Mexico 2003
To Michuacan in December, 2003
December 14th, 2003. Driving all night:
We left about five, after the second act of La Boheme! Dallas
opera performance with great singers, Ponelle sets.
The most beautiful production you could want. But Sixto was
waiting. We said our good-byes and all to the De La
Rosas, (Carolina, Saul's Eposa, and Sophia) loaded the Honda and
headed south. But I had forgotten pass-port, so we
had to detour by Granbury.
All night driving through Austin, calling Kevin to no avail, then
down to the border on I-35. We saw some meteors. At
least we
thought they were. Rather low in the sky and very, very
bright.
Then we decided they must be flares!!!!!
Slept a bit after San Antonio, under a bridge, sort
of..... Then on to Loredo, as dawn was breaking.
Trying to follow the signs as I-35 breaks down like a
river delta. Ended up under another bridge, the one
we were trying to cross on. A cop in a city Police Car
came to rescue, told us which bridge we wanted, not
the one we guessed. An easy crossing, just a buck or
so toll.
Had some help finding the bureau for getting a car
permit. Asking a group of compadres where it was,
one youngster said to follow! But then he jumped,
spread eagle on the hatchback and shouted
directions.."Isquierdo!!!! Derecho!!!!!" And
when we
got there, in just a few minutes, he wanted five
dollars!!!! I gave him a handful of change, but no! So
I turned him over to Sixto, and I think he got his five
bucks!!!! Extortion!
Then the fun began. Getting copies of insurance and title, my
passport, we entered the long building and started at the
first of a long row of windows. Got my tourist card costing 20
bucks, good for six months. Then on to the next
station, to get copies of the copies. Another dollar. Found
something missing, so back to the car, and back to the
copy station. Then something still lacking: NO CREDIT
CARD!! Neither of us had one. I thought my ATM card
might do, but NO. It costs about 15 dollars to get the permit,
and only a credit card is accepted. Or a deposit of $300
dollars refundable. Oh well, I though. We will take
the bus! No wait. Sixto who never banks his money,
had 300
to spare, and we left it with the permit people. I was
flabbergasted! But he really wanted to take the old car in.
Soon we were flying down the road toward Monterey and Saltillo once
again, this time I am behind the wheel, not a
bus driver! Libre 84, avoiding Coata 84, which costs
money. We go through a small town, and stop at a large
super-tienda for some fruit, bread and ham, and on we roll. The
mountains pop up ahead, and we start climbing
them. The desert gets more lush in spiky things like cactus and
tree yucca. Onward into smog. This industrial mist
that hangs in the air. There must be a lot of asthma among the
folks hereabouts. The air has not been clear here
when I have been through. Maybe it is the time of year that this
occurs, late fall and early winter. It is the smell of oil
being refined, held in the high desert air, burns the
eyes... like places in West Texas. They call it there
the smell of
money and jobs.....
We take a toll road that by-passes Monterey to Saltillo. We are
on this beautiful road riding in a valley
through grand rugged mountains, textbook geological formations, folded
rock strata showing huge
anticlines shot through with dikes and faults, soaring on either side.
The majesty dimmed only when a pay station comes up and they
want 8 dollars, or whatever 92 pesos comes to American. On one
fine hill, there is this silhouette of a huge bull. It is a bill
board in toro
skin, and we will see them a lot all the way down into our trip.
But
always catches the eye.
Dead tired from
the drive, we are
soon in city
traffic. Frustrating traffic, confusing fooling
around, Sixto recognizes where we must go. It is a
different location from last year, but he has been
down here since. Bere, his sister-in-law, is at work
with baby Joel in a cradle at her feet. She is
managing a chic designer denims shop in a strip
mall near their new home. Joel is three months old
but seems older: alert, taking in everything, but not
fussing about it, not even afraid of this old gringo!
Lots of black hair make him look older. Six holds
him. I do not get too close for fear of giving him
my cold, which has been creeping on, adding to a
certain discomfort.
She gives us the house key and we walk to their house, past some urban
ruins, an incomplete church
building, whose construction seems to be on hold, in a mixed
neighborhood of older homes, some
newer ones, we would call it a neighborhood in transition. But I
feel like it has been in transition for a
century. A concrete basket ball court, some nice flat
roofed houses, some with room for landscaping
and colorful tile and upper balconies. The houses are right on
the street glued to their neighbors'..... row
house style. Jose's and Bere's house has sparsely furnished
rooms. Seems to be a family trait. One
neighbor has a car port entry to the street, and you have to be careful
not to block the narrow
driveway entrance. The other neighbor, who has teen age
girls, runs a cottage industry making tortillas
and taco shells. They seem to do a smart
business. Several homes on the block are turned into
specialized conveniences stores. You go one place for milk and
cheese, another for laundry and
cleaning supplies. In neighborhoods like this, people are out on
the streets a lot. Only in big cities in the
states do you see such neighborhood activity. Lots of kids
playing, curb-side mechanics going at it on
their cars.....
After naps and showers, Jose comes in from work, and we
head for a huge Walmart-clone of a store.
Groceries, clothes, electronics just like Wally World (which they have
there also!) He picks up fruit,
cheese and chicken. I bought some Thera-Flu. My grip
gets worse. We head for Bere's shop, still
busy in the pre Christmas rush, and she leaves it with others to
close. At home, we caught up on
things, Jose enjoying stretching his English, I am ashamed to be
so mono-lingual.
Bere did not miss a beat putting together tostados with the cheese, and
onions, jalapenas and limes,
sprinkled with cilanthro, of course. Instead of soup, we had a
bowl of "Atole de Pinole", hot milk and
soft cereal, made thin and sweet. Also a great drink of
pureed guavas. The spare front room was
ours. We spread our sleeping bags and Jose's blankets on the
concrete. I slept so soundly..... with the
help of a dose of thera-flu.
At first light, Jose woke me with coffee, and had to move my car some
so he could get his out for
work. Then driving school for Sixto. He could not do the stick
shift. I had tried unsuccessfully to teach
him before, but he seemed more determined to learn now, having to
listen to my rants about doing it
all, getting tired, and I was an ancient man..... He got a little
better. But I remembered how Daddy
would yell nervously at me and how clumsy I was at first. I am
such a bad teacher. I can lecture and
explain a lot, but that does not seem to teach. I am more like my
Dad than is safe...... We found an
internet connection in the Plaza Christal where Bere works, and I
caught up on my e-mail.
We walked to a big Mall a mile or two away down some busy main
streets. It was Christmas crowded,
and had lots of what seemed to be outlet stores inside, a food court
and a cinema showing "Gatto",
which turned out to be "Cat in a Hat", and "41 Gramas" which we
wanted to see, but decided not to.
Jose and Bere had church that night, but later we ate another good
chicken dinner (with a Mole
sauce!!!). It was time for us to get going, so we found the Honda
dealership and I wanted to get it
looked at for the front end noise that had been going on had been
bothering me.
Uncertainty and this cold, I got into a depression about something I
had read about the Mexican
character. D. H. Lawrence wrote "The Plumed Serpent", in the
thirties, when Mexico was desperately
poor overall. Observing through his character, a
world-weary Irish lady, the drag down feeling he felt
about the Mexican soul. The slovernly, thick work-a-day life, a
dreary slump, everybody selling things
passively and waiting days in one place for things to come about.
A seeming acceptance of fate, so
alien to the North. But I understand too. Part of me
accepts futility and hopelessness, enevitability and
leading a static life, imbeded in the wheeling matrix of
indifferent fate. But it is all balanced out by the
artistic impulse, energy and liveleness of the art of the Natives past
and present..... Orosco and
Sequieros painted this on great walls. Life in Mexico for me is a
dream in a mural!!!!
Also, I was feeling that alienation and dread, being there, a stranger
in a culture I could not understand,
because it was so different from the ways of the North... The mind-set
of the ancient Indian Culture,
Aztec, Maya, that certain fatalism. The old terrible blood
rituals that horrified the Conquistadors, who
replaced them with the terrible blood ways of Christianity, both
demanding blood sacrifice. Nothing in
art is so stark and real than the image of Jesus on the cross executed
by the artists and artisans of this
new world. God that demands blood for atonement, the understand
well!!!! But Christianity at last
became just a Rococo veneer over the proud pagans, whose culture
evolved in a different mind-set.
The Christians burned their books, but not their memories, burried deep
in collective unconscience.
The next morning It was time to leave Saltillo. We went to the
Honda Dealership, found it
easily in the Morning Traffic, and was surprised to be greeted by a
friendly, helpfull fellow,
who said yes, they would check the car out. What was wrong?
I explained about fear of
the front axle that I thought needed changing. The waiting room
seemed like a glass booth
suspended into the work space, which was unusually clean. They
heisted the car up on a
lift, and looked carefully underneath, turning the wheels and
all. I felt it was a superficial
examination, but they pronounced that everything was fine, and,
surprise, did not charge
me a centavo!!!
In no time at all, we were on the way south. On the road, I am
always
exhilarated. We sped on through the bad air, through desert and
mountains.
Basin and range. Toward the town of Matuala. We passed
these people
standing on the side of the road waving at the approaching
traffic. We could
only guess their purpose, and thought at the first ones wse saw, they
wanted a
ride into town. There were whole families, singles, and doubles,
some had
constructed wind-breaks and sun shelters, as if they planned to be
there all
day!!!! We saw an occasional car stop and pass various ones
something out
of the window. We geussed this was a Christmas custom, taking
advantage of
the season of giving
Later on past Matuala, a town full of feed stores and wide dusty
boulevards, we came
upon farmers selling all maner of things roadside. Bothes set up
with bird cages of finches,
raptors chained to a stake, like horned owls and red-tail hawks.
Lines of snake skins,
bottles of snake venom, skins of other animals..... I made a note
in my mind to stop on the
way back for photos. If we came back that way.....
At San Louis Potisi we took the toll
road, the Cuato around the city. Up on one of the nearby hills
there was one really dusty
strip mine, collecting lime it looked like. The white whatever
had blanched all the
equipment and the scene was ghostly surreal. The hightway circled
above the city , and
we remembered the afternoon of last year down in the town, hanging out
waiting for a bus
to Tampico.
We go up higher and into greener country. Rolling hills.
The sun goes lower, and we are in the state of
Guanajuato. We pass the road to Delores Hidalgo, where the
revolution was born in 1815, by a priest
proclaiming from a balcony, history tells, and Guanajuato itself, the
beautiful colonial town built by silver
mines, with its mummies and fine colonial styles, in a rococo
canyon....
We wanted to spend the evening in San Miguel Allende and took a road
with an arrow directing us to
San Miguel. The road looked a bit small from what I remember from
1964, the summer I spent there.
We should have checked the map maybe, because there was a much larger
road down to the town a
bit farther. But this road wandered among fields of grain and
small farms, with no signs indicating
anything!!! A very nice road, actually, but longer, narrower and
more hilly. We finally got to a village
that seemed to be frozen in some kind of time warp, donkey carts,
native looking costumes a quaint
church, and lit up for the season. The Coca Cola signs looked old
and out of place, somehow....but
harmonizing pleasantly, or was I just tired from all the driving.
The Mexican and the Spaniard, clashing
of cultures, as geologic plates had once united Europe and America, now
cultures that had developed
separately fused and created something original, unappreciated until
after the fact, after a new
primative sophistication set in that hangs heavy over the art
sensibilities, triuphing now as never before,
but kept unsettled by discontent and uprisings, as the division of rich
and poor seem to be more
entrenched down here, high contrasting, and is common to most of the
countries on down into the
southern continent, especially the tropical ones. Banana
Republics.
And where was San Miguel? It was
getting dark real fast. Soon traffic was
picking up. Buses, trucks, fine cars.
The road now approached a cliff, with
town lights below. A lake I did not
remember twinkled in the last of the
light. We were heading down. Soon
we were bumper to bumper!!!! The
road became cobble stone, and we
were in the 18th century part of the
world.... now where to park, because
a big Christmas celebration was going
on in the famous square. A traffic jam
at the Monhas! An inn I remember
from before, an austere but elegant
building that was built as a Nunnery.
On past the Plaza, which was crowded with holiday
spirits, We found a place to leave the car and go check out the
party. A huge Christmas tree had been
erected and decorated. There was a play going on in front
of the big church, the Paroqueo. It seemed
to be a sort of morality play: The Devil and his wife were
having an argument, in Spanish, of course,
then a lot of angels appeared for some reason.... Too much to
take in. The churches in the plaza date
from the 17 hundreds, said to be built by native craftsmen,
from pictures of Spanish cathedrals. The
architecture is a funny blend of styles, and the main church is rather
a Disney Gothic dream cathedral
as conceived by Tim Burton, unlike the usual Jesuit
Baroque/Plateresque, common in much of colonial
Mexico.
There was this room over the square with a big "Internet" sign in
it. We went
through the courtyard and up the steps, into a large room. A few
game players
were present. I read my e-mail, the little there was, and Sixto
got directions to
the cheep beds.