Notes from Zacatecas: The Perils of Travelogue

A colleague of mine once spoke of a novel way of looking at documentary photography: documentary photography as therapy. The premise of this idea, at least by my understanding, was that in walking into a stranger’s life and offering to be a witness, the photographer can work on the story and help the subject to gain a better sense of their own story — a sense they may not have been able to arrive at without the photographer’s intervention.

Now, it’s not the journalist’s role to put his (or her) subject on the couch. Cable news anchors are notorious for doing this. But I do like the idea that, as we try to draw truth from a subject’s situation, it’s possible for both to distill a truth that neither the subject nor the photojournalist would have arrived at alone.

Having said all that, I can also see the other side of the argument: who the hell are we to march into someone’s life and have the answers? Who the hell are we to say what’s what after parachuting in for a day, a week, a month?

Nowhere does this sentiment strike me more strongly than when I travel. When I went to New Orleans six months after Katrina, I saw the devestation of the lower ninth, the revelry of Mardi Gras partygoers, the strained police force and city services. Traffic lights remained out in many places; a thirty-foot tall barge that had landed on a school bus remained on the school bus; miles away, in the recovering seventh ward, a home that had collapsed on an SUV remained on the SUV.

When we came back, the story ran with the headline: “New Orleans Still Broken.”

But was it? On the same trip I also saw workers rebuilding homes, saw the Zulus preparing for the Mardi Gras parade, saw — for better or for worse — drunken college students and Girls Gone Wild cameramen pouring money into the local economy. At a Sunday church service, I saw families returning to the parish for baptisms months overdue; they waited to come home to baptize their children. And at the end of mass, the pastor went around the room, asked people to call out loud to fellow parishoners if their businesses were reopening. Many people called out. Many people were proud to be open.

You may be wondering what these musings have to do with Zacatecas. Well, it goes something like this: I can’t tell the whole story of Zacatecas. There are thousands of different stories of Zacatecas. And as for me, I barely speak the language, and in traveling here, my sense of the place isn’t the strongest it could be. These are the perils of writing a travelogue: whatever you write, it’s but a small part of the story.

I’ve already mentioned Zacatecans’ propensity for spending time together. I don’t want to overstate it; arriving on the night of La Rosca was a coincidence, and as to whether the whole town often gathers in jubilation, I couldn’t say. But days after the Rosca, on a Friday night, I saw hundreds of people — teenagers mostly, but young kids and adults as well — gathered in Genaro Codina plaza. A pair of clowns was hosting something not unlike an American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. They would grab teenagers from the audience, have a dance-off, give away prizes.

All across the world, people gather to have fun on Friday nights. This much is no surprise. But in this plaza, on this night, the feeling was different, more free. Strangers danced with each other before a crowd of hundreds. The clowns, at close range, made fun of people in the audience — even, at one point, calling me out. But it was good-natured fun, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

One one level, I wouldn’t dare come here, a thousand miles from home, and put an entire city on the couch. I wouldn’t dare to judge this culture, having been steeped only in my own. But being here, you cannot help but feel the emotion of this place, of these people. It makes me wonder whether this is the norm, and the American sense of boundary and indifference is not the exception.

We live. We love. We do. But here it’s on the streets, exuberant, exposed and all around, not cooped up in apartments and backyards. And while I know this is only one part of one story, I think it’s a part worth noting.