A Walk in the Park

We’re in Merida, Mexico, in a barrio called Santa Lucia. It’s more or less smack dab in the middle of the city. Well, a little east of the smack dab. The actual smack dab is a big square called the zocalo, or the Parque de Independencia, or the Plaza Grande, depending on who you ask. My advice is to ask no one nothing in the Plaza Grande, or you’ll have to endure a fifteen minute peroration in heavily accented English about buying a Panama hat. The zocalo is very big, and greener than we remember it from a year ago. The city sure is making an effort. There are Catholic churches all over the place, some so close they are almost touching each other, but the biggest, oldest, cathedral fronts the big square: Catedral de San Ildefonso.

I went to Catholic school as a child, but I don’t remember a St. Ildefonso. When called on topics like that, I often resort to straight fibbing. “Oh sure, we called him St. Fonzi back in the day. Solid saint. Holy bigly. The patron saint of oil refineries, I think, or maybe tube socks.” Never show fear, and you’ll get away with it.

It’s called the oldest cathedral in North or South or Central America, which is technically correct, I guess (the best kind of correct, I hear). It was finished by 1598. But they’re cheating a little. There was one in Cuba, first, I believe, but I gather an island doesn’t count for as much in North or South America as regular old land. If you can fish in every direction from it, it’s considered too short to get on the continental rides. Even Rhode Island doesn’t count for much in the scheme of things, although it’s just a name, but Providence smiles on it anyway (The management cannot vouch for that pun, and disavows any knowledge of its creation).

But the the cathedral is built on, and with, a demolished Mayan pyramid of some sort. You can see how old the blocks in the walls look. Very. Many modern historians and various other kvetchers excoriate the Jesuits and Dominicans and other orders for eradicating a lot of the existing structures and local flavuh when they showed up swinging their thuribles and clonking holdouts on the noggin with their croziers. It’s useful to remember the lighthearted hijinks the natives favored before Spanish was spoken. They had a kind of jolly game show that involved cutting out hearts and showing them to the contestants for as long as they lasted on top of those pyramids. So I tend to cut the friars some slack, although I’m still a little peeved about a B+ I got in History once. Totally should have been an A-. We’re certainly not barbarians like that any more. For instance, only the IRS is allowed to cut your heart out and show it to you nowadays. We’ve come a long way.

Never mind all that. I think the original inhabitants were pretty confused in general. The original, pre-Columbian name of the city, was T’ho’. So they had at least one thing in common with our current batch of intertunnel spellers. They liked shotgunning apostrophes into words willy-nilly. But the confusion didn’t stop there. The translation of the name means roughly: place of the hills, or the place of the five hills. Uh huh. I’ve walked all over this town, and it’s hard to find something to stub your toe on, never mind walk up and down. The entire peninsula is as flat as a countertop. It’s no wonder they built pyramids. It’s about the only way I can figure they could get their ankles up out of the water every time it rained.

The zocalo is where the city puts “The Letters.” Mexico has a charming tradition of putting big, colorful letters in prominent public places to tell you where you are, in case you have dementia, or are American, which I gather they feel are similar conditions.

At any rate, it’s the place where tourists get their picture took, as we used to say in the vernacular. It’s a great way to identify yourself and where you are to your folks back home. It’s also a handy way to identify yourself as a tourist, so the locals can offer to take a picture of you and your sweetie with your cellphone, instead of one at a time. And, you know, for them to launch into a fifteen minute oration about the history, design, construction, sales, and marketing methods for Panama hats.

I’ve tried various approaches to interrupting these outbursts, to no avail. I’ve explained that I’m allergic to hennequen fibers, a magnificent lie that I worked on like a fourth-grade essay. No dice. I tried telling them my hat size, which qualifies me to wear a shimmering blue smock and needle Captain Pike on the original Star Trek. No effect. “Eet stretches, senor!” I said, “No neccesito, gracias,” until my tongue got sunburned. No help there. But finally I hit on the perfect approach. When they start in, I hit them with, “Können Sie mir bitte helfen?“, followed up by, “Können Sie ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen?”

Works like a charm. They flee like a European army.