The Urban Circus: Travels with Mexico's Malabaristas

by Catriona Rainsford

Overview

The story opens in Chihuahua, North Mexico, with a chance meeting with a group of itinerant Mexican street performers. Entranced by their stories and free-roaming lifestyle, author Catriona Rainsford decides to go with them on what becomes a two-year, hand-to-mouth journey across Mexico, learning to live off nothing more than a few performance skills, initiative and the kindness of strangers.

Compelling, humorous, sometimes violent, and full of wonderful descriptions of life on the road, this is also a discussion of the morality of hand-to-mouth travel. Packed with stories of the characters she meets on the Mexican streets, the book offers an insight into the day-to-day experiences of Mexico's urban poor. Above all, it is a tale of the struggle of Mexico's youth to transcend the country's current climate of corruption and violence and create a new identity for themselves, inspired by aspects of Mexico's surviving indigenous cultures and the desire to make people smile in the most unprepossessing of places.

'They were travelling malabaristas - itinerant circus performers who wandered the streets of Mexico, hitchhiking from town to town and surviving by whatever means they could. They saw themselves as a modern take on the ancient tradition of the wandering entertainer, taking their art to the people, and taking whatever the people were prepared to give them to help them on their way.'

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781841627786
Publisher:	Bradt Travel Guides Ltd
Publication date:	02/25/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	319,965
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

After travelling to India on leaving school, Catriona intended to make a life for herself in Asia until an injury forced her to return to the UK. A promise made at closing time in a Cambridge pub then took her to Mexico, where a chance meeting began her journey with Mexican street performers. Catriona is currently living in London while she studies for a degree in politics and anthropology. She continues to practice circus, talk to strange people on the street and speak Spanish in a strong Mexican accent.

Table of Contents

Contents

1. The Millionaires 1

2. The Disappeared 10

3. Aluminium Flowers 18

4. The Patron Saint of Lost Causes 27

5. Señor Talón 37

6. The Five Rules of Master 48

7. The Wheel of Fortune 61

8. The Missing Half 71

9. Wirikuta 81

10. Playing the Semáforos 96

11. La Migra 106

12. Deportation 119

13. Borderlands 126

14. Saint Death and the Ball Game 136

15. La Chaparrita 149

16. Topes 164

17. Welcome to Chihuahua 172

18. The Silent Zone 181

19. The Letter Z 189

20. A Delicate Equilibrium 199

21. The Layered City 208

22. Three Mornings 220

23. Barbed Wire and Scissors 236

24. The Sacred Mountain 246

25. The People Who Love you 259

26. Kinich's Message 271