Cancun Dispatch: 9/9

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The buses arrive, and I see Mary Carmen, and Ellie, and Everardo, and all the others. They are glad to be there, but there is trouble in the caravan. They are exhausted after two days on the buses, and some don't want to camp in the stadium that has been provided, and they are having a meeting that seems intense and interminable. Everardo really wants us to stay, and we do for a while. I fall asleep on a cement bench in reach of the not-so-sweet smell of the porta-potties, which already stink from the day's forum held earlier in the same space. Finally Lisa says she will take us home and come back. I don't argue, I'm past the point where I can stay up all night and be functional in the morning.

We wake up early to get down to the stadium for the supposed 8 a.m. start of the march, although none of us believe for a moment that the march will really start anywhere near 8 a.m.. I am still feeling bad, still exhausted, but adrenaline starts to kick in as I gather my action gear -- bandanna in a baggie, a lime to soak it with, my water bottle, and goggles and drum.

At the stadium, the students are camped on the grass and thunder growls above us. Lightning flashes down, but there is no rain, and the sky clears. The Pagan Cluster gathers and circles up and begins a small ritual for healing and protection. We ground, sinking our roots into the earth, and a man who has been with the students but seems a bit older comes up and joins us. We say something to honor Mother Earth and he nods and says, "Tonantzin, Pacha Mama. . . and other indigenous names, and I translate for him as we call for healing and protection. He joins in our ceremony and at the end introduces himself as Kanik, the power of the sky.

I am feeling better, letting go of my expectations of what the action could be, and accepting the reality of what is -- that we all need time to meet and organize and group up and that we are actually doing what we need to do.

The students are having a big meeting in the center, and we gather up our cluster and start to organize the internationals. I'm looking around at lots of people sitting in circles and having intense discussions and it is finally beginning to look like an action. We finally have a large mass of internationals together, and we can actually organize affinity groups and spokes that can then join the students' spokescouncil.

The students plan to march to the entrance of the hotel zone, and make an ofrenda, an altar, in the road. Gloria from Cuernavaca, whom Lisa and I met at the student encampment in early August, is initiated into an indigenous tradition and she and Kanik and another shamans will lead the ceremony. I take her aside and say I have waters of the world with me -- water from sacred sites and political actions all over the globe, and she invites me to place the water into the ofrenda.

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