<HTML><FONT SIZE=3 PTSIZE=10>Honoring San Vicente By Tom DeMott (tdemott@aol.com)<BR>
The only photo I have of Alicia sits unprotected on my basement desk, and fleck-by-fleck it is disappearing. It began a year ago, when the same humidity that soaked and rotted the basement door began chipping off the pale olive of Alicia's neck. I've been meaning to put the photo away for years, but it has lingered, neither framed along with loved ones nor categorized in an album with other, less significant photos. <BR>
I met Alicia in Juchitßn, a Zapotec town of 60,000 on Mexico's Pacific coast, two hundred miles north of Guatemala. In the last three weeks of May, Juchitßn celebrates a festival in honor of its patron saint, San Vicente. The festival is organized and run by the women of the Juchitßn who, according to some, hold sway in a matriarchal society. In part, my curiosity about matriarchy drew me to Juchitßn. I was also drawn by my guidebook's description of the festival of San Vicente as "one of the most colorful festivals in the country"; it failed to mention, however, anything specific about the time and location of festival events, nor if an invitation was required. <BR>
This failure would not have been so bad had Juchitßn been a smaller town, or had I known someone there. Instead I was stuck with the hotel staff, most of whom were foreign to the area and knew nothing about the festival. Whenever I asked about a tourist agency, however, the response was quick and unanimous: "There isn't any." Unphased, I located the Regiduria de Cultura y Recreaci≤n, and made four visits over the next day and a half, but the official who could have provided me with details about the festival never showed up for work. The following day, I made a similar assault on the Casa de Cultura only to find a chain threaded through the wooden gate at the entrance secured with a lock. <BR>
On the third day, I approached a shop owner across the street from my hotel who had greeted me earlier in the day. He introduced himself as Jorge, and he agreed to answer my questions about the festival, provided that I rode with him across town as he delivered chairs and other goods to his customers. Soon after we left his shop, we came to a bridge that crosses the Rio de los Perros, and Jorge pulled his pickup to the side of the road to allow a procession to pass. Four elderly men in black pants and white shirts lead the way with a kind of wooden stretcher that had a statue of San Vicente balanced on top. Women carrying beeswax candles and gladiolas followed. At the end of the procession, girls in velvet rode in the back of a pickup throwing party favors that were scooped up from the pavement by a pack of boys in beat-up jeans and T-shirts. <BR>
Jorge explained who was who in the procession, and the significance of the objects they carried. He was not only well informed and articulate about local customs, he was patient with my Spanish. On our way back to his shop, he explained that for each procession crisscrossing Juchitßn that day, there would be a corresponding vigil that night, and that the vigils formed the heart of the festival. <BR>
"Is an invitation to a vigil hard to come by?" I asked. <BR>
"I'm not sure," he said. "My sister will know." <BR>
Back at the shop, Jorge brought out two figurines that fit neatly into the palm of his hand. "These idols are from one of the old tombs," he said. One of the figurines depicted a man in a jaguar headdress, the other a pregnant woman, and where they were not covered in clay, the milky green of Mesoamerican jade shone through. "If you come tomorrow," Jorge said, "I'll take you to see one of the old tombs that hasn't yet been covered over with houses." We agreed to meet at four the following day. Then the heat of the afternoon was upon us, and I retreated to the hotel and slept. <BR>
At five, Jorge called to say that his sister, Alicia, would be attending a vigil that night, and that I was welcome to accompany her. "Wear black pants and a white shirt, or they won't let you in." I explained that I had no white shirt, and he offered to loan me one. We agreed to meet in his shop at nine that night. My spirits rose.<BR>
<BR>
What first came to mind on seeing Alicia was a light, waiflike quality that she played up with a short, asymmetrical hairstyle. This hair cut would have looked annoying on others, but because of her beauty, suggested that her good looks would stand out no matter how she styled her hair. She wore a low-cut dress of pale red satin, and the contrast of her dress with the olive skin above Alicia's breasts was striking. A thin gold necklace was the extent of her jewelry. <BR>
On our way to the vigil in Jorge's silver station wagon, she made it clear that she was someone to be reckoned with. For years, she said, she had worked as an aid to the governor of Oaxaca, and later in the same role for the mayor of Juchitßn. Now, like many of Juchitßn's independent women, she owned her own business, which she hinted was in the field of cosmetics. "Even so," Alicia said, "it takes me only a minute to apply my makeup." When we entered a neighborhood clogged with traffic, Alicia grew quiet, and Jorge pulled to the side of the road near the cinderblock wall that surrounded the site of the vigil. We got out, and I waited for Jorge to turn the engine off and join us. Instead, he drove off. <BR>
<BR>
Given the elegant dress of the women streaming through the steel gate at the vigil's entrance, the dirt-field setting seemed wrong. A concrete dance floor lay at the center of the field, and above the heads of the dancers a circus tarp flapped in the wind. In a far corner, a brass band played sones and boleros and an occasional meringue. A gibbous moon hung overhead.<BR>
At the steel gate, Alicia turned to me and said: "We have a tradition here that an uninvited man must bring a case of beer to the vigil." She took my arm, steered me to a flatbed truck loaded with dozens of cardboard boxes reading "Corona╛20 Bottles." She handed over a small blue wad of Mexican pesos to a man standing on the bed of the truck, and I carried the case under my right arm. "Not like that," Alicia said. "Carry it like he is." She pointed to a man who carried the case of beer on his shoulder. I followed suit, and we entered the vigil. <BR>
Several hundred wooden chairs, most of them occupied, were dug into the dirt surrounding the dance floor. Alicia surveyed the area, and walked along the perimeter of the dance floor to a spot where her friends, all of them women, were seated opposite the band. I fell in step behind her, in part because I was unaware of her destination, and because I felt underdressed walking next to her. My faded black Levis and white cotton shirt could not compete with her satin and gold, and I imagined I looked like a busboy hurrying behind his matron to clean up something spilled on the dance floor. <BR>
But Alicia was attentive, and soon made me forget the disparity of our dress. She brought me food on a paper plate: macaroni and cheese, one quarter of a club sandwich, pickled nopal cactus, and a dirty yellow thigh of chicken. I picked at the food with a white plastic fork, and when it fell from my hands into the dirt, she was on her feet and had a fresh one in my hands inside of a minute. As I ate, Alicia spoke about her past. She grew up in Juchitßn without a father, and her mother, who managed a restaurant, provided a strict upbringing. In her twenties, Alicia married an English major who despised work, preferring to hang out on the plaza in hopes of practicing his English with foreigners. Before she divorced him, she gave birth to a daughter, now eight. She made no mention of a boyfriend. <BR>
After I had eaten, Alicia introduced me to her friends. Like most of the women at the vigil, they wore dark velvet dresses embroidered in bright silk with lilacs and poppies. The full-length skirts the women wore were hemmed with six inches of white lace that collected the loose dirt, but already many of them seemed too drunk to care. The beer had made them loud and crude, and their men, in the ubiquitous black pants and white shirts, leaned silently against the cinder block wall behind us, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer from miniature glass bottles. <BR>
In the days following the festival, I asked several men about the difference in dress, and most answered with a clichΘ: "Think of us as the black and white border that frames our colorfully dressed women." But seeing the men dressed so poorly and separated from their women reminded me of the ragamuffin boys at the end of the procession and the girls in velvet throwing party favors. And I remember thinking: if this society is not matriarchal, it is tilted in favor of the women. <BR>
When the newness of the place and people wore off, I drew Alicia out with general questions, avoiding the personal for the time being. I first asked for her stance on the issue of matriarchy in Juchitßn. "If you go to the marketplace," Alicia said, "you'll see that our women do the selling. A man might bring home fish, but only the women can sell the fish in the marketplace. If her husband is a farmer, the woman sells what he cultivates in the fields." <BR>
"We are not afraid to tell our men, 'Look, if I'm bringing money home, and give you support when you need it, then I also have the right to have an opinion and do what I want.' As you know, this is quite different from other Mexican women whose husbands beat them, and who have nothing." <BR>
"But forget about that," she said. "Let's dance." I ignored her, and watched the dance floor to gauge the talent of the competition. At first, the dancing entertained me, particularly the Zapotec dances in which a woman would catch hold of her white lace hem and draw the skirt open to allow the audience to admire the intricate needlework. While the steps of the dance dictated that the woman flit in a circle around her male partner, he was choreographed to keep his hands behind his back, hopping from one foot to the other. Baryshnikov would have looked awkward dancing this step, and it didn't take an anthropologist to explain why ninety percent of the couples consisted of one woman dancing with another. <BR>
And we drank, bottle after bottle of Corona--and then came a man with the cardboard box, "Don't you want another?" he'd say, and Alicia would add, "have another." I stocked up, despite a line of open beer bottles under my seat, and the more we drank, the more ribald Alicia's women friends became. I would say something like, "Alicia, is it okay to leave your purse open like that?" A screaming cackle would arise, making me want to join the men against the wall. But it was too late; I had been conspiring with the enemy. <BR>
The beer was having its effect on Alicia too. Whenever she thought she'd get away with it, she'd rake her blue-black eyes across my torso, my arms, my legs, my genitals. Later, she began emphasizing the significance of something she was saying by squeezing the flesh above my knee. I, in turn, stroked the triangle of hair at the back of her neck, something I'd wanted to do since we met. I felt aroused in an apprehensive way, and reminded myself that as desirable as she might be, we'd known each other for a couple of hours. <BR>
"By the way," Alicia said, "when are we going to dance?" The band had begun to play a meringue. Anyone can dance a merengue, I told myself: left on the upbeat, right on the downbeat, and repeat. Tell her yes. Then let her know this will be the first and last dance, and that we needed to think about leaving. <BR>
"Yes," I said, "let's dance." <BR>
No sooner had I grabbed Alicia's hand and stood than I knew I had made a mistake. Although I felt sober sitting down, standing up was a challenge, and dancing--in terms of embarrassment--could prove to be the equivalent of a public flogging. But Alicia was so bright-eyed and sober looking that my male pride drove me into the crowd of dancers. At the center of the dance floor, where all right dancing must begin, I managed to slide my right hand slid around Alicia's waist and interlace my left hand with hers. But as I raised my left foot to begin the dance, I lost my balance and took what would have been a certain fall onto the concrete had our descent not been broken by a virtual Amazon of a woman and her thimble-sized partner. Not only did they break our fall, they shoved us so hard in the opposite direction that Alicia and I found ourselves once again upright and on our feet. <BR>
"Not a very good beginning," Alicia said. <BR>
"Then why don't you lead?" I said. And she did, beginning with a sideways trot from one side of the dance floor to the other, our arms extended in front of us like a lance. Now the other dancers made room for us, and Alicia's movements grew bolder and more dramatic until I realized that Alicia was deaf to the meringue: she was dancing a tango. Soon, however, a pattern emerged. Alicia had a propensity to dance in a slow circle around the periphery of the dance floor, and I molded myself to this pattern. Toward the end of the dance, the circles made me feel I felt as though I were on a carousel, and faces of the women near the dance floor would light up with laughter whenever Alicia and I rode by. <BR>
When the merengue ended, and we had returned to our seats, Alicia she cupped her hands around my ear and whispered, "Are we going to make love tonight?" Under most circumstances, I would have married Alicia for the right to take her dress off. But no one had ever pursued me like this, and her pursuit distorted everything and made me so wary I had stopped touching her. On the other hand, saying no to sex might mean she'd have nothing more to do with me, and--if she wanted to be vindictive--she could turn Jorge against me. Then where would I be? Back at the Regiduria de Cultura y Recreaci≤n waiting for the director to show up. <BR>
"I don't know," I said, and felt the distinct burn in my stomach that comes when I tell an obvious lie. All my life women had done this kind of thing to me, suggesting sex was imminent, if only I'd take them to the theatre, or retrieve them from the airport, or buy them earrings. Now, to a certain degree, I was doing the same. "Sangano," Alicia said in reply, meaning jerk. She said this, however, with a smile. <BR>
Hours passed in this way. We would dance, and drink, and when we spoke, we would whine about the mistreatment we suffered in our previous relationships, and our bright hope for the future of our love lifes. When I estimated that we had been at the vigil four or five hours, I grew bored, and mounted a campaign to convince Alicia to leave, but she turned away from me whenever I brought up the subject. She babbled on with her friends, dancing with some and gossiping with others, while I sat watching the moon cross the sky. When I estimated it that it was three in the morning, I turned to Alicia and said: <BR>
"What time is it?"<BR>
"Three," she said. "You Americans don't know how to relax. Have another beer, and loosen up." For a while, I gave up on convincing Alicia to leave, and dozed in my seat. When I woke, all but fifty of the wooden chairs were abandoned, some of which sat cockeyed in pockets of mud that had formed from spilt beer. <BR>
"What time is it?" I said.<BR>
"Three," Alicia said. "Have another beer."<BR>
Her stubborn insistence on staying angered me. But my irritation with her never lasted long because she seemed to always follow her irritating behavior with something kind or considerate. Now, out of the corner of my eye, I watched her improvise a bed out of a couple of empty chairs for a four-year old girl who couldn't seem to fall asleep in the limited space of her mother's lap. Alicia stretched the girl's legs out over the chairs, and covered her with a borrowed sweater. I was touched. Nonetheless, I stopped speaking to her altogether, and for the next hour, the moon held my attention as it descend into the red blossoms of a Flamboyan tree.<BR>
"What time is it?" I asked one of Alicia's friends. "Alicia tells me it's three. But I know it's much later. What time do you have?"<BR>
"Three," she said. By now, Alicia's friends were in on the joke and they laughed at me openly whenever I asked for the time. I considered leaving on my own. I would shake Alicia's hand, kiss her cheek, as was the custom on the Isthmus, thank her, and walk away. But I reminded myself of the jade figurines, and my plans with Jorge to visit the tombs, and I again bit my tongue. Alicia must have sensed my anger, because she turned to me and spoke: <BR>
"We're leaving together, all of us." Then the brass band kicked in with a slow, plaintive tune, not what you'd call a dirge, but more along the lines of a hymn, and, for the first time that night, no one got up to dance. The lead trumpet player pointed his horn at the steel gate, and walked in time with the hymn, so slowly he seemed not to move. Those of us who were still there--me, Alicia, and a dozen others--rose to our feet. Then the brass band had become a marching band, and at last, we formed a procession and followed. As we walked, the women held up votary candles and chanted in chorus, over and over, "Viva San Vicente." <BR>
The band marched through the gate and into the street, and whenever we came to a road that lead to one of the marcher's homes, they drifted away from the caravan without the long, Latin goodbyes filled with smiles and kisses. Instead, they slowed their pace, dropped back toward the end of the caravan, and disappeared around the corner without a wave of the hand or a word from their mouth. <BR>
When it came our turn to go, we followed this pattern, and drifted through the swinging glass doors of my hotel. My room was on the second floor, and I climbed the red tile stairs ahead of Alicia hoping to make it clear to her that if she was coming, she was coming of her own accord. Outside my door, in a coy voice, she made an announcement. <BR>
"I've been watching you," she said, "ever since you took the room." <BR>
"You're making this up," I said. "You can't see into my room from Jorge's shop."<BR>
"I can from the second floor," she said. To prove her point, Alicia went on in detail about my movements in and around the hotel over the last three days. Her account was so accurate that it unnerved me; I could not get the key to unlock the door. "Last night," she said, "you were at the desk in your room writing, and--" I stopped listening, and lock clicked open. Inside, Alicia stretched out on my bed and turned the television on. I crossed the room to the sliding glass doors that faced the street, and pulled the curtains aside. Not fifty feet away, on Jorge's second floor, was a picture window.<BR>
"Close those curtains," Alicia said. <BR>
Alicia's confession helped me understand her rush to bed down. In her mind, our relationship had begun when she started her watch three nights before. This gave her time to imagine a friendship, then a romance. Now she was ready to seal the relationship with sex, and in the reflection of the sliding glass door, I watched her peel off layers of clothing: petticoats and slips and garters and stockings and underwear. I took my shoes and sox off, pitched them into a corner, and got in bed with her. She fumbled with the top button of my shirt, and put her tongue in my mouth. <BR>
"Our first kiss," she said.<BR>
Though I've given it much thought, I am unsure why this phrase spurred me out of bed and onto the cold tile in my bare feet. I don't like soap operas, and have never read a gothic romance, so a distaste for the flowery must have played a part. About the truth of the phrase, I can't argue. It was our first kiss. Yet the implications were more than I could bear on an empty stomach and an emerging hangover. If this were the first kiss, I heard myself reason, there would surely be a second, and a third, and when there wasn't a fourth, how would she make me pay? Sex wasn't sex with any of the women I'd ever known. It was the beginning of a steel-trap commitment. <BR>
"I can't do this," I said. "Not now; not later."<BR>
With her lips still parted from our kiss, Alicia stared at me for several seconds, and from the expression on her face, I knew I'd seen the last of her and her brother. But I stayed put on the cool tile, and when she saw I wouldn't rejoin her in bed, she clamped her mouth shut, biting down hard as if my tongue were inside and she was about to swallow it. Then she spoke:<BR>
"Walk me home." I put my clothes on, as did she, and I followed her out of the room and down the stairs, past a sleeping desk clerk in the lobby and onto the sidewalk. When, for a moment, I regretted what I had said, and extended my arm around her shoulder, she was quick to push it away. <BR>
"Don't touch me," she said, "and don't tell my brother about any of this." <BR>
"That's the last thing you need to worry about," I said, and felt a wave of relief roll through me. In another minute, we had crossed the street, and Alicia had the key in Jorge's door. I began walking backward toward my hotel, keeping an eye on her until she was safe inside. Then I turned and jogged, partly out of glee, confident that she'd tell Jorge nothing, and that he and I would explore the tombs that afternoon. <BR>
