60
PARTISAN REVIEW
babies. For other functions, each family had its little pot for the
younger children. As the train rolled through the hot dust, time be–
came lost in space, and I found myself looking at these worn
travelers and wondering whether there was any real distinction
between what they were going to and what they were leaving, between
their dreams and their sorrows. None of them had the slightest hope
of improving his own lot: in fact, the very idea of self-advancement
or social progress seemed outside their way of thinking. One old man,
who, I suppose, would be regarded in some quarters as socially con–
scious, had once been in Texas in his youth, and he told me he
thought the best thing for Mexico would be annexation by the
United States, for then at least the plumbing would be improved.
The train ground into the station at Oaxaca at about seven
o'clock, and there we were ceremoniously directed to the only hotel in
town.
It
was a large, rambling structure, that looked like an old
castle, full of pride and decay, and it had been converted into a room–
ing house by the simple device of charging guests for bed and board.
We were immediately told by the owner, in a casual tone as though
it were one of the facts of life, that there was no running water be–
cause something or other was not working, but that we could have
little basins for washing. Dinner was the usual exotic combination of
foods, some of which were considered edible and others taboo for
the foreigners because of the dread disease of dysentery, "the
tourist's sickness." I could never understand why we were given such
specific instructions about what could and what could not be eaten,
since, so far as I could observe, everybody got some kind of dysentery
at one time or another. Anyway, each one observed the prohibitions
according to his own hypochondria, and left the rest to the laws of
nature.
We had been told that there would be a fiesta that night, and
right after dinner we went out into the dim streets to hunt for it.
I knew that the fiesta was a religious celebration that had retained
some of its early forn1s but had lost much of its original meaning. I
was totally unprepared, however, for the modernization the fiesta
had undergone, and I thought we were at the wrong place when I
saw what looked like an Indian parody of a Fourth of July parade.
Men, women, and children were squirming and dancing along the
street in a kind of disorderly march, some carrying placards with
