it was a week ago that i met the first indian. i was on my way back from the market, on the prospect street. as usually, i didn't press the button for the green light trusting the drivers, and, i did not have time to realize what had happened, but there was a truck just in front of me and an indian sitting in it, watching me. that moment expanded into eternity, the time stopped, it was just his face that i saw. and then i crossed the street and did not look back, but the image will remain in my memories. i don't even know what indian he was... might be a hopi or cherokee, or maya, or inca. they still live here, in this world, the same, but different, inhabiting the world which obeys other laws then they do. several days ago in the "new york times" there was an article about the U.S. - mexico border, where the tohono o'odham nation lives wandering freely from one state to another. they can move across the border without their passports because it is their land. but the authorities are concerned about the increasing flow of mexican immigrants and the drug mafia and want to build a big wall in arizona. the indians will not accept that. and the government is not going to do anything without first getting their permission. a state in a state, one world intruding into another, two distinct orders overlapping and living side by side without conflicts.



but conflicts do arise in mexico, in chiapas, which is near the guatemala border and where the maya live. at class we were discussing the zapatista movement all week. the professor brought some movies from the independent media project in chiapas and made a presentation on the use of revolutionary symbols in mexico... its art... from the time of zapata and his eyes... and one guy showed us a small zapatista soldier which he carried in his bag. "zapaturismo" is expanding... the small zapatista soldier is a fetish. yesterday at "au bon pain" in harvard square i was trying not to attract attention to my red-covered marx and engels reader. the chapter on commodity fetishism was so far the most interesting part of marx i have read... maybe except the letters to his wife and to his companero that were reprinted in "nemunas". marx is different here, writing about the secrets and mysteries. we look at the social relations of men, but we see the objectivity of the products... we think they have intrinsic value, they are alive, they are magical, to use marx's words. i remember the old days when my parents tried to persuade me not to believe in commercials by saying that "coca-cola" or "l'oreal" are not better than other sodas and shampoos, but they cost more because of the publicity. although my parents don't like marx, they do agree with him on commodity fetishism. but today i found out that a "fetico" was a portuguese word for a small nkisi figurine that was used in rituals by the bakongo tribe in west africa. it was an object acting as a person. like in yesterday's open lecture my favourite professor was talking about the silver and the minerals in mexico's mines. minerals get their names, people make tatoos of the particular shafts where some precious stones are discovered, they travel through places and people and collections and acquire more and more value. they live forever and they live progressively, whereas the mines die... like a living organism with veins under the ground. never before had i heard of the anthropology of time. "rocks of ages: mexican minerals, time and the concept of resources" was the title of the lecture which i expected to be about archeology, but it wasn't. anthropology is the play between the strange and the familiar... you can write about a tribe in papua new guinnea and so make the strange to be familiar, or you can analyse capitalist economy or the community of the subway, and so make the familiar the strange. it's always the wonder and the will to explore.



today is rosh hashanah, the jewish new year, which counts to 5767 from tonight. and "the new york times" is full of enormous greetings... the space in the paper bought by "macy's" and "bloomingdale", and some other big companies which want to give at least some respect for "the others" before beginning the christmas' mania. but my friends at the anthropology department didn't know about it as none of them is jewish. being in this school maybe they should at least give us some sheets of information to understand the "strange". like with the flags of nine eleven which many foreign students misunderstood. neither did the nice driver of the night shuttle that brought me home from cambridge last night know anything about it. but now we feel it. the friday parties are cancelled and all the cafes are closed, people are going home... for new year... and i'm staying and feeling more and more at home. not only in boston, but also in the department. studying here is like being at the seminars of the "invisible college", day and night. it is knowledge that matters to me.