Mexicowoods—An Expatriate Life

Lunch in Teotihuacan

Adjacent to Teotihuatlan, the village of San Martín de las Pirámides provides a convenient destination for lunch. Ravenous from so much walking and pyramid climbing, we head for the mercado and some quesadillas. My lunch is cooking in the middle of the comal: quesadillas de flor de calabaza and quesadillas de champiñones (squash blossom and mushroom).

 

Heaped on the tortillas in the foreground are sesos—brains. Considered a great delicacy by many Mexicans, I've never found them appealing. However, I did sample a quesadilla de panza. The filling is stomach—not tripe mind you—but the actual stomach of some animal. It was quite tasty.

These quesadillas are not made with traditional round flour tortillas. The cook places a blob of masa—cornmeal dough—into this device. As with a pasta machine, she gives a crank a single turn. Rollers press the masa into a thick patty, and a second roller cuts it into an oval shape. It's cool to watch.

 

She places the masa ovals on her comal and adds cheese along with whatever other ingredients you want: onions, squash blossoms, brains... She ladles copious amounts of oil from the aluminum pot on her left, more in my opinion than is needed to keep the quesadillas from sticking. This is not going to be a low-fat meal.

 

Her hands move in a blur. She must have served twenty people in as many minutes. Hers is a popular place. Every stool was filled and often customers stood behind in ranks, waiting for their lunches.

 

Mercado food is a favorite for me. I wish it was even remotely healthy, but it's not. So I only get to eat it on rare occasions. But it tastes sooo good, and dining shoulder to shoulder with an amiable bunch of strangers only adds to the experience.

Two Chickens Today

Chickens roasting in a vertical broiler tempt me as I walk by. Places that prepare chicken this way wisely position their broilers near the front door. The smell of sizzling chicken wafts into the street.

 

Two chickens for only $95 pesos—that's a little more than seven bucks. Same price as when I first saw them six years ago.

 

Odd then, that I've never actually bought one.

Fixing My Panama Hat

Some three or four years ago I drove through the tiny Campeche town of Bécal, where they make straw hats. They call them Panama hats although I understand that true Panama hats are made exclusively in Ecuador. Whatever the case, many Panama-style hats are made in Bécal where the artisans work in caves. Underground humidity keeps jippi plant fibers pliable for weaving.

The man who wove my hat showed me how it could be rolled up and stuffed into a pocket. Upon removal, it popped right back into shape. When it came time to fly home from Cancún, I stuffed my new hat into my luggage, properly rolled as I had been shown. Somehow, being squished into an overpacked bag that in turn sat out in the rain on a luggage cart was more abuse than it was designed for. When I unpacked, the hat had become a shapeless mass.

The other day I discovered the remains of my hat at the bottom of a closet. As I am planning on spending a couple of weeks under the tropical sun in Tulum, I thought I'd see if it could be salvaged. There are at least two shops in San Miguel de Allende that sell both Panama hats and cigars, an unlikely combination. Perhaps one of them would help me out.

A young woman named Maria took my hat upstairs to "iron" it, a prospect that left me nervous. I had hoped that she would block it, not "iron" it, but the shop lacked the necessary forms.

I spent some time admiring the true Ecuadorian Panama hats on sale and drooling over the Cuban cigars. Both the hats and the cigars were expensive; besides my cardiovascular system has endured all it can take from my cigar smoking days, so my shopping was restricted to the window variety.

A half hour later Maria descended with my miraculously restored hat. The woman is an artist. She went outside in search of good light so she could sew the band on, using the fender of a battered pickup truck as a work table.

As she worked, I continued exploring the shop, finally coming upon the holy grail of Panama hats—a Montecristi Superfino. Price: $25,000 pesos.

Maria completed her restoration of my $300 peso Bécal hat. I asked her what I owed her. She said "Lo que quiere" (pay what you like), ensuring that I would pay her generously.

Small Business

Unimaginably small businesses sprout up throughout San Miguel de Allende. The other day I happened upon this food store. It apparently hasn't yet opened this morning.

 

The modest offering includes jello with rompope (eggnog), cookies, flan (custard), tuna or jam empanadas (turnovers) and churros (deep fried dough sticks dredged in sugar). Home cooking maybe?

The enterprise has the hallmark of a resident who needs a few extra pesos. In these tough times there seems to be more such businesses than usual. No way do they generate serious cash. Yet hopeful people start them, banking perhaps more on the generosity of neighbors than on servicing actual market demand.

I doubt profits even reach the level of the minimum wage (currently around $50 pesos per day).

Efforts like this are rare up north, except for occasional lemonade stands. They wouldn't return enough to justify the effort. But a few extra pesos may be all this entrepreneur needs to make ends meet. Does the presence of this micro-tiendita point to the absence of an economic safety net? Or is it testimony to the initiative and resourcefulness of Mexican people?

Our Altar

On this día de los muertos we emulate our Mexican neighbors, building a modest altar to greet family members who have gone on before us. Ours incorporates many traditional elements: a stick of copal for driving away evil spirits, candles for each of the deceased to help guide them to our ofrenda, the color and scent of cempasuchiles (marigolds) to attract them, two alfeñiques (sugar figures)—on the left a hooded ghost bearing a candle, on the right, a skull—to provide them with energy to journey onward after their visit.

For nourishment we offer pan de muertos. A bite is missing from one of the rolls. The culprit? Probably one of the many squirrels that live in the trees surrounding our house. Probably. A little booze, salt and lime should be welcome: some of our ancestors were tipplers. We keep an eye on the level in a glass of water: someone is drinking it.

The black bowl contains letters: Laura's to her grandparents and mine to my parents and to Sally, Karen and Michelle, my three sisters who died in infancy. I am surprised at how much I have to say to them. Writing them gives meaning to the entire ritual.

Night comes. We fill the house with copal smoke, light the candles. We speak with our dead and say prayers for them. I feel their presence during this night when our worlds briefly touch.

I often think about my missing family members. But never before have I tried to communicate with them. I am grateful to mexicanos for showing me the way.

Organic San Miguel

Sonoma County, in the wine country north of San Francisco where I used to live, has always been in the forefront of the organic food movement. From the mid-'60s on, small farms have offered organic produce. Many of us grew our own veggies, if not for health reasons, then at least because the food tasted so much better. Just compare a home grown tomato with the strip-mined supermarket variety, and you'll see what I mean.

When I moved to San Miguel in 2003, I had to give up hormone-free grass-fed beef, those incredibly sweet Sierra strawberries grown by Korean gardeners, eggs direct from farms where chickens were allowed to eat bugs. I left behind the French market lettuces grown in raised beds at Mustard's Grill in the Napa Valley. Italian chicory forced in darkness, Cox's Orange Pippin and Pink Pearl apples, Yukon Gold potatoes—I said goodbye to all.

Little or no locally grown food was available in San Miguel when I arrived, much less organic food. Mercados received most of their food from large distributors. Supermarkets and tienditas alike offered the output of corporate farms, often in a state of incipient decay.

Today this is changing. First there was Bee Natural (now Natura), a small store offering organic veggies. Then a few restaurants recognized the market opportunity, given that so many expats mourn the loss of healthy foods. They began offering locally grown foods. Now, a major player has entered the game: Via Orgánica.

Via Orgánica is an organization dedicated to promoting organic food production through workshops, an organic certification process, and a producers' network. Most Sanmiguelenses though know of it through their café and tienda in Colonia Guadalupe.

The sign says, "Eat healthy. Eat organic." And indeed you can, from a breakfast and lunch menu of unique dishes all prepared from locally grown ingredients.

In the tienda proper, shoppers won't find Log Cabin genuine artificial maple-flavored syrup. Or Jif peanut butter, or Smuckers jam. All the canned and bottled stuff is from organic producers.

(The shelves of prepared foods make me nervous. They smack too much of the offerings of Whole Foods, an Austin based nationwide organic supermarket chain (oxymoron!) that has managed to give the organic movement a bad name, with its ties to agribusiness and its mistreatment of employees.)

Via Orgánica offers dairy and bakery products, most of them locally made. Hormone free beef and line-caught fish are available (unfortunately, frozen). For me the fresh fruits and vegetables are the stars. Vine-ripened tomatoes, little white-and purple striped eggplants, tiny sweet carrots, tender "non-shippable" lettuces—these products make eating vegetables attractive again.

Today's shopping basket: tomatoes, zucchini, spinach, broccoli, bananas (!) and wax beans I snatched out of the box the minute they were delivered. They had been picked just a few hours ago.

After buying my groceries, I always sit down at Tapas Café for lunch: a small veggie pizza, a green salad, fresh fruit juice, maybe a blackberry tart.

Our community contains 5,000-10,000 expatriates, many of whom have shopped organic in the States and have grown to appreciate healthy foods. So San Miguel is a natural place to get started with Mexico's organic movement. Via Orgánica, with its community-wide vision, is positioned to accelerate change.

But it's not just brown-rice Californian expats making this all happen. Mexico already has organic markets, many of them small but all responding to ever increasing demand by discerning Mexicans. A list of them can be found at the Red Mexicana de Tianguis y Mercados Orgánicos website. (The Mexican Network of Organic Stores and Markets).

County Fair

Our county fair opened last week: an opportunity to eat unhealthy food and throw up on whirling, jolting rides. My kind of event. Monday evening we drove out to the fairgrounds behind the new presidencia, just off the Dr. Mora road.

The fair is the best entertainment deal in town. Parking costs $10 pesos; admission is $25. All the rides are free.

The machines can be charitably described well-used. The rides shake and judder. Bearings howl. Holes in seats dig into your butt. What do you want for free? We ride them anyway. They're just too much fun.

Electricity powering the rides runs through cables laid on the ground. We try not to trip over the 220 volt lines leading to the Ferris wheel.

Check out the rat's nest leading from the breaker box. The entire network was made by twisting bunches of wires together and wrapping a layer of electrical tape around the joins.

The rides are reminiscent of those I rode as a teenager at Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. Everything is kind of loose, leading to an unpredictable, lurching, thrilling experience.

Lines for the roller coaster are long. There's only one car—just four people can ride at a time.

We may choose between two levels of bumper cars—one for kiddies, and a pro driver version. The aggressive look of this driver signals the presence of a born killer. Best to wait til he's gone.

Faulty contacts beneath the cars emit sparks and a reek of ozone.

Laura and I ride the Hurricane. I hold a Nikon SLR in my hand, hoping to get some nice blurry shots of carnival lights. As the ride revs up, centrifugal force threatens to tear the camera out of my hand. When we return to Earth, my arm aches from hanging on to it.

Weak personal liability laws mean Mexican kids get better rides—like hanging from a trolley that rolls along a taut cable. No adults allowed on this one.

Nor are adults allowed on the trampoline. A barefoot kid bounces on a surface twenty feet in the air, having the best time ever.

Security is tight. Males 16 to 40 years old are frisked before being granted entry. Mounted patrols range the parking lot. Policemen, sharp in desert camos, keep an eye on things inside the gates.

Vendors sell cheap stuff. Here's a Zen moment: this place sells socks behind a TV blaring Korean popular music.

No man can leave the midway without winning his girl a prize. I pay $20 pesos for three darts. Successfully popping three balloons (it's impossible to miss) I get Laura a $10 peso stuffed green frog. Makes her happy. She'll give it to one-year-old Eric down the street.

Rides, games—what else is the fair about? Food! It's about pan de feria—fair bread. Competition is fierce: a dozen vendors sell it. They tear samples off loaves and thrust them into our hands, trying to obligate us.

Pan de feria appears to be a big deal, given all the hype and the sheer amount of it on offer. But I wasn't impressed. It tasted like—well—bread. Stale bread. It might as well have been made in the Bimbo factory at Matehuala last April.

Fortunately we had many more gustatory options—like my favorite, tacos al pastor. Several vendors spit-roasted layers of marinated pork in vertical broilers. Note the traditional pineapple atop the smaller spit. The carver adds a little chunk of fresh pineapple to your serving with a practiced flick of his knife.

Early in the evening, everybody is preparing food for the crowds soon to arrive. A petulant teenager has been pressed into KP duty.

Foods exotic to gringo tastes provide opportunities to expand culinary horizons. "Ricos tacos de tripas" reads a sign. A skull, not a sign, advertises tacos de cabeza.

If such foods put you off, there's plenty of hot dogs and hamburgers available. Thirty years ago they tempted me. Today I get angina pains just looking at them.

This one's new to me: potato chips on a stick. A single spiral cut potato is threaded onto a wooden stick and deep fried. No bag needed.

Fresas con chantilly—strawberries and whipped cream—sound appealing to me. I envision a paper cup overflowing with fresh, dew-picked strawberries topped with thick hand-beaten cream.

I wake up the vendor. ("Why am I the only customer" I should ask, but don't.) From a freezer, he digs up one of those milk cartons like the ones hanging overhead. He bashes it on the counter to break up the congealed glob of frozen strawberries within. Then with a large knife, he stabs into a container of frozen Cool Whip, scooping the few tiny chunks he's able to free up into the carton.

I throw mine away. Fortunately a guy across the way is making churros. Deep-fried batter rolled in sugar rectifies any disappointment.

Oh yeah. County fairs are supposed to be about agriculture. We don't see any 4-H-ers showing prizewinning lambs, nor any blue ribbon canned preserves. A few large commercial ranches exhibit livestock, that's all. Nobody seems excited about it.

Tens of thousands of people will visit this fair. The vast majority of them don't come to see domestic animals. They come to have a good time. And they will.

Growing up, midways were magical places. Lights, music, the calls of the barkers created a whole new world around me. I began innocently riding merry-go-rounds, advanced to the big coasters, and graduated to the tunnel of love.

If you live here, you could suspend all judgment, drop your inhibitions, and go. The experience will take years off you. The county fair will be open through this weekend.

A Taxi Gets a Fill-Up

A taxi pulls up to the Pemex pump. The attendant slides a steel ramp behind a rear wheel. The taxista backs onto it.

The ramp is purpose-built. Attendant and driver employ it with the ease of long practice.

 

I want to know—what is the point?

My guess? The ramp allows a little more fuel to fit into the tank, so the taxista gets a skosh more range between pit stops.

Fruteria 'Gil'

If you get a sudden hankering for a nice juicy hunk of papaya, consider calling Gil's Fruit Shop.

Gil offers free home delivery. Just telephone 154-9135 and your fruit will be speeding on its way.

Escritorios Públicos

Every year, the Rebublic of Mexico kindly grants me permission to live in this country as a No Inmigrante. The Instituto Nacional de Migración issues me an FM3 visa, a document familiar to many expatriates. It is valid for five years but must be renewed annually.

Currently FM3s are green booklets the size of a passport. They are printed on paper of a quality that lasts for the five-year period of validity, no más. For the last few months, I've held mine together with a rubber band.

Since my FM3 is expired I cannot renew it again, but must apply for a new one. This requires me to gather documents proving my identity and supporting my claim that I'm a desirable resident, that I have a home, am of good character, and will not be a burden on the state. I have to present myself and my assembled papers at the Migración offices where a functionary armed with well-inked stamps will grant or deny me a new visa.

 

Ordinarily, obtaining a visa requires little more than visiting Migración twice: once to apply and once to pick up the finished booklet. The process involves sitting for a few hours in a molded plastic chair until called, but is no more onerous than waiting in a US Social Security Administration office. Odds are fairly high that a third visit will be needed to correct some minor deficiency in the application—a no-longer-current utility bill perhaps—caught by the eagle eye of the immigration officer.

All this is normal. However for me, the situation is not normal. Because, as I explained to the examiner, my status has changed.

[With these words, somewhere in the bowels of Migración a vast apparatus stirs to life. A senior immigration officer is called in. Dusty volumes of regulations are consulted. A large file jacket is broken out in anticipation of a flood of new forms.]

My altered status consists of 1) a change of address, and 2) divorce. When I mentioned this to an immigration consultant, she pursed her lips and said, "Ooooh."

—§—

Ordinary people cannot negotiate the Mexican bureaucratic labyrinth. If an educated man with a working command of Spanish can't do it, imagine how an illiterate campesino manages. Enter the escritorios públicos, the heroes who bridge the gap between a ponderous, uncaring government and the suffering masses.

This escritorio público is located on the side of Calzada de la Estación opposite from the Migración offices. His job is to grease the skids. Without him, the workings of Migración would seize up. Without him, no visas or passports would ever be issued. I would venture that more work gets done in this modest establishment than in that intimidating building across the street.

Escritorios públicos can help you get a driver's license, draw up a power of attorney, or write a rental agreement. They can help you flawlessly meet every requirement needed to obtain an FM3 visa—even if your status has changed.

I marched into Escritorio Público D'Polo and explained my situation. The proprietor sat me down at his desk and twirled a couple of forms sandwiched with carbon paper into his upright manual Royal typewriter. He asked for my old address and my new one, typing away furiously with two fingers as I replied. Then he proved his real worth.

He asked, "When did you move?"

"In February."

"Oh, but this cannot be Señor. You of course know that you are required to notify Migración within thirty days of moving or else you would have to pay a large fine. It's not possible that you would have overlooked so important a thing."

"Oh. I meant to say August 25th."

He returned to his two-finger typing.

We eventually got to the matter of my divorce. I produced my certificate. He selected additional forms and asked me for more information. Where does my ex-wife live now? Still in Mexico? Is she a U.S. Citizen? Had she been born in the U. S.? Is she still alive?

That last one disturbed me.

I spent a couple of hours in his office. Then I walked over to Migración with a thick folder of papers, all in order, not one with so much as a single corrected typo. I presented them to an official. He riffled through them, nodded his approval, and asked me to check back in a few weeks for my new FM3.

I'm considering putting myself on the citizenship track by upgrading to the FM2 Inmigrante visa. Every person, every article I consulted said I should retain a lawyer to handle this. Everyone except one friend who said, "You don't need to do that. Just go to the escritorio público. He handled all my paperwork. Only $400 pesos. It was a snap."

I'm beginning to think these guys are the bedrock of the Republic.