Safety — Home May 22
Safety at Home in Mexico
Luckily, I don’t have any firsthand experience with how important it is to protect the safety of your home in Mexico. Judging by the way Mexicans construct their homes, there must be a real need for security. Mexican homes tend to look like Fort Knox. When I first came here, I felt threatened and reduced next to the 20-foot-high walls people build around their houses.
An architect from UNAM (Universidad Autonoma de Mexico) told me how the cultural history has influenced Mexican home design. The Spaniards brought with them an Arabic tradition where external windows were small, permitting people to shoot arrows out through them, while the interior courtyards were private family spaces. He stressed the macro-cultural factors influencing this, such as tribal warfare. I noticed the micro-cultural factors surrounding women’s roles in private and public life.
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Anyway, when these Spaniards came to Mexico to rape, plunder, steal, and control, they had good reason to reproduce architectural features that kept them safe from upset native people. Sadly, the modern situation STILL reinforces these same home safety features (not that the features themselves are bad). Once someone breaks into your house, your stuff–and possibly you and your family are toast. The police don’t or can’t keep you safe.
Prevention is the key to the safety of your home.
Physical precautions:
1. Choose a home in a neighborhood where people are out and about. This would be a not-so-rich, not-so-poor neighborhood. Some rich neighborhoods are terrifyingly lonely, with nothing but blocks and blocks of 20-foot-high-walls topped with razor wire. Who will hear you if you get into trouble? If you don’t want to be with other people, why not just stay in the US where the police are professional?
2. Mexican houses and housing complexes generally have a wall surrounding them, with a huge metal door. Only people with keys can get in through the giant door, called the “portón.” You have two good choices. You can choose a home with a private entrance. Or, if you want to live in a complex, choose one with a limited number of people who have access from the street. Complexes are nice because they often include a shared swimming pool.
3. Keep your street door (“portón”) locked, even when you are inside.
4. Ground-floor windows need to lock and have bars protecting them.
5. If your house doesn’t happen to have a wall around it, lock all windows when you leave. People will know your schedule.
6. Make sure there is no place where people could climb up, around, or into to reach unprotected windows and doors.
7. When you take a quick walk to the neighborhood store (doesn’t that sound great?!) don’t leave your door unlocked. There are always many people around. Most will protect you, but someone just might decide to steal something.
Community precautions:
1. Form networks with your neighbors by saying hello when you see them and trading little favors. This is actually our TOP safety precaution and I admit I don’t always follow the physical ones listed above.
2. Don’t let people know what you have inside.
Solutions Abroad Mexico
After leaving Casa Museo de Zapata your next stop in the Zapata Route is in Chinameca where he was shot. It’s quiet at the ex-hacienda Chinameca and it’s easy to feel the sadness of knowing that Zapata died there. There are three things of interest in the small town of Chinameca.
them, but not in this case. Here was a newspaper article just like I read today, describing the events as if they had happened the day before – which was the case at the time that the article was type-set.
such sadness. There is one photo where his dead body is in the arms of other men and their faces are full of shock and grief. It supports the solemn mood of Chinameca.
dramatized version of how it was that Zapata was shot, complete with Zapata galloping for the exit, hanging down on the side of his horse to protect himself as his horse’s hooves struck echoing blows in the hard-packed earth.
coming from a sun baked area teeming with kids and a periodic announcement over a megaphone from the local bakery that the buns were coming out of the oven at that moment, hot and delicious. Finally, we learned from a quiet 7-year-old, who guided us there that you go back out to the main street and walk along the street, keeping the walls of the ex-hacienda to your left. Soon you see an old arch-style gate with a small statue of Zapata on his horse. The horse is leaping, as if Zapata had escaped the bullets and his horse was about to charge away, safe and sound.
The back side of the gate is riddled with orange-sized pock marks. These were made by the bullets that missed Zapata. There is an older man, by the name of Andrés Trujillo, grandfather of the doting boy who led us there, who has a table set up in the shade on the inside of the gate. He sells T-shirts and photos of Zapata. I was grateful that 
my husband, unlike me, didn’t write the old guy off as some guy who just wants money. He struck up a conversation and we had a fun time sitting in that sad place, speculating on why so many bullets missed their mark and also singing along with grandfather Don Andrés as he shared some songs that he’d written about the death of Zapata. If you 
purchase something from Don Andrés he’ll give you the photo copies of his songs for free. His personal theory on the wayward bullet holes is that most of the guys ordered to shoot Zapata in the back really didn’t want to hit him and aimed high instead.
ex-hacienda. Zapata’s old look out was on this hill at a place called “la piedra encimada” (the rock on top of another). It’s the hill that you see as you are looking out the gate through which Zapata couldn’t exit. You follow the road that heads straight away from the gate in the direction that the statue is facing until you find your way to the
summit. You can see for miles around and you’ll know why Zapata had his lookout there. You can imagine him standing there, his trusted men nearby, heart beating steadily in his chest.
Zapata had his military base from 1914 to 1918. The ex-cuartel as it is now called is a cool, quiet, relaxing museum. For me the most imagination-catching display is that of the clothing Emiliano Zapata was wearing when he was killed. I stood for a long time trying to imagine how big he was. The pants don’t look very large, but since they were 
tight-fitting maybe they trick the eye. Still, it would be fitting that this Mexican hero be pint-sized like so many of his countrymen. True to classic Mexican museum style, no real explanation, least of all his height and weight, is posted near the clothes.
my own, very amateur forensic analysis. The stains — which I had to conclude were made by his very blood — on the long underwear are poignant. Just below the right waistband in the back of both the pants and the long underwear, there is a tiny, round hole. I’ve never seen a bullet hole in clothing, but it appears that he was shot in the back. Therefore, 
my personal forensic analysis rules out the old man in Chinameca’s version of the story. You’ll have to come see for yourself.
coverlet, recorded Mariachi music began to drift in, followed by the sounds of rhythmically tapping shoes. Community members were practicing folkloric dance in the shady courtyard of the museum. I thought that Zapata would probably be glad that this generation can use his ex-cuartel as a place to practice an art form so Mexican. Besides, Don Lucino told me that he liked music.
Mexicans, made their own. You can still see the soot staining the bricks.
storm. We stopped the car so that I could try to get a picture of this phenomenon which happens periodically in areas surrounding sugar cane plantations during the time that they are burned to remove their knife-like leaves and prepare the cane for transport to the factory. I was out, trooping around, taking everything in like Mexicans in the north experiencing their first snowstorm.
sucking whir as the people inside processed the sugar. I imagined that in their day, Zapata and his men would have hated to see the ashes falling and hear the sounds of the sugar industry which was gobbling up the heart of their land. Now the land is in the hands of the people and they make money on the sugar industry, as Zapata wanted.
Stop 1: Museo Casa de Zapata in Anenecuilco
Cuautla, keep your eyes peeled for a sign in a traffic island in the middle of a “Y.” At this “Y” you will bear right. Next, at 2 de Marzo you will be forced to take a right due to a transformation into a one way street. Next, take a left onto Dalias Matamoros (which will turn into the highway to Ayala). You will immediately see Parque de la Revolucion 
with a large statue of Zapata to your right. Don’t miss this because he is buried there. You will go under a set of pointed arches that read, “Bienvenidos a la Tierra del Jefe” (Welcome to the land of the boss). Let the sugar cane growing along the highway make you think of the days when Emiliano Zapata rode the area on his horse. In less than 6 kilometers you will see a sign to turn right at a small plaza with a gold colored statue. This is Anenecuilco. (It has been 96 years since the signing of the Plan de Ayala and the town is still very small. Imagine how it must have been when Zapata lived there.) 
On that road, you will cross a bridge, go up a hill and turn left at a “T” (yes, there’s a sign!). The museum will be on your right and unmistakable with an open fence of metal tubes and the soaring while tent that protects Zapata’s house.
This left is well marked with a “Ruta de Zapata” sign. Before you get to Chinameca you will go through a 4-way stop. Don’t turn. After the 4-way stop, you will go up a hill into Chinameca. The museum is well labeled and is almost the first thing you see upon arriving in Chinameca.
Cost: 30 pesos open Tuesday through Sunday
(The Zapata Route). In the course of one day you can learn about Emiliano Zapata and his fight against the exploitation of his people in the best way to do that – by moving through his land.
still in production today. If you can speak Spanish, you will talk to the people who still inhabit his land, living their daily lives, preserving their history, and preparing their message for future generations. You will come away knowing that he was a real man, of great strength, determination, and ideals, 
who lived his life as a Mexican; defining himself between the extremes of poverty and Spanish class-ism; excelling in horsemanship, leadership, and just as macho as they come.
On August 8, 1879, in the middle of the rainy season, a powerful force came into the world in the usual way. Gabriel Zapata and his wife Cleofas Salazar named him Emiliano Zapata Salazar. He was the ninth of ten children and grew up learning the ways of farming corn and dry season watermelons as well as raising cattle and horses, in the scrub forests that surrounded his home in Anenecuilco, Morelos. His family was not rich. He lived with them in a two room adobe house and dressed in the traditional white manta clothing. Actually, though, he was quite lucky. His father owned land and the family was able to make a living without getting sucked into debt slavery on the sugar plantations (haciendas) which were increasingly being given control over the land in the regions surrounding his home town.
In Anenecuilco, Morelos you can see the walls that sheltered Emiliano and his family as he was growing up. Their solid adobe blocks give off a comforting stillness from 
beneath a soaring white tent within the grounds of the Museo Casa de Zapata (House of Zapata Museum). This is the first thing that you will see as you pass through the gates at the entryway to the museum. In the air there is a light touch of the smell of cattle, just as there would have been when Zapata walked there.
On the Sunday that we visited there was a group of young people painting at easels set up in the shade of a tree in what used to be Zapata’s “yard.” Their presence there wasn’t coincidental; they were there because of Don Lucino’s vision of what the museum is and can become for his community. He explained to me that they were painting illustrations of local legends as part of a project to create a book of Anenecuilco’s traditional legends. He tells young people the legends and it’s their job to paint events in each one. This is just how Don Lucino thinks. He has this uncanny understanding of how to make history valuable in the present for people of all ages.
As we stood in the garden, the newly rebuilt, L-shaped museum was to our right and behind us. Everything inside is carefully planned. The air is naturally cool. The lights are low with the displays illuminated by carefully designed lighting. You weave through loosely separated “rooms,” which first describe the people of Anenecuilco and their horrendous loss of land, water, and freedom to the sugar plantations, called haciendas. Next, Emiliano’s history and life is described within this context.
The contextualization was one of the two things that really impressed me about the museum. So many museums in Mexico are a series of items with signs underneath that leave the reader with more questions than answers (even if you read Spanish perfectly). I’ve often joked about the state-the-obvious style of Mexican museums. You are looking at an ancient piece of pottery with some black designs painted on it and the sign says, “Pre-Columbian pottery with black designs typical of this region.” Museo Casa de Zapata doesn’t fall into this trap.
As you study items from the era and old photos of Zapata you are carried along by relaxing guitar music which forms part of a movie that you see in the second to last room. Standing in the same room as Zapata’s guns and his saddle you watch this movie, projected onto a curved, white wall with time advance scenes using historical and current photos, an aerial shot of the town and real people’s voices. The movie was made by El Grupo Mundo with the help of SECTUR (the state tourism department). Don Lucino took the filmmakers out to get the shots they needed for the film and, even though he doesn’t say it, I think he had more than that to do with the content.
Don Lucino has made it an important part of his mission to gather and preserve items belonging to Emiliano Zapata and his men. He goes personally to people, many of them elders, and explains to them how important their items are in preserving the story of Zapata and Anenecuilco; that they will last forever, long after we have departed this life. He is particularly glad to have the .30.30 carried by Zapata on that first day, donated to the museum by Marcos Manuel Suárez Gérard, the secretary of tourism. He also has his saddle mounted on a tall stand for all to see (also donated by Marcos Manuel Suárez Gérard). I almost talked him into letting me take a picture of him resting his hand on this saddle to accompany this article, but he decided to abide by the no-flash rule in order to protect it and I was without a tripod.
The guitar music made my experience in the main part of the museum relaxed and pleasant, but my favorite room in the museum is the last one. It is a small theater, with benches, and black curtains keeping the ambient light out. There is a touch-screen monitor on the wall where you select the movie you would like to see. When I walked in, there were elders talking about what they remembered about Zapata. The image is about 8 feet by 10 feet and large enough to relax and watch. My favorite was the clip of Zapata’s step-daughter, now probably in her 70s. She describes herself as his daughter’s sister and shows us a photo of him. The scene was shot in an outdoor kitchen of a tiny Mexican house. Just like Don Lucino, she’s the real thing.
I asked Don Lucino how he became interested in Emiliano Zapata and he told me that when his grandfather Fidel Luna Franco took him to work with him, he would tell him the stories of his days with Zapata. Mr. Luna Franco planted his fields and fought along side of Emiliano Zapata. Through his grandfather’s oral tradition Don Lucino was kept in touch with these experiences. To Don Lucino, Emiliano Zapata is not just a historical figure; he is a real man who lived a real life.