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.

Saturday Trash Day

I’m an odd person. You could be forgiven if you said I was defective. Please note that the previous sentence was written using passive voice. If you call me defective in plain, Anglo Saxon declarative sentences, well, it’s hard to pick up your teeth with a broken arm, fella. I know, I’ve had to do it.

Anyway, enough about hockey. I don’t act or think exactly like most other people do. It’s not obvious that I don’t, but I don’t. I’m a Donald Sutherland pod person. I look about the same, but then I get on WordPress and hiss and point at you.

I’ve said it many times here, but it’s not my fault I notice things. You can list all my other faults if you like, and I won’t take umbrage. You know, if you have ten or twelve years and can type fast. I have taken umbrage in my past life, but I’ve always put it back on the shelf before the interpersonal store detective collared me.

So here I am in Merida, Mexico. I know I’m supposed to do tourist things. I do, occasionally. But my heart’s not generally in it. I’m not going to make YorubaTube videos depicting me and my wife shoveling food into our faces. The food’s good here — way better than good, it’s excellent, superb. Case closed.

But back in the cobwebbed recesses of snakepit I call a mind, stuff is moiling all the time. I’m curious about things no other extranjeros ever ask about, or include in their videos and search-engine-optimized drivel. I like to go to different places, like, say, Mexico, and see how everything works there. I don’t want to go to fourteen tourist trap restaurants and film myself eating. I want to know where the trash goes.

Honestly, I do. These are the sorts of questions that fascinate me.

Q: Where does the water in the taps come from? A: Not sure. Occasionally, it doesn’t.

Q: Where does the, um, processed food in the toilet go when I flush? A: No one knows. And occasionally it doesn’t. Then you have to move.

Q: Where did the iguana in my courtyard go? A: Wherever he wants. Who’s going to stop him?

Q: How are they building houses in 100F heat with nothing but a bucket of trowels? A: They’re Mexican

Q: Hey, landlord, what do we do with our trash? A: [laughter] You just put it outside on the sidewalk after 4 PM. It will not be there tomorrow morning.

Whoah, wait a minute there. This is a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, in a Hefty steel sack. Are there trash fairies? [please, no cheap jokes about the drag bar over the back wall] Do the wandering iguanas eat it all while we slumber? What gives?

So we’ve been doing it for three weeks now. The trash fairies come, but we never hear them, or see them, or meet anyone who can tell us exactly how it works. But last night, wonder of wonders, we solved the mystery that would make Agatha Christie blush, and hold her nose. We saw the trash fairies. Up close. Personal.

My wife and  I are adapting to the clime. It’s as hot as a demon’s George Foreman grill every day. Smarter people than us (every Mexican) stay in all day and wait for the relative cool of the evening to wander about. I’m not including working people in this. They bustle early and late, and many ride to work on buses without air conditioning. I’d salute them, but that would reveal the giant sweat stain under my arm.

So the sun was setting. The narrow streets lined with painstakingly assembled skipping stone and mortar houses made miniature canyons to shade us from its last rays. Buses and little cars and scooters went rollicking down the calles, set free from the heavier traffic of the workday world. Young couples (and us) strolled hand in hand on the way to a dinner date, or a walk in the park in the moderated air of the evening.

It was during this leisurely shamble down the skinny sidewalks that we spotted a veritable greyhound of a man. He went by us on a dead run. I’ve never seen anyone run that fast in a city unless he was carrying a stolen TV set. But this mustang carried nothing, and he certainly wasn’t dressed for jogging. He had the true workmen’s uniform here: jeans, a T-shirt, a baseball hat on backwards, and battered sneakers. He got to the next intersection before us, and he ran right into the street, and without an instant’s hesitation ran straight through the traffic passing through the intersection. Our hearts were in our mouths. A toreador has nothing on this guy, except a better tailor.

I looked back to see if Jason Bourne was chasing him. No soap there, but way back on the opposite side of the street I saw another of these human whippets. He was blazing down the sidewalk, grabbing bags of trash without slowing down one iota, then running across the street without looking, and throwing all the bags on the west side of the street.

Another of these mocha Hermes appeared, and then another. I thought to myself that if Mexicans don’t win every medal at the Olympics, it’s only for a lack of interest. Then I spotted it. The trash truck.

It was completely ordinary. Not a fairy coach, or some mechanized monster that picks up your recycling bin and shakes it all over the street on the opposite side of the truck. Just a big cab with a big metal enclosure and a big crusher on the back hopper.

And that truck didn’t stop to pick up trash. It didn’t slow down to pick up trash. There were half a dozen human barracudas hanging off that truck, and taking turns sprinting down the street, grabbing everything, and hurling it into the back, and running the compactor while they rolled. They went down that street like Patton through France. And they do the whole city, a million people’s worth of trash, just like that. I assume there’s more than one trash truck. But I can’t testify to it, because hand to God these guys might be capable of doing it alone. And not one man-jack of them looked the slightest bit winded.

So I can die happy. I know where the trash in Merida goes when I put it outside in the evening.

Hey, now. Where does the trash truck go to get rid of the trash? This is going to keep me up at night until I find out.

Scenes From an Exhibition-ist

Well, I’ve often remarked that the greatest service an internaut can provide is to simply wander around where you are, and point a camera and your attention at what you see.

That’s actually the stated purpose of the news media. They’re supposed to go to dangerous or disreputable or otherwise notable places that you don’t have the time or the inclination or the ammo to visit, then inform you about what’s going on there. They utterly refuse to do this. Everything on the news is either an editorial or an infomercial. Usually both. The intertunnel is even worse than the old-fashioned media. Everyone just wants to read the newspaper harder than you, and tell you what it said, right after they tell you that everything in the newspaper is a lie. If I wanted someone to read the newspaper to me, I’d enter a nursing home rather early in life. No thanks.

So I’ll take my own advice and wander a bit and take a snapshot of this and that in the neighborhood I’m in, Santa Lucia in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. And nearby environs. Here’s one that caught us off-guard. We went the opposite way around the block one time, just for shiggles, and encountered this front door. Holy cow. I’m a bad photographer. It was even more wonderfuller than my snapshot shows it:

Merida isn’t very green for a city plopped in a jungle. It’s what’s often called a dry jungle. The vegetation can be kind of sparse-looking compared to your typical impression of a jungle. It perks up a lot in the summer when it rains a lot, but this time of year, it basically never rains. There are essentially no surface bodies of water, or rivers. Because of the geologic makeup of the place, all the water flows underground. Occasionally, holes open up to underground reservoirs called cenotes. People swim in them, and generally like to hang around in them for their cool, shaded, mysterious vibe.

Here’s a “colonial” house that’s being renovated. I’ll bet it will be spiffy when it’s done. Great location. It’s as hot as Beelzebub’s curling iron in Merida, even though it’s not the hot season yet. It was about 95F when I took this picture. If you look closely, you can see a guy applying a coating to the roof. I don’t know how he could stand it, but he did:

The next one’s still colonial, but more clasico, and restored to a fare-thee-well. It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that all these houses are basically built the same way. The walls are built of rubble set in mortar. Most all the details are molded into the parge layer that hides the stones. In many cases, the rough stone texture is left visible. Sometimes inside, sometimes on outside walls. They call this exposed stone texture chukum. Originally, chukum referred to the resin they sealed the walls and ceilings with, but now it means rough or smooth-ish exposed stone wall.

This one is further downtown…

[Hold on. There’s a gang of giant green and yellow parrots perched in the neighbor’s tree, the one that has blooms on it that look exactly like shuttlecocks, and they’re making more noise than a school board meeting when they run out of money. A cat is yowling, which is making the neighbor’s dogs go into convulsions. Someone’s beeping a horn to get into the auto body shop over the wall. The gay bar over the other wall is in remission, however. I’m going outside for a minute to enjoy it all]

Whew. Back again. So, Mexico has been visited and developed and influenced (pillaged) by a long list of European polities. But that just means you can see French things, and kinda German stuff, Italian goings-on, and of course beaucoup Spanish things. This place further towards the centro might be all those things in a mishmash:

RE: The bicycles. Every Sunday, the city closes one side of the beautiful Paseo Montejo, and many appurtenant streets, and everyone cycles on them. They pedal all sorts of contrivances, not just bikes. Something like surreys with the fringe on top, trikes, scooters, rollerblades, and anything that produces locomotion without gasolina. It’s sweet.

When you’re learning Mexican Spanish from Pimsleur tapes, they don’t call it understanding espanol. They say entiendo castellano. Castilian. This part of Mexico was settled by Castilian Spain, and a lot of the names are the same as in that neck of Iberia. For instance, there’s a Merida, and a Valladolid (a nearby town, halfway to Cancun) in Castile, and various other names around here that sound like Ferdinand and Isabella picked them out of their crown.

But before there was an organized Castile, there was the Moops. There’s plenty of Moopish looking stuff in Merida, like this one:

We’ve already featured a sorta Moopish fantasia that’s down the block from our casa:

I asked around about this place. I figured it was some sort of Shriner’s clubhouse or something, but anyone who would at least lie to me about its provenance said nope, it’s just some guy’s house. Some guy, indeed.

A five or ten minute walk from our place, you’ll find the corredor gastronomico. It’s a big long strip of restaurants, nightspots, and spiffy homes that they just completed a year or so ago. The street is lined with bollards and wide sidewalks, to keep the cars from discommoding the pedestrians and ruining their undercarriages with gringos unaccustomed to Mexican driving.

This neighborhood is in a never-never land between barrios. I think it’s still Santa Lucia. There are a lot of nice clothing stores in this area, and it’s gotten the same concrete brick street, wide sidewalk, and bollard treatment. The cones are out because they closed this street, too, for biking and just plain staggering about, like we did.

Santa Lucia runs into Santa Ana seamlessly. Please note that Santa Ana only has one N in Ana. This is not to be confused with the fellow named Santa Anna who made a hobby of pestering Texicans. The church is plainer than most in town. We went to the church on Ash Wednesday, and not only couldn’t you get into the building, you couldn’t get near it. We went the following Sunday, and sat through a Mass. El corpo y sangre de Cristo sounded close enough to Latin to follow along.

There was a small, pleasant commotion at the end of the service. Our castellano, er, espanol was too sketchy to understand what was happening before it was over. They had invited anyone from far away (extranjeros) to come up and be blessed by the padre in a gang.

I’m not sure after the last forty years or so of my behavior I should risk being sprinkled with holy water, so maybe it was all for the best.