Letter to Friends & Family-23: The twenty-third Qualm

The Centennial came and went last Saturday. In trying to be the dutiful Peace Corps volunteer, I walked over to the Office of Tourism of the State of Querétaro to seek out activities for the evening and found very little except a ´Baile Centenario´ and a concert by a Mexicana pop singer.

Unfortunately, scheduling precluded my seeing the big event which was a ´Desfile de Fraces´ (akin to the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village). This Saturday seemed like any other with families filing along in the streets savouring a restful day off from the work-week.

For a cool hundred pesos, there was also a flamenco dance show at the local cultural center. The Tourism Office did not know of any fireworks. This lackadaisical celebration struck me as strange since México´s highest product of the revolution was a much improved democratic constitution, drafted in 1917 right here in Querétaro.

‘La Revolución´ of 1910 basically overthrew a military dictatorship, with its customary antithesis of banditry, in favor of a democracy actively and controversially supported by then freshly inaugurated U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.

Since this struggle often involved ambitious men of malleable loyalties, it is difficult to get a sense of how bad or good the revolution and the concomitant civil war really were. Yet this slap-dash régime-change is oddly familiar to Americans a hundred years later.

President Wilson becomes President George Bush, both promoting the interests of democracy aggressively. ‘El Presidente´ Porfirio Diaz, the thirty-six year military overlord, resembles what a benign Saddam Hussein might have done. If one substitutes Pancho Villa for Osama bin Laden and General Pershing for General Petraeus, events begin to look familiar.

Like General ´Black-Jack´ Pershing, General David Petraeus is a public figure with a larger-than-life persona, much of it justified. Neither could find their famous fugitives but did succeed in the more mundane task of fracturing the underground networks that supported them.

Anyways, the Mexicans wanted more than the economic security of an authoritarian régime; makes me wonder about what is really happening in China these days.

Since my ‘novia’ had been a flamenco dancer as a teen-age girl in México City, I booked two tickets for that show and warmly congratulated myself for finding such a Mexican way of celebrating the ´Centenario´. Except that flamenco dancing is a Spanish art…whoops. Well, we had a taco to make up for my cultural confusion.

The show as riveting.

There is little sexual about the dance; it truly is a ballet that combines classical music with a distinctly Arab flavor. It is as if ´Isabela la Catolica´ could only go so far in purging the ´muselmanes´ influence after 1492, thank God. The movement of the women evoked appreciation for their artistry.

The flamenco singer was a beauty but her voice quickly commanded the attention. This dance and music combination contains its own paradox – at once very earthy rhythms and frankly sensual movements reaching the transcendent through the sheer discipline required to excel.

What also struck me was the same-but-different sensation I feel quite often here, south of the Border. The three dancers exhibited the same level of mastery in their steps, in their arm movements and in their body swings. The oldest of the three, by what appeared to be ten years and as many kilos, was different. I puzzled over this for a few minutes and soon realized why she was the best among equals.

This older woman understood her body. Experience truly had emerged as the teacher to graduate this veteran dancer’s movements from mastery to grace. As I watched the younger dancers, excellent in their steps and movements, I realized that in a decade or so they would be rising to their unique grace.