Into the Hearts of the Amazons: In Search of a Modern Matriarchy

Day of the Dead

h Day of the Dead  . When I attended the festival of San Sebastian in Jalapa earlier in the year, someone—I can’t remember who—suggested I return there on October 31 for the Day of the Dead. Not only was the all-night ritual celebrated in new Jalapa’s cemetery with brass bands and tequila, but there would also be a ritual to honor the dead in old Jalapa ’s cemetery. Near dawn on November first, I was told, those who had relatives buried in the old Jalapa would hire open motorboats called launches to take them to the spot on the reservoir above the old cemetery . Then, as the boats came to rest and the sun rose, they would scatter flowers on the water above the graves. At ten thirty in the evening on a windy October 31, Julin and I boarded a second-class bus with a small entourage of Julin’s friends and relatives that included Lluvia, one of Julin’s closest friends; Memo and Coco, Julin’s sons; and Christi, Memo’s American girlfriend. The bus was crowded with Mexico’s poor, and we were forced to spend the halfhour ride to Jalapa on our feet, clinging to the backs of the seats or anything else we could hang onto when the driver swerved or came to a sudden stop. The luggage racks were stuffed with cardboard boxes containing pungent marigolds that the Zapotecs use in the Day of the Dead ceremonies. Already it was late, and the passengers grew tense and silent as midnight approached. If they were not home by twelve, when the dead returned, it would be no small disgrace. We got off the bus within walking distance of La Palapa, the seafood restaurant where I had met Magda earlier in the year. Everyone was thirsty, so we entered the restaurant, and all of us drank cold Coronas . Julin suggested that I call Magda and invite her to the festivities, 143 but I explained that neither Magda nor anyone in her family had a telephone . Instead, we agreed to stop by her house on our way to the cemetery and ask her to come along. Magda—who was eating dinner with her parents at the time we arrived—answered the door dressed in an orange T-shirt and white cutoffs . Despite the late hour, she seemed pleased to see us. From a far corner of the patio came the sound of a typewriter clacking against a sheet of paper. Magda’s brother, an economist, was hunched over a photocopy of a census report, squinting to read the fine print in the dim light of the patio. He dictated and his wife typed cautiously at the antique machine. The following day, at eight in the morning, Pedro would give a formal presentation of his report in Tehuantepec before turning it over to the state government in Oaxaca, and I was reminded how hard Mexicans work. Even though we insisted we were not hungry, Magda’s mother, Hortensia, sent Magda to buy additional food. She reached for pots and pans that were stored under the patio’s thatched roof and began cooking . Now and then, she shuffled over to a stack of banana leaves that Mexicans use to wrap tamales, counting them to make sure she had enough. A couple of minutes after Magda returned, her mother served the tamales, and everyone, including those who protested most loudly that they were not hungry, ate one tamale after another. Hortensia watched us eat, gauging the success of her powers as a cook. While we ate, Magda told us about her new post on the town council. In the nine months since she was appointed, she had been collecting data about who grew what in Jalapa but was forced to drop this because of flooding caused by El Niño. She had also hired a consultant to help her assess crop damage. Because of chronic corruption, it was difficult to convince state officials in Oaxaca that Jalapa’s farmers did indeed need financial aid. At times, she felt isolated. Before the flooding, she had been educating Jalapa’s farmers on how to use fertilizer. Noise pollution was something she had wanted to spend time on, but she placed it on a back burner while she solved the problem with crop damage. On Thursday she would take the four-hour bus trip to Oaxaca to push for additional funds. She would have to finance...