Sunday, 20 January

Last night, after a fun show and a beautiful afternoon, the wind whipped up as darkness fell and it began to rain.

Hard not to take that as a sign.

The show went pretty well; there was some comedy at the beginning as the show was in the main plaza of San Cristóbal, in front of the cathedral. As we were setting up, a "security guard" of some sort wanted to know if we had "official permission" to do a show; the woman from Melel Xojobal, who had booked us, offered to go get some kind of permission, but since it was Saturday, the city offices weren't open. So we started the show anyway. The security guy then showed up with a cop, who looked nervous. They trued to stop the show but we already had a crown of 150 people who started jeering, and the forces of law and order stood down...

They stayed off to the side glaring at us until we left.

The music bit went OK; some people laughed and a couple of older ladies smiled and sang along. I guess "La Paloma" is a pretty old song... But Rudi said I was hiding. It's hurtful to think I still need to get commentary like that, but I suppose it's something I just have to deal with. I suppose the bit is still a bit opaque to me— I have an image of it but I guess I'm not really sure what it is yet. My first, instinctive thought about that is that Ferdinand is starring in his own personal musical, and he needs to be transported out of the ridiculousness of what he is actually doing...

So now it's time to move on.

Today will be about packing, calling Leila and trying to watch some futbol Americano, if possible. Tomorrow my van leaves for the Tuxtla airport at 5:30 am; I have an 8:30 flight to Mexico City, a 12:30 flight back to Houston, and a 9 pm flight to São Paulo. When I get there, I have to figure out how to get a bus to Recife, which promises to be pretty epic — that's a trip of more than three hours by air, so it's gotta be more than a day on the bus... And the fancy express busses that are apparently ubiquitous in Brazil are a little mysterious on the web. So I'll have to go straight to the bus station from Airport and hope for the best....

In any case, this is most likely the last blog entry until Friday, when I'm reasonably certain that I'll be safe in Recife.

So have a good week, y'all. I'll have more reflections on Chiapas by next weekend, when I start to gain some perspective...