Buried Photos (blanco y negro)

Following up on 'yesterday's' post (actually a few days ago), a few black and whites from the past year around Mexico that never got published.

Zapatistas sing their hymn at a community meeting. (Balaclavas are on because I was taking pictures, not because they always wear them: Zapatistas generally do not show their faces in public)

Grant 'Twiggy' Baker - a legend of the big wave surf scene - catches a macker on the gnarliest day I've ever seen. His friend, professional surfer and videographer Noel Robinson, died on a wave shortly after this pic.


Standing guard: a staple of Mexico City rooftops

A machine shop near La Merced, Mexico City

Holding court in Tepito.

A favourite hair style, sported by women in an indigenous town in Chiapas being relocated to new 'sustainable cities' by the gov.

Union Representatives speak to a crowd on the anniversary of the worst day of violence in the 2006 occupation of Ciudad Oaxaca. Security forces, accused of killing or disappearing dozens of protestors and organizers, were nowhere to be seen - except as an effigy hanging from the gazebo in the Zocalo.

Betters and afficionados keep a close eye on their bets and birds. Ciudad Oaxaca.

From same night as above shot... I just love dude gettin' his gallo strut on.

A woman sitting by a freshly decorated grave in Lo De Soto, Guerrero. I was hoping she would move her face a few inches out of the shadow, but she never did.


Pushing goods for sale and someone to sell them down a side street in Tepito, Mexico City.

"Juan" steers a boat through the forest swamps deep in the Lancondon Jungle. He is among the last people still speaking Lancondon Maya, which many believe to be among the oldest languages in Mexico.

Buried Photos (en color)

Upon returning to Mex a few days ago, one of my tasks has been organizing photos and cleaning up hard drives. To spice things up for myself (I don't love such tasks), I decided to pick out some pics that I still like, regardless of their lack of journalizing sellability. Then I decided to post them.

These are ones that did not make the cut for publishing, but they all caught my eye in one way or another.

Today, colours. Tomorrow(ish) black and white.

Jesus on display in a narco town in rural Michoacan.

A man 'gets his lean on' as evening comes to the used goods section in the back of Tepito, Mexico City's largest black market.

A Lacondon Maya child rests on a tree after chasing his cat away. The Lancondon Maya are the most direct known descendants of the Maya, who managed to escape detection until the 1960's. There are about 1000 left, and fewer who speak the language. Sadly, this story never got published.

A woman arranges flowers with her daughter in Cuajinicuilapa, Guerrero, the unofficial capital of Mexico's remaining African descendants.

A girl dances on the top of grave, singing to her friend below.

Grant rejected it from a slide show we did together, an editor rejected it, and no one else seems to love it but me. A Zapatista man (who can't show his face on camera) rests on a cross during a hilltop meeting in Chiapas

Two roosters mid battle on the floor of cockfight in rural Oaxaca.

Jesus fixes his get-up, as part of an odd media frenzy at the main protest against the UN's climate change conference in Cancún. Tons of riot police blocked the road. It felt for a bit like it was gonna get intense. But then, protesters just took turns standing in front of the riot police, denouncing the UN and such - to the media's delight.

An alleyway in Ciudad Oaxaca.

Chuy squeezes out of a sweet mid-morning barrel peeling off the rocks. No, I will not tell you where.


In the afternoon glow of a cemetery on Dia de los Muertos, en Guerrero... Blurry colours

Gettin' By - Selling Zapatistas

One interesting offshoot Mexico's Zapatistas is the small economy of indigenous who have used their popularity to make money - small money. Me and Grants did an article on this a while back.

We also spent two nights drizzly nights hanging out with Anna in front of the cathedral. She makes a living selling Zapatista dolls. During the days, she makes the dolls at home - a skill taught to her by a person of unclear origin. Sometimes she makes it out to walk around a bit in the day or evening, looking for tourists who might buy them. Mostly though, she comes out at night - after 10 pm is the only time local authorities allow indigenous sellers to lay out their blankets and sell their goods.

On good days Anna brings in a few hundred pesos; $ 20-ish US being the high end. Lately, its been more like $ 6, and sometimes nothing. The days we hung out with her, it hovered closer to $ 3.

You can hear Anna's voice on this co-produced radio street vendor profile for World Vision Report.

Article Series: Big Year for the Environment

Ever been confused about the environment, and all the talk about it? Not just in the 'does driving to the store mean I am killing baby swans et al.' But more in the 'I have no idea what any of these talks mean for the countries and ecosystems that will be affected by changing climates and weather patterns.

I'm not purporting that this will solve your woes, but a four-part series I did for World Politics Review came out Tuesday. The series focuses on the four major pillars of the Cancun agreement, and what will need to happen in 2011 to keep the Kyoto Protocol alive and enact all this proposed/promised assistance for the developing world by richer nations. (You can likely expect a blog post about this last issue in the coming days).

For those who have a subscription to WPR, these are the articles.

1) The Kyoto Protocol

2) REDD +

3) Finance Mechanism

4) Technology Transfer

That Which Happens

(just down the street a few days before)

On Dec 1, I woke up with serious back pain - a regular visitor to my life, caused this time by a twisting fall clearing the ball off my keeper's goal line. I forced myself to work, which on this day, meant interviewing and taking photos in a rough, working class neighbourhood. I was thinking (mistakenly) that the next day was the two year anniversary of my blog. Feeling pretty good about work that day - and life in general - I thought about funny shit I would never write, and ambled through the waves of back pain.

My interview with a group of teenage thugs was going pretty well. They kept cracking hilarious jokes. The sun in the cool air made for the perfect temperature.

Someone grabbed me from behind - though not very hard - and another guy appeared right in front of me. I shrugged off guy one, and pushed guy two away. At this point, the gun appeared. I got that weird feeling of clarity that always comes to me when intense things go down: whatever is happening all just stops, and I feel really alert and focused. I weighed my options. I thought about running into the crowd. I thought about charging the guy - I really sincerely doubt a trigger would have been pulled, and I have no doubt I would win in a fight. But, he lifted the gun up, yelled some shit that I wasn't listening to (focused on my potential options), and cocked the trigger.

The mini-gangsters I had been photographing took a scared step back out my periphery. Now left standing alone against two with a gun, I had another moment of clarity. And in those brief segundos, lost roughly 3 grand of camera and recording equipment and a day's worth of photo and audio.1

People I knew chased after them. Then I spent 20 mins in Mexi surrealism; me in the back of a cop car, cops talking on their cell phones, and me meant to inform them if we happened to drive past the ratones. We ended up stopping, sitting on the back of the cop car, and just talking about regular shit. Predictably, this chapter ended with them saying it was not worth my time to report it. I called a friend, got on the metro, and went home to lie down.

(Violent) theft is a scenario I have played through several times - though it never results how you thunk it. Ever since the first two times I took pictures in Liberia resulted in threats of violence from crowds, its been pretty constant. Much of the past few years have been spent working in areas with some degree of poverty and/or tensions, and my security tends to involve not much more than contacts I make in these neighbourhoods, and "common sense." I'm always doing 360 degree checks, watching who's watching me. I keep exit routes mentally mapped, and never face one direction for long. I rarely pull out my camera when I don't know (and trust) at least one person in short radius.

Talking about this with a journalist I had just met at the Cancún conference, she scorned me for not rolling with an armed detail. I think this is, um, dumb, and the "discussion" that ensued on this topic quickly ended our very brief professional relationship.

Beyond the fact that I literally can't afford it, guns change everything. Surely I would not arrive in Mogadishu and just be like "who wants to be in a pretty picture?!", but having a hired gun with you has its affects. Sure, you can extract information, but its different. You become a potential threat to your subjects. You hold a superiority that changes the dynamic of an interview; how you see interviewee as much as how interviee sees you. And, you wield the threat of death over people who want to steal a material object from you. This, to me, does not work, though I recognize certain circumstances call for it.

Without launching into a diatribe about how much security expats tend to demand in situations they decry as unsafe, I do really still think that reporting is best done with a limited amount of official protection units (ie building localized contacts and confidence, not showing up for a day with gun-toters), and I don't plan to change that approach.

Had this happened January 1st, I believe "bad omens" would have been the standard issue comment when referring to my annual prospects. A whole year to try and recover. But, it happened at the end of a year, allowing me to pack it away with what by all measures, was a fairly frustrating 12 months.

Now, after hiding from the internets for a few weeks, 2011 starts off with a challenge: "make money-money make money-money, make." I need to hustle my way outta debt. Despite its obvious downsides, I like this challenge - I got tons of ideas that I need to find homes for.

I just learned that 2011 is prime number.2 So bring it on, bitches.


FN1 If you are looking for a deal, somewhere on the streets of Mexico City a Canon 5D with a 24 - 105 L series lens likely sells for well below market value.

FN2 I learned this from Chris Blattman's Twitter feed when I checked back in to the interconnected webbing last evening.