To Stay in Mexico

   Because of the death of our friend Carl, part of our stay in Mexico has left us feeling out of place and time. Our grieving has known no locality, and we both often snap back to "reality," puzzled over where we are, and sometimes even wondering what season it is. The little essay that below is not about that part of our "stay" ("holiday" is grossly wrong; "vacation" hardly right; "travel" would be right, if we moved more; "stay" seems more right given the total experience). What I will say here will not be news to many who are familiar with Mexico, or at least with those of you who have seen more than the gated-beach-resort Mexico. Still, many things below bear repeating, to myself if no one else.

1. The Assault on the Senses -

     Color confronts you everywhere in Mexico, from flowers in bloom to the bougainvillea on our garden wall in San Miguel that proves more hardy than the most common weed. 

Not content with nature, Mexicans produce their own riot of color -- in fabrics, in clothing, in buildings, in kid's plastic toys. 

 

Chiapas and Oaxaca

 

    And, while colors often appear to be primary, and therefore easy to imitate, the fact is that they are much more subtle than you first imagine, especially in fabrics and stuccoed walls. We have often stared at exterior and interior walls in Mexico (usually painted in a faux style), and said, we can do that. The fact is -- we cannot. Our friends, Kathleen and Jim Ellsworth of San Miguel de Allende, have painted house interiors for decades (and they can do this kind of painting) but they will readily testify to the nuances in this kind of house painting.

    

Oaxaca

     Ruins (ruinas), cobblestone streets (in old colonial towns like San Miguel) and dust are the second assault on sight and the senses. Ruins like the Mayan complex at Palenque (Chiapas)or the Zapotec ruins of Monte Alban (Oaxaca) are justly shown off with pride.

"Second rank" ruins, like the ex-convento at Cuiapan (construction begun in 1530 and shutdown in 1550 because Philip V thought them too expensive), barely get a glance.

In fact, the whole country often appears to be ruins covered in dust, as were all of the buildings surrounding the gold and silver mines of Minerales de Pozos below.

And, after all, what town, or even village, does not have a church dating to the 1500s (well, almost none, actually).

All of this is to say nothing of rickety, termite-eaten gates (in every city and town) -- behind which may lie a mansion worth millions of dollars or the humble residence of a poor Mexican family. Who is to know.

     Streets are barely navigable in most old towns. The sidewalks are narrow, and the holes, big enough and sometimes deep enough to swallow a whole person, wait uncovered and unmarked for the first "gringo" to make a mistake. Anyone with a propensity to twist their ankle should never come to Mexico. We often walk in the street, dodging whatever car or truck comes along. Those who drive confront "topes" (speed bumps) every little distance. A man who took us by van from San Cristobal de las casas to Palenque (a distance of 200km that took over five hours) shrugged and said to me:  "200 kilometers of road; 350 topes." He was apologizing, not exaggerating.

     Sounds in Mexico are something else. Road traffic, blaring horns, dogs barking and fighting, birds singing, church bells being rung at every imaginable hour (with no apparent reason; often in the middle of the night), fireworks (especially in San Miguel; hey, you have a birthday, "let's fire off major fireworks from 4am to, say, 10am."), people barking their wares. Total disregard for others in making sounds of every sort define the equivalent total lack of privacy in Mexico, just as that privacy is lacking in many traditional societies.

     Smell is another thing. For June, it is the smell of fresh corn tortillas, sold from little shops along the street. For me, it is a bakery two houses away down the street (again, you would have no idea it was a bakery because it is located behind a set of rotting wooden doors -- there are actually people who make rotting wooden doors here -- real nice ones -- I am not kidding you). Every other day of so, we get the sweet smell of bread (Mexicans are really keen on sweet; less on salt). But if you try to guess which day you might get bread (these folks seem to wholesale it for other tiendas - stores), you are likely to be disappointed.

     More likely smells are auto and truck exhaust emissions (forget fighting for clean air emissions; Mexico alone will defeat the world on that score). And, even more, the sweet smell of the sewer. It hits you anywhere, anytime. It may be a big drain on the street; it may be the drains in the house. Despite having the knowledge to know how to handle this in homes, Mexican plumbing continues to develop without using elbow traps, vent stacks, or good closed sewers. My father, a plumber, would be appalled.

     Touch should not be left out. Every surface in Mexico has a texture, even a smooth wall. Stucco, brick, cobblestones, steel fixtures, wooden chairs, thin plate glass, iron-work gates and windows are all ubiquitous, all immediate.

II. Mexico the Mysterious --

     You really don't know what you are going to encounter in Mexico. Last night we went to a restaurant we had eaten at two years ago. The same guitar player was playing. He is just about as good as any jazz guitarist (and classical for that matter) that you are ever going to hear.  He, however, is always going to be eking out a living a "Mama Mias." Kathleen took us on a trip and stopped at a small humble house where the owner builds musical instruments, including the most fantastic drums I have ever seen or heard (people from far away commission him to build them). He also builds beautiful sounding flutes and recorders. But his life is still humble.

On that same trip, while looking at a ruina way out on a nearly impassable dirt road in the middle of a desert, I heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. I guessed it was a pick-up. It wasn't; it was a fully loaded Coca-Cola truck, lurching and swaying its way across the seemingly empty desert. It had probably been to some very small miscelania or tienda near some houses where the four kids in the neighbourhood needed their daily intact of Coke (bad teeth and diabetes are major afflictions in Mexico now).

   Excursions to towns on their market days always surprise you -- whether it is an old woman carrying an enormous live turkey upside down around the stalls, bargaining hard to sell it, or this goat, being kept cool and safe in a novel way before being sold.

Some mysteries are anticipated, yet they still surprise you. These women are part of the Easter Sunday procession (about two hours and a mile long, including an orchestra and a couple of choirs); maybe it is just seeing middle-aged women carrying heavy platforms with icons for such a long time.

Other things are puzzles of a sort, and gringoes seem to be drawn into these just as much as anyone. Many walls of elegant houses expose the bricks beneath the stucco, as if to suggest that the stucco had fallen off, and the house was a shambles outside. This one, near our home, was weirder yet. The message over the door read, "Cantina of the Dogs," and an accompanying plaque read: "No women. No uniformed people. No minors allowed." And, it pictured dogs fighting -- as if it were Michael Vick's house.  All a bad joke; the house is an ordinary (though rich) residence.

     Not all mysteries are to be seen or smelled or heard. Our "lavanderia" posts hours 8 to 8, Mon. through Fri. But many days they are not open until 10, and then sometimes you see one of the family working there at 10pm at night. It is all a suggestion (much like traffic signs). This is 

not to bad mouth Mexicans. They are hard workers; anyone working a mere 60 hour week is an executive or a slackard. They are polite, often very friendly, and they love their children without reservation.

     In fact, the economy of  the vast majority of semi-poor or poor Mexicans is interesting. Everyone seems to be selling something. Hawkers can be very much in your face. No space is free from someone selling something. Restaurants are assaulted outdoors and often indoors by old women selling trinkets or flower sellers and even sometimes by someone selling food! One day I said to June, "I wonder which of these sellers is allowed to move up and down the corridors of the Mexican Congress." She immediately replied, "Why, all of them, of course."  And, so it seems. Yet, for all of this "selling," most people have no change. "Cambio" is hard to come by in Mexico, and everyone we talk to (meaning native Mexicans) says it is just laziness on the part of sellers:  if you want it, the buyer must have or get the right change. In fact, June and I think we should start a "cambio" business in Mexico; we would make a fortune.

     Well, we probably would not. Hordes of people all selling the same goods, or nearly the same goods, feel some social compunction to try to make a sale just because the culture demands the social gesture. But in the real economy underneath this false entrepreneurship, they all know that the number of buyers is limited. And, if any seller does something special in their peddling, that peddler knows that within days everyone will be doing the same thing. They have learned the hard-knocks side of capitalism. Where there is a void, a need, a want, someone will fill it. But in Mexico, thousands will fill it, and no one will move up. That is the economy here; no one will move up, except the small percentage of elites and the small number of lucky souls who get advanced educations. The social-class order fixes everything, and entrepreneurship is a joke. So, why have "cambio" ready.

     In many ways your heart breaks in Mexico, but in other ways, on reflection, one wonders about our so-called "values" -- including modernization, capitalism, education, and so on.