So since this is the land of Moctezuma, he has taken revenge on me just as he has on thousands before me. I've been pretty sick the past couple of days. I took a cipro last night and another this morning and that seems to have kicked it, though I still don't have the confidence to eat like a normal person. Ah, how wonderful it is to be in a place with little governmental infrastructure! All those small government types back home can kiss my ass.

(Ew.)

Of course, it's not just travelers who get it. My spanish teacher was sick this week too (and he's on antibiotics) and today I went with him to pick up his wife and son from the doctor's office -- his son is just under 2 years old and he has dysentery. Poor little kid. Now he has to take flagyl to get rid of it. I went with my teacher because he had to pick them up, drive them home, then come back to the center to teach an english class at 4. He asked if it was okay and I said yes, of course. We spoke spanish the whole time anyway. He and his wife live in subsidized housing, which is apparently how most Oaxaca City residents live who aren't wealthy enough to have homes in the city center. This government has nothing but contempt for its people. The corruption runs so deep. It's incredibly sad.

The teachers are still in the zocalo and the surrounding area protesting, but supposedly they're going back to work on Monday so the kids don't have to repeat a whole year. Everyone besides the wealthy here (the PANistas, surprise surprise) are supportive of the teachers, even though their protest has led to horrible traffic and ugly graffiti, even in the historic area (which used to be spotless, especially compared to the rest of the city). There's a lot of talk about how Calderon and the PAN stole the election. Even Subcomandante Marcos made a statement saying he had been contacted by people who witnessed the destruction of over a million votes in favor of AMLO, Obrador (you can see it on DemocracyNow!). The Zapatistas are apolitical -- they don't participate in elections -- but Marcos said that he felt he had a moral obligation to tell what he knew. Given that Calderon is another Harvard technocrat who received oodles of "assistance" from the GOP's International Republican Institute, it's no surprise that votes were "lost" in a way that makes it all seem legitimate, and makes the opposition seem unstable, shrill, and unreasonable. Since so many Mexicans are paranoid and expect bad things to happen (and rightly so -- corruption is everywhere), there's all this talk about needing to "respect the results", blah blah blah, just like in Florida 2000.

It's all so suspicious. I find it particularly so because of the way the US press has been covering the whole thing (and to a lesser extent the Mexican press). Calderon is  the "conservative" who is "pro-business" while Obrador is "leftist," a total pejorative in the states. And then there's the whole thing with IFE (their federal election commission) declaring Calderon's victory before over 3 million votes had even been counted, and how they kept insisting that even with the official count nothing would change, even though the difference between the canidates was miniscule at best. I mean Calderon "won" by around 0.5%, or less than 200,000 votes out of 41 million (that were tallied, that is)! Calederon was hand-picked by Fox, like the old "dedazo" or big finger days of the PRI, and Fox campaigned for him heavily, even offering up all sorts of government money to communities in excange for votes, which I've read is illegal. What the hell is our government doing meddling in other democracies?! It makes me furious.

Oh well. I've had some time to read the web since I've been home sick, which is both good and bad. Good because I know what's going on and bad, bad, bad because I know what's going on. Apparently there's all kinds of American Taliban creepiness happening right now. It's been on Jesus' General, Daily Kos, and Crooks and Liars. This crazy organization in Delaware, StoptheACLU.org, printed the names and addresses of a Jewish family who had asked the ACLU to help them deal with the harrassement they were getting in their increasingly Christian fundamentalist community. They received so many death threats they had to move! One of these fundamentalist wackos even said that someone should "disappear" the family the way an atheist had "disappeared" a while ago. Apparently the woman (I don't remember her name right now) had been a client of the ACLU too and had successful sued to get prayers out of public schoools (going all the way to the Supreme Court) and then she "disappeared," her dismembered body found six years later. These people are as crazy as Bin Laden and the Taliban. They are terrorists -- spreading so much terror that they're driving their neighbors out of town. Sickening.

And on an even worse note, S found out that the last man to go to Afghanistan from his unit (also as an ETT) was killed there yesterday. And that's our "good" war. What a disaster.

We leave on a 7 am bus for Juchitan tomorrow and we've still got to finish packing. I've heard that Juchitan is muy feo (ugly) but has beautiful culture, and is hot hot hot, even when it's not the dead of summer. There is a cultural center in the middle of town that supposedly has wireless internet, so hopefully I'll be able to update from there, and let you all know about the ladies who wear live iguanas on their heads and the proud muxes (transvestites) who work in the markets. We'll see!