Grant Fuller is an independent radio producer in Mexico City.
This is his blog.
Listen to my recent radio feature about sneaker addicts in Mexico City. Barrio Warrior’s collection includes sneaks inspired by Gremlins, Chucky, Kate Moss, Heineken, and Teen Wolf. ‘Nuff said.
It aired on an exciting new show called Latitudes, produced out of WAMU in DC. My awesome producers from the defunct World Vision Report are starting up this operation. This pilot episode, “Global Catwalk,” focused on fashion trends in the developing world. Check out the other episodes and tell WAMU how much you love it. Thanks.
Chips, Ahoy!
I spotted this ad on the subway recently. The Mexico City metro is infamous for the unsolicited surprises that often await female passengers. Groping, squeezing, pinching, rubbing and much more is the norm. The stories I’ve heard from friends will make you gag. So, in come the geniuses at Doritos with this doozy:
“Recharged Doritos: They’re more intense than riding the metro in a miniskirt.”
Eek. I guess someone shut off the P.C.-filter at the advertising office. The weird thing is, I’m willing to bet this ad will not raise a single Mexican eyebrow – even among the very women who are harassed on a daily basis. Back home, this would cause an uproar and spark national introspection on the treatment of women. Here, they deal with it by laughing about it. Different strokes for different folks? (no pun intended)
The Mammoth Moth
I open the door, turn on the light. The moth awakes, startled, spooked. Like an ugly, drunk, pinball butterfly, it flutters and dives and flings itself about. It disappears into the darkness of the bathroom. As luck would have it, I need to shower. I tiptoe to the door, slowly slide my hand around the corner to find the light, ready for a creature in my face. Flip, lights on. No movement, no sound. Nothing on the ceiling, nothing on the walls, nothing behind the door. I step in further to give it one more eye scan - boom! Next to the light. The mammoth doesn’t move a muscle (do moths have muscles?). Clapping, yelling, jumping, none of it works.
Fine, you play dead while I jump in the shower. We’re locked in here together now. No way out. Shower done, I fling open the door. Stillness still. What now? I won’t touch it, no way…*lightbulb* The broom. I’ll sweep it out.
There begins the fight. The broom is on the hunt. Not to kill, just to gently herd the moth. A couple minutes of a stooge-like chase ensues. It zigzags from the light to the ceiling to the shower to the wall to the door to the ceiling to my face…and finally lands on the broom bristles. Perfecto!
Now, act quickly. I slowly bring the broom stick down, point it out the bathroom door, and make a bee-line (moth-line?) for the nearest open window. I hold the broom straight out in front of me like a knight in a joust. Get there, get there, get there, get there…yes! I knock the stick against the sill and the mammoth falls 14 stories, or flies, or finds another apartment to torment. I don’t care what it does. The window slams shut.
Tianguis for Dummies
“Híjole, por qué frenaste?!” It was a rude introduction to our newfound secret in the Distrito Federal: selling at the tianguis market. The excitement was building as we inched closer to the sprawl of stalls with covered with colorful tarps. Then, crunch! We were rear-ended while driving a snail’s speed at which it should be impossible to rear-end anyone. Our heads jolted forward, then back. We dominoed into the VW Beetle taxi in front of us. And behind us loomed a hulking metal box of a bus.
“Come on, why’d you brake?” Uh, seems like because traffic was slowing was reason enough. There was no sudden slam, no surprise obstacle, no nothing out of the ordinary. The indignant driver tried to blame us, like a kid playing the “stop hitting yourself” game with his little brother. Baloney. We argued over whether or not the door was damaged, then decided to get out of the street to settle this.
Bad idea. We pulled over. The taxi did, too. But the microbus gunned it and disappeared in a hurry. Se fugó, says the Spanish. Like a fugitive. Except that in Mexico, nobody’s gonna bother to chase him down like he’s Harrison Ford. Two hours of watching the insurance man scribble on clipboards later, we were back on the tianguis mission.
Now, imagine your local farmer’s market. Multiply that by 100, add the sale of every manmade thing under the sun, plus a healthy dose of chaos. That’s the Mexican tianguis. Surrounded by stacks of sneakers, piles of mattresses, walls of music, and racks of clothing, we snuggled into our puesto (rented for a mere 20 pesos) and splayed out two years’ worth of life’s detritus for sale.
Back home, this would happen at a yard sale. But in the absence of a yard (or a single patch of grass in DF, for that matter), becoming street vendor for a day at the tianguis is the next best thing. It was a slow day, but our sales advantage was in the disorganized nature of our mess. The pristine stands around us had brand-new products displayed with mucho care. Translation in shopper’s mind? Expensive. But they see a heap of dusty clothes in an open suitcase surrounded by an explosion of knick-knacks and trinkets and they just know it’s gonna be cheap.
Laju and I pocketed about 50 bucks apiece, thanks to the generous patrons of Tianguis San Felipe. Now we only need about a dozen more outings to reach the bottom of our junk. We’ll just steer clear of microbus drivers next time. Who knew that you, too, could be a Mexico City tianguis vendor? They don’t tell you that in the guidebook. Pásale, guero. Qué le vendo? Qué buscaba? Puede preguntar sin compromiso. Le doy precio!
*special thanks to Polo for letting us in on this little gem.
I went to Cuba on a tourist visa. But instead of touring, I worked as a journalist. Check out the Common Language Project link above to find out what happened next. Long story short, it wasn’t easy and it got a little hairy.
This is Part 3 of my CLP blog series from Cuba. Parts 1 and 2, along with the rest of my Cuba coverage, can be found here. And check out the audio slideshow above, featuring my photos and snippets from my audio diaries of the trip. Big thanks to the Common Language Project for editorial guidance.
The Organ Repair Lady
Listen above to my feature about an old woman in Tepito (near downtown Mexico City) who fixes the antique street organs that are a fixture of life in the Distrito Federal.
After reading in David Lida’s excellent book, First Stop in the New World, about the possible existence of one solitary person in this megalopolis who could tune and repair the squealing music boxes, I decided to hunt for that repairman.
Turns out it was a repairwoman. And thanks to the deep connections of my partner-in-crime and Tepito expert Myles Estey, she wasn’t all that hard to find. Although most people I know harbor a fierce resentment of the organ grinders and their often awful, out-of-tune “music,” I thought Silvia Hernandez deserved a fair shake. Listen for yourself, check out the photos, and get the earplugs ready, just in case.
Last month, the public radio website Transom.org featured me and six other graduates of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, which turns 10 this year. Check the link above to read our testimonies about how we’ve managed to survive the pubradio jungle in a variety of ways. You can also listen to a sample radio piece from each of us!
Mexican Media Silence
For NPR’s On the Media, I recorded this interview with Ana Arana, who leads a project on investigative journalism here. They studied media coverage of the drug war in northern Mexico, and found that a startling amount of drug-related murders are never even reported in the news. Fear, manipulation, bribes, saturation, fatigue, capacity, danger. It all plays a part to create a pretty impossible media landscape for our brave Mexican colleagues up north. Listen above.
Juan Diego at Work
Listen above to A Day in the Life of a Zapatista Settlement. Back in August, Myles Estey and I hand-delivered a letter to the Zapatista Good Government Board, asking for permission to enter a Zapatista community and spend some time with its residents. We awaited an answer for two days while they put us up in a cave-like concrete structure and fed us beans. Finally, they said yes. But the access they gave us was far less than what we wanted. So we waited another full day. And our persistence finally paid off.
We spent about 24 hours in the autonomous village of Juan Diego, Chiapas. This is what we found. Also watch Myles’ slideshow to see photos of daily life there.
