Merida. Where the Ugly Americans Aren’t American

We’re in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. We’re meeting all sorts of people here. There’s the usual steady diet of locals that wander in and out of our lives abruptly. Uber drivers and waiters and cleaning women and maintenance men and so forth. But tourist interactions are a terrible way to judge a foreign locale, and to be judged. Of course the person at the desk in the hotel is friendly to you. You’re paying them to be friendly to you.

This has led, in our life, to people we know back in the states telling us we’d certainly be killed in Mexico within minutes of stepping off the plane, because they don’t know any Mexican concierges. They watch Chicken Noodle News, and believe what they hear. The same people go on vacations in places like the Dominican Republic, and tell you how safe it is, and how friendly all the people are (at the front desk). We were cautioned by one well-meaning group that Mexico was invariably lethal. They’re in Sarasota Florida. I looked it up. Sarasota’s violent crime rate is 14-times higher than Merida’s. That information would just clonk off their foreheads and fall on the pavement if I supplied it to them, so I don’t.

We were invited to a get-together at a privada last night. A privada is a gated community. We’d never been to one. The local environs of the address were pretty rough and tumble compared to the city center where we are staying. Lotsa rubble. The privada itself consisted of a cul de sac with about a dozen brand new, two-bedroom, masonry homes. They’re joined together in long rows. These are not particularly popular with expats. For the most part, Mexicans buy them to get out of the noise of the main part of the city, and to get better plumbing. A privada doesn’t appeal to my wife and I, but we do see the appeal. And it’s not an Omega Man situation here. We stood out on the curb waiting for our ride home in the evening without a hint of Danger, Will Robinson. It’s just not as upscale outside the walls as it is inside.

The assembled guests, besides us, were a Syrian-born long time Houstonian who was educated in France. A Mexican woman who married him. An American from Rochester, New York, who rides all over the city on his bicycle. A young goth fellow from Connecticut, a veritable Richmond from the IT crowd. A Canadian fellow who also lives in the privada part of the year. Another, younger Mexican woman, who professes to know no English, but smiles when you say something funny, so might be fibbing un poco. And the host, a Meridiano who also lived in Houston, but has returned to his roots here. He made dinner for us, a traditional Mexican dish called… lasagna? Well, he heard my wife say she was Italian, so that’s what he made. Man, people are pleasant here.

Earlier in the day, we went to the Merida English Library. It’s a fave gathering spot for expats, mostly Canadians. They had a bazaar going on, so 90 percent of the people there were straight up local Mexicans selling paintings, jewelry, foodstuffs, and clothing. The entertainment was a flute player, an announcement that filled me with dread. I pictures some pseudo-Peruvian Paul Simon schtick, I’d rather be a hammer than a nail…

Wrong again, poindexter. He looked Cuban, and played jazz standards like a demon, if demons favor smiles and Satin Doll covers. Really enjoyable.

At any rate, we talked to a pretty large cross section of Merida inmates in a single day. The topic of ugly Americans came up fairly often, and it was interesting that none of the ugly Americans mentioned were Americans.

A Canadian woman was mentioned a lot. She made the news (TikTok version) by purchasing a house on a godforsaken stretch of beach and then yelling at, and eventually throwing eggs at, a Mexican family who camped on said beach. She said (screamed) that she owned it. The Mexican family, who know that in Mexico it’s illegal for anyone to own a beach, or to keep you from using it, tried to explain. Of course the Canadian woman speaks no Spanish. Why would she learn that, just because she moved here permanently?

The next, really ugly American was from Spain. He’s some sort of journalist, although nowadays what does that mean? I guess I am too. It’s the perfect business card for a drunken layabout like PJ O’Rourke, or Hemingway, or me, I guess. Anyway, he’s lived here a long time, but hasn’t figured out the Mexico has zoning by roulette wheel, and Mexicans are generally happy and occasionally loud. He was pissed off that the restaurant next door to him celebrated open hours in the morning with the usual mariachi disco torch song vibe they favor. He went next door, confronted what I’m supposed to call a young lady, but really was nothing but a girl, and yelled at her, threatened her, frightened her more than a little, and knocked over and broke some of the stuff on the tables. I guess he showed her.

Knock knock. Who’s there? Angry mob. Angry mob who? No joke, just angry mob. Luckily for our (z)hero, they didn’t lynch him. They probably didn’t have time, because when the inevitable video of his behavior hit the social media circuit, seventeen kinds of police showed up at his door to cart him off to the hoosegow.

He went to jail. Mexican jail. No bail jail. I have it on good authority you do not want to go to Mexican no-bail jail. He tried explaining that he was a good feminist, and wrote all sorts of articles about women’s rights. You know, women except the ones right in front of him. Theoretical women always get treated correctly by feminist men, I have observed. It’s the real ones that get threatened.

After a couple of what I’m sure were scintillating, educational weeks in the pokey, his Mexican lawyer, if not the man himself, figured out that by being very, very sorry, and making what must be a very, very large settlement with the girl and the restaurant owner, he could at least get out on parole. He’s still going to go in front of a judge, and I doubt it’s going to be a frolic for him. All over a radio.

We were here a year ago, and I seem to recall the same sort of situation happened then, too. IIRC, a Canadian woman who owned a shop got in a big beef with a little girl over the restaurant next door crowding her sidewalk or some similar infinitesimal contretemps. She pitched a similar fit. I can’t find the story to verify the details, but I believe the authorities advised her by her collar that she might be happier in Canada, and a Police Line Do Not Cross kinda sign was stretched over her business the next day.

The third ugly American is German. We’ve met rather a lot of Germans here. Way, way more than Americans. I gather this is a popular spot to escape North Sea winters and waiting to the end of the sentence to encounter a verb. So one spot tourists like to visit is nearby Chichen Itza, and its magnificent pyramid, El Castilo.

Most people leave it at that, but not our German freund. He decided he wanted to run up El Castilo, and he didn’t have the sense to try it at midnight during a slow week. He was booed all the way up, and a security guard had to chase him up there. When he came down, he was lucky there were very serious police waiting for him, because the mob of people waiting for him might have pulled him limb from limb. I hope his little bit of intertunnel fame was worth it, because the fine can be $15,000 (not pesos), and maybe jail time if you break something.

So it appears that my wife and I are the ugliest Americans in town, and she isn’t the least bit ugly, so the mantle falls to me alone. I’m no good at yelling at anyone, and I can at least ask nicely for a table for two ugly Americans, in barbarous Spanish, so I’m not sure exactly how to ruin our national reputation while we’re here. I guess the American and Mexican presidents will have to pick up the slack, and argue like a recently divorced couple over the name of the Gulf of Meximerica. We’re not interested.