Four Postcards from Mexico - Postal Primero

Over the years, the descent into Mexico City has gotten progressively more appalling as the sky has gone from “hazy” to light grey to tan to, now, dark brown. The question passes from, “How do people live in that?” to “How am I going to survive in that?” It is hard to believe that this great mountain-ringed valley once had the most crystalline skies in the hemisphere. So hard in fact, that the extermination of beauty leaves one numb.

Numb, because the problem is intractable. To wish for clean air is to wish for the whole megalopolis of 25 million to be wiped off the surface of the Earth and the valley returned to ocelotl and coyotl.

Although it was indifferent to the burgeoning problem for many years, the Government has undertaken fairly aggressive steps to clean up the air. Five years ago, Mexican traffic presented the típico spectacle of sleek limousines sharing the jam with vintage trucks, banged up buses and junkyards on wheels spewing either black diesel fumes or burning oil or both. No more. Almost all vehicles were new, green and smogged. And yet the air was worse.

The problem is that there are too many people and hence too many cars. There comes a threshold where no measures will affect the absolute amount of pollutants spewed into the air. The Government instituted an alternate driving day program; but, predictably enough, this backfired People simply got two cars with alternate plates. Not just the limousine set, but anyone who could.

Why do I hear that tart yankee voice? “Well...if people (i.e. those people) are going to.....” blah blah blah.

But have they taken public transportation in el de efe ? (as the federal district is called). It’s not just that the swarms of micro-buses clogging traffic are jammed to overflow, so too the sleek, clean modern metro cars. There are just too many people trying to get to too many places at once ...and doing the things that all people do.

Several years back Univision reported that the D.F. Department of Public Health was proposing to outlaw that most Mexican of enterprises, the open air sale of food. It turns out that 75 tons of “desiccated feces” falls on the city every day, and the Department determined that these micro-pollutants contaminated the open air carnitas, jicama slices, chicharron and tamales. The vendors are still there, so the Department must have figured out that if shit was falling on the food it was also penetrating lungs.

The problem is not just exhaust, but deforestation due to the metastasizing slums, and dust due to the drying up of the pathetic remains of lake Texcoco. The D.F. government has one of the most aggressive tree planting programs in the world, but the poor trees can’t keep up.

As the plane touched down, I took one last gulp of clean refrigerated air before venturing into the soup.

Valle de México (1845) when ocelotl ruled

Mexican bureaucrats have a long tradition of being slow, sullen and biting. This is part of a larger tradition of pinchismo which could perhaps be described as the art of using incredibly small things to screw you over in a major way. And so just as I sucked air before disembarking, I took a deep breath before stepping up to the immigration desk. “They’ll figure out something,” I pre-groused to myself.

The line monitor pointed to booth number five for Mexican Nationals. He didn’t look too bad.

“Buenas tardes,” he said.
“Buenas tardes.”
“Su pasaporte por favor”
“Si,como no.”

Flip Flip Flip Stamp Stamp Staple

“Bienvenido” He told me to be sure to return the insert on my leaving the country

“Gracias”

Well I’ll be damned......

From that point on, it was easy sailing; and it is always surprising, in a pleasant way, how easy urban sailing can be in a place that is, or at least can be, a total disaster. Everything in the city is stressed to the limits -- air, water, sewage, space, deliveries, utilities, services -- and yet sometimes one cuts through it all like a knife through butter. I am sure it is this way in order to increase the Mexican conviction that life is utterly arbitrary and that only the Blessed Virgin is reliable.

In short order, over the new “second deck” of the cross-town freeway, I was hurtled from air port to the upscale residential section of El Pedregal. Except in the older parts of town where there used to be a townhouse tradition, almost everyone in Mexico from middle class on up lives behind some sort of fence. In the Pedregal, they live behind stone walls. The reason for this was that -- as the name might give way -- the development was built in an area that abounded in rock. In all events the result is a cold and foreboding maze of streets curving around between facing phalanxes of stone walls and solid wooden or metal gates.

I was deposited in front of one such wooden gate and rang the bell, as the cab driver waited. I rang again, as he waited some more “Look,” I said, “I’m sure they’re just slow, you can go.” “Are you sure?” “Yes, yes, of course.” “Seguro?” “Sí Sí, hombre, vayase ya, no se preocupe.”

I rang again, but there was still no answer. It was the maid’s day off and my hosts had said they would be at home all day. Still, I was an hour or so early from my estimated time of arrival, and they may have stepped out briefly. So I sat down, on my two-tone pastel-coloured rolling duffel and waited,. the very picture of a mature gringo preppy in loafers, slacks, pink shirt and (loosened) school tie.

After a while I began to worry, as clouds (darker shades of brown) were forming. I should probably call R. to see what’s up, I thought. But I had no phone and, as might be imagined, the Pedregal is not the kind of place to have public phones. The expected protocol in the Pedregal is that just as you drive up, the wooden or metal gate is silently opened by an attendant and swiftly closes again, as your car disappears into the walled interior with a faint swoosh of the tires, like water closing over the fins of a shark.

Just then, just that happened several doors down; but unlike most of the residences that house also had a guard booth. Aha! I walked over and asked the guard, who no doubt had noticed me sitting on my duffel, if I could borrow his phone. Ah... he was very sorry, señor, but he didn’t have a phone. Really? Yes, really, imagine that. He had a closed circuit tv, a radio, a funky radio, but no phone. Such is life. I went back to sitting on my duffle.

The idea of lugging my duffel and shoulder pack a mile down hill to the busy streets outside the development was not anything I was looking forward to. Just then, a young man, of about 30, in jeans and sneakers came around the corner walking a happy sniffing lab. Ah! The Blackberry Generation. He’ll have a phone for sure. I got up, and walked in his direction “Oiga, perdón.... but you wouldn’t happen to have a phone I could use for a moment, I’m waiting...”

I didn’t get any further. The man froze with a look of sheer terror in his eyes. He shook his head violently, sharply called his dog and turned back in the direction from which he had come. As he sped-walked away I saw the phone on his belt.

Sitting behind his plate glass, the guard in the booth had seen it all, even if he had that studied Mexican look of not having noticed a thing. I walked over, and said, “You saw that, right?” “.. uhseh. .” he replied. “Tienen miedo” he added in a voice which spoke the disdain of those who have been “despected” all their lives. “They’re afraid.” “De que?” “Pues de los secuestros,” he said surprised to have to repeat the obvious. “Kidnappings? Here? in the Pedregal?” “Por todas partes.” he said dragging out the “todas”. If a 30 year old male... If in the Pedregal...

I was instantly infected with fear.

I went back to the gate and repeatedly bellowed out the name of my host -- Annnnah!!! -- who shortly afterwards came down and opened the gate. “I don’t think the bell works....” she said.

I did not stay any longer than necessary in Mexico City, and two days later was on the bus over the mountains to Puebla, to visit my cousin, Lara, at her hacienda in the foothills beneath mount Ixtlazihuátl.

TAPO -- that’s what they call the new centralized bus station for autobuses heading to the south and eastern part of the country. It used to be that each bus company had its own terminal, and most of these were squalid affairs, even if the buses -- at least los de primera -- weren’t so bad. The terminals were jammed with people trying to get into and out of buses at the same time; and the streets around the terminal were a congestion of newsstands, macaroon vendors, fruit vendors, lottery ticket vendors and children or old people sitting on twine wrapped bultos as flies swarmed over the juices and droppings that littered the sidewalks.

No more. TAPO is the true Pantheon of Buses, its immense dome covering a reflective marble floor on the circumference of which were arrayed the various bus companies’ brightly logo’d ticket niches. Marcus Agrippa would have been proud.

There were plenty of guards.

The mens’ room, however, was inconveniently located on a mezzanine portion of the circumference, which meant that one had to lug whatever he was lugging up a flight of stairs. To keep the bathroom “safe” they had installed a coin operated turnstiles made of rotating inter-spaced metal bars which would slice you into 20 pieces if they were sharp. Whoever designed this marvel intended you to leave your bags outside the bathroom where they could be stolen, or to trap and your luggage like a pig in a poke between the bars in the quarter turn allowed. Squeezing, grunting and grimacing, I got into and out of the bathroom vowing to feed the clown who designed this safety feature into a true human gin if I ever got my hands on him. Back on the shiny main floor marble disc, I headed over to the departure gate where, after being “wanded” by more security personnel, I boarded the bus.

A result of the old anti-system was that the first half hour of the trip anywhere was spent hissing and grinding through city streets. The result of the new integrated TAPO system is that the first half hour of the trip out of the city is spent hissing and grinding along the congested southern exit-way. But just when one is about to give up hope of ever getting past the interminable urban detritus, the city stops and the bus is speeding up swooping curves into the pristine, pine covered mountains that separate el Valle de Mexico from the Plains of Puebla.

Puebla de los Angeles was the third city the Spanish founded after landing ashore at Veracruz in 1519. Not only was it a necessary stop between Mexico City and Veracruz, more importantly it was a key juncture in Spain’s trade route that ran from the Philippines to Acapulco through Puebla to Veracruz and over the Main to Seville. Testimony to Puebla’s privileged position in this global trade is reflected in its towering cathedral, one of the most stunning examples of Ibero American baroque.

The abundance of red-clay in the region gave rise to brick making. Since, at the time Puebla was founded, Spain still controlled Holland, Delft dies and techniques were imported and gave birth to Puebla’s talavera industry.

I did not go all the way to Puebla, but got off the bus 20 minutes sooner at San Martín Texmelucan, a scruffy, rural town that looks like a collection of old style bus stations. Twenty minutes later, my cousin and her husband, Stefo, arrived in their rattling Ford pik op. Holaaaaaaaaa!! Hugs and protestations.

Bienvenido a Topelandia. she said, I laughed. Topes are Mexican speed bumps -- originally made out of grapefruit sized metal spheres, now usually just corrugated concrete. Topes are ubiquitous and last visit, during a spine crunching moment of exasperation, I renamed the country. Actually, if I recall, I renamed it Pinche Topelandia

San Felipe

After stopping off at the butcher’s to buy some pork chops, and at the tortilleria for fresh tortillas we bumped our way upland, back in the direction of Ixtlazihuatlpast San Felipe and San Pablo del Rio to the hacienda.

As haciendas go, the buildings at San Pablo are on the small side, and might almost be classed as a rancho were it not for the 400 hectares surrounding it. There are books on the matter, with titles like La Morfología de la Hacienda en México, and needless to say the question is not left to a simple answer. The long and short of it, in my opinion, is that an hacienda is a socio-economic organism that both draws from and sustains the community around it. A ranch on the other hand is a strictly private enterprise

Whatever its classification, during a long period of absence and illness, San Pablo fell into disrepair and was sharecropped out. Upon inheriting the property, my cousin set about to restore it, physically and as an economic organism. It is slow going and has taken an immense amount of work, “pero ya soy pueblerina” she said, meaning she had left the city and city life and city-being behind.

After showing me the parts that had been remodelled, including of course, the chapel, we sat down to a late dinner.

“Tomorrow we have to go to a working comida of hacendados over at hacienda Los Vientos.” she said with a glint in her eye.
“A what?”
She teased me some more, “They want to discuss forming an association...”

I gave her a you-must-be-kidding look. Warranted or not, centuries of conflict have left their mark and the thought of hacendados meeting to form an “association” inevitably conjured up images of counter-revolution,

“N’ombre,” she said ‘fessing up, no lo creas, it’s just a meeting to see how best to deal with government bureaucracies.

“That’s what they always say...”
“Besides, they say they’ve fixed it up and its very pretty. Will you come?”
“Claro ...”

Sitting around after dinner, Lara brought up a mutual cousin with whom, “frankly,” she was quite annoyed. Apparently, cousin had favorably reviewed a book in which it was said (in so many words) that her grandfather Maximiliano had been something of a caudillo/gangster type. “Ah, yes...” I said, “I think I saw that.” “Pero como?” She had talked to aunt so-and-so over in Tlaxcala who had assured her it was all calumny, puras calumnias... How could he write such a thing?” “But he didn’t; it was the book he was reviewing that did.” “But he should have disputed (desmentido) the allegations!”

I thought of the genre oil painting of Maximiliano as a young army officer, in formal blue tunic with burgundy piping, standing slim and straight with his hand on the library table. And then of the table photograph of Don Maximiliano, in his 40’s, face at once smooth and chiseled, a little broader, but still erect in a tight fitting charro jacket with its silver buckles and striped silk cravat, holding the flat rimmed, cloth hat of a jinete, what the Spanish call a sombrero cordobés . I wondered if I would have enjoyed meeting him.

I tried to mollify Lara. “Well... those rumours have been around for some time. Besides it was after the Revolution, and things were still unsettled.” I thought it best not to mention that at least half of Puebla took rumour for fact, and not to put too fine a point on “after.” “Well cousin could go to the devil, as far as she was concerned.

©WCG, 2008