Southside Pride

People have asked me about how I chose Oaxaca. The brief answer is that Oaxaca chose me: I just came here to study Spanish eight years ago, and never left. Below is a vastly revised “Letter” that I wrote early on in my stay here, talking about some of the issues that folks seem to want to know about. Enjoy.

I am a traveler. Some people are drunks and some play Bingo. I like to pack a suitcase and boogie. I get restless when I have been too long in the same place, the same job, the same social scene. That’s why I travel: for stimulation. So far, I have lived in over 15 cities in four countries on three continents.

On the other hand, I like my comforts, the more so the older I get. I am not a loner, so I look for places with the possibility of community. And, having been born and raised in Minnesota, I like warm places. So it’s not surprising that I ended up in Mexico, a place that is both familiar and exotic; close by but far away.

Nothing about Oaxaca was difficult for me (however much I pretend to complain in my writing). I love the “vamos a ver” (let’s go and see how it works out) attitude. I accept the fact that I will always be an outsider to the local folks: people from the next State are so viewed, so why not me? I have my “family” here among the extranjero (foreigner) community, and like all families, I like some better than others and some not at all. The climate (5,100 feet) suits me.

The day to day reality is not much different than it was “back there”: work, sleep, eat, socialize, make love (and occasional war) with Diana, scratch for the rent, and go to the beach whenever the time and money permit. I enjoy my role (and I often think of it as just that: a sort of persona that time and circustances invented for me) of “Mr. Oaxaca”. I have to admit it’s fun being a medium sized frog in a very small pond.

I like the notoriety, such as it is, and it makes me feel good when I can give others information (power) that they didn’t have before, like how to get to x and where to find y and have you seen z. Because aside from writing, which is fun, I am really a “matchmaker” by nature: a living walking connection between here and there, so-and-so and such-and-such.

Of course, I miss my old friends. It takes a long time for new friends to become old friends—although I have observed that the process is speeded up in small town atmospheres such as we have in the expatriate community of Oaxaca.

Going to a new place won’t change who one is. Carl Franz says “everywhere you go, there you are”. He’s not the first person to say that, but he made it the central empowering notion of a valued travel guide, and that is why I give him the quote. To me, the notion that you can “transplant” yourself is an erroneous simile. It’s like saying you can grow a cranberry bush in the Sahara. The successful process is more like grafting, where you join your developed personality to roots that are already viable.

However, the problem does not end there. You can graft almost anything to almost anything else, and get a viable hybrid, but what will it do, and how pleasing will the result be? My guess is that a pleasing graft occurs when the cutting and the root share some common characteristics.

This means that if you value punctuality above everything else, you would find life here very frustrating, but if you know how to be punctual but don’t value it more than reading a good book you could probably adjust. The cultural values regarding punctuality compose one of the roots of plants that grow in this soil. Others are patience, tolerance, a sense of humor and a non-judgmental attitude, to name a few.

The Mexicans reciprocate in kind: they accept us as they find us. Sure, we scandalize them sometimes, but most often they just shrug their shoulders and assume that our craziness is just the way “we” behave.

And don’t forget that Mexicans differ even more by geographic location than we do: what you need to bring with you changes, depending on where you go and what you are doing.

There is no-one alive who should never think to move to Mexico. There is no perfect profile for making the move. The best indication of being able to make it here is having made it here, and even that isn’t sure. Things change. Stuff happens. Life’s a cabaret.

Stan Gotlieb’s website, “Oaxaca, Mexico: An Expatriate Life” is at www.realoaxaca.com His email address is stan@realoaxaca.com