Is It Margarita Day Again?

I wrote this article on the Cinco de Mayo celebration a few years ago for the Detroit Free Press.  I made a few modifications and thought it was worth reading again.

The Cinco de Mayo celebration has become so popular in the U.S. and has become a marketing tool for many restaurants and establishments of spirits.  I have witnessed, and must admit participated in, unabashed celebration trying to capture an unclear and undefined glory of Mexican heroes of years past.  Many of my friends are party hounds, and I am totally amused by their attempts to make up the lyrics to songs like Cielito Lindo, La Cucaracha and El Rancho Grande, while at the same time trying to consume Margaritas faster than the person sitting next to them. 

But what is Cinco de Mayo?  Is it someone’s excuse to have a party (and sell margaritas) in early spring when there just doesn’t seem to be any other holiday for an excuse?  At 49 days after Saint Patrick's Day, it’s the right amount of time for people to forget the after-effects of Saint Patrick’s Day drinking.  For many people, this is probably the case; however, I hope for some the basis for this celebration includes some real feelings for what the date signifies in Mexican history.

To me, Cinco de Mayo represents the beginning of the end for foreign occupation in Mexico.  After 340 years of foreign occupation and intervention that started with the Spanish in 1521, the French were defeated in the battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.  That battle started the war that ended May 15, 1867, when Maximillian, the Austrian monarch supported by the French to be the Emperor of Mexico, surrendered.

However, to really appreciate the true meaning of Cinco de Mayo, we must understand the suffering that Mexico had endured during the period of occupation.  It is estimated that the Spanish, during the 1520's, caused, either directly or indirectly through the introduction of deseases, the death of 19 million native Mexicans.   We revolt at the atrocities of the Nazis; however, many more native Mexicans died and those who had survived lived in virtual slavery while the country was raped of its resources and left in bankruptcy. 

Spain's iron grip began to deteriorate in the mid 1700's.  Real resistance began to surface during the reign of the third Bourbon King of Spain, Charles III.  The Bourbon reforms revised the colonial government and economic structure, and a new concept of society was introduced, commerce and business, that began to change the structure of Mexican society.  The revolutions of France, Haiti and the United States gave rise to revolutionary thinking in Mexico and in September 16, 1810, a priest from the city of Dolores, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, began the revolution for independence against Spain.  The war for independence continued until September 27, 1821, when the treaty of Córdova was signed that recognized Mexican independence under the terms of the Plan of Iguala, which established a constitutional monarchy.  This monarchy lasted for a little over a year when, on December 1, 1822, Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana Peréz de Labrón, rose against the monarchy and proclaimed the republic.  In 1824, the Constitutional Congress established the constitution that formed the United Mexican States (the official name of Mexico).  The third President, Vicente Guerrero, is responsible for the abolition of slavery in 1829, and that same year, Santa Ana finally succeeded in expelling all the Spanish troops from Mexican territory. 

Twenty years of war had left Mexico economically weak; however, the process begun a new organization of the county.  In an attempt to bring government control to the northern regions, Mexico placed restrictions on immigration and prohibited slavery.  This caused the Americans living in Texas to declare independence in 1835 and join the U.S. in 1836.  However, the young, ambitious U.S. wanted more land and resources, as a result, the Mexican-American war began in 1840.  By 1848 more than half of the land that once belonged to Mexico, the current southwest had become part of the U.S.

By the time the land was lost to the U.S., the Mexican effort to keep foreigners out was not over yet.  Early in the 1850's a move was begun to moralize Mexican politics.  In the Mexican version of the French revolution against feudalism and privileges, the Reform Laws that abolished inequalities and put controls on the church were established.  Juárez won the presidency, and with a bankrupt country, declared a moratorium on all foreign debt payments.  The French, Spanish, and British were angered with the moratorium and, in October 1861, sent a united military expedition to occupy Mexico and get paid. 

After deliberations and a better understanding of the situation, the British and Spaniards recalled their men. The French, however, decided to implement their real plan, which was to take over Mexico.  The French probably believed that after 50 years of fighting, Mexico would be war-weary.  President Juárez sent General Ignacio Zaragoza and his troops to fight the French, and in the City of Puebla, on May 5, 1862, Zaragoza's army defeated the foreigners.  Hence, the celebration of Cinco de Mayo was born.  The war continued for five years, and during that time the French sent Emperor Fernindad Maximillian Joseph of Austria to rule over Mexico.  The Mexicans did not want a foreigner governing them.  On May 15, 1867 Maximillian surrendered.  He was tried and then executed on June 19, 1867.  There has been no foreign occupation of Mexico since.  At least I thought that had been no foreign occupation until a friend informed me that Americans and Europeans are retiring down there by the thousands and are populating all the resort areas.  But, I guess this doesn’t count as politically motivated occupation.

So, as I sit there having a few margaritas with my friends, I wonder if they get the same chills just to think of all that history.  I smile listening to their attempt to sing Mexican songs, I put the glass to my lips silently toast those defenders of long ago and wondered how I would have sounded speaking French.

In celebration of William Shakespeare Birthday

I have always said that I was born 400 to 500 years too late.  I truly think that I should have been born sometime between 1447 and 1547 and not 1947.  Many times I feel I don’t belong in this time and that is one of the reason why I admire Cervantes, Shakespeare and many other people from that time period so much.   

William Shakespeare birthday was celebrated this week. Although his birth date has been set at April 23, 1564.  His actual birthday was not known, but it was known that he was baptized on April 26, 1564.  I think the birthday date was chosen as the 23rd because he died on the 23rd of April, 1616 – the same day that Miguel de Cervantes died.  What a coincidence.

I love all of Shakespeare’s works and specially his sonnets, and specially love the form of the Shakespearean sonnet.  Although most of his 154 sonnets (126) were most likely written to or about a male friend (or friends) of his, historians generally agree that he was not a gay man (apparently, it was considered proper at that time for men to admire and praise their male friends).  One of his sonnets, considered as a “great love” poem, number 18, begins:  “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” was possibly written about his male friend and not a lady.  My favorite sonnet however, and the one that tells me he was not gay, is number 130 where he writes about his mistress (his lover); a woman of plain looks, wiry hair, her skin color is grayish, her words are not music to his ears but he loves to hear he talk, and her breath is not at all like perfume (probably had bad breath after drinking ale all night with him).  But yet he is in love with this plain woman.  Shakespeare probably wrote this as a parody of all the love poem that were floating around during that time period, but it tells me that he was not an aloof noble trying to impress someone, he and his lover were simple common people.  Here is the text of sonnet 130:

Sonnet 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

To celebrate his birthday I thought I try to write a sonnet in the style that he wrote.  How difficult can it be to write a sonnet?  As it turns out, without the proper inspiration – difficult.  However, with my father being ill 88 years of age, I see my potential future health in his and the inspiration for my first sonnet. 

Sonnet 1:  The Cycle of Life

We want to live a long and fruitful life.
Without the illnesses that age may bring.
To live each day without the daily strife
And always stay in life’s eternal Spring.
Youth with endless quest and thirst for knowledge,
With body prime in health to challenge life.
The senses at their peak for truth they forage.
Our wanton immortality is rife
Awareness hits with need to procreate,
Plant our roots and build a reputation.
Defend our home and our true wealth create,
And to reap the fruits of our creation.
But our mortality becomes too clear.
Our grip on life, once powerful, is sere.

Well, not as elegant as Shakespeare, but he had a lot more practice and better inspiration!

What should we worry about next - famine?

I have coffee with my father on early on Saturday mornings.  Getting together at 6:30 a.m. or 7:00 a.m. gives us a couple of hours to talk about things that come to mind that morning.  Sometimes we talk about politics, the environment;  I might even explain some natural events or other scientific or economic issue.  Most often I try to ask him question of life during his youth, the jobs that he had, his brothers and sister, his efforts to make a living and other historical events as he perceived them when he was younger.  He always tells me stories of things that happened in the 1930s and 1940s.  To him that period of time is very much alive in his memory, more so than any other period in his life.   His greatest fear for us and the grand children and great grand children is for the country to return to the depression of the early 1930s, when drought and economic downturn caused a lot of people to suffer.

He constantly relates stories of hunger; going without anything to eat for days when he was 6 and 8 years old, in 1932 and 1934.  He tells of how a family of 10 had to eat with twenty cents and how they relied on the charity of other to be able to get food and shelter.  He relates stories of communal eating on the river bank where people made barrels of coffee for anybody to have and where people would kill and cook any animal they could find and anybody who was hungry could go and serve themselves a meal.  He also relates how people would sometimes go and steal beans, corn and rice from warehouses or freight trains in order to prepare a communal meal at the river bank, which by the way was also the garbage dump.  People used the river as a garbage dump because every year it would be flooded and eventually taken out to sea.

I relate to him that as bad as the depression was, as was not as bad as other great famines that have occurred throughout the world, and those famines might not be as bad as the potential famines that could occur if our lack of environmental discipline, lack of control in our biotechnology or economic greediness gets out of hand.   I relate to him that this is not a remote possibility.  I indicted that a recent report by the United Nations indicates that rising temperatures have already reduced the global food supply and will continue to be worse.  In fact, that climate change has already reduced corn and wheat production and will most likely cause a reduction of rice and soybean production in the near future.   With increasing population and reduced food production, something has to give.  Although he claims it is against God’s law to have birth control, my response is:  “is it against Gods law to knowingly have millions of people die?”  We are a famine waiting to happen if we do not change our ways.

We don’t have to wait for a nuclear war to wipe out people, or a meteor hitting us, or the poisoning of the waters and the atmosphere or hoards of zombies attacking the world.  I think the real fear is the outcome of the future battle against famine.  With global warming, agricultural output will break down throughout the world with fewer crops being able to be grown in fewer productive regions.  This may start in developing countries but quickly reach us here and destroy our global food supply.  The world pictured in the movie “Soylent Green” with Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, may not be that farfetched.

We read of famines in history where millions of people die.  And to us these are simply statistics.  But my dad knows how it feels to be hungry.  What he does not know is what starvation really is; We cannot understand death from starvation because we have never experienced it.  We cannot conceive our chunky bodies going through the excruciating pain as the organs fail slowly; we cannot picture how the body gets reduced to skin and bone, how our faces collapse and our heads turn to living skeletons cover with a thin layer of skin, skin that shrinks and our lips peel back exposing our gums and teeth while still alive; or how some people may move toward suicide and some may start seeing other people as tasty morsels and move toward cannibalism.  

Maybe if our leaders were more enlighten this may never happen.  But how do you convince fundamentalist whose decisions are based on faith and their unwavering belief that “God will provide” and to hell with any controls.  Or, our conservative leaders who represent the profit makers who are in turn so consumed with the creation of greater and greater wealth among the industrial giants and the few and “upper 1%” that they don't realize or care about the fate of common people, a fate that will eventually hit them.

The hunger and misery that my father went through and describes in his life in the 1930s was the result of drought, the dust bowl, and the economic depression that together created the perfect storm for misery and hunger in the US, Mexico.  That “perfect Storm” had a domino effect on the rest of the world.  But today we only have ourselves to blame – pollution!  The unlimited use of resources, the inefficiency of our energy sector and our inefficient use of energy, the continued exploitation of carbon based fuels that are key factors in climate change.  In turn, climate change threatens the world’s food supply.  If we do not turn it around, we will reap the fruit of our efforts and our disregard for our future – world famine. 

What do Cenotes in Yucatan and Dinosaurs have in common?

We got to see five Cenotes on this trip and we went swimming in one of them.  While sitting there looking at one of the wonders that made the Maya civilizations possible I began to wonder why were they here? and why are there so many of them?  Over one thousand identified!  The Yucatan Peninsula is a porous limestone shelf and all freshwater rivers are underground.  The Mayas called them "dzonot,"  and they are now called "xenotes" or "cenotes."  To the Maya they were magical and the only source of fresh water.  Cenotes also represent the entrance to the underworld just like the high mountains (or pyramids) represent the entrance to the heavens.  

The Maya, at least in the early classical period, only used these Cenotes as a source of water for drinking and irrigation.  It is thought that the Toltec influence in the Post Classic period introduced the use of Cenotes as a place for human sacrifice to their rain god Chaac.

Based on my title for this posting, so what do Cenotes have to do with dinosaurs? 

One theory, supported with lots of data, is that the one key thing that killed off the dinosaurs was the impact of a meteor six miles in diameter.   It turns out that most of the cenotes in the Yucatan are lined up on the rim of the Chicxulub Crater, the place where this six mile diameter meteor hit the earth and destroyed not only the dinosaurs but most of the animal and plant life on the earth!   Cenotes are mostly found on the meteor crater rim.  Driving back from Uxmal (pronounced ooshmahl ) one actually drives over the remains of the crater rim from 65 million years ago and it is a high ground where you can see for many miles around.  It is kind of cool to be sitting near the edge of this crater – ground zero of almost total destruction of the earth.  

As I sat there looking out at the horizon I also thought of the southern fundamentalist Baptist preachers and their “preaching” of fire and brimstone and what a terrible place hell can be for sinners.  Well, let me tell you, they have no concept of the meaning of fire and brimstone.  And hell is a walk in the park compared to what happened here.   To get an idea of what destruction really is  one has to imagine what this meteor really did.  The 6-mile wide meteor hit the earth at about 50,000 mph, generating the power over 3 billion (note not million, billion) WW2-type atomic bombs.  First, the impact would have created a cloud of super-heated dust, ash and steam would have spread from the crater as the meteor impacted with the surface and carved a crater 12 miles deep and 190 miles in diameter in less than a quarter of a second.  The heat from the blast would have incinerated everything within a thousand miles instantly and would burn all those happy dinosaurs grazing, within a 3000 mile radius, as far away as where Montana (or at least where Montana would be 65 million years later), within minutes of the blast.    The poor dinosaurs didn’t even have time to get frighten!  

After the initial blast that killed everything in the way, including plant life and sea creatures, much of the excavated material along with pieces of the meteor would have been ejected out of the atmosphere by the blast, they would then return, super-heated upon re-entry, and would have broiled the surface of the earth igniting wildfires everywhere on the planet.   Incredibly large shock waves would have triggered global earthquakes and volcanic eruptions all over the earth coating a large portion of the surface with magma - liquid rock.  The impact would have caused the largest tsunamis in Earth's history, probably over a thousand feet high flooding most of the continents, since large mountain ranges did not exist yet.  And this is the good news – instant death to dinosaurs within 3000 miles.

The bad news was yet to come.  The emission of dust would have covered the entire surface of the Earth for up to ten years, creating a permanent dark winter all over the earth with temperatures much below zero.  The plants would die, the herbivores, those that survived, would die of starvation.  The carnivores, would have nothing to eat and they would die of starvation – on both the land in the water.    

Moreover, in addition to creating a 10-year long winter, was the production of sulfate aerosols in the upper atmosphere causing acid rain further destroying the ability to survive.  On top of all that destruction, there would be a reduction of oxygen in the atmosphere.  The reason dinosaurs grew so large was that the atmosphere had a higher concentration of oxygen allowing the dinosaurs to grow and maintain their large size.  Even if some big dinosaurs managed to survive, they would not be able to sustain themselves in a reduced oxygen environment.  Bottom line, dinosaurs did not have a chance!, just like we would not have a chance if a similar asteroid would hit the earth today!  

So why are the most of the cenotes arranged in a circular pattern on the outside of the crater trough?  I believe that when the crater was formed it pushed a lot of the limestone out and the newly deposited limestone on the outside of the crater was not as packed as the original layers of limestone or compressed as the limestone inside the crater must have been.  These weak layers were more susceptible to dissolution by the underground water, dissolving and forming cavities and further being dissolved leaving the large cavities that we now call cenotes.  in some cases these cavities collapsed and formed sinkhole-type cenotes and and in some other cases they refilled again.

Yes Cenotes are beautiful places, but we have to remember that they are the product of the geologic conditions created by the impact of the meteor and true hell on earth.  The beauty of Cenotes represents the total destruction of almost all life on earth.  And, I'm sitting here imagining this total destruction, it is like an HD video streaming in my mind.  I look at this beautiful place and I visualize it 65 million years ago.  I wish I could have been on a satellite watching this whole thing!