Mexicowoods—An Expatriate Life

Monster Truck

We occasionally visit Querétaro to shop the big box stores (Costco, Sam's Club) or to see medical specialists. A narrow highway takes us east from San Miguel de Allende. Lately the trip has become arduous. Construction crews have torn up the road, widening it in anticipation of the crush of visitors expected to arrive later this year for the Mexican Independence bicentennial celebration. Along the way traffic gets shunted onto rutted, narrow dirt detours barely capable of handling passenger cars much less busses or large trucks.

As I headed out of San Miguel one morning, I saw a huge truck and trailer parked beside the highway. I thought, "No way is this thing going to make it through the construction zone." Four hours later, on my way back from Querétaro, I came upon the selfsame truck, now some ten miles farther down the highway. I joined a line of traffic that had been stopped to wait for the passing of the gigantic rig.

The massive load required two big Kenworth diesel tractors to get up the grades in our mountainous part of the world. The traction provided by sixteen drive wheels had to be increased by the weight of large concrete blocks chained to the rear of each tractor. A draw bar on the front of the lead tractor left open the option of attaching a third tractor if needed.

I just love this stuff.

I couldn't tell the load was, but clearly it was exceedingly heavy. Wider than a single highway lane, it required a trailer 48-wheel trailer—the biggest I've ever seen. The load was secured to the trailer with many chains and cables. To my eye, they didn't appear substantial enough to survive a serious tilt.

One thing for sure: no mishap would be caused by excessive speed. The rig rumbled down the road at two miles per hour. Crew members hopped on and off at will, checking clearances on corners, eying iffy sections of pavement, and directing traffic around the thing.

What was it? Where did it come from? Where was it going?

Whatever it was, it passed unidentified through the states of Guanajuato and Querétaro, demonstrating if nothing else that Mexican industry is capable of building and moving some really big machines.

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.

¡Sponch!

A snack food has arrived in San Miguel de Allende—one that is new to me. ¡Sponch! What a great name!

I can't tell exactly what ¡Sponch! is, but it's colorful and you can bet that it's sssweeet: loaded with high fructose corn syrup, guar gum, tragacanth and of course those tasty di- and triglicerides. Any resemblance to actual food is coincidental.

Mexico will not be outdone by the United States in the race to obesity and diabetes. Already the world's biggest per-capita consumers of soft drinks, Mexicans have fielded a new secret weapon in the sugar consumption wars.

¡Sponch! Just looking at the picture puts me into a sugar coma.

Shoeshine Bonanza

This shoeshine man operates on the northwest corner of the Jardín. He has his morning's work cut out for him.

What a good idea. Get 'em all done at once. The only disadvantage: you have to wear each pair while they're being polished. If I were ever to do this, I'd want to bring a good book.

I'm not sure about having all my shoes arrayed for everyone to view. People might make judgments, make me want to say, "My good shoes are at home."

Hauling all my shoes down to the Jardín sounds too much like work anyway: efficient, yes, but at the price of one of life's small pleasures. I'd miss that unplanned ten-minute pause while my shine—and my spirit—gets renewed.

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.

Bailing Wire Fix

Even in this time of economic crisis, plenty of colonial houses undergo renovation. Where does the money come from?

The other day I walked past scaffolding built to support workers replacing a cantera window. It looks unsafe.

Two posts rest on the sidewalk, steadied by buckets full of rocks. Holes pounded into the wall receive two beams wedged in place with scraps of wood. Tying the beams to the posts: bailing wire.

The whole lash-up illustrates 1) attitudes about worker safety, and 2) problem-solving ingenuity. On the whole, I admire the builder's minimalist approach. But up north, he'd be cited for a rig like this.

Balloons over San Miguel

On early morning rides down the Oakville Grade from my ranch in the Mayacamas Mountains (between the Sonoma and Napa Valleys) I'd often look down on a scattering of hot air balloons hanging in the still air. By the start of the new millennium, their numbers had increased: to see a dozen or more at one time was not unusual.

These days, balloon sightings are becoming more frequent in San Miguel de Allende too.

 

Even a single balloon transforms the view, redefining the sky into something more than mere backdrop.

Ballooning is for tourists. Where you see balloons in the sky, you know the locale attracts visitors who appreciate beautiful views slowly unfolding as their aircraft drifts over the landscape.

Over the years the California's Wine Country transformed itself from unpretentious farms into boutique wineries visited by throngs of oenophiles. Increasing numbers of hot air balloons in the Napa skies betokened a loss of rural innocence as sophisticates displaced country folk.

Disillusioned, I moved to Mexico, attracted by its authentic culture. Today it seems that $200 balloon rides have followed me here. San Miguel feels more like Sonoma or St. Helena every day. I didn't come here for this.

Still, I feel a sense of wonder every time I see one of those great nylon gasbags hanging silently in the sky.

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.

The Stone of the Sun

Most emblematic of Mexican images is the Aztec Calendar. The original twelve-foot circular stone miraculously escaped destruction by Conquistadores bent on obliterating all traces of heathen Mexica culture. It was excavated during renovation of Mexico City's Zocalo in 1790 after being buried for almost three centuries.

A colored image of the stone hangs in the National Museum of Anthropology. The Mexica may have painted the stone, but the colors shown here are speculative. Accurate or not, they make it easier to discern details, like the hands of the sun god Tonatuih arranged on either side of his face, each holding a human heart.

(For a high-resolution diagram of the stone, click here.)

The stone is iconic. I see images everywhere. One appears on the ten-peso coin. I imagine no other country issues currency that implies human sacrifice.

 

Throughout Mexico, no souvenir stand worth its salt fails to offer a shawl or a plate bearing the stone's likeness.

Starbucks recently got itself into trouble by issuing mugs bearing the Sun Stone image without paying licensing fees to the Mexican Government. I had no idea intellectual property rights extended to works created in the Fifteenth Century. I think it noteworthy that government lawyers pursue Starbucks while overlooking all those artisans cranking out ceramic replicas. The legal principle of "deep pockets" appears to be well understood in Mexico.

I saw the stone for the first time on a recent visit to the National Museum of Anthropology. The sight of it engendered the same thrill I experienced when I first saw the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum.

The Rosetta Stone arguably had a more important influence in the development of western thought owing to its role in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. But its content—tax regulations—is unremarkable. The Stone of the Sun, on the other hand, represents a significant intellectual achievement. It contains a pair of interlocked calendars of 365 and 260 days each which combine to track dates over a 52-year cycle. The Mexica calculation of the length of the day is more accurate than the contemporary European figure.

Mesoamerican science died with the Spanish conquest. But in its time, it was equivalent to western thinking in complexity and sophistication.