Cancun Dispatch: 8/30

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO -- Saturday morning: I wake early after the best night's sleep I've had in a week. Carmen and I have breakfast, and I pack up and we head out to meet the students.

We take a bus to the metro and a train down to the University station, where we all meet under a big mural. We are supposed to meet at 10, but it takes more than an hour for everyone to show up. One of the young men comes over and talks to me very intensely, a nervous smile on his broad face. His voice is soft, and I have a hard time understanding him, but finally I realize he is asking if there are groups in the United States that work on sexual diversity issues.

He mentions that he belongs to a group working for the rights of homosexuals, and suddenly I understand why he seems so shy. I assure him that there are many and that there are many lesbians, homosexuals, transgendered people, and others, and I try to translate the concept of "queer." He tells me he wants to come to Cancun and starts elaborating all the things he has already figured out, but I don't understand all of what he is saying. He wants to wear a crinoline in the march, he confides. I assure him that that would be delightful. (I get a sweet vision of a whole affinity group of big-bodied Mexican men dancing in crinolines up to the police lines. It would be something different, at any rate.)

Finally we start off, guided by Letty, who is a religious sister who works in the neighborhood of Los Pedregales, which is supporting our efforts. Last time I was here we all took a big bus to a gym, but this time we take min-busses, the shared taxis called combis, to an ecological park, where we will be camping. The park is in a sweet neighborhood -- not rich, but full of trees and plants and little storefront shops and restaurants and some of that festive air of a place where people go to enjoy themselves.

We set up a circle of tents, and begin the training. Everardo has given me an agenda he compiled from suggestions I'd e-mailed him, and we start with introductions. There are about 40 students, representing a variety of different groups. I ask them to divide into pairs and talk about where in their lives they feel power, and where they feel powerless or vulnerable. They share for a few minutes, then come back and speak to the whole group. "I feel powerful when we take action together," one says. "I feel vulnerable as a woman, but also powerful in a different way," another says. Many say how they feel power when we can act as a group, and support each other, and feel vulnerable when they are alone or isolated.

I talk a bit about different kinds of power, power-over, the power that comes from a gun or from the state, the power to control resources or inflict harm -- that power we're all familiar with. But there's another kind of power. Poder in Spanish means both "power" and "to be able." There's a power that's our ability to be able to do something, and that power grows when we act together. We don't have control over the police or the power they represent, but we do have control over how we act and organize to increase the power we can have together.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print