Even in my brand new “Charlestown Townies” T-shirt, I couldn't help feeling like a poseur at last Sunday’s Bunker Hill Days parade. While the parade is officially intended to commemorate the revolutionary Battle of Bunker Hill, it is really a celebration of Charlestown’s working class Irish...

Shortly after our arrival in Santiago Nundichi, Don Aureliano asked us to visit his father who was ill. Don Aureliano is tall for a Mixtec man. His face, shaded by a white flat-brimmed sombrero, is gentle and serious. The community looks up to him, the same as his father, Don Jose. Both have been...

Betaza means wind in Zapotec. The village was named for the wind that sweeps the sierra, hissing through the pines and coffee plants. I hear the wind in the voices of the people, in the gentle sibilated tones of their language. We went to San Sebastian de Betaza (the Christian prefix the mark of the...

The PFP has withdrawn from the Zócalo; the tanks, the uniformed soldiers, the automatic weapons, didn’t fit with the image of the Oaxaca recovered, back to normal, open for tourism, that the government is promoting. The facades of the historic center have been repainted. I find myself disoriented;...

Last night we stood shivering on the roof and watched the fires burning. To the north, the smoke stood out black against the night sky. To the south, a crescent moon hung over the ruins of Monte Alban. Without any reliable news (only the University Radio frantically calling the populace to arms) we...

The sound of rocket fire pulls us into the streets. Curiosity is almost as strong as fear. I join the neighbhors on the street corner. From three blocks away we watch the figures running in the clouds of gas. It's five in the afternoon and high sunlight still blazes, but in the canyons of the...

The Day of the Dead is a celebration of life. The proximity of death makes life more immediate. This Day of the Dead, as coils of black smoke unwound over the city, death was present in more than a symbolic sense.

For seven hours battle raged between elements of the federal police and the APPO (Popular...