Zeigt her eure Füße, zeigt her eure Schuh´, und sehet den fleißigen Waschfrauen zu: Sie waschen, sie waschen, sie waschen den ganzen Tag. My mother used to sing this song to my children. Basically the song describes women who spend much of their life washing clothes for their family. Probably, in her youth, my mother and her mother, in the early 20th century, did exactly that. They washed clothes by hand in any available source of water.
In 2006 the women of Catemaco are living like my mother´s mother, just a hair breadth away from passing humongous Mexican owned 500,000 pesos Utility Vehicles. And beautiful downtown Catemaco celebrates its thousands of bathers on the shores of Laguna Catemaco.
That little bit of washing detergent combined with the e-coli effluent from the Catemaco shores possibly creates a natural chemical mix that one of those neoliberal cosmetic companies should investigate for possible international merchandising as a pesticide.
