Gunillocentrism – web diary of a freelance journalist

I am lagging behind, there are so many things to write about (ghost towns, bed&breakfast, desert driving, food, etc) but primarily about the places mentioned in the headline….two of this trip’s highlights.

But I am completely exhausted and probably have some infection, so please excuse me if you get some of the information with some delay. At least I wrote about today’s important issue: the femicide in Ciudad Juárez (see below)!

Meanwhile, you can get a glimpse of American hangout coffeeshop life, and about El Paso’s Jamocha vs big, national chains here:
http://www.unknowncity.com/weblog.php?id=C0_8_1
and here:
http://www.elpasoinc.com/showArticle.asp?articleId=45

I wish some café had offered 24h opening and massage when I was studying for exams!

By the way, El Paso is a dump. This coffeeshop is the most happening thing I have seen so far.

Gunilla

Claudia Ivette, Lupita, Brenda, Esmeralda, Barbara, Veronica, Desconocida, Laura Berenice… These are the names of eight young women, who were found assaulted and murdered on a field in Juårez in 2001.
Today, I watched the crosses that have been put on that field to commemorate these women - plain wooden crosses, painted in pink, with the women’s names. There were also two other crosses there, with no names since they represent women who were never identified, and a large “cross” of flowers laid out on the ground in front of the wooden crosses.

More than 350 women have been killed in the city of Juárez the last decade. NGO’s working with women and human rights claim they are victims of organized criminals, with ties to the business community, local politicans or drug cartels (all of which might also be tied to each other). The Mexican judicial system has received strong international criticism, for example from Amnesty, for its failure to investigate these cases. The federal government has put a “special commission” into place, but the activists that I spoke with today said this is merely something it has done to please the international community; nothing really happens, they say.

Local authorities say that no particular pattern shows these women were actually murdered by organized serial killers. But what the women all had in common is they were very young (often teenagers) and very poor. Most of them had come to Juárez from other parts of Mexico, in order to look for jobs in the apparel industry (maquiladoras), since there are no jobs to be had in many parts of the county.
If they get jobs, it is usually paid with something like $4 a day, and they have to walk very long to the factories from their homes - often in so called “colonias populares” which is nice word for slum areas (here in the desert). So, they are vulnerable - and hence easy victims. Many more young men than women get killed in Juárez, but they are typically members of violent gangs or involved in drug business.

It was staff from Casa Amiga that took me to the crosses. Casa Amiga is a crisis center and shelter, which receives women who have been abused by their husbands or boy-friends (it’s the only organization working with domestic violence in this city of 1 700 000). They said men are threatening their partners, saying they will kill them if they dare going to Casa Amiga. This is because they believe they could get away with it in Juárez…
Casa Amiga Centro de Crisis AC

Tomorrow or on Saturday, I will try going back to Juárez (which is glued together with the Texas city of El Paso, where I am staying and where I am writing this), and hopefully I will get to meet members of families of the victims.

I am also trying to get hold of a labour rights activist, who will tell me about local protests to Electrolux’ new fridge factory in Juárez. I am very curious of that story – since you all know, Electrolux has been met with all kinds of protests in for example Västervik, Sweden and Greenville, Michigan, for the _closure_ of its factories there. It is the Greenville factory that will open up here - so you would think people would be happy for job opportunities. Protests typically would come after a factory has opened, if it offers bad conditions, not before. But I will have to see and find out what this is all about!

Gunilla

Map of Las Cruces, NM by MapQuest

Hmmmm…I might have screwed up the link for the Albuquerque and Santa Fe map I thought I had posted below. Anyway, here is one over where I am now: Las Cruces, going to El Paso (and possibly White Sands).

After filing an article this morning (since my editors in Stockholm are 9 hours ahead of me, I had to raise too early…), I suddenly fell sick and had to rest for some hours! This means I missed the farmers’ market here in Las Cruces. Too bad, would have been fun to see all of the chili. It might also mean that I won’t have time for White Sands, but who knows…
I am still a little dizzy, and won’t write more for now. Hope you all are well!

I’ve survived driving through the desert in almost complete darkness! It was fun to drive; few things makes me happier than driving through beautiful landscapes (when I can see them), this time with bossa nova and samba at a loud volume in the car stereo.

And, in Las Cruces, I managed to find a charming, quirky, somewhat muggy, old-fashioned, homey bed&breakfast.
Inn of the Arts Information

Will tell you more about the Indian ceremony in the pueblo (at least the non-secret parts of my visit)! But now I have to file my first text from this trip (on Indians/Native Americans, as of the school shooting in northern Minnesota).

Gunilla

I am seriously lagging behind in my schedule - simply because I am meeting people all the time! (Yes, also because I spend far too much time online, trying to organize things…and because I sometimes get completely lost when driving, like yesterday for example, when I all of a sudden found myself in an area of cute little residential adobe houses and only dead end streets). Americans are often so nice and friendly, so when you start talking to people you meet you don’t exactly feel like cutting them off and rushing away, no matter how constrained the time is. Au contraire, it is through all these conversations that I get story ideas and contacts.

Yesterday, for example, in a restaurant in Santa Fe, I asked my waiter if he could tell me something about which Indian pueblo (village) to go to. He couldn’t, but the family at the table next to us overheard this and immediately asked me if they could help. It turned out that they knew an expert on Indian culture at New Mexico University, and suggested I interview him. And then of course they invited me to their home whenever I come back to Santa Fe. Nice things like this happen all the time, and it is no less than fabulous (and essential for my work).

Then, I went to one of the pueblos (that I found in Lonely Planet!), namely Pueblo Santo Domingo, and hang out with the guy in the pueblo store (like an old-fashioned “handelsbod” in Swedish). He looked like a proud Indian chief, which is exactly what he was (sort of). He didn’t mind my questions, so I had tons of information - albeit in limited time - on what life has been like on the reservation since 1938 when he was born. Only to hear him and his sister speaking in their language… In the store, they sold food and hardware, but also Indian jewellery, furs, ceremony paraphernalia…very fascinating. And today, I am invited back for a dance ceremony, to be followed by a green chili lunch! It is completely the wrong direction and will make me lag behind even more, but how can you not go to an Indian dance ceremony that you’ve been invited to?!

Gunilla

…and now I am here… Free, wireless connections around the world, and particularly in the United States, are God’s gift to the world, at least during this millennium. I just transferred money from my Swedish bank account to my American, and communicated with lots of people I am supposed to meet with the next couple of days - and it is SO nice to be able to do that from my own computer in a cosy café, rather than from some Internet café with lousy PC’s.
Next: a quick visit to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, and THEN the road.

Gunilla

Wow. Yes, Santa Fe is spectacular. This is actually the oldest town in the United States, from the early 17th century when this was all a part of “New Spain” and Santa Fe was the capital of New Mexico.
New Mexico become an American state only in 1912, so you can imagine that the feel here is a bit different from, say, New Jersey. A weird and fascinating mix of Indians/Native Americans, “Caucasians” as they say here in the US (also as known as “white people”), Hispanic descendants of early settlers, more recent immigrants from Mexico, a few black people, occasional Asians.

I love the adobe architecture, which is used for almost all types of buildings here. Adobe = dried mud, and straw. The houses look like direct descendants of the dwellings of ancient Mesopotamia/today’s Iraq, for example Ur, with a splash of the Barbafamily’s house. Search for (”Santa Fe” and adobe”) on the Internet, and you’ll get an idea.
I haven’t really visited people in their homes, but judging from what the chichi boutiques in Santa Fe sell, they must all be filled to the brim by colorful textiles and expensive antiquities from New Mexico, Indonesia, and China…

Then there is the spectacular, mountaineous landscape..! My plan was to drive up in the mountains and visit an Indian pueblo, a traditional village, north of Taos which is a ski resort (there is still plenty of snow here, and quite cold!) - but of course I didn’t make it in time. I was merely hanging out having brunch at Rancho de Chimayo, and then it was too late for pueblos. Too bad, because they would have had Easter rituals and ceremonies yesterday.
But I did get to see a beautiful cemetary, north of Chimayo, featuring graves and tomb stones with Spanish names, lots of flowers, crosses, madonna sculptures, and the occasional American flag - located in a very muddy field on top of a ridge with a fabulous view over snow-clad mountains and valleys. (In case you didn’t know, I am a sucker for cemetaries.)

I will have to come back for pueblos, horse-riding, perhaps even skiing…and, yes, Santa Fe shopping! Or, it would be fun to live for some time with an American farmer family, perhaps on a ranch, to see what life is like there. I did check out one fairly remote village for that purpose…

A part of the road trip was quite different from the scenery mountain roads. On the way back, I checked out one of the casinos operated by Indians, next to the highway, and hang out with an 18-year old guy there working in the juice bar, amidst hundreds of casino machines and a permanent annoying sound. Very bizarre.

What about Easter? I went to a vigil on Saturday evening, in the beautiful San Francisco Cathedral of Santa Fe - packed with people and candles. Hours of songs and chants, and after the baptization we were all sprinkled with blessed water!

Now, I am leaving Santa Fe to travel southwards, towards Las Cruces. More to come.

Gunilla

Yesterday was a busy day, as always the day before a trip - filled with frenetic web research and e-mailing to bed&breakfasts, potential interviewees, editors, car rentals, friends, etc. But it was rewarding - I found so many story ideas for this trip that I will have to come back (soon).
I have even managed to pitch a few story ideas instantly, despite of editors’ Easter holidays and budget restraints. I told you: this _is_ a business trip!

As I write this, I have just landed at Albuquerque airport. They have free wireless Internet here - fabulous!
Now, since I am too tired to drive right now (I almost never sleep the night before I am going somewhere, because I am too busy organizing the trip), I will try to find public transportation and go up in the mountains… to Santa Fe.
Check out the place where I am going to stay tonight: www.haciendanicholas.com. And this is where I plan to have dinner: www.coyotecafe.com. Stay tuned..!

Gunilla

Map of Santa Fe, NM by MapQuest

Please note that the time was incorrectly set for the first three posts (including Landed in Albuquerque). Deduct 12 hours or so. Just so you don’t think I was writing in those weird hours…. I’m still trying to figure all the settings of the program out, so please bear with me.

Gunilla
now leaving ABQ airport, hitting the road