Ramirez’ Christmas 2006 - Mexican schizophrenia

“I’ll return with limbs of iron, dark skin and furious eye”
Arthur Rimbaud

Every year I return to my centre. You might say Guadalajara, you might say the Ramirez clan. To catch up with their stories is a full time occupation. I could spend half of my life just tracking down my brother, my seven sisters, my twentymany nieces and nephews and my 3 grand-nephews.

I could say that in 2006 my sister Lily survived miraculously a highway accident where the truck rolled upside down, she flew out through the passenger window (she had just unbuckled her seat belt to reach out for an Oscar Chavez CD) and went bouncing around the asphalt for a while. Both her and the driver were intact. Well, she had a broken finger and got an ugly knee scar, but all things considered, every member of the hospital said that it was a total miracle that she survived at all. When her daughter Paola watched the video of the scene of the accident, the remains of the truck, and the big blood stain in the asphalt, she started to cry. I couldn’t.

In 2006 my brother Fausto got invited to direct one of the most important theatre companies in the country, I couldn’t see his work (based on the tragical assassinations spree of woman in the Juarez border), but I hear that it got very good reviews.

In 2006 my mother had her first exhibit of her paintings, 5 years after she first started taking lessons, and sold her first painting. In 2006 Beto my brother in law helped a woman to give birth on the hall of a building.

In 2006 my nephew David simply flew away to spend one year in New Zealand before getting into college. In 2006 my nieces / nephews combined got dozens of new boyfriends / girlfriends / jobs. In 2006... boy, is a very large family!

And like year around, like an astronomer in a lonely mountain tries to study the immense galaxy, I use phone, newspaper, e-mail, chat and letters to get a glimpse of the frantic stories of the Ramirez. This year I have to add another media: radio.

It was a couple of nights before Christmas, I was driving and surfing the radio stations as always (I hate that I can’t get ride of that habit!) when for some reason I decided to stop in the news. The broadcaster said something like “this morning a messenger from a car dealership got mugged and robbed, they took more than 400 thousand pesos in cash and several cheques from Omar Ramírez Díaz”. It took a couple of seconds for my brain to focus on the news, and replay the spot on my head and connect the dots, my nephew, besides his new obsession of building muscles (that is giving very god results by the way), got a job at Honda as delivery boy. They got the name wrong on the radio, it was Omar Díaz Ramírez. So I immediately called my sister:

- Hi how are you?

- Fine, everything alright, how are you? - she answers

- ...and... is Omar fine?

- sure fine, just fiiine.

- Isn’t he scared? Or hurt?

- About what?

She didn’t know.

In many families, that would have dominated the conversation in Xmas. But for us, all together in the Uralde house, (the only one large enough to hold all of us), it was only a side conversation. He was pretty unharmed, just a couple of punches on the face and the ribs. Omar himself, his father Marco or my sister would give the details to the group they were talking to, comment on the corruption of the judicial system, recall a few similar anecdotes, and move on to the next topic, one of a thousand topics we covered that day.

I got a laugh when Omar was opening one of his presents, it was a trendy shirt, and someone asked “is it bulletproof?”.

I would like to comment on the mayhem, noise and chaos of forty something adults and kids walking around the living room, arms full of presents, giving some over here, getting some from over there, hugging, talking, unwrapping, joking... wondering when will the evening end for heaven’s sake!

But that happens every year. What I rediscovered this Xmas was the Mexican schizophrenia as an effective tool to relate to the world.

Seemingly, schizophrenia can be caused by a situation when an individual gets consistently mixed signals, let’s say that your mother constantly tells you drink is bad but your father gets often drunk. Or your partner is constantly criticizing a behaviour that at the same time encourages by non verbal means. Worst is, when the contradiction raise in between your own judgement and the society you belong (or want to belong) to.

Leonor’s sang froid when talking about his son’s recent encounter with danger (boy, do I make it sound dramatic!) Is more than simple resignation to the hazards of the big city. Is more than a shrug to forces she can’t control. It belongs to the same realm as many of us Mexicans deal with corruption in our country. With a mixture of acceptance, resistance and struggle. With a schizophrenia developed since the day we born, helping us to deal with a reality that sometimes we don’t like, without going insane every hour and every minute, without the overwhelming sensation that we must change everything or die. Most of us try to change things a little, while keeping peace of mind. Here and there, there are activist, some journalist, some figures (Digna Ochoa, Francisco Toledo) that try to go further, that do a bit more. And that represents a personal sacrifice, an unbalance that the rest of us admire and appreciate.

But for the rest of us, with a set of values many times incompatible with the environment we’re immerse in, schizophrenia is the only way to peace of mind.

The sane ones, the rational ones can perish!

Guadalajara, December 25 2006.

THE COW PARADE - in english

Every year Guadalajara welcomes me with an interesting public art display. This year it was the turn for dozens cows all over the city. Well, not real cows, fibreglass ones, our very own edition of the famous international cow parade. My 3 favourite ones:

- Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian cow. Located behind the Cathedral, and designed, not by Leonardo, but by one of my mother’s friend artist, this fibreglass and steel sculpture paraphrased Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man”, but with a cow instead, it’s eight limbs reaching out for the perimeter of the circle enclosed by a squared frame. Simply inspired.

- Muu-nerva. By some accounts, the real symbol of our city, the sculpture of greek goddess Athena aka Minerva. She represents the wisdom of the city, which supposedly is the cultural capital of the country. Her proud figure, holding a shield is know to everyone in Guadalajara(although because of her proportions and her shield is better know to the locals as “the fat lady with the frying pan”). Now there is a second Minerva. Well, this is a Muu-nerva. A fibreglass cow in the same position and with the same weapons as Minerva.

- Matute Remus was a well known engineer, teacher and politician from the 50's. His most famous achievement (although by far, not the best), was to shift a large historical building a few metres towards the north, so an avenue could be built. He was so confident about his work that the day the building moved, his family was on the upper floor, waving to the crowd from the window. There is a sculpture of him on that street, right outside the building, pushing it with both arms. Well, now there are two sculptures. Now there is a cow helping him to push.

Guadalajara. December 10 2006.