Samuel Barber, Adagio For Strings

I had a meeting today. As I was rushing through the traffic, I encountered the blocking of some central streets by hundreds of policemen, specifically to where I was going to. The Antorcha Campesina or the Peasant Torch group was marching towards Los Pinos. One hundred thousand people were shouting and singing, informing through a megaphone the reason of their demonstration. Unresolved promises of a deaf federal government.

Education, quality of life, justice on certain issues in different states: Michoacán, Puebla, Oaxaca, Guanajuato, Yucatán. There was a warning tone in all of them, "we're 100,000 but we can gather one million, we're a force to be reckoned with".

Drivers were furious. They honked and yelled at them, after all, the day before there was a massive march for the Ayotzinapa students and the day before that, the cab drivers blocked streets in protest against Uber.

I was officially running late to my important meeting. On my left side, construction workers, the heat, infuriated drivers trying to advance as much as they could to what seemed a vain effort.

I started laughing. Mexico is not for the faint hearted, it definitely requires great dose of capacity for frustration and a sense of humor. No OCD personalities allowed here.

I had to leave my car behind and started walking towards the other side of the closed street to try my luck and get to where I was going. Called my client, apologized, we both laughed at the matter (their location makes these kinds of events the common bread of their daily lives).

I will always be amazed at Mexican improvisation. One's disgrace becomes someone's possibility of profit. Here's the mineral water cart which consists of a supermarket cart with an MDF full of holes for the plastic cups (lemon and salt or lemon, salt and chili). Inside the cart, a bag of ice and other soda drinks such as grapefruit or lime.

I finally got to my meeting.

This once government building has become for a number of years now, the MUNAL or the National Museum of Art. We started the meeting, agreements were achieved and I'm elated. This will be one of the most interesting projects I have been involved with so far.

This place has always been like the MET for me. Not in terms of related content but in the fact that there seems to be a sense of being imposed by the weight of history, not only of the building but of the content in it.

I had to go to another meeting so I started my way back to retrieve my car and try to get something to eat. Hundreds of buses and antorchistas (demonstrators) were on their way back from Los Pinos. I closed my window, set a high volume on the radio and kept slowly, by tortuous inches, driving through a swarm of red and white t-shirts and abusive bus drivers.

It started raining eventually. The Adagio for strings was playing on the radio. I was trying to remember where was it that I heard that song before but I couldn't. Concentric circles of growing intensity lulled my way. Someone once said to me that New Orleans was always going to be gritty, and that's what made it so special. Deep Mexico is where I'm at. There seemed to be something very poetic about this whole day. High contrasts of possibilities in a place where struggle and pain keeps coming back in bigger and bigger waves, like a tsunami that threatens to destroy it's epicentre. 

I always dreamt of being involved in projects outside Mexico but I realized, against all the odds, this place needs it more than anywhere else. 

It suddenly hit me. This song was played in Platoon. War as we know it, is not like it used to be. It's not placed in one scenario but what about the sum of it's parts? Atenco, Ayotzinapa, Tlatlaya, Apatzingán, and now Tanhuato. But one thought remained while I drove through the gushing puddles of brown water... Against the feeling of hopelessness, a utopic feeling must prevail, so any of us, can, in some way, contribute to that possibility of change.