Wise Fool New Mexicos Journey

Chiapas, April/May 2000

A collaboration between Wise Fool New Mexico and Clowns Without Borders.

Itinerary

Log

Well - here goes We've been wanting to send out a letter letting folks know how the Chiapas trip went and it seems way past time but you know how it can be when you get back from a journey and it takes a while for everything to boil down in your head... so here goes....

We left Santa Fe, NM on Monday April 10th, picked up our documenter and musician (Jaime and Caroline) in Mexico City on Friday and arrived in San Cristobal on Sunday the 16th...pretty exhausted from seven days crammed into "Honky" our new van, but also pretty excited to start the more active part of our journey. We were greeted and hosted by Daniel, a truly sweet and crazy revolutionary guy who works with the Cordinadura, among other NGO's. Daniel met us in the mid afternoon wearing his bathrobe while he told us of our itinerary for the upcoming weeks....then we cooked dinner in his bachelor/anarchist pad and set about preparing for the week to come. Monday we spent rehearsing in the courtyard of a nearby NGO called Junax, which would later become our home away from home.

Tuesday morning we set out for Tila where we performed our first show in the playground of a school to an audience of about 400 kids and adults. We were hosted by Juan a Chol man who works as a teacher in Palenque but was home for Semana Santa (Easter break). Juan is a serious Karate man and a lover of the arts. The first night we were fed an incredible dinner and put to bed (or floor as the case more often is) the next day we spent leading a giant puppet building workshop with about 30 kids who made 6 beautiful giant puppets out of sheets, pillowcases, lots of paint and twined together sticks....new puppet technology inspired by Robbie and the lack of any kind of paper(for stuffing) or cardboard (for structure)! That night we were treated to an actual Karate training session (yes! at 10pm after a full day of kids!) in the tiny front room of Juan's house - much to the amusement of his wife and son - there we were on passover- 7 tall and gangly gringas packed into a tiny cement room punching and kicking and push-upping to exhaustion to the beat of bad techno flashback music (we could have been in the Castro!) well that is certainly an image Ill never forget not to mention the music which we couldn't stop singing in the van for the next week at least (Juan would put the tape on when we woke up and play it until we went to sleep).

From Tila we headed to Cantioch, a small community out a long dirt road where we performed in the midday heat and sun - much to the dismay of ourselves and the 300 people watching Im sure - nonetheless they loved it and spent the afternoon trading songs eating rice and beans and talking politics with the local men...they are a community just starting to become involved in the Zapatista civil society and we were sent off the next day after having a group sing-a-long of the Zapatista hymn (which we have on video!!)

Off we went to Petalcingo - a larger town where we happened to be performing on Good Friday - we kept postponing the show waiting for church to let out but finally it was getting too late - so we just started with a mostly men and kids audience, but by the third act church had let out and we were literally surrounded by an audience over a thousand strong - packed in on all sides and quite enthralled with our show. It was a little scary at the end when we were surrounded by mobs of kids wanting to touch and grab and pull apart everything including us!! Petalcingo felt really different because it's a split town and you could feel the hostile energy in the air. But in the midst of it all came our favorite quote of the trip between two young boys peaking through the cracks, watching us prep for the show....Hey, they look like gringos ....Theyre not gringos, theyre clowns!

Next we headed to Tumbala - a beautiful mountaintop community where we fell in love with the kids - spending time before the show painting faces and making friends. The show was in the church yard which was gorgeous and although our crowd was shy at first, watching from a safe distance, by the end of the show everyone had come inside the yard was completely involved in the show. The kids helped us pack up at the end and watched intently as we performed the "taking off your make-up" routine and the "trying to change your clothes when people are peeking into every window of the van" skit (an all time favorite!) We have great video of the kids running beside the van saying goodbye.

From there it was back to San Cristobal for a day of rest (Easter Sunday) and then off to Oaxchuc where we performed for a beautiful crowd of mostly traditionally dressed women and kids. It was in this town that we finally discovered the local interpretation of the headless puppet we had incorporated in our show we created it to represent a government/military/politician type person...faceless and beyond reach, always demanding papers and giving speeches about nothing, the clowns eventually disrobe this character to reveal a tiny man inside...a weasel who really has nothing to offer. Lo and behold, the people there were seeing a whole different thing, nothing political at all, but a very popular myth of a headless ghost, reinforced by another popular myth that when new roads are built peoples heads are cut off to make the road surface. The next day our show was canceled and we spent the time searching out a political poster of the PRI candidate and making it into a head for our politician puppet. As we were to later see, this was a big hit and changed the local interpretation of our show dramatically!

We left at dawn the next day to drive 3 hours out a terrible dirt road and perform in the tiny community of San Jose La Nueva. The women of the town greeted us with excitement, saying the children there had never seen a clown...but as the show unfolded we began to realize it was highly likely that noone there had seen a clown and although they seemed to be enjoying it greatly they looked pretty confused and overwhelmed! It was a rather confusing show for us too as we had to leave our musician and one of our clowns sick in bed and it was quite a stretch to do the whole show without them!

On the 27th we headed out to Nicolas Ruiz with great anticipation. We had heard many tales of this town which had been fighting to remain an autonomous community since before the Zapatista revolution. We arrived at the community center where we were greeted and whisked away to eat and relax by the womens association of the town. Our show was set for evening and there were many plans made for other events which would follow our performance. The audience was huge, surrounding us and enjoying the show with peels of laughter (and especially appreciative of our PRI candidate head!) After the show we were treated to performances by a local marimba band and a reenactment of an historical battle between the people of the town and the paramilitary over the fields where they farm. It was scary and a bit upsetting to see the kids all dressed up in their black uniforms throwing firecrackers at each other and dying , but it was also a powerful means of preserving oral history which the strength of the community depends upon. The next day we taught a giant puppet building workshop with about 70 kids. The kids worked in teams with an incredible understanding of cooperation and the puppets they created were beautiful! We led a procession through the town square at the end which was proudly led by our women hosts who had painted a banner commemorating our visit Payasas Sin Fronteras 2000. We left our mark behind as well with painted faces and a stash of supplies for further art workshops. It was hard to leave Nicolas Ruiz but we packed into the van and headed back for San Cristobal and our last show of the journey.

On the 29th of April we arrived at La Colonia Cinco de Marzo under gray and rainy skies. A gathering of tiny shacks just on the edge of San Cristobal (the international tourist town), this colony of displaced people who have been driven from their land and homes by the lo-intensity war smells of sadness and illness. As we set up our show we befriended a small posse of kids and sent them off to inform the community that the shack which serves as school and meeting house was now officially a clown school for the day and nothing but fun was to be had! The little wooden room was soon full to overflowing with kids making small rod puppets. Women who were peaking in the doors with babies in tow cleared spaces to join in when they learned that clown school was for all ages. It was a crazy hectic and glorious scene of mayhem and creativity in that tiny dark space as we churned out puppets and waited for the rains to clear. Eventually we had to start in the drizzle but our diehard crowd stuck with us and we had a great show despite the weather. It was all the sweeter for the presence of our guides and friends from the Cordinadura who came en masse to see the show. After we had packed up and were about to head out we were invited into the meeting house once again where we were thanked for remembering the poor and bringing laughter to those who are so often forgotten.

An incredible last show was quickly followed by a night to remember as the people of the Cordinadura threw a going away party for us where our guides honored us by telling us that they had been more than a bit skeptical about the idea of bringing a bunch of gringas to the communities. They had thought it ridiculous waste of time, an idea that would only serve to make us American feel better. On the contrary, while traveling with us they had seen the people open up their hearts to us unlike ever before and they had realized the importance of this work. It was a great gift to know that our guides who are working hard within the movement every day had seen the transformation and healing power of laughter first hand and had been changed by it.

A big thanks to Payasos Sin Fronteras for their collaboration and of course to all you folks who helped make it happen!

We're in the process of creating a web page with photos and information about our journey which should be up on the Wise Fool site in the next month or so.

Reports

March 2005