not just now and then. I try to exhaust any opportunity to stop the bad guys, but once I have done that I try to steal some time to invite my soul. I have learned that I must grab bits of happiness on the fly. Maybe, for me, its a way to keep going for thirty six years of activism, taking mini vacations of an hour or so.)
La Isla de Colibri (the Island of the Hummingbirds) could be a restaurant run by my gourmet chef friends Kate Stone or Laurie and Tim Paul of Friday Harbor. Tiny, just five tables. Snappy polyrhythmic salsa on the cd player. Two sets of double doors fold open during the day, revealing original and strange folk art. One has a Mayan hieroglyph with faces spelling out the year the restaurant opened (1996). One has a standing green man with brightly colored birds flying out of all parts of his body. One has a play on the Mexican legend of the Eagle with the Rattlesnake tangling above a shell. And the last is a painting of a green guy with horns, arms upraised like a tree, with sprouts and berries coming out of his feet, sides and arms. The waiter, also, it turns out the artist, told me it is the spirit that watches over, and brought us, coffee. Good on him. I told the waiter about the Green Men of England with the vines growing out their eyes and mouth and ears, pagan symbols representing the male counterpart of Mother Earth and (oddly) found in cathedrals all over Europe. He had never heard of them.
The walls are covered with framed art prints and photographs: Diego Rivera, the God-Adam touch from the Sistine Chapel, watercolors of Mexican homes, the old medieval picture of the guy with a face made of vegetables, Guernica, a Picasso of two women running hand in hand, arms outreached along the sea, one breast on each flying free, a big wooden cross with those little flat copper charms tacked on, the sweet Gustav Klimpt picture of a mother cuddling her child, a photograph of a Mayan girl jumping for joy, and, just as you are leaving- above the door, a final note to endear me to the place- a stern picture of Zapata and a grinning one of Che playing golf. Over in the corner sits an exquisitely carved little bar, maybe five feet wide, with a cross centered above all the bottles of booze.
I knew when my warm avocado soup came it would be awesome. And it was.
Why is it that it sounds so strange to so many that one might take a stand to protect the living creatures of the world that might entail physical risk when we take so matter of factly the apportioning of a percentage of our poor youth to die in stupid and unnecessary wars? Mexico is no different than the United Snakes in that we teach our children that it is high honor to fight and die for your country. But only, it seems, in the abstract, if the actual reason for taking the risk is vague. Just how will killing this man (or this old woman or this schoolgirl) in Falluja help protect my home and family? But the idea, to many of the journalists talking to me down here, that I would plan on shutting down the Ewing by getting in the water makes me an extremely odd duck. Why don´t they ask eighteen year old inductees why they are willing to risk their lives to go far away and shoot bullets at someone with whom they have no grievance? At least I know why I act, and why it must be peaceful.
It seems to me like our threats are changing. No longer is it just the barbarians, or Vikings, or Gringos coming to murder us and carry away our children. Now it is poisons just as surely stealing our loved ones through Cancer. Real smart guys like those at the LDEO (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) accepting a little collateral damage to the seas because they want to find out something. The Navy plays around with active sonar and somebody else plays around with HAARP to see if Tesla was really right about being able to control things on earth by bouncing energy off the stratosphere. Our government takes our protection money and funds those we need protection from- the US military and their corporate buddies. The government does not even serve the purpose that the feudal lords once did and give us, in exchange for our servitude, a safe place to run to when the hard rain begins to fall. They lead the world in the manufacturing and export of hard rain.
For what its worth, I think that the only thing there is to do right now, is to fight for the diversity of life- every single thing- every face, every being, every creature’s home. That is what I think the Mother Earth is asking us to do in our dreams and in our moments where we stop the busyness for a second and let the waves and birdsongs reach our heart. I think it why we feel scared- not because of Bin Laden but because we know deep down in our guts that what we are doing to this place, and to our own true selves, is building up a debt we can´t ever pay. When I feel best, the alivest, is when I am directly involved in a campaign to save life somewhere. Even knowing that I will never completely succeed. That I can do this for a living is a huge blessing.
"Every man dies but not every man truly lives." William Wallace (Well, actually Mel Gibson) aka Braveheart.
We are going out with our own rented boat to challenge the Ewing in the next few days. But I won´t say which day until we have pulled it off. So stay tuned, boys and girls, things are going to get heavy quick, and there’s a spirit a-moving over this land, as the old spiritual says.
Thanks for the kind wishes, prayers, blows toward Mexico, pictures of tacos with the Virgin of Guadalupe miraculously painted on, attaboys and Go bens. I am such a glutton for praise, I enjoy every one.
This campaign, and my salary, is being paid for by the Animal Welfare Institute. Tax exempt contributions will be happily accepted at Animal Welfare Institute, Box 3650, Washington, DC., 20027.
Love and revolution,
ben
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