Immersion

Feeling the Language

/ R. Newell Searle / Leave a comment

 

Language takes many forms of expression. Glyph. Oaxaca, Mexico

Can you “feel” the language when you speak Spanish as an unconscious action like riding a bike? That is, the skill comes unconsciously, without fear or thought. Regardless of fluency, you need pluck to meet whatever conversational circumstance you face. Don’t worry about how many words you know or how well you conjugate them. Your fluency will improve the more you forget yourself and concentrate on connecting with the other person. Then you’re too focused to worry about yourself and errors of conjugation or pronunciation.

 

How you feel when you speak–confident, nervous, fearful–will influence how well you speak spanish. Self-awareness is a key to overcoming the barriers to fluency. As a beginning Spanish speaker, I felt anxious about conversations, like a boy on a first date with a girl I liked. Fear of mistakes made me insecure, socially awkward and afraid of looking foolish. The first date was the hardest and I survived it to overcome the fear of self-inflicted rejection or humiliation. Try it. Who knows? You may soon “go steady.”

‘All government is an assassin.’ Graffiti in Oaxaca

Language immersion, formal and informal, gives you the saturation necessary to “feel” the language. By that I mean an intuitive trust the words and phrases will come when you need them. Nik Wallenda, who walked the cable between Chicago sky-scrapers, succeeded because he wasn’t preoccupied with falling. Like walking a tightrope, language confidence rests on going forward and looking ahead rather than looking down, afraid of falling over your mistakes.

I’‘felt’ the language in Guadalajara several years ago as a consultant to a food bank. A food bank official took me to a distribution center and  introduced me to local leaders with lavish praise. When she finished, she turned and looked directly at me. Only then did I realize she expected a response. It had to be more than “Gracias.” And I wasn’t prepared! Or so I thought. Swallowing momentary panic, I thanked her for the kind words and concentrated on what  I wanted them to know. Words poured out unconsciously without hemming or hawing. It all came out spontaneously. I didn’t quite believe it at first.

Every form of communication builds fluency

Try this: Enter into a Spanish conversation that involves topics more complex than you are accustomed to. Asking someone about their profession is a safe approach. People will be flattered and let yourself enter the vocabulary thicket without  a map, guided by trusting intuition to give you the words. Chances are good your conversation partner will help you with new words and phrases as she answers your questions. You may also develop a way to “work around” the unknown by describing the idea, object or action for which you lack the exact word. Even a work-around provides a good conversational exercise

Look for these  signs of progress toward fluency:

Dreaming. Our minds work even while our body rests. Early in the first immersion, I woke, stunned to realize I was dreaming in Spanish! It happens to a lot of students. If it happens to you, trust it. It doesn’t mean you’re fluent but it’s a sign your mind is absorbing the language subconsciously and that’s where you want it.

Social events are the greatest classrooms

Oblivious to language. At some point you will speak Spanish without conscious intention. Another big step. It happened to me when I agreed to an interview with a Mexican youth taking English classes.  Lacking confidence, she asked questions in halting English. I answered three questions in detail until her companion stopped me. “Ingles, habla en ingles! Hablas en espanol.” Speak English, she said, you are speaking Spanish. I was? Flabbergasted, I realized Spanish was now a “default” language. Even a meal in a Mexican restaurant in the U.S. triggers an unconscious response in Spanish.

 Catching mistakes. Another sign is when you catch a mistake just before or after you make it  We all do it so, relax. Your brain moves faster than the tongue, your mind edits as you speak and sometimes you change our mind while the tongue still  conjugating  a verb you’ve just rejected. You do it in English, too. Don’t criticize your small mistakes. Perfectionism is a disease. Of course, you speak fluent English, don’t you? Then listen to how you speak English and notice your mistakes and imperfections. Conversations aren’t oral exams with a grade. Being understood is the passing grade.  Not trying is failure.

Energy at day’s end. Acquiring a language takes lots of energy at first. Then, as Spanish sinks into the subconscious, check your mental energy at day’s end. The more you feel or trust the language, the less energy you will use in conversation. Much of the ease comes from focusing on what you want to say without worrying about how you say it.

Language, like art, is an intimate human capacity of body and soul

Body language. Every culture has body language to go with the words. Check out your gestures and facial expressions as you gain proficiency. The changes may be subtle or obvious. You may find yourself talking with your hands in ways you never did before  or with more emphatic  gestures. In Mexico, I “talk” with my hands  far more than I do in Minnesota.

Above all, pay attention to your emotional state as you grow in fluency. Language doesn’t exist outside you, and it isn’t knowledge like mathematics or history. Acquiring a language is an intimate process, like art. The teacher can give you vocabulary and grammar as raw materials  but only you can make it a part of your being.

 

Two tongues, Two Minds – Writing Bilingually

/ R. Newell Searle / 2 Comments

Have you ever tried writing from scratch in your second language? A letter, a post-card, an essay? What was your result? Too hard to think of the words? Frustration with the grammar? You wrote it in English and then tried to translate it to Spanish? Writing in a second language is challenging but so rewarding if you want to learn.

I treat all writing – in English or Spanish – as thinking on paper. It’s thought in a visual form. When I lay down the words where I can see them, it’s easier to watch what they do in the company with other words. Writing in Spanish, however imperfectly, also sharpens me for writing in English.

Good writers are also good readers and reading is a good place to start. Try reading a familiar English passage in another language. Chances are it will illuminate something you didn’t notice in English. For example, St. John’s Gospel starts with, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God …” I always took this as a poetic but abstract statement about the Divinity. I understood the passage differently when I heard it in Spanish. “En el principio existía el Verbo y el Verbo estaba con Dios y el Verbo era Dios…” Verbo means verb, it denotes a word to express action. The English ‘word’ denotes a part of speech and can be a noun, adjective, preposition as well as a verb. In other words, ‘Word’ is rather generic, even passive.  God as verbo is a different image than God as ‘word; a God of actions rather than categories.

Try this:

Read in Spanish (or your second language) a book you already know well in English. Preferably, choose one with familiar passages as in the Bible, Winnie the Pooh, Goodnight Moon, or others. As you read, look for shades of meaning in Spanish language you missed in English. What new insights or meanings do you take from this?

I began writing in Spanish during immersion. The teacher asked only for random sentences to practice verb tenses, prepositional phrases, etc. As an inveterate writer, however, I turned the requisite sentences into a short, coherent story I might tell socially. I was tempted to write it in English and then translate it but I’m glad I didn’t. The point of immersion is learning to think the language. Writing Spanish from scratch wasn’t easy at first, but became easier with each essay and oh so satisfying!

Writing forced me to think the language, and my tutor identified the habitual mistakes. That became an agenda for practice and improvement. In short, writing Spanish showed me where to focus my efforts. Writing helped me acquire the rhythm of Spanish. I wrote about things that interested me, thereby building a useable, personal vocabulary connected to my life and interests. Ultimately, I developed a writing and speaking style natural to me.

I habitually wrote English in an emotionally restrained style sometimes bordered on terseness. When I wrote in Spanish, however, I was surprised to discover my natural style was more emotional and affective than in English. Part of this I ascribe to the transforming effects of languages and cultures. Second languages and cultures tend to draw on aspects of personality that may be subordinate or invisible in your native culture.

When I started writing Spanish, I focused on words and phrases I wanted to learn to use well. I began by writing them across the top of a page. Then I studied them for their possibilities until I had a story line. It was a process like arranging and rearranging the magnetic words and phrases on the refrigerator door until a sentence or paragraph emerged. In time, reading and writing moved me closer to thinking and speaking with the economy of a native speaker. You will find, as I did,  writing can embed in your memory useful words and phrases that will easily roll off your tongue when you need them.

After the immersions, I continued to write short stories for my own amusement and to practice Spanish. I created stories with dialogues between the characters because this is a good way (in my opinion) to learn the kinds of phrases most likely to come up in conversation. It is especially useful in learning the slang or modismos.

In the fragment below, I created an author with a case of writer’s block the night before a crucial deadline. He hears a voice in his garret and is confronted by a tiny man standing on his typewriter. It is the writer’s inner voice but he doesn’t yet recognize it as his own:

“¿Quién? ¿Quién eres,” le pregunté, frotando los ojos con mis puños con incredulidad.

“¿Tú no sabes?”

“No. No idea. No conozco a cualquier hombrecitos. ¿Eres tú una invención? ¿Alguien que me imaginaba?“

“Sabes ya mi nombre. Es el mismo de tuyo.”

“¡Ay-yi-yi! ¿De dónde vienes?”

“Aquí. Siempre aquí. Vivo dentro de ti.”

¡Aquí! ¡Siempre! ¡Dentro de yo mismo! Me sentí más y más confundido. Cuando traté poner un dedo en el hombrecito, mi dedo pasó por su cuerpo como sí él estaba el aire. ¡Carrumba! ¿Por qué estoy platicar con un hombrecito imaginario? Él es una alucinación. ¡Ay, estoy fatigado!

Now try writing a story on your own. Keep it simple, on the level of a story you would tell a child. Keep it short and manageable. Play with it. If you write on your computer with Microsoft Word, you can go to the “Review” tab on the menu bar and set the proofing language. When you right click on a word, there is a link to synonyms. It’s a great way to sharpen your writing and expand your vocabulary.

Try this:

Choose a dozen words – verbs, prepositions, phrases – and write them across the top of your page. Next, look at the words and phrases and note the words, thoughts, actions, or events they suggest. Use them as the basis for a story. Use them naturally, in your particular way of speaking. Watch what happens.

Try this:

Create several characters and put them into a conversation in your second language. Try to inhabit each character, and give each one a distinct way of speaking. You may find yourself writing short, punchy phrases – the kind we say all the time. The dialogue will suggest the vocabulary.

If you have a native-speaker friend, or one who is highly fluent in your second language, engage them as a critical reader to give you constructive criticism. Two things will happen: 1) Your use of the language will improve, and 2) you may detect a subtle but distinct aspect of your mind you hadn’t noticed before.

Buena suerte!

 

 

We’ll always have Puebla

/ R. Newell Searle / Leave a comment

It is Mother’s Day. Since 1911, the Mexican Mother’s Day falls on May 10 regardless of the day of the week. In the United States (and much of the world), Mother’s Day is the second Sunday in May. This second weekend in May is also the opening of fishing season in lake-spangled Minnesota, the land with the most boats per-capita, where many mothers feel abandoned by husbands and sons off pursuing walleyed pike, the state’s fish.

Mother’s Day misa or Mass in the Mexican congregation of Santo Niño Jesús, where I am a member, ends with music and a special blessing. Well-dressed women arrive with husbands and children in tow. Afterward, las madres gather for a group photo in front of the altar and the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Then all adjourn downstairs for cake before going to their family celebrations.

My mother died 15 years ago but I offer a silent prayer of gratitude. My greetings for this day go to my daughter, who is a mother herself, and my wife, every bit as dedicated to being a grandmother as a mother. My mother, raised in an upper class household outside New York City, cheerfully accepted and surmounted the challenges of life on a small Minnesota farm. She died before I took up Spanish but I know she would have encouraged me. Encouraging others was one of her greatest virtues. She believed in possibilities. Seeing me take up a new language, she might have glimpsed herself at age 13, becoming fluent in French. I wish she were here to see her son’s late in life achievement.

It is 9:30 p.m. Central time, and 7:30 p.m. Pacific time. I punch a Los Angeles area number into my cellphone. A phone rings several times in Anaheim before I hear an unmistakable woman’s voice.

“Lupita!” I say.

“¡Ay! ¿Cómo estás?” she replies, her voice ringing with excitement, as if she has been waiting all day for my call. She recognizes my voice instantly, as I do hers.

We haven’t seen each other since 2012 but we stay in touch. Lupita is the woman whom I have adopted as my madrina or godmother insofar as I have one. Godparents play a formative role in the lives of Mexican children more so than with American children.

Her role as my padrina  began eight years ago when I boarded with her and Julián, (my adopted padrino) during my first Spanish immersion in Puebla, Mexico. She began drilling me in the pronunciation of accented words. Over the course of three years and five immersions, I lived in their home until it became my home away from home, and our relations deepened from acquaintances, to friends, to family.

“¿Cómo está tu nieta hermosa?” Immediately, she wants to know about my lovely granddaughter, a toddler, who has assumed great importance in our conversations. I tell her I just returned from visiting her and she is well and growing fast. Lupita keeps track of my family, asks after my wife, and after my other daughter, the actor in New York. I tell her my wife and I saw our daughter in an off-Broadway play in February. At our ages, (she is 85 and I am 71) our successor generations become important signs we haven’t lived in vain.

She says Julián just turned 90. He and Lupita, married at the ages of 23 and 16, and I remembered they were about to celebrate their 67th anniversary. At some point in their lives, their children took up residence in California and became naturalized U.S. citizens. I have never met their children – now grandparents as well – but I know about them just as Lupita knows about my daughters.

A year after I finished immersion classes, they sold their house in Puebla, and rented a smaller house in nearby Atlixco to spend summers near her sister. I saw them there in 2012 at a reunion she and friends arranged for me, and to meet my wife. Travel and two residences took energy and last winter they gave up the house in Atlixco. Now they travel only for shorter visits with her sisters and friends.

Our charla or conversation rambles on with small talk. Will they return to Mexico this summer, I ask. She says yes, in July. Am I returning to Mexico? I say yes, but not until January. I plan to spend much of the winter teaching English in Oaxaca. Unfortunately, we will miss each other, again.

The cellphone distorts her voice now and then, and I can’t understand everything she says but no importa. It is enough that we reconnect to fan the embers of friendship and rekindle familial connections.

We last talked in November. She called from Atlixco while I waited for a friend outside Oaxaca’s Iglesia Santo Domingo. She had missed me when I was in Puebla, and Atlixco is a six-hour bus ride from Oaxaca. I couldn’t travel there before they return to Anaheim. ¡Qué lástima! What a shame. Our conversation flows on for a while as I pace the sunny plaza in front of the exquisite Baroque church.

Beside board and friendship, I owe much of my cultural education to Lupita and Julián, whose off-hand examples taught me mexicanidad or Mexicaness – the daily courtesies, gestures, and phrases that define Mexicans. It was a labor of love on their part, the work of godparents or padrinos.

As our November conversation ended, she switched to English to say – unmistakably – ‘We love you.’ I replied that I loved them too. Then she said, ‘hasta luego,’ or see you later but never ‘good bye.’ After the call, I stood in the empty plaza feeling blessed and wiped my eyes.

Given our ages, limited opportunities, and the miles between, I doubt we will see each other again (but I’ve made that mistake before). We are both old enough to accept this reality and cherish the memories and limited contact. For that reason, there is no need to talk about it. Love never dies.

Our Mother’s Day call ends, as they always do, with ‘hasta luego, ten cuidado,’ see you later and take care. It is still too soon in life to say ‘good bye.’

The call reminds me how human love, intimacy, and friendship are realities occupying places of their own. No one will ever replace my mother in my memory or usurp my love for her. However, the heart is a great continent with territory enough for others to reside there in a community of affection. Lupita and Julián have acreage in my heart. We may never see each other again but, to rephrase a line from Casablanca, ‘We’ll always have Puebla.’

Memorias – Lugares en el corazón Memories – Places in the heart

/ R. Newell Searle / Leave a comment

[Este es un puesto bilingue – This is a bilingual post. English is below.]

¿Hay un lugar en el mundo, diferente de tu hogar o residencia actual, que ha enraizado en tu corazón? ¿Qué es el lugar y cómo te ha afectado? Creo que todos nosotros llevan en nuestros corazones un lugar especial donde no podemos vivir sino sólo visitar de vez en cuando o tristemente una vez en nuestras vidas. Para mí, lo es Puebla, México. ¿Qué es tuyos?

Cuando era estudiante de español, viví con una familia en un barrio de Puebla. Viví con la misma familia cada vez, una pareja casada de muchos años, llenada con el fuego de vida. Siempre, viví con ellos durante el fin de abril y el principio de mayo. Durante el período de cuatro breves inmersiones en español, me enamoraba con la gente de la ciudad.

Juntos visitamos sus amigos en el campo, compramos vegetales en los abastos, disfrutamos visitas con los vecinos, celebramos Cinco de Mayo y el Día de la Madre. Ellos me introdujeron a sus amigos y vecinos así que, después cuatro años, ellos vinieron a ser mis amigos, también.

Nosotros formamos los lazos de amistades que lo hacían imposible olvidarles. Mientras, ellos me ayudaron aprender español y las costumbres de la cultura. En tiempo, me sentía como un habitante de Puebla.

Puebla es una ciudad de una primavera perpetua igual una chica que no llegar a ser vieja. Los árboles de jacaranda florezcan y sus ramas produzcan las nubes de flores lavandas. Cada día, cuando caminaba yo a lo largo las calles residenciales hacia el Centro histórico, pase los arbustos podan en las formas de conejos, espirales, canastas y – increíblemente – uno como una casa de pájaros

Hay un gran Zocalo – una plaza central – donde comienzan las calles y avenidas principales según al plan de los españoles. Aquí está donde la ciudad – la gente poblana – encontrarse para negocios, conciertos, protestas, entretenimientos, amores y diversiones. Un domingo, con mi familia anfitriona, pasamos una tarde en los sombras de los árboles mirando la escena y leyendo La Reforma. Aquí está donde me siento como poblano.

Al lado el Zocalo está la Catedral de la Concepción Inmaculada, un edificio masivo de piedras grises. La piedra primera estuvo puesto en 1575 y la última en 1690. Los torres de campanas son los más altos en todo de México. A pesar de la apariencia severa, la interior es un espacio de luz – no solo la luz del sol pero un sentido de luz espiritual, también, que afecta cada persona que visita.

Una vez, con un amigo – un sacerdote y estudiante de español – paramos en la catedral para orar en la interior tranquila. Mientras me arrodillé en el banco, mi compañero endecha propensa en el piso en una acción de mucha humildad. Después pocos minutos, una docente me tocó en el hombro.

“¿Está el hombre enfermo?” ella pidió.

“No. Él es un sacerdote y él ora en esta manera,” contesté.

Ella se encogió sus hombros y salió.

Tenía muchas experiencias simples, mundanas pero memorables como esto. Ellas son eventos pequeñísimos, ordinarios y comunes que formaron la fábrica rica de mi cariño para Puebla.

A pesar de los grandes edificios de Puebla, los museos, ruinas e iglesias, en el fin lo es la gente que viva en mi corazón. Ahora, cuando voy a México, mi ruta pasa por Puebla. Es el sueño del viajero tener la libertad sin cualquier obligación y compromiso. Para mí, es difícil sino imposible amar un lugar sin amando primera la gente que viva ahí.

¿Qué es tu experiencia?

Memories – Places in the heart

Is there a place in the world, different from your home or your current residence that has sunk roots in your heart? What is that place and how has it affected you? I think that we all carry in our hearts a special place where we can’t live but can only visit now and then or, sadly, only once in our lives. For me, that place is Puebla, México. Why do you have a special place in your heart? What is it?

When I was a student of Spanish, I lived with a family in a Puebla neighborhood, an older married couple filled with the fire of life. I always lived with them during the end of April and the beginning of May. During four, brief Spanish immersions, I fell in love with the people of the city.

Together we visited their friends in the country, bought vegetables at the huge outdoor market, visited with the neighbors, celebrated Cinco de Mayo and the Mexican Mother’s Day. They introduced me to their friends and neighbors so that, after four years, they came to be my friends, too.

We formed bonds of friendship that make it impossible to forget them. Meanwhile, they helped me learn Spanish and the customs of the culture. In time, I felt like a resident of Puebla.

Puebla is a city of perpetual spring like a girl who never grows old. The jacaranda trees bloom and their branches produce clouds of lavender flowers. Each day, I used to walk along the residential streets toward the historic center, passing bushes pruned into the form of rabbits, spirals, baskets and – incredibly – a birdhouse.

There is a large Zocalo – the central plaza – where the streets begin according to the Spaniards’ plan. Here is where the city – the people of Puebla – meet for business, concerts, protests, entertainment, love affairs, and diversions. One Sunday my host family and I passed the afternoon in the shade of the trees watching the scene and reading La Reforma. Here is where I feel like a poblano – a person of Puebla.

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is next to the Zocalo, a massive building of gray stones. The first stone was laid in 1575 and the last in 1690. The bell towers are the tallest in all of Mexico. Despite its severe appearance, the interior is a place of light – not only the light of the sun but a feeling of spiritual light, also, that affects every person who visits.

Once, with a friend – a priest and Spanish student – we stopped in the Cathedral to pray in the tranquil interior. While I knelt in the pew, my companion lay prone on the floor in an act of great humility. After a few minutes, a docent tapped me on the shoulder.

“Is the man ill?” she asked.

“No. He is a priest and he prays this way,” I answered.

She shrugged and left.

I had many simple, mundane but memorable experiences like this. They are small, ordinary, and common events that make up the rich fabric of my affection for Puebla.

Despite the great buildings in Puebla, the museums, ruins, and churches, in the end the people stay in my heart. Now, when I go to Mexico, my route of travel passes through Puebla. The traveler’s dream is liberty without any obligations or commitments. For me it is difficult if not impossible to love a place without loving the people who live there.

What is your experience?

¿Hay un lugar en el mundo, diferente de tu hogar o residencia actual, que ha enraizado en tu corazón? ¿Qué es el lugar y cómo te ha afectado? Creo que todos nosotros llevan en nuestros corazones un lugar especial donde no podemos vivir sino sólo visitar de vez en cuando o tristemente una vez en nuestras vidas. Para mí, lo es Puebla, México. ¿Qué es tuyos?

Cuando era estudiante de español, viví con una familia en un barrio de Puebla. Viví con la misma familia cada vez, una pareja casada de muchos años, llenada con el fuego de vida. Siempre, viví con ellos durante el fin de abril y el principio de mayo. Durante el período de cuatro breves inmersiones en español, me enamoraba con la gente de la ciudad.

Juntos visitamos sus amigos en el campo, compramos vegetales en los abastos, disfrutamos visitas con los vecinos, celebramos Cinco de Mayo y el Día de la Madre. Ellos me introdujeron a sus amigos y vecinos así que, después cuatro años, ellos vinieron a ser mis amigos, también.

Nosotros formamos los lazos de amistades que lo hacían imposible olvidarles. Mientras, ellos me ayudaron aprender español y las costumbres de la cultura. En tiempo, me sentía como un habitante de Puebla.

Puebla es una ciudad de una primavera perpetua igual una chica que no llegar a ser vieja. Los árboles de jacaranda florezcan y sus ramas produzcan las nubes de flores lavandas. Cada día, cuando caminaba yo a lo largo las calles residenciales hacia el Centro histórico, pase los arbustos podan en las formas de conejos, espirales, canastas y – increíblemente – uno como una casa de pájaros

Hay un gran Zocalo – una plaza central – donde comienzan las calles y avenidas principales según al plan de los españoles. Aquí está donde la ciudad – la gente poblana – encontrarse para negocios, conciertos, protestas, entretenimientos, amores y diversiones. Un domingo, con mi familia anfitriona, pasamos una tarde en los sombras de los árboles mirando la escena y leyendo La Reforma. Aquí está donde me siento como poblano.

Al lado el Zocalo está la Catedral de la Concepción Inmaculada, un edificio masivo de piedras grises. La piedra primera estuvo puesto en 1575 y la última en 1690. Los torres de campanas son los más altos en todo de México. A pesar de la apariencia severa, la interior es un espacio de luz – no solo la luz del sol pero un sentido de luz espiritual, también, que afecta cada persona que visita.

Una vez, con un amigo – un sacerdote y estudiante de español – paramos en la catedral para orar en la interior tranquila. Mientras me arrodillé en el banco, mi compañero endecha propensa en el piso en una acción de mucha humildad. Después pocos minutos, una docente me tocó en el hombro.

“¿Está el hombre enfermo?” ella pidió.

“No. Él es un sacerdote y él ora en esta manera,” contesté.

Ella se encogió sus hombros y salió.

Tenía muchas experiencias simples, mundanas pero memorables como esto. Ellas son eventos pequeñísimos, ordinarios y comunes que formaron la fábrica rica de mi cariño para Puebla.

A pesar de los grandes edificios de Puebla, los museos, ruinas e iglesias, en el fin lo es la gente que viva en mi corazón. Ahora, cuando voy a México, mi ruta pasa por Puebla. Es el sueño del viajero tener la libertad sin cualquier obligación y compromiso. Para mí, es difícil sino imposible amar un lugar sin amando primera la gente que viva ahí.

¿Qué es tu experiencia?

Memories – Places in the heart

Is there a place in the world, different from your home or your current residence that has sunk roots in your heart? What is that place and how has it affected you? I think that we all carry in our hearts a special place where we can’t live but can only visit now and then or, sadly, only once in our lives. For me, that place is Puebla, México. Why do you have a special place in your heart? What is it?

When I was a student of Spanish, I lived with a family in a Puebla neighborhood, an older married couple filled with the fire of life. I always lived with them during the end of April and the beginning of May. During four, brief Spanish immersions, I fell in love with the people of the city.

Together we visited their friends in the country, bought vegetables at the huge outdoor market, visited with the neighbors, celebrated Cinco de Mayo and the Mexican Mother’s Day. They introduced me to their friends and neighbors so that, after four years, they came to be my friends, too.

We formed bonds of friendship that make it impossible to forget them. Meanwhile, they helped me learn Spanish and the customs of the culture. In time, I felt like a resident of Puebla.

Puebla is a city of perpetual spring like a girl who never grows old. The jacaranda trees bloom and their branches produce clouds of lavender flowers. Each day, I used to walk along the residential streets toward the historic center, passing bushes pruned into the form of rabbits, spirals, baskets and – incredibly – a birdhouse.

There is a large Zocalo – the central plaza – where the streets begin according to the Spaniards’ plan. Here is where the city – the people of Puebla – meet for business, concerts, protests, entertainment, love affairs, and diversions. One Sunday my host family and I passed the afternoon in the shade of the trees watching the scene and reading La Reforma. Here is where I feel like a poblano – a person of Puebla.

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is next to the Zocalo, a massive building of gray stones. The first stone was laid in 1575 and the last in 1690. The bell towers are the tallest in all of Mexico. Despite its severe appearance, the interior is a place of light – not only the light of the sun but a feeling of spiritual light, also, that affects every person who visits.

Once, with a friend – a priest and Spanish student – we stopped in the Cathedral to pray in the tranquil interior. While I knelt in the pew, my companion lay prone on the floor in an act of great humility. After a few minutes, a docent tapped me on the shoulder.

“Is the man ill?” she asked.

“No. He is a priest and he prays this way,” I answered.

She shrugged and left.

I had many simple, mundane but memorable experiences like this. They are small, ordinary, and common events that make up the rich fabric of my affection for Puebla.

Despite the great buildings in Puebla, the museums, ruins, and churches, in the end the people stay in my heart. Now, when I go to Mexico, my route of travel passes through Puebla. The traveler’s dream is liberty without any obligations or commitments. For me it is difficult if not impossible to love a place without loving the people who live there.

What is your experience?

Tlacochahuaya – a volunteer citizen says ‘adios’

/ R. Newell Searle / 1 Comment

It’s not enough to become bilingual. As I achieved fluency, I looked for ways to keep my Spanish in use. Eventually left a suburban congregation to join a Hispanic one in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Through my professional contacts I made a bridge to the majority culture. I made friends, and I advocated for them on immigration issues.

Ten weeks of immersion stoked a desire to return to Mexico, not as a gringo tourist but as a contributing member of a community. I volunteered a couple times but the assignments didn’t involve close, personal relationships. I wanted to be involved with people and engaged in their community. Then I volunteered with Fundación en Vía as an English teacher in Oaxaca. The English classes complement the micro-credit and business training the Fundación gives indigenous women. I already knew effective teaching required rapport if not intimacy.

Oaxaca is a small, vibrant city in southern Mexico that retains its indigenous roots and cultures. I elect to live with an ordinary family near the Fundación and teach in the outlying Zapotec town of San Jeronimo Tlacochahuaya (thirty minutes by bus from the center of Oaxaca). The three other teachers – Nora, Nicola, and Augie are just out of college or grad school – are also volunteers. They teach the children.

It’s midafternoon when the four of us get off the local bus at the município or city hall and set up our ‘classrooms’ beneath the open air arcade or portales fronting the city hall. Each ‘classroom’ consists of a table, a white board with a few markers, and some folding chairs. We write the day’s lesson plan on the white board along with key words or lessons for the evening. Then we bask in the warmth of late afternoon sunlight while we wait for our students to arrive – three classes for children, one for adults.

Tlacochahuaya (Tcla-co-cha-why-a) is an agricultural community nestled in a broad valley bounded by dark, volcanic ridges rising high above fields of maíz, frijol, calabasas (corn, beans, squash), and maguey, an agave that is se source of mescal, the local liquor. This município sits high on a slope facing the fawn-colored parroquia or church across the square or zocalo. From the portales we look across the valley to the dark mountains beyond.

The Fundación’s curriculum is well-designed for children but I don’t think it will work for adults. As an adult language-learner, I know adult students can learn faster and deeper than children, but I also know they have an adult inhibitions and self-censorship that rarely bothers children. With this in mind, I alter the curriculum activities. As a recent adult language student, I know how they feel; at times I still feel inhibited. As their teacher, I’m also something of a student in Spanish. Our immediate goal isn’t the precise mastery of grammar rules but becoming confident in communication.

My small class consists of Manuel, Elizabet, her daughter Monica. Elizabet is in her late forties and I don’t know if she has a job. Monica is a nurse and new mother in her twenties. And Manuel says he’s forty-five and had English classes many years before. He is entering at mid-term and already more advanced. My predecessor taught his last class the week before I arrived and I have no idea how much or how well he taught them. Our first class is something of a blind date.

What a surprise and pleasure to discover they already know more English than the curriculum provides for and eager to push on. Clearly, they aren’t ‘blank slates’ on whom I will lay the curriculum. They are insipient English speakers and I must begin where they are and go forward from there.

Class preparation hinges on several questions: What do adults find hardest to learn at first? What were my barriers to learning?   How did teachers help me overcome them? What spurred me to learn? I spend more prep time working on the answers to these questions than on grammar. Our classers quickly become interactive – like‘improv’ theater – in which we react to and incorporate what we bring to class in the way of questions and observations.

Their questions of ‘how do you say …?’ or ‘what’s the Spanish equivalent of …?’ are as integral to learning as a lesson about placing adjectives BEFORE the nouns they modify. English goes bottom up, empirically compiling details (modifiers) with the noun as a kind of summary of all: ‘The tall, green fir TREE.’ Spanish is more top-down, categorically starting with the noun and then adding details (modifiers) as subordinate aspects: ‘El ÁRBOL, alto y verde’ (The tree, tall and green). Is there any inherent logic about where the adjective is placed? Their simple, direct questions cause me to think about English in a way I haven’t thought of it before.

Making out vocabulary cards, I choose words relevant to their lives and contain letter combinations and sounds largely unknown in Spanish: ‘th’, ‘ee’, ‘oo’, ‘lk’,’rn’ and many others. Not only must they recognize the sound when they read them silently, but it is important to train their tongues to make the sounds. Elizabet, Monica, and Manuel practice training their tongues on words like ‘with’, ‘tooth’, ‘geese’, ‘born’, walk, and many others.

I know this is harder than it seems. Even if the brain recognizes the word, the tongue either fails to make the sound in speech or rebels against making it. At one time, I had to learn new letters and sounds, such as trilling the double ‘r’ as in perro (dog) or making a ‘yj’ sound for the double ‘ll’ in llamar (to call). Now they see me struggling to pronounce Tlacochahuaya.

My Spanish is very good they tell me and try, gently, to correct my rendition of the town’s name. The ‘tl’ combination is a common sound in indigenous place names: Tlaxiaco, Tlacolula, Tlaxcala, and Tlatelolco. Mexicans say them easily but most Anglos don’t. ‘Tl’ isn’t a consonant combination we recognize in English – we’re familiar with ‘lt’. The ‘tl’ sound starts with the tongue near the back of the pallet and then rolls forward. I practice Tlacochahuaya almost daily for weeks until, at last, I get reasonably close – close enough that no one misunderstands me but still short of a native’s rendition.

Besides the uncommon sounds of English, we work on the structure of sentences, the syntax, the inherent ‘logic’ of putting together nouns and verbs and modifiers in a way that makes sense, in a way that completes a comprehensible picture of an object, a person, or an action. The more I work on this, the more I understand how the relationships among the parts of speech differ from language to language.

The verb ‘to do’ in English is simpler than hacer, its Spanish counterpart. ‘Do’ is an all-purpose verb covering a variety of actions (doing). Hacer not only means ‘to do’ in a general sense, but also means ‘to make’ as in constructing or creating something. For my students, writing and understanding sentences with the verb ‘to do’ is like working with only half of a verb. They need to learn ‘make’ for the other half. Teaching the verb ‘to be’ is much easier because English has only one form while Spanish has two. Prepositions are also trickier because those similar to English aren’t exact. The preposition en means ‘in’ but also ‘at’ or ‘on’ depending on the context. The preposition ‘por’ means ‘for’ in the English sense but may also mean ‘through’, ‘by’, ‘by means of’, or ‘cause of’. Teaching and learning these is a strugge.

Monica, Elizabet, and Manuel are eager learners, and return each time filled with questions about a phrase, or how to say a Spanish phrase in English. As homework, I ask each to take from their library a child’s book in English and read it aloud to themselves. Reading aloud makes an eye-ear-tongue connection. In one act, they recognize the letters, hear them pronounced as a word, and train their tongue to make the sound. For my last class, I want them to read aloud a passage from their book and explain what it means (in English, of course). Their explanations will tell me how well they understand what they read. Manuel brings a child’s story, Elizabet and Monica share a children’s book about Mexico. The reading goes smoothly, I know they can now read, understand, and explain in English.

As the last hour winds down, I tell them this is my last class, and introduce them to their new teacher, a new volunteer with several years’ experience as a teacher. Although they have had short-term, volunteer teachers before, and although I told them I would be with them for five weeks, they seem shocked.

‘When are you coming back?’ Elizabet asks plaintively.

‘Si Dios quiere, un año’ (God willing, in a year). In my mind, I want to do this again.

And so class ends with the ‘abrazos y besos’ or hugs and kisses that are the customary Mexican gestures of friendship. It’s evening and we wait in the cobbled street to catch the collectivo to Oaxaca.

I loved spending the afternoons with people as beautiful as their valley. Standing beneath the squash-colored portales of the município, I often gazed across the shady park of fig and cedar trees to the dark, hazy mountains beyond the valley. I will miss looking through the small gap where the solitary, palm tree stands shaggy-headed. But I will take away memories of the broad valley lying green-gold in the enchanting amber light that comes just before the puesta del sol. I will miss Tlacochahuaya, whose name defies my attempts to pronounce it correctly. I will continue to practice it until I return to teach again. Adios Tlacochahuaya.

My work in Tlacochahuaya is done and I’m sad to see it end because it is going so well. For a few weeks, we struggled together to produce learning, and in the process, we opened ourselves to each other. That’s the satisfaction of volunteering, it is inherently real work. And work, whether volunteer or paid, is an honorable and integral part of the larger social fabric. As a volunteer, I contribute toward the fabric of Oaxacan society and feel I am something of an oaxaqueño. Volunteering isn’t simply an activity, with a true heart, it may be a form of citizenship.

La tortilla – in praise of the humble

/ R. Newell Searle / Leave a comment

OAXACA, México

‘Don Rodrigo, es tiempo, el desayuno,’ Doña Estela sings out, calling me to breakfast. I begin the day with huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs), frijoles negros (black beans), hot chocolate, and tortillas wrapped in a cloth to keep them soft and warm. After several weeks in Oaxaca, it’s a reflex to load a tortilla with eggs and beans, fold it, and eat it with my fingers. On other days, I breakfast on chilaquiles, quartered tortillas lightly fried, simmered until soft in red or green salsa, and topped with onions or an egg. This breakfast will last me until mid-afternoon.

Nothing is as versatile as corn tortillas. They’re so ubiquitous I used to take them for granted; worse yet, I hardly noticed them in my rush to savor the moles, salsas, and various fillings and toppings. Yet, corn and tortillas long precede moles and salsas. They are the foundation of Mexican meals if not its culture.

Maíz or corn originated in Central America and nourished the indigenous people just as the bison nourished the tribes on the North American plains. Everything about the forty varieties of red, black, yellow, and white maíz is used. Stalks are fed to cattle, the totomoxtle (husk) becomes a wrapper for tamales, elote (‘sweet corn’) is eaten fresh or cooked, and the huitlacoche (a black fungus) is a delicacy eaten fresh or added to soups and sauces. As a Minnesota farm boy, I knew corn largely as the food for cattle and hogs.

The versatile tortillas are believed to have originated with the Mayans some 10,000 years ago. Whether true or not, tortillas predate the Spanish conquest by centuries if not millennia. Until relatively modern times, most individuals – except the elite – ate their food from a large leaf, half a dried gourd, or from a tortilla. Not only did the tortilla provide nourishment, it evolved into various forms to serve as edible plates and bowls. The humble tortilla is so important that Doña Estela doesn’t consider her table fully set until it has a basket or two of warm tortillas. They are as necessary as napkins – if not more important.

At the Saturday tianguis (market) in Tlaxiaco, I come upon two Mixteca women breaking chunks of white stone with hammers and putting the small pieces into quart-sized plastic bags.

‘Why are you smashing the rock?’ I ask.

‘This is cal,’ one of them says. ‘It’s a special stone we need for making tortillas. We can’t make tortillas without it,’ she adds, filling the bag and setting it atop the others for sale. Seeing my perplexity at her answer, she tells me how the cal is part of making tortilla flour.

Cal is slaked lime and when crushed, she mixes it with dried corn and water, boils it for twenty minutes in a clay pot and sets it aside to cool overnight. In the morning, when the kernels are soft, she drains the water and removes the shells from the kernels. After draining and rinsing the corn several times more, she grinds the kernels. After moistening the meal, she kneads it to make the masa or dough. Making tortillas is a lot of hard work. Like most urban Mexicans, Doña Estela buys tortillas at a shop or occasionally makes them from ready-made masa. But Tlaxiaco is a town in the mountains of northwestern Oaxaca, a place where the people still speak Mixteco, adhere to Mixtec culture, and make their own tortillas.

Hungry at mid-afternoon, I stop at a puesto (food stand) and ask the woman for a tlayuda. This is a particularly Oaxacan dish and one of the many forms that tortillas take. Taking a fresh one as large as a pizza, she bakes it for a moment on a comal, the large, stone pan atop a charcoal brazier. Then she turns it over and spreads the tlayuda with some fat and bean paste before adding shredded cabbage, pulled chicken, avocado slices, queso fresco (Oaxacan cheese), and salsa. Folding the tlayuda over the filling, she seals the edges, and cooks both sides before sliding it onto a plate for me. It’s hot, savory, and enough food for the day!

When I eat dinner on the street or in a café, I order chalupas, a crispy boat layered with white beans, cheese and tomatoes. One day I met my friend Rosario for antiojos (snacks) and ordered sopes, a small, thick tortilla, deep-fried and topped with refried black beans, lettuce, cheese, vegetables, meat and salsa. It’s a finger food, like a tostada, and ideal for snacking at an outdoor café.

On the days when I teach English in Tlacochahuaya, I eat lunch at the Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca and order a quesadilla, a folded tortilla filled with Oaxacan cheese, sliced tomatoes, and squash flowers. It’s a light meal but hearty enough to carry me through the afternoon class until I return home for la cena, or the late evening snack.

In Oaxaca, we normally eat the plato fuerte, (main meal) at mid-afternoon. Doña Estela keeps many recipes in her head but she rarely repeats a menu. Our platos fuertes include grilled fish, chicken, and pork but always with tortillas. One day we eat memelas, tortillas with fluted edges smeared with bean paste and garnished with cheese, salsa, and onions. The lighter evening meals include sopa de tortilla (tortilla soup) made of chicken broth, shredded carrots, or onion, and served with tortillas.

Tortillas have many permutations depending on what part of Mexico we’re in. When I was a consultant in Guadalajara, I often ate supper on the street at a puesto selling taquitos, small, tortillas. My favorites were called the gringa and consisted of two small tortillas cooked with shredded cheese between them that I rolled up and filled with my choice of meat, salsa, guacamole, and onion.

Tortillas are essential to enchiladas, the less common efrijolada, a soft tortilla dipped in black bean sauce and topped with cheese, onion, and parsley, or the entomatada, a folded tortilla dipped in tomato sauce, garnished with queso fresco, white onions, and parsley. As a snack, I often eat a flauta, a deep-fried, rolled tortilla that looks like an egg-roll filled with cheese or chicken, and topped with cream or guacamole.

And for postre (at the end, or dessert), a favorite is the empanada, a turnover filled with sweet or savory stuffing of sweet potato, yam, or squash flowers, and then baked and topped with a sweet syrup.

Consumption of tortillas in the United States exceeds that of bagels or croissants. Although we expect to see tortillas, along with chips and salsa, as part of the meal in a Mexican restaurant, the tortilla’s significance remains largely unnoticed and unknown among non-Mexicans.

But the tortilla still shines like the sun in Mexico. It plays the leading role at the center of everyday dining. The tlayudas, memelas, chilaquiles, and other forms of the tortilla vary widely from region to region, cultural group to cultural group, and family to family. All are genuine, and variation is part of the tortilla’s virtue. No matter how a corn tortilla is dressed and served, it is still the foundation of a proud culinary heritage. And those who know its history and secrets, are connected – however invisibly – to a past far deeper and richer than any they’ve known before.

 

 

The Virgin of Guadalupe – God’s feminine face

/ R. Newell Searle / 1 Comment

A hint of incense, with its sweet scent of mystery and sanctity, hung in the air of the semi-dark church.  Several hundred Mexican immigrants and a few Anglos filled the pews and more stood along the walls.  On a table beneath the rood beam, twinkling lights surrounded the statue of a woman  wearing a blue cloak with stars; her tranquil, brown face is turned aside, as if watching the boys at her feet, dressed in white ‘campesino‘ garb, and little girls with braids and long skirts, singing Spanish carols.  Happy parents watch, pleased they are passing their culture to the next generation.

It’s December 11, 10:30 p.m. and, to the sound of guitar music, the crucifer, the thurifer, the acolytes, the priest, and then the bishop walk up the center aisle to the sanctuary.  This is my church, El  Santo Nino Jesus, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and as a new member, and this is my first experience with the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  And it has changed my perspective.

If you’re not a Mexican, you may find the rest of this post exotic, but stick with me.  And if you are Mexican, I hope I don’t give offense if I get this wrong.  Believing in the Virgin of Guadalupe goes to the heart of cultural differences between Mexican and North American spirituality.  My friends in Mexico and Minnesota believe so strongly in her existence and power I can’t dismiss it as unreal.  Believing in Guadalupe is a part of who they are, and a part of our friends.  Something I accept even if I don’t  understand it completely.

Nothing is as Mexican as the Virgin of Guadalupe.  She is the unifying figure for Mexicans of all classes and ethnicities.  As Carlos Fuentes remarked: “You cannot truly be considered a Mexican unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe.”  But who is she?  And what does it mean to believe in her?  And how do I understand her when I didn’t grow up under the Virgin’s guidance?

I grew up with the Virgin Mary as a figure from the Christmas Gospels, in Christmas pageants, carols, and creches. She seems so remote, so unnaturally pure as to be unreal.  I thought of her as the greatest of saints, the “Mother of God,” but abstractly as the name of a holy person along with Peter and Paul, Luke and Matthew.  Like them, she lived in a distant past and wasn’t a presence in the here and now.   That’s how I thought until I went to Mexico where she seems to be a fact of life.

So who is she?  What is my relationship to her – whoever she is?  Indisputable information about the Virgin of Guadalupe is hard to come by.  What there is, is subject to varied interpretations and disputes.  As the story goes, she appeared to an indigenous peasant named Juan Diego a decade after the Spanish conquista on the hilltop of Tepeyac, a place where the Aztecs had worshipped Tonanzintla, the mother of their gods.  The Virgin appeared with a brown face and spoke in Nahuatl, the indigenous tongue.  The Aztecs quickly embraced her and millions converted to Catholicism within a decade, despite the doubts of the bishop.  In time, the Church accepted the apparition as real and built a church on the site.  It is now the most visited shrine in Mexico.  December 12 is her feast day in the Mexican calendar.

I’ve never seen an apparition or met anyone who has, but I image it is intensely personal and makes a powerful impact on the person who has it.  But is it real?  Or is it a form of dreaming or hallucination or delusion?  For the millions who didn’t witness the apparition, the story of it rang true and they converted because of it.  A  woman, the Mother of God, like their Aztec mother of the gods, had appeared where they used to worship.  The effect was profound.

She was and remains a figure for all Mexicans.  When Padre Miguel Hidalgo raised the flag of Independence in 1810, he and his followers shouted: “Long live our Holy Mother the Virgin of Guadalupe, Death to bad government!”  Painting her image on their banners, the army of peasants and creoles fought and died by the thousands until Mexico achieved its independence in 1821.  Afterward, the victors gave thanks for Guadalupe’s intercessions as the source of their victory.  After a century of Independence, internal struggles, and dictatorship, Mexico erupted in Revolution.  The leaders had no consensus: Liberalism, monarchism, socialism, constitutionalism, and they led the country in different directions. Emiliano Zapata led his followers into battle under the banner of Guadalupe.  In 1995, the Zapatista Liberation Army of Chiapas named their ‘mobile city’ after Guadalupe. For a century, through good times and bad, the Virgin has been the unifying symbol, the rubber band, that binds together the disparate classes, ethnicities, political parties, and alliances that make up modern Mexico.   Unlike politicians, she is above criticism or doubt.

Everywhere I go in Mexico, Guadalupe looks upon me from posters, banners, and statues in store windows.  Men and women wear her medallions; she is silk-screened onto T-shirts, and painted onto walls.  Restaurants and businesses display posters or images of her.   Pedestrians pause at small shrines on the sidewalk to pray before going to work.  Like a truly protective mother, she is a silent presence watching over her ‘children’ in Mexico.  Guadalupe is syncretistic but there is substance as well.  The Biblical Mary was a decisive and powerful figure and not a passive vessel of popular piety.  Being pregnant out-of-wedlock in Judea would have brought about Mary’s death by stoning (had not Joseph agreed to marry her).  The “Magnificat” by itself is a  radical vision of social justice (as yet unrealized) that Jesus went on to proclaim as ‘good news.’  After giving birth, Mary  is a silent presence except at a wedding in Cana; a witness to the crucifixion and resurrection.

But all this is history and theology.  The facts are few and conjectural.  Whether Mary is a real figure in history, or whether Mary’s apparition as Guadalupe happened or not; the impact on Mexico and Mexicans is real and profound and can’t be ignored when learning to understand Mexican culture.

I was struck by Guadalupe’s power, if that’s what it is, on the day we installed her statue in the chapel at Santo Nino.  Someone donated the statue anonymously (anonymous donations are very Mexican).  Two women carried her statue forward and put it on a corner of the altar.  The priest blessed it with incense and holy water.  And, as the soloist sing “Ave Maria,” the women carried the statue to its place in the chapel.  I stood with my friends during the installation, seeing solemn, brown faces – men’s and women’s – wet with tears.  Their connection was deep, personal, and emotional; and I knew it was something outside my ability to experience.

Every Sunday, Angeles or other women from Santo Nino place fresh flowers before Guadalupe’s statue.  They place the flowers carefully, tenderly, and then stand back, offering prayers.  Looking on, I see their devotions are intimately personal, the silent or whispered conversations from their hearts between the women and Guadalupe.

Why do modern people – Mexicans or North Americans – believe in an apparition that happened nearly 500 years ago, if it happened at all?  Why do they believe in an apparition in which Mary returns as an indigenous woman?  Almost any other appearance would be treated like believing in UFO abdunctions, Big Foot sightings, or extra terrestrial origins of the pyramids.  Where’s the proof?

Those questions lead me to wonder about some sacred North American beliefs.  Why do we believe the “invisible hand” of the free market brings about the greatest good for the greatest number when the evidence is contrary?  And why do we still pay lip service if not outright devotion to the idea that “heaven” has a special mission, a “manifest destiny,” for the United States in world affairs not given to any other nation?  Why do we believe that?  It takes a large dose of hubris to believe in manifest destiny or American exceptionalism, and a certain moral blindness to believe in the goodness of the free market despite economic facts.  The free market and manifest destiny are abstract ideas but we accept them.  It’s even easier to believe in Guadalupe.

The Virgin of Guadalupe is a real and powerful force in Mexican life.  Millions ask her to pray with them and for them; they seek her blessing, protection, and guidance in all manner of causes and situations.  When their prayers are answered (and I believe some prayers are answered), or they receive a miracle, they gratefully undertake works of mercy, compassion, and charity.   I can’t think of many individuals (real or imaginary) who have inspired and commanded such devotion over so long a time.

Guadalupe wasn’t part of my spiritual formation in Minnesota.  I didn’t grow up with her watching over me from a wall in my home, in my church, or from a street corner shrine.  She didn’t exist in my world until middle-age and I find it impossible to make an emotional connection to her the way that “Amazing Grace” or other hymns give me a clutch in my throat.  Guadalupe for my friends and “Amazing Grace” for me have been indelible parts of our respective spiritual lives.  Memory is a part of our identity.

“What does the Virgin of Guadalupe mean to you?” I asked my friend, Maria, a woman of forty, a mother, and bookkeeper.

“She’s my spiritual mother,” Maria said.  “She’s the feminine face of God.”

Yes, now I understand.  Jesus taught that when we feed and clothe the poor, or heal the sick, or visit the prisoners, we are doing these things to him as well.   And from that, we are taught to seek the face of Jesus in the people around us or to be his face to others.  Seeing Guadalupe as the feminine face of God makes sense.

Tonight we will celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  I’ll be there as the music swells, the priest and bishop elevate the bread and wine in the Eucharist.  I’ll be in line with the others, filing forward  to receive the Body and Blood of Christ.  And then I’ll pause before the Virgin’s statue to say a prayer.  After the communion, the Aztec dancers will file in, their feathered headdresses waving, the shells tied to their ankles rattling softly.  While the drummers pound a hypnotic rhythm, the dancers will sway and dip before the statue, their bare feet flashing and the shells rattling.

And after the dancers, the mariachi, six men in tight pants and short jackets adorned with silver conchos and buttons.  They will stand before the statue with guitars, violin, and trumpets to play and sing “Las Mananitas,” a traditional song for birthdays.  We will stand and sing with them as the last of the incense drifts over us and the music fills us with the joy of celebrating the day of our spiritual mother, the Virgin of Guadalupe, the feminine face of God.

Next post: La Navidad in Oaxaca – las posadas, calendas, and fireworks

Home Sweet Homestay – living and loving the language

/ R. Newell Searle / 4 Comments

 

OAXACA, Mexico

Many Spanish immersion programs offer a “homestay.” It’s a real-world setting for using and learning language.  Is that something a middle-aged adult really needs to do?  I mean, after college, aren’t we too old be living with strangers? Isn’t that going to cramp our adult freedom?  Wouldn’t it be better to rent an apartment, maybe with a friend or spouse?

If your answer is “Yes,” please keep reading and consider my experience.

Hosts are more than you imagine them to be …

Getting off the Estrella Roja coach in Puebla for my first immersion, I know little except I will live with a family named Gutierrez. Of course, I speculated about what they would be like.  By the time I reach Puebla, I have a clear, imaginary picture of them.  But Julian and Lupita Gutierrez are not as I imagined.

My first impression is I’m having a homestay in a nursing home.  Julian is at least 80 and Lupita is in her mid-sixties.  He has a shock of white hair; hers is still naturally dark, with long eyelashes to match.  Julian and Lupita are nothing like the multi-generational family I imaged.  I’m afraid we won’t have much in common. But I’m wrong!

Their house is small by U.S. standards, but comfortable; their bookshelves are jammed with titles covering a range of interests; and souvenir plates from their travels cover the dining room wall.  My room is more than I expected: a double bed, desk, dresser, and built in closet as well as a private bathroom.  It’s everything I need.

I rise early the first morning, a Sunday. Julian steps out of the kitchen to offer me a mug of fresh coffee flavored with cinnamon.  “From now on, we speak only Spanish,” he tells me in English.  It’s one of the Institute’s rules.   I’m okay with that.  I came to learn.  And then he asks if I want to attend early Mass with them.  I say “yes” because I’m committed to saying “yes” every language and cultural opportunity.  And after Mass he invites me to go to with him to a friend’s ranchito for a party.  Again I say “yes.”

Hebert and Socorro host the party and don’t speak English. Neither do any of the other 25 or 30 guests. Julian introduces me to people whose names I immediately forget. Then he settles me into a conversation with Hebert’s son, an attorney.  Seeing that I’m “dog-paddling” in a conversation, he leaves me alone.  At first I feel anxious; later see it was shrewd on his part.

Over bottles of Corona beer, I chat as best I can with the young attorney.  Although I went to Mexico with some vocabulary and basic grammar, I couldn’t mold it into a real sentence.  But the attorney is patient and kind; he nods and encourages me. Slowly, thanks to his affirmation, I gain enough confidence to push my boundaries in Spanish.  By day’s end, I’m exhausted but elated. I’ve been in conversations for nearly seven hours!

I suppose our proximity in ages and life experiences started my rapport with them.  We are, at most fifteen years apart in age and we’ve already lived a lot of the ups and downs that life dishes out.  In less than two days, we act as if we’ve known each other a long time.   I feel settled, without the uncertainty of being with strangers.

Homestay is more than room and board …

They give me more than room and board. Lupita corrects my words and makes it her mission to improve my accent.  “Say fácil,” she says at breakfast.  It’s more like an order than a request.  Fácil means “easy” and is accented: FÁH-sil.

I try to copy her accent but it comes out “fa-SIL,” and “fassil” and “FUH-sal.”

“No.  FÁH-sil.”

And so it goes, back and forth for a week until I get it; until fácil is fácil.  While Lupita works on my diction, Julian guides me through some of the cultural norms.  

Buen provecho! he says as I sit down the dinner.  It means roughly the same as bon appetit.  “We say that at every meal,” he explains, “and we say it to strangers in a restaurant.  It’s impolite to ignore those who are eating.”  This is a revelation!  In Minnesota, we give people their space and this would be an intrusion. But in the more extroverted culture of Mexico, it is rude to ignore people.  This is only the beginning of lessons in language and culture.

Very gently and casually, they take me under their wing and teach me without appearing to teach me at all.  Like a child, I learn by imitating what they do.  Its’ easy. And they do this when I lived with them during four of the five immersions.

A network of lasting friends is possible …

Eduardo and Lorena live next door to Julian and sometimes board students.  He is a businessman, she volunteers at a nursing home, and their children are grown.  Eduardo and I are the same age and on Sunday afternoon, during an outing, he and I climb through cactus and mesquite to the top of a butte. Our friendship grows out of that adventure.  On my next visit, they take me to the indigenous town of Cauhuatinchan to explore an ex-convento dating from the 1500s.  A couple years later, after immersion, when I work voluntarily in Puebla, he invites my wife and me to stay with them instead of a hotel.

Hebert is a doctor, an anesthetist, about my age.  He and Socorro live in the city but own the ranchito in the country.  They are a couple of expansive generosity and we become friends almost instantly.  One year, I spend the Cinco de Mayo holiday with them, sitting in their arbor and talking for seven hours! At other times, I visit the ranchito, or they take me to their social events.

Besides friends who are contemporaries, my network includes former teachers with whom I correspond regularly, conversation guides, and some of their family and friends who make up my social circle in Puebla. A homestay is an efficient way to build a network of friends.  Once I acquired a network of friends, the city no longer seemed foreign but familiar. I no longer felt like a visitor, but a resident.  That’s how I feel in Puebla; like I belong there.  An emotional connection to people anchors me to the city.

Home Sweet Homestay 

A homestay adds a special dimension learning and living in Mexico. It’s a privilege to be an integral part of a family.  This is one of the joys of Spanish immersion.  And although I’m no longer a student, I seek out homestays instead of an apartment when I volunteer in Mexico.

Now I am living with Estela and Daniel in a Oaxacan family.  They are in their sixties, people of humble origins and means and not quite middle-class, although their grown children are.  I have my own room, the appointments are simple; the food is excellent and abundant.  So are laughter, conversation, and love among all members of the family – including me.

I have always learned more about how to talk and act from living with families than from classrooms.   Like a child at the dinner table, I’m still learning the language as it’s really spoken from people who use it daily.

Learning the language and learning to talk are different things.  I can learn the language as a body of knowledge yet be unable to really speak it.  But living in a family, I hear hijole! for “wow!”, orale for affirmation like “okay,” and esta en la onda for “to be with it.”  Something that is produced or grown around Oaxaca is criollo, and if you appreciate something, the phrase is, te pasas.   If you’re frustrated, you might say, no manchas.  A fool is called  a pendejo, or guage, and a small boy is a chamaco.   You won’t find these in regular dictionaries or, if you do, you won’t know how to use them, and when.

After seven years, I’ve come to regard Julian and Lupita as my Mexican padrino and madrina, or god-parents.  What began as a passing acquaintance has become familial love.  Their friends and neighbors are my part of my extended family, and I’m a part of theirs.  To be loved in your family is a divine gift; to be loved in another country, another culture, in another family, is an even greater gift.

Not getting your money’s worth … 

So, if you’re still thinking about an apartment, you may have more privacy and liberty to go as you please but at a price.  You’ll have fewer opportunities to learn day-to-day Spanish from native speakers.  And if you are living with a spouse or friend, you are less likely to speak to each other in Spanish.

If you skip the homestay and opt for an apartment, you have just cut your immersion experience by half. Said another way, you’re not getting your money’s worth because you’re getting only half the education you’re paying for.

So, weighing the two options, which is the better deal?

For me, there’s no place like homestay.

 

 

 

Spanish – getting it WRITE

/ R. Newell Searle / Leave a comment

OAXACA, Mexico

At the end of my first day of my first immersion at the Spanish Institute of Puebla, Claudia assigned “tarea” or homework: Write ten sentences in the “co-preterito” or past imperfect.  You know, the sentences that say “I used to do this,” or “I was doing this.”

Ten sentences in the imperfect!  That’s all?  Ten random sentences in the past perfect?  I can do that in twenty minutes! That’s not much of an assignment.  I expect something more for my fee!  So I set to make it something more and found a strategy that worked well for me – then and now.

The imperfect is ideal for narratives and description.  That evening, I hit on telling a story I might relate in a conversation.  Sitting at my small desk, I thought about a story of ten or a dozen lines.  It wasn’t anything serious, just an episode with a beginning, middle and end.   Then I picked the verbs I wanted for the imperfect and wrote them across the top of the page.

Then a decision:  Write the story in English and then translate or rewrite it in Spanish?  Or just plunge into Spanish and start writing?   Writing in English struck me as half-hearted – almost cheating – and self-defeating.  Writing in Spanish meant thinking in Spanish, and wasn’t that the point of immersion – to learn to think and speak in Spanish?

After two hours and a couple false starts, I finished a one-page story I was proud to hand in the next day.  Besides the ten sentences in the imperfect, the narrative needed a few in the present and future tenses.  I gave it to Claudia, she put on her glasses, and read it.   She said nothing, but looked at me with a question in her eyes, as if awaiting an explanation.

In halting Spanish, I said writing a story seemed like the best way to practice the imperfect in a context.  This seemed to me a good way to create a coherent relationship among the sentences was to write them the way I   would say them in a conversation.  This way I can get used to handling several verbs in shaping a story.

She smiled and nodded.  “Si,” she agreed.  Thereafter, I wrote essays, short stories, and opinion pieces every day during each of the five immersions.  As my Spanish improved over time, I  wrote longer stories, developed characters and plots, and gave them richer details and greater nuance.  My writings ranged over simple narratives, humor, short fiction, and political editorials.

The point of writing

But, you say, I don’t like to write.  All I want to do is learn to speak the language, not write it.  I understand.  Many of us find writing a chore, and sometimes it is.  None the less, we all know how to write – however poorly we do it.  Writing is a part of language; our capacity to write is integrally linked to our capacity to think, to feel, and to speak.   All of these functions work together in to create language.  Writing – however poorly done – can improve our fluency.

Don’t think you have to come up with the “Great Mexican Novel.”  Let’s be pragmatic.

Writing makes visible our speech, our thoughts or the fruits of our thought.  When we write, we can see our thoughts, we can save them, refine them, correct them, and return to them again and again.  If nothing else, our writing becomes a personal artifact of intellectual archaeology.  And as an artifact, your essay, opinion piece, letter, or short story in Spanish provides you and your teacher with a map of how our mind works with the language.  Don’t fret about the sophistication of what your write.  It’s not the story you tell that’s so important, it’s HOW you tell it.    

Writing saves our thoughts in a moment of time, a reference point in our development as Spanish speakers.  Why?  From essay to essay, our writings create benchmarks for measuring our progress toward fluency.  With our teacher, we can identify the chronic weak spots in our grammar, syntax, or conjugation (and we all have weak spots).  After a few essays, we can identify patterns: habitual errors, missed accents, failure to use the subjunctive in subordinate clauses, misplaced direct and indirect object pronouns, and more.  All of this information helps to set our priorities for improvement.  Through triage, if nothing else, we can tackle one problem at a time.  And a periodic comparison of essays will reveal the progress we are truly making. 

The method

Writing takes a little planning.  And planning makes our task easier.  Ah!  The question: What am I going to write about?

Pick something simple; maybe something simple you know how to do and describe that to an imaginary Spanish speaker.  Or write about an episode from childhood, or about your dog.  It doesn’t matter what the topic is as long as it’s something you like.  The more you like the topic, the easier it is to write about it.  But keep it simple so your mental energy goes into the language rather than the theme.

Think about how this story relates to and will be useful in working through the problem you have with a category of conjugation, a grammatical tense, or vocabulary.  It may be verbs in the conditional, indirect object pronouns, or “modismos” or colloquialisms.

Don’t try to cram two or three problem areas into one essay.  Use triage.  One problem area per essay.  As you review your work,

If you’re not a writer by nature, you may still feel stumped for a theme.  If you are, play this little game.  Select words from the category you are working with (let’s say it’s verbs) and write them across the top of the page.  Okay: Now you have verbs but they are unrelated.   Your task is to create a story line that puts these verbs into a logical relationship.  Think of them like the magnetic words on the refriderator door – words you can re-arrange to make different sentences.

Dollars to donuts, with a smidgen of imagination, the verbs will “suggest” the story line to you.  Words have friends, and as soon as you put down one word, that word invites another, and very soon they invite more words and you have a sentence.  Once that happens, the rest is easy.  Or easier.  The juxtaposition of verbs suggested possibilities I wouldn’t have thought of on my own.

Try this

No matter where you are in your pusuit of Spanish, try writing as a way to confront problems with grammar and syntax.  Take an aspect of vocabulary or grammar that is particularly difficult and make an assignment.  Think of a story or a dialogue between characters that will cause you to use the part of the language that is most difficult in the moment.  Put the key words at the top of the page and start writing.

Like physical exercise, the effort will strengthen and expand your capacity to use the tenses (say, the subjunctive), the indirect object pronouns, etc. with ease.  I’ve read that this kind of effort creates new neural pathways.  Maybe so.  I do know, however, the effort smooths out rough places in my Spanish.  Who knows, you may enjoy it!

 

 

 

 

 

“Ya basta!” – Celebrating an unfinished revolution

/ R. Newell Searle / Leave a comment

OAXACA, Mexico

Understanding social realities is an important part of learning Spanish and Mexican culture.  Unlike a packaged tour, immersion means you take what comes, the good, the bad, and reality  Today is the 104th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution.  Although it began as a Revolution, it soon descended into civil war lasting nearly ten years.  Its grim tally of untold deaths is often overlooked in favor of colorful characters like Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.  Let’s start the day’s meditaton with the colorful leaders and look at the realities later.

That was then … or was it?

My friend Don Hilario, a former mariachi, took me to several places in the life of an iconic Revolucionario: Emiliano Zapata, the handsome general with a thick moustache, large sombrero, his chest crossed by bandeliers of bullets.  Don Hilario’s adult children and grandchildren – my friends – live in Minnesota.  He lives in Cuautla, Morelos, in a small house built against the stone and concrete wall of the ex-Hacienda Coahuixtla.

On my first visit in 2010, he put on his hat, picked up his cane, and led me into the ex-Hacienda.  It is a ruin, an empty shell of crumbling, stone buildings were landless peasants processed cane into sugar and died in dire poverty.  The Revolution smashed the hacienda system, including this one.  As we stood on a knoll, he pointed across the valley and said: “Over there is Zapata’s house.  Do you want to see it?”  Of course I did!

It’s the centerpiece at the Zapata Museum in the town of Anenecuilco (which he made me practice pronouncing).  The remnants of its adobe walls are protected from the weather by a huge nylon cover.  The immense mural presents the life of Emiliano Zapata in dramatic scenes and vivid color.  Zapta is the Revolution’s romantic icon.

When I visited him again in 2012, Don Hilario drove me to his home town, Quilamula, a pueblo in southwestern Morelos.  On the way, we stopped at ex-Hacienda Chinameca where a young teamster named Emiliano Zapata hauled the bricks to construct the hacienda.   In 1919, near the end of the civil war, Zapata’s rivals assassinated him there.   Quilamula is a poor town, and it was easy to imagine that many towns like it offered men as “guerreros” who followed Zapata for “Tierra y libertad,” land and liberty.

That night, in my guest room on the second level of Don Hilario’s small house, I stood on the balcony under a full moon.  Looking over the tops of the pomelo trees at moonlight and shadow, I was deeply aware I was as close as I could come to the Revolution of 1910.

This is now … or is it still 1910?

This morning I paused by the plaza of a kindergarten and peered through the wrought iron gate at the parents and children celebrating the Revolution.  Little boys wore small serapes, conical sombreros, and carried toy rifles; the girls wore long skirts with ribbons in their braids.  A fiesta for los “ninos.”

But an adult hung on the gate a framed, hand-lettered sign listing the causes of the Revolution:

  • Unequal distribution of wealth;
  • Exploitation of workers;
  • Political and adminstrative corruption;
  • Negation of democratic government.

Many Mexicans today wonder what has changed.  Is this 1910 over again?

Since the Spanish conquista, resources and wealth in Mexico have been largely in the hands of a small circle of influentials: Spaniards, then the criollos who succeeded them, and then the one-party government of the PRI (Partido Revolutionario Institutional) that ran Mexico from 1929 until 2000.

Expropriation of ancestral lands provided the spark for Zapata’s bottom-up revolt in the State of Morelos.  But Zapta’s was only one of several revolutions that erupted in different places in opposition to the 30-year presidency of  Porfirio Diaz.  Briefly united, the revolutionaries forced Diaz into exile.  After that, the country plunged into a decade of brutal conflict as generals and chiefs allied and betrayed each other in pursuit of conflicting agendas for the future of Mexico.

Unfortunately, ten years of civil war didn’t resolve these contradictions and establish a common vision that all Mexicans could embrace.  Nor did it create a democracy to off-set if not end the pre-Revolution system of oligarcy that had marginalized the campesinos and indigenous.  Only the names of the oligarchs changed.  The tendency toward oligarchy re-emerged within the state managed-economy run by the PRI.  Before its 71 year domination ended, the PRI co-opted and absorbed civic organizations, labor unions, trade associations, and cooperatives that might otherwise act as independent, countervailing forces.

Ayotzinapa – a flash back

The September 26, 2014, massacre of 43 student teachers at the hands of officials in Iguala, Guerrero, shocked a country already numbed by tens of thousands of deaths in a decade of the narco-violence.  Murders in Iguala resurrected memories of 1968 when he government used the Army to crush a student protest at the Autonomous University in Mexico City.  Like Kent State in 1970, the massacre at Tlatelolco left deep wounds.

The mayor of Iguala ordered the arrests of students because he feared they would disrupt an event held by his wife.  After the arrests, the police turned the students over to Guerreros Unidos, a drug gang, that killed them and burned their bodies.  Iguala exposed and confirmed the collaboration between drug cartels and local government.   Although the mayor of Iguala is in jail, and the Governor of Guerrero has resigned, the search for bodies goes on, and people wonder what other officials are controled by drug cartels.

Public anger is palpable, as is the disgust over corruption.  Daily press accounts reveal conflicts of interest and corruption among governors and other officials in cities and states throughout the country.  The President’s luxurious new home for his wife, however it is finally paid for, is more gas on the fire for citizens who don’t live in luxury.

Discontent and anger are evident in every place I’ve traveled -Mexico City, Puebla, Oaxaca, Tlaxiaco, and other pueblos.  Oaxaca’s Zocalo is a protesters’ camp of banners, tents and tarps.  Protesters march in Puebla and Mexico.  Banners hang in front of municipal halls and government buildings; graffiti and posters avow solidarity with the 43.  Youths slow traffic at toll booths outside Oaxaca to give travelers information and seek donations for families of the 43 dead students.

“Ya basta!” Enough already, is the prevailing mood.  Protesters are calling on the President to step down.

As I write this, officials in Mexico City have canceled the traditional celebrations in the Zocalo because of massive protests that are occuring.  Police and marchers are clashing near the International Airport.  In Puebla, students are marching in solidarity with the 43 murdered students.  Protests are occuring elsewhere.

After you make friends in Mexico, it becomes increasingly difficult to shrug your shoulders and feel nothing for the social and political forces affecting them.  Friendships can make these events personal.  What affects my friends, affects me, even if I can’t do anything about it.  For my many friends in Mexico, I hope for the best – whatever that may be.   

After a decade of narco-violence and political corruption, will the Mexican people rise up in revolt?  No one can say for certain.  The Revolution remains unfinished, its promises unfulfilled.  The grievances of 1910 are with us yet.  Are there grievances enough to spark a national uprising?  No one knows for certain, but there is something in the wind.  And if there is an uprising, will it have a unifying vision for Mexico?  No one knows.

Like the volcano Popocatepetl, the body politic has errupted periodically since 1910, the outrage arising over one greivance or another, and then subsiding.  But like El Popo, the causes of unrest remain and the social magma is moving once more beneath the surface.  The phrase: “Ya basta!” has real force.  Mexico, like El Popo, is never dormant and the risk of eruption remains.  “Ya basta!”