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Walking Across the World

Jane Bauer

If you have not ventured to the highway around Huatulco lately you may not have noticed the growing number of migrants on their walk towards a better life. Many months ago on the south side of Copalita an immigration kiosk was erected and manned by immigration and army personnel. They pulled over buses and vans and had a tented area where I occasionally saw people who had been pulled off the buses and vans, for not having the proper documentation, waiting. When I happened to be standing next to a man in an immigration uniform at the bank, I asked him what they did with the people and he told me they sent them back to their country or at least to the border of Mexico.

In the last couple of weeks the number of migrants has steadily grown and in the past couple of days I have seen at least a few hundred people walking on my fifteen-minute drive home. A path just before the immigration kiosk has been forged so that they can avoid it altogether. 

Yesterday I stopped and asked a group where they were from just before they got on the avoid-immigration kiosk path through the bushes. 

“Haiti” one man responded.

“où allez vous?” I asked

“Les Etats-Unis” he said.

This morning while driving back in to work, moving in the same direction as the walkers, I stopped for two women. They climbed right in my car with a small baby and a few meters later we picked up a young man. I asked if they were from Haiti and they said they were from Guinea. 

The immigration kiosk was just up ahead but we weren’t stopped, to be fair the two soldiers standing in front of it looked resigned to their inability to do anything.

We stopped just off the highway in Copalita and had breakfast. Guinea is 9345 km from Huatulco. Over breakfast we exchanged names and phone numbers. 

Mari Assi, a robust young woman with a burn scar covering one hand and forearm was wearing sandals and carrying her 19 month-old daughter Fati. Her traveling companion was Aminata who had left her 13-year old daughter back in Guinea and the young man was Osmane. While French is the primary language in Guinea, due to its colonization by the French, their speech was also peppered with words of a language I didn’t know. They flew from Guinea to Nicaragua and had been walking/taking buses/ hitchhiking for 12 days. Their final destination goal: New York.

If you watch the news it will tell you about the atrocities happening in other parts of the world- military coups, crime, instability, places where women being raped is a regular occurrence. I don’t need look at the news to understand the why of what brought Mari Assi, Aminata, Fati and Osmane to be on the same road as me. I only need to look at their inadequate footwear, their clothes that have leaves sticking to them from sleeping in the bushes, to know they deserve more… more help… more humanity… and more compassion.

Living, Mexico

Women in Politics

Jane Bauer

The editorial from this month’s The Eye magazine.

“For me, a better democracy is a democracy where women do not only have the right to vote and to elect but to be elected.”—Michelle Bachelet, head of UN Women, former president and defense minister of Chile, in The New York Times

Most people are astounded at the giant leap humanity has taken with regard to technology in the past 100 years. Equally astounding are the small steps we have taken on the status of women. 

Yes, women now have the vote (since 1918 in Canada, 1920 in the US and 1953 in Mexico) and can own property, in North America at least. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent US organization, 

When it comes to property ownership, women are not equal in the eyes of the law. According to the World Bank, close to 40 percent of the world’s economies have at least one legal constraint on women’s rights to property, limiting their ability to own, manage, and inherit land. Thirty-nine countries allow sons to inherit a larger proportion of assets than daughters and thirty-six economies do not have the same inheritance rights for widows as they do for widowers.” 

Even though we vote there is still a great disparity of representation of women in political spheres. It just doesn’t make sense. Women represent half the global population and in several studies it has been shown that women have a higher tendency to make decisions that benefit the community rather than just themselves. This is why organizations that give out small business loans favor women. Making decisions that benefit a community, organization and accountability are all qualities that make me think women are ideal politicians.

In 2019, women are still under-represented on the international political stage. We earn less than men and are at a higher risk for physical assaults and human trafficking. I don’t know how if we have come so far in the past 100 years; tv, cars, the internet, mobile phones, MRIs, ultrasound machines, cardiac defibrillation- with all these inventions to improve our quality of life, how have we lagged so far behind in our humanity? Why is it taking so long for women to be equally represented in politics?

It’s also not as simple as electing women. Why are fewer women running for office? Is it lack of opportunity, poor education, cultures that limit women to staying home and having babies? Is it the tolerance of misogyny from world leaders and super stars or the acceptance that our bodies are branding and marketing tools? I don’t know.

This progress is too slow.

Jane

Living

A Woman in the Oval- only on T.V.

Jane Bauer

I am a little embarrassed by how excited I was when I turned on my Netflix and saw that Season 6 of House of Cards is available. I had pretty much come to terms that it wasn’t going to have a sixth season after the whole Kevin Spacey scandal. I am only a couple of episodes in but I couldn’t be more impressed. Robin Wright, as Claire Underwood, as president, is a force and the writing is spot on with poignant lines like “Playing incompetent is so exhausting” and “The reign of the white middle-aged men is over.”

I couldn’t help but draw comparisons with Scandal’s final and seventh season which has Mellie Grant fighting to keep her presidency, while also lamenting on how wielding so much power has complicated her sex life. Her vagina monologue is a fine piece of writing and is delivered with humor and truth “I’m not just POTUS. I am a single female POTUS. Do you know what that means? It means I’m a human chastity belt, there is a famine in my lady bits! My vagina is beautiful, she is welcoming, but she is getting treated like a murder house. I can’t get anything in there!”

Is there any country in the world whose Presidency is portrayed in so many fictional accounts? As a Canadian, I am not sure I would tune in to a show based on the drama of Ottawa. As entertaining as it has been to watch Justin Trudeau, I don’t ever think of Canadian politics as glamorous. 

What does it mean when two prominent shows portray a woman running the Oval? Is it a Hollywood backlash against the misogynist who currently holds office? Whatever it is I am loving it and I hope it is a sign of things to come. 
Living

On Technology…

Jane Bauer

april coverEditorial of the April issue of The Eye. Thanks for reading! http://www.TheEyeHuatulco.com

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

Albert Einstein

I am a technology resister- without a doubt more Wilma Flintstone than Judy Jetson. I read books not tablets – I love the smell and feel of paper over the subtle hum of electronics. My daily planner is one of those cumbersome paper ones and it never leaves my office. While some might view this as an inconvenient method to run a business, as I need to be physically in my office to schedule anything – for me it is a luxury.

I was very resistant to getting an iPhone. Did I really need email alerts at the grocery store or to check Facebook when I was out with real people? Eventually I gave in. When the screen got smashed up I continued to use it for months. It still worked – as a phone. Upon seeing my damaged phone, one woman remarked that I deserved a new one and that I should ‘treat’ myself. I responded that the treat was to not be so attached to my phone.

Don’t get me wrong – I think technology is cool, science is cool, talking to a friend on the other side of the planet with the touch of a button on a cordless device is super cool! But most us have become slaves to technology. We are desperately creating electronic scrapbooks of moments that are gone. Filling fake clouds with stuff we don’t even know why we’re saving, or what for. We are living with sound bites rather than substance. Our everyday lives have become a virtual existence rather than one based in reality – most of our communication is via devices and shared moments happen through screens, which capture the aesthetics of a moment but not the emotion – technology has not managed to capture the subtlety of human experience. There is no emoji to capture … all the best moments. The flicker of a feeling you get when you walk on a crisp fall day and for a second you know everything is going to be ok … a flicker of inner peace.

So has technology exceeded our humanity? Has it dumbed us down to communicate our feelings via emojis? Sanskrit has 96 words for love. We have happy faces with hearts for eyes.

Did Albert Einstein even really say that? I wish he had – it would fit perfectly with my beliefs – add some heft to the idea that what we are experiencing is a momentous and scary collective experience. But ironically there is no proof that he even said it. It is a perfect example of the soundbite machine roller coaster we are all on, where it seems if something gets repeated enough it could be true … alternative quotes.

See you next month,

Jane

 

Living

Happy Love Month!

Jane Bauer

february-coverHappy Love Month! This is my editorial from The Eye magazine this month. For those of you who don’t me personally, I am the editor of an English-language magazine in Mexico called The Eye, in addition to owning a restaurant and a cooking school. The magazine really allows me to explore different aspects of life in Mexico and connect with amazing writers and of course our readers. You can check out current and back issues online at http://www.TheEyeHuatulco.com or if you are fortunate enough to be in Oaxaca or Huatulco you can pick up a hard copy.

 

Editor’s Letter | Beach, Village & Urban Living in Oaxaca

“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”

― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

I am feeling very exhausted. Everywhere people are bubbling over with their opinions, demanding their right to be heard but it seems we are so busy talking that the entire planet has actually stopped listening. All mouths are open and everyone I meet is ready to let me know where they stand on the state of world politics – by this I mean American politics – since WWII, America has prided itself on being the leader of the Free World and the consequence is that much of the world feels totally within its rights to weigh in. Add that to the fact that America has rarely hesitated to weigh in on the politics of other nations – and we all carry our opinions about those actions – layers and layers of ‘I thinks’ and ‘I believes’- each of us holding onto these values, believing that they have come to define us.

Strangely for me, an outspoken feminist, the day of The March did not incite in me the feeling of power it seemed to for the rest of my contemporaries. As I looked through my social media feed and saw photos of many people I respected taking to the streets, I felt sad rather than exhilarated. I felt even sadder when I read comments from those who were against the march. I asked myself… ‘Can I respect people whose opinions are so offensive to me and different from my own?’

Here’s what I realized. The wall has already been built. Without laying a single brick we have completely divided ourselves by allowing our beliefs to define and separate us. None of the issues being presented at the moment are new; access to abortion, equal pay, sexual assault, immigration reform, gay rights, police brutality. These are not just issues concerning the USA – these are issues we need to be concerned about worldwide. Human rights are a problem worldwide. There are many people around the world who do not have the privilege and freedom to attend a march or have access to rant on social media. If you are even reading this, you are most likely a lot ‘freer’ than the rest of the world.

If we really don’t want a wall, we need to stop talking. We need to stop shouting at people to love more. Shhhhhhh. Enjoy the silence. Listen to your heart beating inside your body. Before your gender, your culture, the randomness of the country where you were born, the religious and political beliefs you were raised with- before all that, you were just a beating heart, in the bubble of quiet of your mother’s womb. It was safe. You were most definitely loved.

Can I respect people whose opinions are offensive to me and different from my own? If I really want to be a part of the change I want to see, then I am going to have to learn to.

Happy Valentine’s Day,

Jane