Museums and Zacatecas

I spend the day in Zacatecas today doing what I don’t normally do: going around to museums and learning everything I can about this place and the people here – from the museums.

First I find an art museum that has an incredible art collection of local Mexican artists displayed on several floors and in the hallways of this amazing old building. But the best display is a large room full of intense ancient masks and and another room of ancient objects collected from the local people as well as people around the world.

Of course all the local artists were men, except for one woman – and half of her display was dedicated to talking about her husband.

I of course have to attempt to talk with one of the curators about this blaring problem. He understands me and is very aware and sad that this is the case. He says in México much machismo still exists.

I assure him México is not standing alone.

The other museum I find is dedicated to the indigenous people of Zacatecas. It is all in Spanish so I miss lots of it but I get lots of it too. There are some great old black and white photos, as well as life-like displays of the Zacateca people, their work, their homes, their rituals and ceremonies.

It is a multi-media museum with a large-screen introductory movie, several videos, as well as objects, detailed signs, machinery, etc. on three or four floors and in another incredible old building.

And there are many squares of brilliant, beautiful, intricate designs on cloth, both hand embroidered and beaded work.

I carry my dictionary with me through both museums and it takes from opening to closing time to make it through them.

I hang out again with Mario, the vender who sells cactus growing out of sand paintings of lizards and other desert scenes that he makes. I get to ask him how he knows about Monsanto. He tells me he has a friend in Pueblo, where he lives, who owns am organic coffee shop.

She has told him all about Monsanto, GMO and sterile seeds. Mario speaks english really well, although he lets me speak in my awful Spanish.

I also talk with Gloria, who is also a vender with three children, selling scarves. She doesn’t speak english, nor do the kids, but we have so much fun talking together. Her kids are 11, 10, 9 and they are all sweet and patient with me.

I can understand Gloria and I think she understands me too. She tells me her father grows some food but not organically. She says the corn he grows is just for cows. We talk about impact on humans when cows are feed inorganic corn.

Gloria tells me in one more month, I will be speaking Spanish perfectly! I kiss her feet!