Thursday, July 19, 2012 was a day to remember.

On our morning ramble through the old stone streets and verdant squares of Querétaro we encountered a large political protest assembly in the busy Plaza de la Corregidora. We lingered at the fringes as the speaker, a PRD Senator, described the broad national dissatisfaction with the recent election. There is still plenty to dispute about the official results, considering all the allegations of fraud and manipulation. Then there's the fact that more than 60% of the voters cast their ballots for someone other than the alleged winner, Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI. The country is strongly divided, and one wonders how this will play out.

In the early afternoon, I was in the hallway of our hotel checking e-mail when a young man came out of his room to do the same. We struck up a conversation about the Querétaro/Montreal International Jazz Festival currently in progress, and he turned out to be the bass player for the YolanDa Brown group from London that was playing that evening.

Carolyn joined us as we discussed music, philosophy (Hobbes vs Locke, The Great Conversation, etc.) and the politics of Nigeria, his homeland. Nigeria is known for its rich musical heritage and tradition of political activism, and few people symbolize this better than Fela Kuti. Although he's gone now, he was part of the Great Musical Conversation. He remains an inspiration to Jeremy and many others.

In the evening, we got there early to grab seats and enjoy the opening act, a very good group called the Vudú Chile Jazz and Blues Band, from nearby San Miguel de Allende.

But their set was interrupted by the protestors marching through the area and chanting, "¡Fuera Peña Nieto!" (Out With Peña Nieto!). At one point, about 60% of the jazz audience (around the same number as voted against the PRI) applauded the protestors, and several waved signs. It was looking to be a very interesting evening, with us in the middle, perhaps, of a history-being-made moment. But the protestors finally moved on, and their chants slowly dimmed as they marched away.

This all happened well before YolanDa Brown began her set, and what a set it was! She plays, quite excellently, both the saxophone and the clarinet; and she has an outstanding backing band that kept the whole place hopping. She told the crowd in very good Spanish that this visit to Querétaro was her first opportunity to taste 'jamaica,' a popular bright red hibiscus drink. That was significant because her family is from Jamaica, and that country is currently marking it's 50th anniversary of independence.

She came down into the crowd and sat about five feet from us as she wailed on the clarinet. And we were quite impressed with the bass playing of our new friend Jeremy (actually, Jeremiah Oluwambe Olaleye, but we'll stick with 'Jeremy').
After a rocking evening of jazz, protest, more jazz, and a couple of encores, we retired to a nearby hotel restaurant for a drink (Cuba Libres), some passable food, and a fine Cuban quartet that played all the great Buena Vista Social Club numbers and more. A middle-aged couple got out there to dance, and for one brief, shining moment they were 23 years old again.
(The table sign translates, charmingly, "No Smoking - Respect the Regulation 'Of the Law for the Control of Tobacco' or suffer the consequences of Having Broken Said Regulation")

It was a excellent way to end an eventful day.
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Friday was tour day. We signed up for two tours and spent much of the day busing around the city with a full load of Mexican tourists. The tour guide spoke so rapidly (all in Spanish) that I was soon left far behind. In situations like this, it's hard to keep up if you're not born to the language. And there's a tendency here – certainly among tour guides – to slur the speech and gloss over pronunciations. Words discard their 's,' 'o,' and 'a' endings and elide fluidly to the next word. A phrase like "Los edificios" (The buildings) becomes "Loedificio." "R" endings become "sh," so "No Tocar" (Don't Touch) becomes "No Tocash." It certainly adds color to the language, but (for me) it's far less understandable than the language spoken in Oaxaca or Mexico City.


Our guide speaks constantly for 15-minute stretches in an attempt to give the most information possible. I drift off in contemplation, writing this up in my head for the next blog; and a Mexican tourist compliments him on his very compete explanation! At times like these, I relish my rich inner life. But he was very animated, entertaining, and dramatic, and told lots of jokes that, judging by the reaction of the other tourists, were real knee-slappers.

So we saw the famous 'acueducto,' statues of famous people, narrow streets and fountains, and a beautiful park called the Cerro de las Campanas (Hill of the Bells) crowned by a huge statue of Benito Juarez. It was worth the money, even with the language issue (for me, not Carolyn so much).



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Querétaro is a large city and there's still lots of wandering to do. We soon find ourselves in the extensive gardens of the Alameda, where locals go to find a patch of green.
There's a large and raucous street market at the entry, but signs prohibit "vendors, clowns, etc…" from the park itself. It's a place to wander down the broad center walkway; admire a statue of José Lopez Alavez, composer of the famous Canción Mixteca; feed the squirrels; or find a quiet place to talk and breathe the oxygen.



It's also a good place to meet a young man named Francisco who just wants to practice his English.

On our way back to the hotel (for a nap) we happen upon El Jardín del Arte, and somehow manage not to buy numerous essential items. I hope we'll survive.

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More wandering brings an encounter with Querétaro's modest ex-pat community. Barry Lippman, a former New Yorker, relocated to this city several years ago and now deals in real estate (blippman@queretarorealty.com).
Barry has a tasteful flat he's renovated extensively just a block or so from the center of town. We were fortunate to join him and his friend Ann, from Toronto, at his place for a drink before we all went out for dinner on our last night in town. They suggested a very good nearby Oaxacan(!) restaurant called María y Su Bici. It's a successful and fun family place where the music is loud, the portions are large, and there's a play area for the kids.


We discussed the healthy economic growth the city has experienced in recent years, due to strong foreign investment. We had also noticed extensive and fine restoration work in the city's historic center. Barry mentioned the new assembly and distribution plants near the airport that are providing good jobs for the community, as well as the growth of suburban residential tracts around the city. He spends some time these days finding living quarters for incoming executives. In the daily newspaper, Diario de Querétaro, the outgoing Alcalde, María del Carmen Zuñiga Hernandez, mentioned the large colchón (mattress) of 400 million pesos her administration will leave in the treasury to finish out the year. It's nice these days to see a city with money in the bank.
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There's still much to see, and lots to remember from our time in Querétaro. On the surface, this appears to be a very livable city. There's a wide variety of newspapers and magazines to enjoy over morning coffee, there are daily (and nightly) street performers and book fairs; and cars actually stop if you look like you want to cross the street. There's an effective recycling program, and they have a regimen of constant street cleaning to discourage even thinking of tossing out trash.



And who can forget the oddly wonderful dog fountain (no, I didn't ask) in the Plaza de Armas?


There's a lot to see in Querétaro, but the time has come for us to push onward – to the charming spa town of Tequisquiapan, about an hour away.
— PRW
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But before we go, a bit more reflection from Carolyn...

Street life in Mexico owns me. Or perhaps it's street life in the Latin world — Mexico, Argentina, Spain. I'm sure there are other places where vibrant street life can be found, but here it has a particular lushness and diversity. I often think I could no longer settle for living where the streets at night are empty and all the people are locked inside their homes watching television!

We had dinner two nights in a row on Queretaro's Plaza de Armas — one night at Chucho El Roto's (I think Perry is telling you a bit of Chucho's tale) and the next at a fine restaurant named 1810. The food was great at both; we enjoyed nice wines and listened to jazz drifting over from the performance tent nearby. Both nights we had tables at the edge of the plaza, with full view of the people and events, and in the 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. time frame, there was a lot to see!
Families carrying/pushing/trailing small children, herds of teenagers in everything from skintight miniskirts and 6-inch platform shoes to goth black and studs, a little old tipsy man swaying to the music (same one was there both nights), elegantly dressed couples in leather and diamonds, beautifully colorful and quiet indigenous women selling baskets and dolls and bread and necklaces..., young couples necking on the benches, men carrying guitars, women in medieval costume, beggars, amputees in wheelchairs, blind people with white canes — it seemed the whole sea of humanity flowed by in a never ending, undulating stream.
And often they would stop at our table — the vendors and the beggars, that is. Small children asking for pesos or if we would like to buy a little cotton "muñeca" or a "chicle." They look at you with large, imploring eyes and you wonder if they've managed to sell anything all day long.
I am so quick to say "no," especially after the nineteenth woman has offered the same shawl or straw bag, after the twentieth child has held out a grubby little hand asking for "un pesito." Perry is more reachable, at least until he's emptied his pockets of coins. (Perry's position: We are not rich, but we have so much more than they do.) He seems so generous; I seem so hard. I can barely look at them. But when I say "no!" it's not a rejection. It doesn't mean I wouldn't like to heal the wound for each and every one. It's just my way of temporarily coping with my own discomfort, my sadness.
I remember my first exposure to real poverty in Peru nearly fifty years ago. It wrenched at me, tore me up, had me virtually paralyzed — seeing such hunger and illness and deprivation. I was so fortunate, and I had come with the intention to help; yet I could not fix this thing I was seeing.
Back then I could barely look that poverty in the face. It would have been so much easier to go back to my middle class comforts and "realize my potential." But luckily I had signed on for two years with the Peace Corps. I was committed to sticking it out. And by the time the two years were over, I saw things through very different eyes.
Living outside my culture and country of birth helped me understand that I had been born into a very privileged society and that I could as well have entered this world under very different circumstances. It was not entirely intelligence and hard work that gave me access to education and employment. I was in the right place, at the right time.
It's no less distressing, now, to look hunger and need in the face than it was back in 1963. But those things are so undeniably part of being human. And exploring other cultures has shown that there are many ways to survive, be human, and live life with dignity, whether rich or poor. For me it is a good thing to keep poking around in the world, checking out the street life in as many places as possible, experiencing how it's done by other people following other rules and speaking other languages, pushing my limits, testing my comfort zone. There's so much yet to learn!
Never mind that it isn't always easy!
—CJK