Four Postcards from Mexico - Postal Cuarto

The following afternoon, Saturday, we were scheduled to travel up the foothills of Ixtlazihuatl, for dinner with the Hinojosas, friends of Lara’s at San Isidro Labrador. “They’re very amable,” she said, “buena gente, but... conservative.” “Ya me imaginaba” I said. I had met one of their sons, Eduardo, several years back and we formed an instant liking for one another based on our shared feeling for Benito Juarez, Mexico’s great Liberal Liberator whom Eduardo called a paricidio, corrupto, ingrato, apóstata y traidor. Needless to say, Juarez is something of a fault-line in Mexican political history.

“And don’t go talking about ‘indians’,” Lara mock-admonished me. Juarez was a full blooded Zapotec Indian, so that playing from a politically correct deck of cards, a person who despised him is supposedly a white racist who deprecates “los indios” -- the currently correct term for which is “indigenas” But, life is never that simple. When, during that lunch several years back, I made reference to “the Indians,” Eduardo had another outburst. “Se les llama indígenas!” “Ya, ya.” I replied, “but “Indians” is a perfectly fine word...even Las Casas (their great protector) referred to the natives as ‘indians’.” As far as I was concerned it all depended on how the word was used. Eduardo would not be convinced and after a cascade of contrary explanations concluded with “my skin may be white, but my heart is brown!” Now, five years later, Lara and I looked at one another, put hand to heart, finger to air and simultaneously broke out laughing... “pero my corazón es moreno” Nevertheless, I promised to speak only of ‘los indigenas’. ”

Everything about San Isidro bespoke privilege; not luxury, but the well-being one enjoys when fate has been kind. Impeccably maintained, the house rests on rolling green slopes overlooking the entire valley. Mt. Ixtlazihuatl forms an impressive backdrop, the visual equivalent on this grey-sky day of a Bach fugue.

We arrived late, because another fire had broken out and Lara had to do her round ups. Don Hector Hinojosa a tall, portly man, in open shirt and suspenders, had waited the time with a copa or two and greeted us amiably at the gate.

Lara was nervous, still worrying about the fire. “Mira mi querida,” Don Hector said at once authoritative and gentle, “come inside, ya, and relax. You’ve done what you can do, so now let it take care of itself.” “Bienvenido a su casa,” he said to me, as he draped his arm over my shoulder and led me inside.

Clean and comfortable, the hacienda was far from grand. By size and privacy of style it was more of a rancho, not that anyone in their right mind would turn their nose up at it on that account. Don Hector’s wife, Eugenia, came out from the kitchen and after introductions and greetings we stood around chatting while a delayed dinner was got together.

Standing there in the living room, I noticed a large polished wood and glass display case which contained an exquisite meter long model of a turn of the century steamer. Don Hector saw my interest and walked me over to it.

“This was sent to Don Porfirio, in the days before the internet.” I looked at him quizzically. “Well today,” he explained, “they would simply send some imagenes en PDF, but in those days.....” “

Ah, yes, I see your point... Well it’s quite beautiful.”

"Yes, the shipbuilders in Bremerhaven were hoping to sell it to the Mexican Government. Desgraciadamente, the model never made it to Mexico (City) and Don Porfirio never saw it.”

"The Revolution?"

"Yes."

"Ah."

It didn’t take a shipbuilder to figure out my next question, and so Don Hector went on to explain, how for near 50 years, the model languished in a crate at the warehouse in Veracruz. When as an young engineer he went to work for the port city, his boss was clearing out the warehouse and gave it to him as a wedding present.

“Very nice gift,” I said. Don Hector thought so too.

La comida was ready and we made our way into the comedor. Don Hector sat at the head of the table with his wife at his left. He pulled out a lacquered placard of sorts and read from one of several printed prayers on the board. “... make us mindful to seek sustenance for our souls as we gratefully receive this sustenance for our bodies....” We all crossed ourselves, before passing around the serving dishes of a very comida familiar of white bread, salad, rolled tacos, beans and several varieties of soft drinks.

Our table talk was inconsequential except for a brief political interlude in which the topic of NAFTA came up when I remarked that the tortillas appeared to made of white corn. Most NorteAmericanos, were taught to think of NAFTA as friendly neighbors trading sugar for flour over the fence. To the extent that they think otherwise now, it is in terms of “jobs lost overseas.” What they do not realize, even now, is that NAFTA was simply a protocol for economic conquest, connived at with Quislings in the Mexican Government.

Under its terms, Mexico was prohibited from providing agricultural price supports to its own farmers, whereas no such prohibition applied to the United States. As a result, large corporate agribusiness, simply flooded the Mexican market with cheap industrial yellow corn, underselling Mexican growers who traditionally had grown a high percentage of white corn, which is now virtually non-existent. Also virtually non-existent are thousands of small and medium Mexican farms, whose campesinos, fled economically devastated villages and illegally migrated up north “seeking to take advantage of our way of life.” As the New York Times put it sanctimoniously, NAFTA has “ shaken up Mexican farming — mostly for the better” The Times went on to instruct that “ Mexico needs investment to increase yields and move out of corn and into more lucrative crops” while and the Mexican Government “ will also need to help more rural Mexicans find jobs outside agriculture.”

It was hardly surprising that once the Mexican peasantry was destroyed, large U.S. Agric-Corps would buy up huge tracts of land, and convert them into food factories, worked by Mexican campesinos, at last freed from their feudal bondage. The only difference between these holdings and the villainous pre-revolutionary corporate haciendas is that Cargill, Arthur Daniel Midland and Tyson dispense with manorial facades.

“No,” came the reply, “this corn is grown locally.” “That’s nice to know,” I said before going on to say in a classic Freudian slip, “it’s terrible what el Tratado, has done to los indios”. Eduardo choked and Lara kicked me under the table.

“You oppose the present government?” one of Eduardo’s younger brothers asked, as he fed some pablum into his infant’s mouth. “Of course he does,” Eduardo said emphatically, “if people do not like the present regime es porque aman a la patria.”

Don Hector smiled and made an irrelevant comment, the effect of which was to put the table talk back on track of the ordinary and happy. Two of Don Hector’s other sons popped in with their wives, children and infants, and after everyone standing up and getting introduced and making some smaller talk, popped out again.

As we sat around the table drinking coffee, Don Hector told his wife to bring out the foto albums of their honeymoon. Soon we were looking at browning colour pictures from the early sixties that showed newly weds and friends at some country grove pic nic and then the couple alone, standing next to a wrought iron park bench on the flagstone pathway in front of the cathedral at Aguascalientes, a slim young man in sweater-vest and slacks with his young wife, in a plain cotton dress with a sweater draped over her shoulders and looking new to the role of señora.

I was taken back and taken aback. I recognized the scene as I had been through Aguascalientes in those very years when returning home by bus or train during school vacations.. But I had forgotten how relatively deserted Mexico was in those days. The whole country had only 60 millions, up 20 million from a decade before. Still, the country was a ways from being awash with people and at el tiempo de la comida, and at other times, the streets of provincial cities would be well nigh deserted.

The only other person in the photo was an Indian woman in the near background, making her way up to the cathedral on her knees, as Sr. and Sra. Hinojosa stood smiling and facing away toward the camera. They were not ignoring the woman in any despective way. No doubt they had seen her, the way one sees people praying in church, the way one sees balloon vendors, or couples on a park bench. The woman on her knees was simply going about her prayer-business, and it was no one else’s business to gawk or fuss. I held the photo as long as I politely could. One doesn’t see much of that either... in the new Mexico.

“...we had a wonderful spiritual advisor up there, right my darling?”

“yes,” Doña Eugenia nodded, “he was a wonderful being...”

“... but they wouldn’t let him leave his diocese, even though we begged the bishop...”

“Spiritual advisor...” it was said in the way one would speak about the gardener, or cook. People walked on their knees, people had spiritual guides, while others, apostates and parricides, made revolution; it was all quite usual.

Don Hector led me over to a mueble on which stood a thicket of photos. One by one he showed me pictures of his sons, who stood with their arms around their wives or holding an infant; all except for one young who stood alone by some flowers in a garden dressed in a brown Franciscan habit... "Does he continue in his vocation?" I asked. “No, he left. He wanted to get married.” Then Don Hector added, “I don’t ask about my sons’ lives. Solo quiero que sean felices and that they know that whenever they want, for whatever reason, they can come to me.”

At that point, Eduardo came over, and said, “Let me show your around.” We walked outside and he started showing me the grounds, his stables, his collections of bridles, the orchards, and a big dry pond. “It was wonderful, when it was filled with water,” he said, “we used to eat Sunday lunch out here, and we kids swung from a rope from that tree over there..”

“What happened?” I asked “Los campesinos needed the mountain run off for their fields.” he said this with resignation but without bitterness. It was inconceivable to deprive people of water they needed to survive. So that was that; everything passes.

With or with-out a pond, it was a very beautiful spot, and I told Eduardo that he was lucky. He knew it. Still, I asked, had he ever travelled abroad? He replied, somewhat off-handedly, that perhaps someday he would go to Europe. He would like to visit the Louvre and the Prado. Had he ever thought of going to the United States, I asked. “Para que?” Came the terse reply, “For what?” My mind ran through a quick stack of postcards: the Empire State, Maine fishing village, Grand Tetons, Golden Gate. He waited until he could see by my look that I had answered the question for him, whereupon he tacked on the inevitable conclusion: "No me tiene ningun interés."

Nor apparently for anyone else I was meeting. It’s not that they are unawares of the United States... the din from north of the border is inescapable. It’s rather that, at best, they think the U.S. is tiresome.

A part of me wanted, to say that the United States is not all Hollywood trash, bad manners, rapacious exploitation, and neocon monsters; that interesting things are being done and there are good people here too. But the look in their eyes answers, “So what?” And yes, “So what?” -- It’s not as if there aren’t good and interesting people elsewhere. In fact, at all times, under all regimes, there have been good people doing interesting things. Why should the U.S. think that its “good and interesting people” make it exceptional or provide a saving exception? The fact is that for the past 50 years the U.S. has brought depredation and destruction the world over. People in the U.S. are oblivious to this precisely because we have benefitted from this program of plunder. Not elsewhere. So, there are good people in the U.S. too. So what? People shrug and go about their business.

Of course not all Mexicans feel this way. Especially among the middle and upper middle classes in Mexico City there are large segments of people whose habits and expectations in life are entirely americanized. And of course, there are millions who have been sucked up into le standard by those disgorging cloacas of globalized consumer culture. All this is as true in Mexico as it is in China, France or Argentina. But in the provinces and even more in the pueblos ... it is otherwise. They are not anti-American... it is more lethally indifferent than that.

Many of these campesinos are the same people I meet in the United States. “So, how do you like it here,” I ask. “Pues ya sabe...no?” Comes the defeasing reply. They don’t have to explain. They don’t like the “here” en el norte They think it’s cold, unfeeling, uptight, ungracious, un-everything. So why are they here? “Pues, ya sabe ...no?” They don’t have to explain that either. Life in Mexico, loved as it is, is “muy dificil” if not outright impossible and downright pinche

But not for the Hinojosas. “Yes,” I replied to Eduardo. “why leave at all?” Just then a herd of sheep came barrelling down upon us.

It finally came time for us to take our leave. Back at the doorway, Don Hector put his arm around my shoulder and shook my hand. It had been, a pleasure; aqui tiene su casa; come back whenever you wish. I told him he had a lovely house, that I would make it a point to come back soon. “Not too soon,” he laughed

After hugging Lara, and making arrangements to “conectar” again in the coming week. Eduardo walked us to the truck for the bump back down to San Pablo. As we made our way through the darkened car-paths and alleys, I thought of Don Hector’s amiable greeting, his boat, his honeymoon pictures, his children, his placard with table prayers and his “... spiritual advisor...” “What are they, I wondered... Opus? Legionarios de Cristo? “ It didn’t matter. Don Hector had welcomed me to his ranch, let me know what he believed, showed me the fruits of his life and told me he was happy.

Next morning, I was up at the crack of dawn. Lara drove me to the bus station at San Martín for the trip back over the mountain passes into the Valley of Mexico. The sun was bright and the sky was clear. There were as yet no cars on the road and the countryside was bathed in Sunday morning tranquility as we sped past chocolate coloured fields, small villages, church spires with fading paper pennants hanging from the bell-tower, mounds of village garbage being scavenged by dogs and, then, deep phalanxes of pine trees pointing upward at 9000 feet.

How many times I have travelled this mountain road between the two great valleys of the Mexican altiplano, joining the short span of my life to a train voyagers through centuries past. They used to call it El Paso de Cortez. but even before him it was journeyed by Aztec warriors and, before them by, merchant traders from Teotihuacan heading south with obsidian for jade. As we sped down the maguey covered slopes into Mexico City, in the emollient morning sun, I was filled with a rooted and abiding sense of familiarity

It being Sunday, the air in Mexico City was breathable. Being early, there was little traffic, and from the window of the bus, I could see that the el gobierno had planted playgrounds, trees and parks along either side of the road. Early morning joggers and exercisers were out doing their motions. I was glad at least that through the interminable stretches of barrio on either side, there was at least this scrubby green belt people could use, early enough, to get out in the still fresh air.

Back at TAPO, I dragged my rolling duffel over to the dispatch cab booth. Sitio cabs are supposed to be safer than free roaming street cabs, although a modicum of sense would alert one to the dubiousness of this proposition in a country where the police themselves have been caught in theft, drug and, now, kidnap rings. Still, a hope and prayer seemed better than a prayer alone.

The access to the airport is always under construction and, as the cab wound its way through unfamiliar streets, I wondered if there was anything I could say that would not disclose that I was completely lost and totally at his mercy. “Very sunny, morning, eh?” “Si señor, hace mucho sol” he replied non-commitally. At last, some hangars appeared in view and I relaxed, tipping him handsomely as he unloaded my bags.

Mexico was never this way. This fear hangs over the city like a moral smog far worse than the 75 tons of dessicated feces that supposedly float about in the air. No one cared all that much when it was only the filthy rich and the filthy politicians who had to run about with guarda-espaladas, but as society becomes more and more economically polarized anyone above zero can be considered “filthy rich” by those who have nothing. With typical ingenuity some bands engage in “virtual kidnapping” -- a kind of blackmail based on a telephone call which pretends to have kidnapped a loved one whose personal data have been stolen and whose habits were previously observed. I doubt people will be able to put up with it much longer.

I had worried that, getting struck in some horrible traffic or highway snafu, I would miss my plane; but, as things turned out, I had arrived four hours early and thus had plenty of time to sit around and contemplate the brutal surroundings of the newly remodelled airport.

Thinking to have a good breakfast before a long day, I got a table at a chain restaurant called FLAPS, and ordered the “specialty of the day” -- a ranch style steak breakfast. What was special about it was that the steak was quite rotten. Equally special was the manager’s refusal to admit it. I was annoyed and disgusted but not surprised. It has always been the case -- notwithstanding the Department of Public Health -- that the worst places to eat at in Mexico are not the “dirty” open air street stands but the “tourist safe” eateries like Sanborns, Dennys, and now Flaps.

Leaving the steak and no tip on the table, I decided to get security over with once and for all, and went to lie back in one of the waiting rooms where I closed my eyes and let my mind drift back to the plains and slopes of Puebla and to how far Lara had come, in the six years, since she first inherited the property. I was glad she had opted not to turn San Pablo into a spa for the pampered.

“They are always, reminding me of my mother,” she had said, “tu mamá fue tan buenísma persona...” I could hear it in my mind. “Ah, la señora Irma, was such a fine person. When she found out that the children in the school had no books, she took it upon herself to speak to the Governor himself...” The obvious and necessary response to such “recollections” would be to ask if the books were still in use. “Ayyy, señora, pues fijase que.....” So perhaps it was the villagers’ memory of my cousin’s mother that had pushed her along. In all events and alongside the ongoing struggle to rehabilitate San Pablo Lara had become, as she said, “del pueblo”.

The call for my flight sounded over the loudspeaker and I was soon enough being propelled antiseptically through the skies back to the United States.Upon landing we lost ourselves in the jumble of baggage carousels and immigration lines, snaking through the maze of ropes. As I stood in line inching along, I noticed the brushed steel logo of Homeland Security lit tastefully and sharply by recessed lighting. Empires are all equally ostentatious. I also noticed small black spheres discretely dispersed along the moldings. Thinking of Winston, I blanded my mind of any grousing thoughts.

At last my turn came. I stepped up from the yellow line to the immigration counter and handed the ICE officer my passport.

“Looks like you’ve had a long day,” he said. as he pecked the keyboard
“Actually longer, I started at six by bus.”
“Are you bringing anything back? he asked as he looked at the screen
“Nah, just a couple of nic nacs”

He handed me back my passport

“Well...welcome home.”
“Thanks; it’s good to be back.”


©WCG, 2008