Cronicas Amexicanas - D+14 (out of 15)

A taste of Italy but with more randomness and chaos, more noise, music and people dancing in squares... The city is full of love and joy. Oaxaca, I will miss you. Hidden in a mansion transformed in a hostel, I was at the heart of a Mexican jewel, perfect location to forget about time, duties, and endless questioning.

Along the streets of Oaxaca, the colours are fighting with the light. On the lovely terrace that was my private balcony for three days, the purple and pink are mixing in harmony with the warm shades of the walls and front doors, yellow, ocre, brown, blood orange, dark red. Along the street, brightness is just even more alive, melted in Oaxaqueños' smiles and kindness. A walkable city, where you cannot get lost but you can get driven. The end of my walk culminates with the gorgeous Plaza Santo Domingo and its unique iglesia, full of sculptures and golden inscriptions. The square is a meeting point for art dealers and galleries, and a quiet blessing for strangers, never too crowded, never too empty...

Just 20 minutes outside the city, the true meaning of blue and green lies in Monte Alban. The most gorgious sky embraces the impressive view on a never-ending landscape of grass and ancient archeological sites. Paradise view swollen in a perfect sunlight. 

When the night falls, colours seems to get only more intense, a little bit more shy maybe, but as vivid. It is party time. This weekend Mexicans are celebrating the 202 years of their independence and with no restrain. I disappear in the envy for belonging... But no, of course not.

Time to head back. The ride is one of glorious green hilly landscape, until the dusk.

A good way to survive a six-hour Mexican bus ride, despite the feezing cold air conditioning and the Americain action movies dubbed in Spanish: Massive Attack on maximum volume on the ipod. It does feel like it increases our speed though.

Entering the darkness, as we approach one of the biggest megapoles in the world, the landscape looks like a giant spaceship has just landed and illuminated the valley with its orange lights. Unseen before. Ciudad de Mexico, Distrito federal. I will be back, I have to...

Cronicas amexicanas: Mexiparadise in Oaxaca

Why didn't anybody tell me earlier? Paradise exists and it is in Mexico...

I arrived in Oaxaca yesterday by a bus from Mexico and it was an immediate enchantment. The city is the capital of the Southern Mexican State of Oaxaca, full of traditions and indigenious culture, built up in a whirl of colours, lights and charms, fulfilled with the activities and music that make you feel over the moon... 

After a two hour walk, I was ready to taste what is supposed to be the best food in Mexico when I met a very nice man from the region in front of the sublime public library, who happens to speak French... Law student, specialising on Mexican migrants in the US, he had just come back from Milwaukee. He took me to a local restaurant for dinner and only ordered a warm chocolate while I was devouring my mole negro con pollo... We chatted for an hour before I head back on the shining night streets towards la Basilica de la Soledad, near where I am staying...

Cronicas amexicanas: Love letter to my hosts

Some people, on top of being brilliant and amazing, are also generous, welcoming and manage to make most moments taste better. Those people are rare. Luckily, some are your friends, and I can tell how lucky I am to have plenty of these precious species. But some are not even your friends, they just happen to appear on your road.

At some point, for some random reasons or from a magical connection, I have been put in touch with some of those talented and wholehearted persons, and they did host me in wonderful places, offering me some of the most beautiful presents I was ever given.

Most of them must know who they are, and have already been thanked. I am surprised I am allowed to still meet more of them.

Miami, Georgia, India, England, Mexico would not have been the same for me, would maybe not even have appeared on my road map, without you, beautiful strangers, lovely encounters, precious friends or, I hope, friends to become.

And in Somalia: New President, New Era

I am in Mexico but in my news world, Somalia is making headlines: the country has a new President!
Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.

See more here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19540325

Cronicas amexicanas: bella vida

DF D+4: bosco de Chapultepec, Museo de Arte moderno y contemporeano, Teotihuacan, enchiladas de pollo, Tour Cine Frances, nuevos amigos, nuevas colonias... la vida es bella en Mexico... Gracias. 

Cronicas amexicanas: Arte popular in Mexico, Distrito Federal

Who doesn't remember those days where you first discover a city? Even when it starts becoming familiar, those first memories remain vibrant like the first moments we spend with new friends, and every encounter can be a unique experience for each visitor.

Meeting a place often starts when you leave the main way and the well-known areas. I am not there yet with Mexico, but I'm trying.

Here is a few insights into my quest...

On la avenida Balderas, el centro historico de Mexico changes from a highly touristic area into a more popular one. La avenida leads to the charming Mercado de la Cuidadela, where the most of Mexican handicraft is beautifully featured in a lovely atmosphere.

 La calle Independencia, in between La Reforma and el mercado hosts relevently el Museo de Arte Popular where examples of Mexican traditions, cloths, religious and traditional objects are presented in a beautiful art deco building.

It is a lovely way to deepen in el distrito federal, after a first tour of el Zocalo, el Palacio Nacional, and el Museo de Bellas Artes.

On my second day, I also mingled in the Saturday crowd at the Franz Mayer Museum, on la Avenida Hidalgo, which actually shows the World Press Photo exhibition.

Al sol de Mexico

Estoy en Distrito Federal. Primera vez en Mexico, primera en America Latina.

Mexico is a jewel of a city, full of light, beauty and history, with the most welcoming people. I have only been here for two days, but it is difficult not to fall in love. I am happy to remain in the Distrito Federal but will also travel next week in Teotihuacan and Oaxaca. If you are on this road too, let me know.

I will post some pictures soon.

Cronicas Amexicanas: Discovering Sunset Park

On a blurred wet New York day like today, after spending hours in Park Slope, Brooklyn, yesterday morning, and loosing tracks of time in the incomparable Museum of Modern Art in Midtown, Manhattan, yesterday afternoon, I dragged myself on the N subway line this morning, down to the Southern part of Brooklyn, in Sunset Park.

My goal was to check a neighbourhood I had never visited before and only read about, the Latino hood around the South Brooklyn area. I started the day on 6th Avenue, which is a Latino going on Chinese neighbourhood, before coming back to 5th Avenue and stopping at the Sunset Park Diner at the Corner of 39th Street. The avenue is actually full of Mexican delights, shops, restaurants and families. I met with a photographer friend and we left the diner to walk up to the park to discover a beautiful green and calm island overlooking the East River and Lower Manhattan. On our way back we were counting the numerous churches on the avenue and admiring the blooming Spanish-speaking meeting places, from barber shops to local fruit and vegetable stores. We then stopped at the cute Sunset Perk Cafe where we were lucky to meet two residents who fell in love with Sunset Park a couple of years back, two writers. One from the US and Austria, who recently came back from Central Europe and the other from Ireland, an adorable young Novelist, who published his first novel this year, Johnny Kelly.

If Sunset Park is an ignored-by-tourists blooming immigrant area, it charm also relies on its cleanness, dynamism and suburban quietness. There is nothing pessimist about this enclave of Mexican and Chinese communities, both equally ignoring the need to learn English to settle in the United States. Not need to underline it was one of the many subjects of conversation this afternoon... I wonder which language, Madarin or Spanish, will first overtake English in the US.

Sunset Park is definitely a good spot to watch the change.

I will have to go back.

Watch Al Jazeera's The Cafe in and on Mexico City

Great debate this week about Mexico City from the Mexican federal capital on Al Jazeera English!
Here is the link:
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/thecafe/2012/09/20129161631565644.html?utm_content=automate&utm_campaign=Trial6&utm_source=NewSocialFlow&utm_term=plustweets&utm_medium=MasterAccount

I will be in the Distrito Federal on Thursday for my first visit in Mexico and Latin America (if we exclude Miami, which should be considered as part of Amexica, according to me...).

Somalia sets Sept. 10th for Presidential Election

Somalia sets date for presidential election

September 10 the day of the final stage of the UN-back process to set up new administration

AFP - Published: 19:20 August 31, 2012

Mogadishu: The Somali parliament will hold a presidential election on September 10, the final stage of a UN-backed process to set up a new administration for the war-torn country, an election official said on Friday.

“September 10, 2012, is the day that the presidential elections of the Somali Federal Republic will take place,” Osman Libah Ebrahim, spokesman for the presidential elections committee, told reporters.

The new parliament, whose members were selected this month by a group of traditional elders, will vote in a secret ballot.

The election has already been delayed several times — having already missed an August 20 deadline — but international pressure has increased on lawmakers to hold the vote swiftly.

At least a dozen candidates are expected to run for the top job, although officials will only begin accepting applications from September 3.

However, bitter arguments have begun between rival challengers, divided along Somalia’s notoriously fractious clan lines.

Outgoing president Shaikh Sharif Shaikh Ahmad, in power since 2009, is one of the favourites, though he cuts a controversial figure with Western observers.

A UN report in July said that under his presidency, “systematic embezzlement, pure and simple misappropriation of funds and theft of public money have become government systems” — claims Sharif has rejected.

Veteran politician and former minister Mohammad Osman Jawari, a legal expert who helped draft a new constitution for Somalia, was elected speaker on Tuesday by fellow lawmakers.

Candidates will give their campaign speeches to parliament from September 7.

Somalia is trying to set up its first stable central government since the 1991 ousting of dictator Mohammad Siad Barre, which sparked rounds of bloody civil war.