Calling Out Around the World, Are You Ready for a Brand New Beat?

[If you just dropped in, I’ve been hounding the internet with my recollections of a recent trip to Mérida, Mexico. Hey, look, something is finally happening!]

Well, hardly a brand new beat, but it was to me. They dance in the streets in Mérida.

That video is from 7 years ago, but I assure you there’s still doing this every week in the street hard by the Zocalo, the big park in front of the very big cathedral in the heart of Mérida. Sorry, I couldn’t get you a fresh video, but I couldn’t get near the action. See? Packed:

I lost my wife in the crowd there. That was in no way a worry. There is, for all intents and purposes, no crime in Mérida. It’s a profoundly conservative place. The governor was asked once if he could cut the police budget because crime was so low, so he gave the police a raise instead, and hired more. He remarked that the number of arrests is a poor metric for judging the performance of the  police. If there’s no bad hombres left to arrest, the police are actually doing their jobs.

The dancers in the video are wearing traditional garb. You actually see women out and about from time to time wearing some approximation of that dress. Of course young girls wear a very brief version of it, with less floral acreage, and look quite fetching in it.

In the US, this sort of thing would be an anachronism, and slowly die out for want of interest. I’m not Methuselan, or anything, but I remember when every high school had a marching band, wore uniforms, and marched in parades while blaring Sousa marches. Try and find one now. In Mérida, this tradition isn’t going anywhere. While we made our way through the big park, we passed darling little girls wearing miniature versions of the floral white outfits, with their hair and makeup done up like you see in the video. I didn’t notice any of them dancing, so I assume they’re like guys who wear black Megadeth t-shirts to Megadeth shows. But different, of course. They aspire to this, from an early age. Wonderful.

They do a kind of Maypole thing at around 19:00 in the video. We didn’t see that. Around 22:00 they start dancing with cervezas on their heads, and around 24:00, they dispense with smaller orders and dance with the whole drink tray balanced on their head. Marvelous.

Just in case you think the whole thing is a put-up job strictly for tourists and squares, I can testify that regular people dance in the street in Mérida, too. We went to the Super Aki one evening, hard by Santiago Park in the Barrio Santiago where we were living. Super Aki is a small supermarket, across the calle from the park. During the day, the market was fairly staid, but we went in there later in the evening, and it was a scene, man. They had some kind of wild Mexican disco blasting over the speakers in the ceiling, and the help was boogieing around a bit while mopping the floor. It was a stone groove, my man.

We stumbled out into the hot evening air (it was 104 during the day, ratcheted back to the high 80s at night). Right across the street, in the sweet little park, a twenty+ piece band was holding court, and the whole neighborhood was dancing in front of them:

The band is in the powder blue shirts in the background there. They were excellent, and they had a jackhammer MC who introduced each number, and goaded the crown to join in, because all MCs like to tell audiences to do what they’re already doing. It’s easier than convincing them to do something they’re not.

The abuelas sat at the periphery and watched and clapped and smiled at us. Occasionally their grandchildren would haul them out of their chairs and dance with them, including that feisty dama in the foreground there.

They do it all the time, and in different parks around the city on different nights. Here’s our little Santiago park again:

My wife and I stood and watched for a long time, grinning the same grin you get when two fifty-dollar bills get stuck together and counted as one at the bank. We were tired from a day of hoofing it around the city, exhausted from trying to shop in another language to disco music, and lugging big sacks of groceries back to our casa. But we paused under one of those big trees at the darkened corner behind the band, put down our bags, and I turned her around to a Cumbia.

It doesn’t matter what you wear
Just as long as you are there
So come on, every guy, grab a girl
Everywhere around the world

[To be continued, if you can stand it. Thanks for reading and commenting, recommending this site to others, buying my book, and contributing to our tip jar, which, ahem, is getting lonesome lately. It is greatly appreciated]