Mexicowoods—An Expatriate Life

Cops

Mexico City crawls with cops. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard made crime reduction a priority and apparently he is succeeding. I'm impressed with the increased visible police presence: I can't imagine criminals attempting a robbery when there's at least one policeman on every block-long section of street—and often more.

Note how they're all wearing ballistic vests. Years ago when I first saw this practice, I thought it was a little over the top; a sign of excessive love for uniforms, combat gear, and militaristic deportment. Form instead of function. But after reading about drug related violence, I think perhaps they're not well enough protected. Where are their Kevlar helmets?

Police ride around in the backs of pickup trucks, a transportation method borrowed from campesinos. It's not safe. It's illegal in California. I've actually witnessed people catapulted over the hood of a truck during a low-speed rear-ender. In Mexico City, it's illegal to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, but riding in the back of a pickup, without a helmet even, is OK.

These police are riding on Pino Suarez in an area chock full of computer and tech gear stores. They're just loaded with goodies perfect for fencing; tempting for those whose money and crack have run out. The police strategy here is to saturate the neighborhood. In this block-long stretch, I counted twelve cops on foot plus those in the truck.

Then there's the threat posed by striking teachers and electricians. The risk probably is real. A lot of unhappy people have gathered in a small area. They've shut down roads and the Zócalo. Motorists' tempers have frayed. Eruption of a large-scale disturbance isn't out of the realm of possibility.

A precedent for using the army to augment police has been set in the border cities and other narcotrafiacnte hot spots. Hell, a year or two ago in Tijuana, the Army arrested the whole damn police department—took away their guns.

I've seen maybe a dozen troop carriers like this one in the last day or so. Somebody in the administration is worried.

Cops on horseback are a practical solution to the paucity of roads in Chapultepec Park. The big sombreros are a nice touch. These guys are smiling because they know they've got a soft berth. They  could be bumping along in the back of a pickup truck after all.

I've seen cops in patrol cars and cops on bicycles too. But this is one of those moments that's too good to pass up: a cop on a Segway talking to a half-naked guy wearing silver paint. The policeman doesn't look happy. The guys probably don't have their buskers license or something.

All the police on the street have produced a Mexico City that feels safer to me than New York City. I read somewhere that after his success in reducing New York crime rates, Rudy Giuliani hired on as a consultant to the Mexico City government. Perhaps some of the changes I'm seeing can be attributed to his influence.

Whatever the cause, I find myself enjoying Mexico City worry-free. Twenty years ago I didn't.

Labor Unrest in Mexico City

The taxista asked me if I wanted to go to a different hotel. To drive into the centro was impossible, he said. There was a manifestación de maestros—a demonstration march by schoolteachers. He threw up his hands, emitted theatrical sighs. "¡Imposible!" In a heroic effort to get me as close as possible to my hotel, he backed his cab up several blocks of Eje Central Lazaro Cardenas, threading through the police roadblocks. Finally a tránsito made him stop. He unloaded my luggage and set it on the pavement. He told me that my hotel was straight ahead. He pointed south. I picked everything up and began walking.

I never did see any sign of the manifestación de maestros, but as I passed the National Art Museum I came upon a group of angry electricians.

 

These guys weren't pulling their punches. "Hunger Strike! We demand those who run the government [get] out. Out with the bastard Calderon!

After checking in to the Gillow Hotel, I walked down to the Zócalo. More electricians were there. The world's largest plaza was covered by a tent city.

 

Camp-ins like this wouldn't work in Chicago's harsh climate, even if the police allowed them.

 

Makeshift kitchens were set up here and there. Nobody goes hungry in Mexico (unless there's a hunger strike of course). Chicharrones de la Resistencia: they reminded me of freedom fries. The sticker on the payment can exhorted me to support the movement by not paying my electric bill.

 

Enterprising vendors sold handcrafts and snacks. This woman sold cigarettes by the piece.

If I had taken every flyer, handbill, or pamphlet I was offered, I would have had to leave early to carry it all home. This man wanted me to take his newspaper. I wasn't going to tell him no.

 

From what I could tell, the electicians have mounted a serious campaign to ask for President Calderon's ouster. Groups huddled under tents or stood around in groups discussing the issues. These women represent a group called Families Standing Up for the Struggle Against Calderon's Treason, or something like that.

 

In case anyone is missing that this event has a leftist slant, note that the Mexican Communist Party is here in support of the electricians.

 

A young man holds a bullhorn, essential gear for a protest demonstration, but his mind is on the girl in the pink sweater. Seconds after this photo was taken, his girlfriend caught him gawking and smacked him.

 

Danzantes seem to pop up more and more these days. I don't know what they have to do with the Sindicato Mexicano de Electristas or the politics of that traitor, Calderon. But they've got the drum sounding and the copal smoking and they're dancing in the hopes of drawing a crowd.

 

Other entertainers worked the crowds of demonstrators: jugglers, clowns, evangelists.
I found it hard to gauge the event: angry protest or vacation holiday?

I left the Zócalo around six o'clock. Overhead, scores of helicopters ferried the high and mighty to their estates and elegant dinners in Las Lomas. Meanwhile, electricistas sitting in their tents and munching chicharrones de la resistencia, looked up and resented them.

Barrio de la Palmita Celebrates Santa Cruz

A burst of explosions woke us up yesterday morning at 4:30 AM. Hundreds of heavy bangs came from the field across the street from our house They couldn't have been closer without scorching us. Immediately following, a parade marched by (In the dark!) led by a shrill banda. It was so outrageous, all I could do was laugh.

We were treated to hundreds more explosions lasting until 7:30. Somehow we managed to doze on and off through it all, having become acclimated over the years to the noises that accompany fiestas.

The occasion was the celebration of Santa Cruz, a time of thanksgiving and prayers for a bountiful future. Our neighborhood, Barrio de la Palmita and the adjacent Valle de Maiz, are noted for noisy celebrations during May.

People celebrated all weekend long, but last Sunday was the big day. At noon our friends assembled into a parade, shutting down the Salida a Querétaro as they marched through the city.

Mostly working-class people live in La Palmita, most of them descended from Otomí or Chichimeca forebears. A consequence of their heritage is that the Santa Cruz celebration is a mixture of Catholic and indigenous rituals. Everyone here seems comfortable with the messy confluence of the two traditions. I imagine though that if the Vatican were fully aware of what was going on, it would drive them nuts.

The red-shirted banda that awakened us provided marching music. It has a wonderful sound. Paired clarinets, harmonizing in sour thirds and delightfully out of tune, play a sprightly melody. When they complete a cadenza, the whole band lurches into a repeat: blaring trumpets, booming tuba, and loud, loud drums. Somehow, the effect is thrilling. You gotta hear it to get it.

In counterpoint to the banda music, huge public address systems mounted on trucks play recorded music mixed with the voice of an announcer whipping up enthusiasm among participants and spectators. Stock batteries and alternators in these trucks are unable to supply more than a fraction of the power demanded by these sound systems. Gensets clatter away, generating the needed kilowatts.

Note the household fan mounted on the bumper of the red truck. Powered by the PA system genset, it provides needed additional cooling. It's 94º today, and that old engine probably can't idle for long without boiling over.

Later tonight a play will be enacted in the forecourt of La Palmita's modest church. The actors parade in their costumes. There seem to be more than three wise men...

...and there are at least two devils. Satan's regulation costume appears to be black-painted skin, a cow skull, and greenery from a pepper tree.

Next it's the locos; people dancing down the street in an incredible variety of goofy costumes. The woman to the left of the photo, the one in pinafore and baseball hat, appears to have been out shopping when she got caught in all the madness.

Among the locos, a popeyed mojiganga (outsize papier-mache creature) marches down the hill. Aunt Jemima appears as well, as she often does at these festivals. Mexican people are not as sensitive as Norteamericanos to caricatures and stereotyping. I, for example, am sometimes referred to as pelón—baldy.

The loco dressed as Death is handing out candy to little children.

Danzantes whirl to the beat of an enormous drum. They wear vague approximations of pre-Hispanic dress.

We followed the parade downtown and ate lunch in a restaurant just behind the Parroquoia while La Palmita rocked the Jardín, showing the town their chops.

Our barrio is modest. It puts on an enthusiastic if somewhat small-scale show. Next weekend Valle de Maiz will wheel out the big guns. The noises they are going to make will send dogs shaking under beds and set Gringo teeth on edge. No one within the city limits will escape the din. From Thursday on, sleep will be impossible.

Inured to Mexican celebrations we may well be, but we're sensible, too. Later this week Laura and I are going to head out for the peace and tranquility of Mexico City.

Urban Yelapa

Yelapa Bay boasts an actual town in addtition to its beachy resort area and sizable inland rural community. This was the original fishing village, established long before discovery by vacationers. A dense cluster of brick or cinder block houses, it centers on a spring-fed creek.

 

Yelapa town has roads, but they are generally unsuitable for cars. The primary means of land transportation is by foot or on horseback. This woman rides her mule past the town's only medical service: a tiny pharmacy staffed by a nurse. People have to hope nothing serious happens to them: it's a 45-minute boat ride to the hospital in Puerto Vallarta.

 

It's early. The cybercafe hasn't opened yet. The sun-and-moon image is Mexican all right, but the painting style is Haight-Ashbury. Old hippies are holed up in Yelapa, one of the few remaining refuges for those who still cling to the old counterculture.

 

Say what you will, but where the flower children are, there's good food. Brisa's restaurant has an inviting menu. Lupis bakery offers goodies not usually available in Mexico. At another café, the proprietress informed me she had good brownies—really good brownies.

 

I don't know what you can get at the House of Miracles.

Marginal businesses subsist providing visitor services. Marketing is rudimentary. If you want to go whale watching, ask Roger.

 

When on beach vacations, I prefer oceanfront accommodations. But budget-driven visitors can sleep at Casas Irma & Angel for $35 per night ($40 high season) if they're willing to take a fifteen minute walk when they want to go to the beach. "Enquire at the top of the stairs." More primitive hostelries offer even better deals.

These business signs look more suitable for Venice, California than a Mexican town.

I saw plenty of evidence that residents of Yelapa seem more sensitive to environmental issues than those in most Mexican towns. A signboard depicts "Nuestra Sra. de la Ecología," a play on the famous Guadalupe image. Net bags hang from trees and fence posts to collect refuse.

 

The town has the requisite church. The interior is decorated with fabric hangings to make the otherwise utilitarian cinder block cube look more church-like. The ceiling needs paint, but the interior has been kept spotlessly clean.

 

Boaters note: Yelapa has a yacht club.

 

These phone booths are holdovers from the days when the town had maybe a dozen phone lines.

 

The difficulty of bringing in materials and equipment leads to ad-hoc intallations.

 

Main Street, a mule trail, leads south through town to a point at the bottom of the bay. Behind, the urban center recedes. Pricier homes line the water, many of them available as vacation rentals.

 

The mule track rounds the point and continues on for maybe a kilometer, winding past more large homes. It ends here. The sign says it all: no appointment, no entry. Hmmm. Exclusive.

 

Those who find other Yelapa lodgings too primitive recline in luxury at Verana. It must be good: rates are ten times higher than our hotel on the beach. The cheapest room runs $320 USD per night, five night minimum. It's a 40-minute walk to the beach restaurants, so guests had best opt for the meal plan: another $80 per person per day, drinks extra. So you have to pony up a minimum of almost $2,000 just to be admitted as a guest.

It seems to me that Verana guests might miss what Yelapa is all about—funky, laid-back, real.  I prefer the look of this place on the lagoon at the north end of town.

It's such a tiny place. Maybe 2,000 residents. But town, country, beach—there's plenty to capture my attention, lots to do.

Hiking the Yelapa Back Country

I'm good for about a half a day of lying around on a beach; then I have to get out and do something. One day during our mini-vacation in Yelapa, we hiked into the country behind the beach community, where a pair of trails border either side of the river that snakes back into the mountains. 

Quite a few people live back here. Most seem to be subsistence farmers. They live in palapa huts, raise a few crops, keep horses and mules.

They grow corn in small fields, just enough for family use. Scattered fruit trees provide varied diets: mangoes, bananas, and that exotic Indian import, jackfruit. The fruits hanging on this tree are as big as watermelons.

Until a few years ago, the people of the Yelapa back country lived like their forebears a hundred years ago. Then, no infrastructure existed to provide water, electricity or telecommunications. Today the back country is being wired for electrical power. Some homes became connected for the first time just this year.

Absence of roads means everything has to be done using primitive methods. Here a CFE (Comisión Federal de Electricidad) worker floats a power vault across the river on a rubber raft.

Much of the wiring is being installed underground; hence, the vault. I'd like to think CFE's motivation for burying power lines is due to aesthetic or environmental concerns, but I suspect their decision has more to do with protection from Pacific storms.

For people living back in the jungle, electrification means the arrival of technology. There are no phones yet and no television broadcasts or cable. But this tumbledown palapa sports a satellite TV dish.

I once drove through a tiny Mayan village in the southern Yucatán. The community had no electricity, but I spotted a small solar array perched on a pole outside a traditional Mayan hut. Banda music blared out though the doorway. You don't need light, but you gotta have your tunes.

Along the trail there was plenty for nature lovers to see: a vulture sitting in a blooming tree...

...a curious green tree shedding thin orange bark...

...an iguana basking in the sun. This fellow is more than two feet long.

Here as in other Mexican rural localities, people still wash laundry in rivers.

A farmer draws river water to irrigate his crops. He employs found materials: a plastic chair serves as a mount for the pump.

The riverside trails are too narrow and rough to accommodate automobiles or trucks. Transportation is by horse or burro. Tack hangs in shacks along the trail.

High up on the trail we encountered a string of burros dragging fresh-cut lumber travois style. These boards were cut from logs using a chain saw mill—wasteful and inefficient, but requiring little capital investment. Note how the saw cuts terminate before reaching the end of the log, keeping the boards connected in order to simplify transportation.

Small homesteads trigger romantic notions of country living. Far away from technology, wars, and politics, I imagine life would be peaceful and serene in a place like this.

But I'm wedded to technology. I took the photos for this post with a digital camera; I'm writing it on an internet-connected computer. I dragged this gear into the jungle, unable to live without it.

Besides, I'm too old to work as hard as the people who make their homes in this beautiful river valley.

Yelapa Beach

Our closest beach getaway is Puerto Vallarta, eight hours west of San Miguel de Allende. But PV is not to our taste. Resort hotels insulate visitors from Mexican culture. Beach vendors hit on sunbathers every ten minutes: jewelry, sunglasses, hats, fish-on-a-stick. Forget dozing in the sun.

On the street, ambulatory salesman carrying photo-filled binders offer snorkeling trips that turn out to be come-ons for time-share pitches. Your snorkeling trip won't be free as advertised. You'll have to endure hours of high-pressure selling to pay for it.

And man are those high-rise hotels and condos ugly!

Wouldn't you rather stay here?

The better option lies forty-five minutes south of PV: the tiny fishing village of Yelapa. Here are few phones and no TV. Electricity arrived only a few years ago. Oddly, broadband internet access is available via microwave link from the city.

The way to get here is by water taxi. You can catch one at the pier at the end of the romantic zone in Puerto Vallarta. A rudimentary road exists but nobody takes it; not unless they're delivering a load of bricks. Boats are quicker by a couple of hours and they're much more scenic.

We stayed at the Hotel lagunita, on the north shore of Yelapa's small bay. Low season started on the first of May, bringing with it promotions and deep discounts. Our palapa cost $180 USD for four nights—$45 per night. A local resident told us that May is Yelapa's best-kept secret. Rates are low and the hot weather hasn't yet kicked in.

No road connects the town of Yelapa with the resort area. Instead, the beach serves as a road. People deliver goods in wheelbarrows or on their heads.

Everyday necessities—fresh groceries, beer, coke, gasoline for the boats—all of it arrives via small boat, over the water and across the beach. On delivery day, empty gas cylinders are dragged out onto the sand to await exchange for full ones.

What comes in must go out. Boxes of empty beer bottles and bags of garbage get loaded onto pangas for return to PV.

A desultory fishing industry helps feed Yelapa's 2,000 residents. The fleet contains maybe a couple dozen boats. Most remain moored all day long. Sleepy Yelapa produces more dreams (of whatever kind) than fish.

The tanned guy in dishabille has been free-diving for abalone. He's throwing empty shells back into the water for tourists to step on. His friends are shelling the couple hundred baby mollusks he caught. In California, taking abalone this size can land you in jail.

I asked the guy on the right if I could take a photo of the catch. He replied, "Want some weed?"

 

Around noon every day one or two excursion boats arrive with a load of tourists from PV. Day trippers.

They're ferried to the beach by panga and steered to a couple of restaurants and gift shops that exist solely for the purpose of extracting their dollars. Barkers harangue blinking, disoriented visitors. A guy thrusts a large iguana into unsuspecting arms as he pitches a $10 photo-op. Around three in the afternoon when the boat leaves, all those umbrellas are folded. They get stowed away along with the beach chairs, and the restaurants shut down. Locals don't eat in these places: the food is mediocre and the drinks are overpriced.

Arrival of the tourist boat signals siesta time for us. We retire to our veranda to read, to nap, or just to sit back and take in the peaceful view.

That's what's so nice about a room on the beach. We can retreat while the crowds baste themselves with oil and lie in the sun, ordering yet another Pacifico and shooing away jewelry salesmen.

The other nice thing is that long after they're gone, we go back out on the deserted sand to watch the sunset.

Yelapa used to be an old hippie hangout. People came here for the laid back lifestyle and for the drug scene. A few old hippies remain, hanging on to fading dreams of the counterculture. Their presence ensures good food and good music, yoga sessions and excellent bodywork.

Old-timers complain that the place is becoming popular. They say that expatriates are being priced out of the market for beach houses and forced to move upriver into the jungle. But Yelapa remains a great, inexpensive getaway. Unless (God forbid) a good road gets put in, it's likely to remain that way.

Modern Mexican Cultures at the Anthropology Museum

The entire first floor and grounds of the National Museum of Anthropology are devoted to pre-Hispanic culture. After three hours of wandering through Mayan and Aztec artifacts, I ate a good lunch in the museum restaurant and then ventured upstairs to a smaller series of galleries devoted to modern Mexican cultures. The exhibits there capture the fast-disappearing features of various regional population groups.  At the entrance to the galleries, I came upon the largest tree of life I have ever seen.

Hundreds of clay figures perch on its branches. The wealth of detail depicts all of the cultures covered in the galleries that follow. It would have taken me an hour (which I didn’t have) to fully absorb all those scenes. A first visit to the Museum of Anthropology is like that—continuous forming of intentions to return for closer looks.

The museum generally omits references to colonial era history and culture: another museum in Chapultepec Park deals with that subject. But displayed among exhibits of modern cultures was a reproduction of the Osuna codex, describing pictorially and in both Spanish and Nahuatl the punishments meted out by Spanish courts to indigenous people. Shown below is a depiction of an imprisonment device called the mantrap.

Dioramas convey some idea of how various groups lived. I suspect people still live as depicted only in the remotest settlements if anywhere at all.

The dioramas have a staged look, as romanticized as a Diego Rivera mural. People probably still lived like this during Rivera's day some eighty years ago, but today all I ever encounter are people in jeans and baseball hats.

Besides dioramas, collections of modern artifacts are on display. I particularly was taken by the musical instruments. The old Mexican harp on the right looks identical to the instrument played when Laura and I were married. The mandolina made from a gourd is unique to me; I would have liked to have heard it played.

Growing sugar cane is big business in Mexico, but smallholders also raise cane. This diorama shows a farmer extracting sugary juice from with a horse-powered mill. In front of the diorama a model of the mill permits close inspection of the mechanism. The gray pottery cups to the right are molds for forming the conical loaves of raw sugar called piloncillos, still widely sold in mercados and even supermarkets.

To the delight of many and the despair of others, the introduction of sugarcane to Mexico led to readily available alcoholic beverages like aguardiente.

I could have devoted an entire day’s visit to the modern cultures galleries of the museum. And on a future trip to Mexico City, I will.

The National Museum of Anthropology

Getting my head around the magnitude of ancient Mexican civilization is tough for me. An advanced civilization arose in Mexico while my Northern European ancestors were still living in huts. Mayans were writing hundreds of years before people living in the British Isles were. They developed a sophisticated calendar and the mathematics to support it before the Greeks invented geometry. If not for accidents of history (environmental collapse, cultural obliteration by the Spanish) Mesoamerican civilization might have carried through to the present day. Who knows what contributions they might have made to the modern world.

One place to learn about the scope of Pre-Columbian accomplishment is in the crown jewel of Mexican Museums, the National Museum of Anthropology.

The museum's ground floor consists of a series of galleries devoted to different ancient cultures—Olmec, Pre-Classic, Teotihuacan, Toltec, Mexica, Maya... Entire temples have been moved from the far corners of Mexico and assembled here in Mexico City: this one, a Mayan temple all the way from the Yucatán.

The museum collection consists of more than 120,000 objects, some 5,000 of which are on public display. The huge number of artifacts cannot be appreciated during a visit of a single day. There's simply too much to take in. Here a Chac mask, a representation of the Mayan rain god.

A mask of an Aztec god, fashioned from semi-precious stones.

A small statue of Ehécatl, the Aztec wind god whose breath made the sun and moon move through the heavens.

This bowl of flint razors amazes me. They were shaped by a single blow to a flint nodule with very little secondary working. Imagine the consummate skill of the artisan who made them.

A tiny number of gold objects survive for our inspection today. Cortez got most of the gold, melting priceless art objects to make ingots for shipment back to Spain. The man would have fit right in at Goldman Sachs.

Rounding a corner, I was surprised to see pots from the American Southwest—until I remembered that the region was at one time part of Mexico.

A deformed skull reminds me that punkers didn't invent body modification.

Only three authenticate Mayan codices have survived, and all of them are conserved in European museums. Reproductions are on display at the National Museum of Anthropology. I wondered at first if they might not be originals. They are so carefully made—perfect copies down to the last tear, wrinkle and stain.

The museum is more than a collection of artifacts: it provides much material for teaching visitors about the history and culture of ancient Mexican peoples. This diorama of the Tlatelolco Market is an example. Thirty thousand Aztecs were said to have met here daily to trade in Pre-Conquest times.

A group of scholars holds a seminar among the exhibits, evidence that the National Museum of Anthropology is a place of learning.

It is one of the world's great museums. In my opinion it ranks with the Met or the Louvre. I'm ashamed to say I've known about it for thirty years, yet I made my first visit just now. It is one of those museums to keep returning to, like the Prado or New York's Museum of Natural History. A visit to the National Museum of Anthropology is justification enough for a visit to Mexico City.