Mexicowoods—An Expatriate Life

Real Estate Troubles

Licenciado Luis Miguel Serrano places a sign on his property: This lot is NOT for SALE. Why go to all that effort?

I suspect that sometime in the past, some rascal "sold" this lot to a gullible buyer, leaving Luis Miguel to fight off a bogus claim. Either that, or as an attorney he's seen enough such shenanigans that he prudently protects himself against phony real estate agents by posting his land.

 

A confluence of unsophisticated buyers and murky titles provides opportunities for fraud. The safeguards I relied on in the USA—title insurance, escrow accounts, licensed realtors—are unavailable here. Resolving problems via the justice system is sluggish and uncertain. Posting warning signs appears to be far more effective in warding off trouble.

What is going on with the yellow house? Apparently two parties claim ownership. Perhaps one of them is attempting to sell it. In response, the other claimant posts signs to scare away prospective buyers, going so far as to cite the case number in which any seller would be named as a litigant.

Problems purchasing real estate are far more common than any buyer newly arrived from the United States would care to know about:

• A high-end housing development on the edge of town remains stalled because of a title dispute.

• A well-known realtor leaves town, taking his clients' deposit money with him.

• A friend is repeatedly sued over the purchase of his home. His house was seized twice and transferred to another buyer once, his possessions were thrown out onto the street, and a warrant for his arrest was issued—all fraudulently. Every setback was reversed on appeal. Even so, after three years of litigation, he still does not have clear title.

Most people don't encounter problems like these. But buying property is definitely riskier here than up north.

A Luncheon in Zacatecas

My friend dined recently at a posh restaurant in Zacatecas. He and his party had been seated where they could observe patrons getting out of their cars and handing their keys to the valet parking attendants.

Four identical black SUVs pulled up. A dozen young men got out, sidearms visible under their jackets, and entered the restaurant.

 

One of them addressed the roomful of diners. "Please do not be frightened. We are just coming in for a meal. We ask you to remain in the restaurant until we leave. No one else is allowed to come in until we are finished. Please, nobody use your cell phones. You can relax and enjoy yourselves as our guests."

Then a smaller group of somewhat older men entered, flanked by bodyguards. They spent a couple of hours quietly eating and drinking. As they left, the spokesman handed a thick wad of cash to the restaurant owner. He announced, " Thank you for your cooperation. I hope everyone enjoyed comida. You can go whenever you want." He left, and the motorcade pulled away.

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.

Barbara Kingsolver Visits San Miguel

The Fifth Annual San Miguel International Writers' Conference started yesterday. The keynote speaker: Barbara Kingsolver, author of thirteen books of which I have read three: The Poisonwood Bible, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and her most recent novel, The Lacuna. She is as brilliant a speaker as she is a writer.

Norteameriacnos living in San Miguel de Allende need walk a mere twenty minutes in any direction from El Centro to be in real, unalloyed Mexico. People don't have to hang out in gringo ghettos unless they choose to.

But what makes our town unique is that it attracts famous figures like Barbara Kingsolver. Ten thousand expats, many of them well-known artists, musicians and writers comprise a world class creative community. Residents and visitors come together for Jazz, Chamber Music, Dance, Drama, Photography, Creative Writing, Painting, Film, Sculpture—some of it extremely fine. It's all accessible and much less expensive and crowded than similar offerings in San Francisco or New York.

Plus, you can stroll from your house to all of it.

Fixing Pila Seca

Potholed streets are getting new surfaces. I see construction crews all over San Miguel de Allende. Everyone has to endure inconvenient street closings and the snarled traffic that ensues. Apparently some federal money came in, so workers are tearing up the roads, filling potholes, re-setting cobblestones.

As late as last year, masons set paving stones in dirt just like in the Seventeenth Century. What little concrete they used they mixed by hand. They filled spaces between stones with a runny plaster slurry—painstakingly poured from cut-off plastic Coke bottles.

Today they use ready-mix from the Cemex plant out on the periferico—a sudden leap into modern times.

Construction methods quickly revert to the Nineteenth Century though. Laborers fill wheelbarrows from the cement truck and dump the concrete onto the street where its needed, a few square feet at a time.

Masons spread the mix and set cobblestones one at a time. Apparently the ancient art of cobblestone paving can't be mechanized.

Just before opening to traffic, Pila Seca looks pristine. Gone are the lumps, the loose stones, the potholes.

Built to newer construction standards, the street looks smoother than I've ever seen it.

Cobblestone streets don't last long. Unlike concrete or macadam roads, they need re-paving every few years. But they form an important part of the character of the Centro Historico, so we all put up with the vibration and jolts that prematurely degrade the suspensions of our vehicles, the stumbles and falls when our feet catch on uneven stones.

Despite the expense, the inconvenience, the hazards of cobblestone streets, we love their look, and we'd vigorously oppose any movement to modernize them.

Righting a Fallen Horse

As riders staged for the Allende birthday parade last Thursday, one horse staged a revolution of its own, lying down on the pavement.

 

The horse's owner beat it with her crop to no avail. It refused to budge. Apparently the animal was not simply refusing to stand; it was too weak to get to its feet.

I left the scene, looking for a vantage point from which to watch the parade. An hour later I retraced my steps to find the horse still in trouble.

 

The scene was faintly surreal. The horse now was standing. To keep it on its feet, two people pushed against its side to prop it against a fire truck. Another rider squirted its nether regions with a fire hose.

Is this some kind of folk remedy? What reasoning impelled the woman to revive the animal with a douche?

A mystery of animal husbandry.

Ignacio Allende's Birthday Parade

Yesterday the country celebrated the birthday of a hero of the war for Mexican independence: Ignacio Allende, our city's namesake and one of the Founding Fathers. Captured during the fighting, he didn't live to see independent Mexico. His portraits always show him in uniform. This one by Ramón Pérez hangs in the National Palace.

 

Celebrations of Allende's birthday have military overtones, appropriate for a man who was a soldier throughout his entire life. Elements of the Mexican Army lead today's parade down the Ancha de San Antonio.

The military likes to show off new hardware. Several recoilless rifles, bazookas, and machine guns mounted on Humvees roll by.

At one time I wondered why the Mexican Army would own such heavy weapons. Guatemala and Belize present no threat of conflict, and no weaponry in Mexico could possibly defend against aggression from the USA. So the only rationale seems to be for use against Mexico's own citizens—a chilling prospect. But escalation of the drug wars provides justification for a well-armed militia. 

San Miguel's own police force makes an appearance. Compared with the soldiers, they look like they could use a few visits to the gym.

The police also have gear to show off, like these gas masks.

As armed men roll by, a group of pre-schoolers watch the spectacle, sitting in their little chairs.

 

Much of the parade is in fact made up of children. Every school in San Miguel fields a group of marching students.

 

Apparently marching, drumming, and bugling are part of the required curriculum in Mexican Schools.

The occasional child wears historical costume. This boy takes most seriously his portrayal of General Allende.

Bigger boys dress up like Allende as well. This man, holding a saber at present arms, leads a woman rider who is incongruously wearing a tiara. How she fits into the historical panorama is a mystery.

A series of flatbed trucks bears dioramas of significant historical events. This one, called Los Conspiradores, depicts one of the secret meetings between Allende, Father Miguel Hidalgo, Juan Aldama and others during the birth of the independence movement. Another diorama features El Pípila setting fire to the gates of the Alhóndiga in Guanajuato, a great flat stone strapped to his back to protect him from the defenders' missiles.

 

Assorted militias and groups of caballeros ride by. Parade dress for horses includes flowers woven into manes and odd checkerboard haircuts over their rumps.

Always the last in any parade, the bomberos (firefighters) drive by in an assortment of fire engines—some new, some decrepit but still in service. Leading the engines is a color guard made up of fire-axe-wielding young women in short skirts.

San Miguel has a reassuring practice: street cleaners immediately follow parades sweeping up litter and manure. Moments after the last unit passes by, the street looks as if nothing at all has taken place.

Patriotic parades and celebrations in the USA lack the ferver of those I see in Mexico. In San Miguel, the whole city comes to a halt for Allende's birthday. By comparison, celebration of Washington's birthday (which has been watered down these days to "Presidents' Day") seems muted.

Canal Living

Xochimilco is more than a tourist attraction: it is a community. Lucky people live in nice houses along the banks of the canals. The waterways serve as streets. Residents use simple scows to move around town.

A few use canoes for transport. Paddling is faster and easier than poling.

 

Hidden behind the houses, city streets provide access to the rest of Mexico City. But congestion, potholes, topes, and traficantes bent on extortion make canals an alternativo más tranquilo.

Some of the resources city dwellers expect exist along the canals: Restaurants, repair shops, tiendas.

 

There's city services too. The garbage scow makes its rounds, ringing a bell just like the guys in the trucks.

 

Here there are no stop signs or traffic lights: Xochimilco seems less regulated, but it's not entirely free of government. Underneath the graffiti, this wordy sign basically says, "No Fishing" in classic bureaucrat-ese.

People work as well as live here. Nurseries and flower growers line the water. They make some sales to passing boaters, but I suspect most of their crops go to wholesalers or retail customers who drive in from the rear.

Some residences are large, beautiful homes. I was more taken by this unpainted wooden shack, looking like something right out of a Lousiana bayou.

 

As we glided past these houses, I entertained myself with a romantic fantasy of living in one of them. Xochimilco seems a perfect environment for stress-free living. And I've always dreamed about living on water somewhere. I had the same thoughts when I visited Tigre near Buenos Aires two years ago.

Well, maybe some day...

Produce Sellers at Mercado de Jamaica

Mercado de Jamaica, the big flower market in Mexico City sells fruits and vegetables as well as flowers, although vendors of these are far outnumbered by flower stalls. But to reach the flowers you have to walk down a corridor past all the fruit stands.

 

Sellers here seem to have more space than those in, for example, San Miguel's San Juan de Dios market. The Jamaica displays are larger, the foods offered are more varied.

 

I post so often about mercados that something has to be out of the ordinary to inspire me to write again. And Mercado de Jamaica is different: the attractiveness of the displays and the quality of the produce is superior to any I have seen elsewhere in Mexico, reminiscent of that in Barcelona's Mercado la Boqueria.

Look how big, beautiful, juicy, and perfectly ripe these fruits are. Not a single green, overripe, bruised or spoiled one in the lot. Soriana (a Mexican supermarket chain) could learn much from these sellers.

 

SInce Mercado de Jamaica sells flowers for use as gifts, it's natural that fruit vendors package gift arrangements as well.

 

Exquisitely prepared candied fruits catch my eye. Peaches, pears, figs, tunas (prickly pear fruits)—each sugary specimen looks perfect.

 

This candied fruit looks nothing like the crudely hacked stuff in our local mercados or supermarkets. Check out these calabazates—candied miniature pumpkins—each in its own little dish.

 

As in other Mexican mercados, the selection is larger than in U. S. supermarkets. Unfamiliar fruits and vegetables are abundant. An example, the yellow-orange tecojotes are an apple-like fruit that appears seasonally. I see them used to flavor poncha, a fruity drink served warm during the Christmas holidays. I wonder what other ways they're used.

The tecojotes are priced at 15 pesos per kilo, about 50¢ a pound. The apples in the background are priced the same—50¢ a pound. They are imported Washington State apples identical in quality to those sold for $2 per pound in Los Angeles. That says something about distribution and margins in the U. S. food distribution system ¿No?

 

The sign stuck in the pile of strawberries says "Who gives you more?" I wouldn't be surprised if they were imports from California—Watsonville or Oxnard. They look like the flavorless, case-hardened variety, bred to have a shelf life of four weeks. But at 70¢ a pound maybe they're a good deal anyway. A few fish genes spliced into strawberry DNA never hurt anybody. Who gives you more?

Which of these things is different? A solitary egg vendor squeezes in between two fruit stands. Consistent with Mercado de Jamaica standards, his display is arresting.

 

But the eggs along with the pineapples and melons, high as their quality may be, are nevertheless products of agribusiness. The pineapples—from Hawaii, the melons—from California's Imperial Valley maybe, the eggs—from Bocacho, a huge Mexican producer. The tecojotes may have been locally grown, but they're bucking the trend.

Mercado de Jamaica offers produce as good or better than what you can buy in Draeger's swanky market in Menlo Park, CA. And it does so at less than a quarter of Draeger's prices. The mercado's produce is the best of the best: that is, the best that agribusiness can produce. The appearance is gorgeous: the flavor and healthfulness may be something else.

I'm currently reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. I've always preferred food that is locally grown using organic methods, but I never really appreciated how big corporations have hijacked our food system, how good nutrition and palatability have been sacrificed for appearance, transportability, and shelf life.

I think I'll continue buying my food at tiny Via Organica or Natura. The selection is limited to what's in season locally and it doesn't always look as pretty as the stuff in Mercado de Jamaica. But it's always healthy and flavorful.

Mercado de Jamaica

A friend suggested I visit the Mercado de Jamaica, Mexico City's great flower market. I love mercados and I love flowers, so this off-the-tourist-track attraction is a natural for me.

At the entrance to the market, a surreal mural decorates the long corrugated iron façade.

A mural segment depicts a Xochimilco boatman poling his scow through the starry night, heaped with flowers.

 

Underneath the great steel roof, a hundred or more vendors line a labyrinth of passageways.

The sheer amount of color in the place—dazzling.

An arrangement of red roses and birds-of-paradise stood at least four feet high. I asked the vendor "How much?." His asking price: $600 pesos—about $45 USD.

For the cheapest flowers, shoppers bypass the fancy arrangements and go straight to the growers fresh in from the campo, their trucks heaped with field-grown flowers.

The Mercado de Jamaica is hazardous place for browsers and tourists. People bustle past hauling loads of flowers. I was forever being shooed out of the way.

I never before considered the words "hand truck" and "flowers" might be used in the same sentence. Nor had I thought of flowers as heavy.

 

Hauling all those flowers is hard work. Plenty of food sellers stand by to fuel the workers. This pan vendor gives me an opportunity to use "hand truck" and "bread" in the same sentence—another first.

Barbecued corn browns over portable wood-burning cookstoves. A huge clay cazuela bubbles with a stew of cut corn, herbs and other vegetables.

The seller, one of many offering this dish, told me it was called esquites. She gave Laura a sample served in a fresh corn husk.

I would like to say it was delicious, but this stuff is the doughy feed corn served throughout Mexico as street food. For my Mexican neighbors it's comfort food. But my gringo palate is conditioned to appreciate the tender sweet corn we get north of the border. To me, esquites taste like corn that was picked too late and left on the supermarket shelf too long.

But people visit Mercado de Jamaica not for the food, but the flowers.

For formal arrangements or simple bunches of roses, for decorating a home or a business, for quinceañeras, birthdays, weddings, or funerals, people scour the corridors, looking for just the right blossoms. I saw many customers, but I couldn't imagine that enough of them could pass through these narrow alleys to buy up the huge stock on offer. Mercado de Jamaica has been in business for many years though. Apparently enough flowers get sold to keep it a going concern.