It’s Hard To Become a Mexican Resident, Part 1

Please note I said “resident.” I’m not talking about becoming a Mexican citizen, because that’s right up there with alien abduction and chupacabra ranching for practicality and likelihood. A married couple like us could, in theory, get divorced, go to Mexico, find two deranged myopic hard-of-hearing Mexicans and marry them, and thereby technically both become Mexican citizens. But unlike the US, if Mexico thinks you’re doing it for a dodge, they’ll probably tell you to pound sand anyway. It’s easier to explain this process if you just accept that you can live in Mexico like a Mexican, but you can’t live in Mexico as a Mexican. This is not ‘nam. There are rules. Boy howdy there are rules.

You can’t start this procedure in Mexico. If you’re a USian, you have to visit the Mexican consulate nearest you in the states. In our case, that was Boston, Massachusetts. That’s two states and a four hour drive away, but rules is rules. You need an appointment. Actually, if you’re a married couple, you need two appointments. The internet (teehee) and the consulate itself will tell you that you either can, or must, make your appointments using their online portal. It doesn’t work, and you can’t.

Hell, you’ll find out after trying to log in to their portal, over and over, that Boston doesn’t even have online scheduling. You can try calling if you don’t mind “Press 1 for Spanish.” Or more to the point, press whatever you like, you’re getting Spanish. They’d prefer (demand) you ask by email. We did, in English and Spanish. The consulate does not even acknowledge that they received it. You’re just supposed to wait, and wonder. After a few weeks, you can email them again. It feels strangely like pushing the elevator button even though it’s already lit, and you and four other people have pushed it already. You are strongly cautioned (by the internet again, teehee) not to get uppity with your followup requests. Just plead a bit. You won’t get an answer to that email, either. You’re instructed it might take up to six weeks to get any sort of reply to anything. And the answer might be two appointments days or weeks apart, months after the reply.

You can try consulate shopping. Wild tales of Vegas consulates passing anyone with a pulse and a few shekels in their pocket are rife on the internet (teehee), for instance. Others have reported luck, good or bad, all over the US map. We looked into going to the Philadelphia consulate, and a couple in Florida, and Houston, because we read that they might be faster than Boston, but we could never schedule an appointment online anywhere. It’s all broken, or we are. And being stranded in a strange city on an open-ended commitment to waiting around wasn’t appetizing. When we begged for appointments in Boston the second time, we lied only a little and told them if they had any cancellations, we’d show up on short notice. American dependability being what it is, they emailed us back with two cancellation slots on the same day a month in the future. God knows what we would have said if they said, “We have one later today.” I can talk faster than a car salesman, but I can’t drive faster than one.

So you’ve got an appointment, What’s required? for openers, you best be a good boy. Been arrested much? Forget moving to Mexico. They’ve got problems of their own, and they’re not interested in importing any more, unless you count me.

You’re going to need money, and I don’t mean toll change. The fee to apply for a residency visa is only $56 per person (in cash, not refundable if you flunk). That’s just the cover charge. There are several ways to demonstrate that you’re not (ever) going to be a burden to the Mexican state, and they all involve various sums you might not have. You might think you’re a rich American, so no sweat, but Mexico doesn’t care about your theoretical money. Equity in your house is theoretical money, for instance, or imaginary if we’re talking about 2009. They’ll also require documentos out the ying yang to prove said sums. For example:

The most common way to get permission to live in Mexico for 1 year is through solvencia económica. The sum required is based on a certain number of days of Mexican minimum wage, which is very minimum indeed, but they want to account for a lot of them in a row. It varies by consulate, and they change it every year, but you’re going to need about $80,000 in the bank to qualify. If you’re married, you’ll have to pay for your spouse, too, but it’s not double. You need somewhere between $2000 and $5000 more.

After you’re done puffing out your chest and sniggering about a paltry sum like eighty large, let me clue you in. Your net worth don’t mean jack shit. It better be in cash, or something close to it, or it doesn’t count. And you don’t get to “explain” anything. It’s “show, don’t tell” south of the border. You have to present 12 straight months of at least that much money on original bank statements. Dip one peso below the required amount for one hour six months in, and your clock starts again. If you’re one of those sexy people who does everything on your phone, including your banking, waving the balances on your Nokia phone at the consulate staff is going to get you precisely nowhere.

We had original bank statements, because we’re the last people on earth that get them mailed to us. We still had to get a credit union officer to personally stamp and sign every month, every page, and then write a cover letter on bank stationery that averred that both my wife and I had unrestricted access to all the funds for the entire 12 months. The look on the bank manager’s face gave me the impression she would have preferred that we rob the bank. It would have been less trouble. And if another month ticks over while you’re waiting for an appointment at the Mexican consulate near you (it will, and it did), you have to go back and get the latest ones stamped and signed, too. And by the way, the consulate wants several copies of every page in addition to the originals, and you better not have a staple in them, or any doodles or highlighting on the originals. When we got our interview, it wasn’t a formality. They looked at every page, and scrutinized every deposit. Got a windfall in there? Best be able to explain it.

[To be continued]

Beelzebub’s Dodge Caravan and Other Discontents

Men need a god. Otherwise they get confused and start worshiping themselves. They climb into a booster seat in the back of Beelzebub’s Dodge Caravan and think they’re driving.

When I was young they taught us history. The nuns patiently trooped through the ages while we followed along closely by staring out the window half the time, and doodling Big Daddy Ed Roth Rat Fink cartoons in our marble notebooks the rest of the hours. Some of it must have seeped into my adolescent corpse somehow. They always started with Mesopotamia, mentioned their balcony gardening skills, hopped the Nile to explain that the pyramids were more than a pile of rocks built by shirtless dudes with two left hands, then dogpaddled the Hellespont to belabor the Greeks for a bit longer than the others. Greece was the first thing they could point to that really looked like our kinda civilization, so they pointed hard. The Parthenon wouldn’t look weird if it was a post office in Poughkeepsie. Abu Simbel would.

We’d hop skip and jump through the ages after that. Romans roaming around Europe, guys who wore HVAC ducts into battle, the Britishers showing up everywhere brandishing the awesome firepower of a swagger stick and Greek and Latin lessons. We’d get about as far as the battle of Yorktown into America’s trail of broken pottery, and then run out of school year before we ran out of history book pages. No matter. You could watch Gunsmoke and The Untouchables reruns to fill in everything from the Civil War to Prohibition, and our uncles would fill us in on dropping bombs on Japanese, or Germans, to taste. As you know, the Fifties never happened, and if it did, which it didn’t, it was all bad, so we didn’t need to look into that any deeper than Fonzie. From then on, we could look out the car window while dad drove and see what was going on for ourselves.

Lingering on the Greeks meant learning their Pantheon of Gods. Babylon wasn’t interesting, really, in that department, so the nuns skipped it. I mean, have you read The Gilgamesh? He dives to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve a head of cabbage or something, if I recall correctly, which I don’t. Then he swims back up and gives it to Gumby, or Pokey, or Spreitel or Chim Chim, I really can’t remember who now, and they live happily ever after, or everyone dies. It’s usually one way or the other with these people. Moving on, the Egyptians were plain weird.

Mount Olympus was more our speed. A toga party in the clouds with recognizable human forms. Wings on your heels are less confusing than a bird’s head on your shoulders. The Olympians were just superhuman humans. They might be the god of water, or thunder, or love, or table tennis or whatever, but they were usually depicted in human form. They weren’t simply abstractions, or concepts. They had agency in our world.

You could go shopping for your own personal deity at the Greek Pantheon Stripmall. One for this, one for that, some covering a bunch of Olympian bases. Officially, there were only twelve of them that had membership cards in the Champagne Room at Olympus. That number is interesting. Keeps popping up all over the place, from Norsemen to apostles. We didn’t need as many Marvel comics as the generations that came after us because we still had Greek and Roman legends to amuse ourselves.

Of course, nuns were involved, so we had the tale of the Christ as a standalone subject. The saints stood in for the various gods they replaced when you needed a leg up with something. Praying to a unitary god for everything can seem futile. He’s got a lot on his plate, and is usually busy elsewhere. If you were drilling holes in west Texas, I imagine there’s a patron saint of oil refineries or something that might have more time to take your call than the head honcho.

I’m on perfectly good terms with the Big Guy. I don’t need a refresher on the catechism or anything, although it sounds like the pope could use one. I’m not talking about needing THE God now. But I do need A god in my life. Gods didn’t used to be all powerful and remote. They drifted in and out of humanity, and meddled. This led to amusing Golden Fleece All-Inclusive Travel brochures and so forth. That’s the type of god I’m currently looking for. A dread god that I can stand up to.

This was perfectly normal back in the mists of time when Demosthenes was still annoying his neighbors in the agora, and Nancy Pelosi was still in grammar school. You might worship gods, but you were allowed do more than thank them or shake your tiny fist at them. You could measure yourself against them. You’re not a passive worshipper. You’re an active participant in a system where the gods set limits, and the meaning of your life is how well you confront those limits. If you beat the gods at their own game, sometimes they sorta adopted you, and give you a day pass to Olympus, or a peek at Hera’s ankle or something. Other times, they chain you to a rock, and you get your liver plucked out daily. It’s all in good fun, either way.

A while back, I moved my family to the edge of the map in To-Hell-And-Gone Maine, to shake my tiny fist at Boreas, and test myself against him. Boreas was the Greek god of the north wind. He brought winter, arctic air, and sixteen inches of partly cloudy you had to shovel every couple of days. When we first lived in Maine, the thermometer touched 22-below zero. We didn’t have central heat. Around midnight that night, I went out the front door and stood in the middle of the street, with moonlight my only companion. I looked at the desultory column of smoke rising from my chimney, and dared Boreas to kick me again, harder. Then I realized I was standing in the middle of the street at midnight in the winter and this might cause comment down at the local grange hall, if there had been someone there to witness it, even though there wasn’t, because no one does anything like that in Maine very often and lives to procreate. Boreas was a worthy adversary, but we beat him. We found an abandoned house without a heating system, and left it with air conditioning and a pile of wampum in our pocket. Take that, Boreas.

So I was in the market for a new god so I could murmur, “You’re not so tough” under my breath after he kicked sand in my face and walked away. I thought, why not go the other way? Who’s the sun god?

Oh, right. Apollo. We got all bollixed up when we learned the Roman Pantheon after the Greek. Honestly, can you remember which was which between Ares and Mars? They mostly had the same portfolios, so it didn’t matter much. The only name shared by both pantheons was Apollo, the god of the sun, among a lot of other things. Apparently he fit the bill for Mediterranean vibe, no matter whether you were a hoplite or a legionary.

There’s a problem. Apollo is a bit, er, flouncy.

I’m getting on in years and can’t be seen using my old man strength to beat up stringy teenaged looking dudes like Apollo. Naked in sandals is a good look for Playboy models, but it doesn’t fill out the divine male wardrobe very well. I knew I needed to go shopping for a harder dude than Apollo. After all, I just finished off Boreas, and look at him:

See, that’s what I’m talking about. A worthy opponent. He’s got wings, and unlike Apollo, he can grow a righteous beard. He’s kidnapping chicks and taking them north, just like I did. Apollo is minor league stuff. I need a worthier opponent.

We’ll have to shop around more. Hey, how about the Aztec Sun God Tonatiuh:

This is more like it. The Simpsons style drawings are kinda hard to decipher, but he looks fairly formidable compared to Apollo. What’s his story?

The Aztec sun god Tonatiuh was seen as the active force that drives the sun across the sky, and in the Aztec view, he required constant nourishment through human sacrifice to maintain his strength and ensure that the sun would continue to rise each day. As the ruler of the Fifth Sun, Tonatiuh embodied the idea that the universe depended on a reciprocal relationship between gods and humans, where people had to offer their blood in return for the gods’ self-sacrifice that created the world. Without these offerings, Tonatiuh would weaken, threatening the movement of the sun and the survival of the cosmos itself.

Hmm. Might have bitten off more than I can chew, there. Let’s try the Mayan version of a sun god, Kinich Ahau:

Not exactly Cary Grant, but he’s doesn’t have one of those heads with an extra set of teeth that pop out when they’re menacing Sigourney Weaver or anything. What’s his story?

Kinich Ahau was the Maya sun god associated with daylight, warmth, and the life-giving power of the sun, often depicted as a youthful figure with large, sometimes squinting or crossed eyes, jaguar-like features, and solar symbols marking his divine nature. He was closely linked to kingship, as Maya rulers were believed to embody or channel his power, and his role was tied to maintaining cosmic balance, agricultural fertility, and the orderly passage of time. Rituals in his honor did not center on large-scale human sacrifice but instead focused on symbolic offerings and bloodletting ceremonies, in which nobles and rulers would draw their own blood—often from the tongue or ears—to communicate with the gods and sustain the cosmos, reinforcing the idea that divine and human realms were interconnected.

So the Aztec sun god Tonatiuh wants your heart torn out and shown to you to keep the temples humming. The Yucatecan Mayan god only demands Curad cuts to guarantee the orderly passage of time. Mexico it is, but it looks like the Yucatan peninsula is more our speed.  Tonatiuh is the equivalent of a daily IRS audit. Kinich Ahau sounds more like an occasional bad currency exchange rate. We can handle that. Shine on!