Naïve & Abroad: Mexico: Painted Mask

Naïve and Abroad: Mexico

Painted Mask

by

Marcus Henderson Wilder

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Naïve & Abroad: Mexico

Painted Mask

Copyright © 2009, 2011 by Marcus Henderson Wilder

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-4664-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-4681-2 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 09/07/2011

The Mexican, whether young or old, criollo or mestizo, general or laborer or lawyer, seems to me to be a person who shuts himself away to protect himself: his face is a mask and so is his smile.

Octavio Paz

We are the prodigal sons of a homeland which we cannot even define but which we are beginning at last to observe. She is Castilian and Moorish, with Aztec markings.

José Vasconselos

The most serious difficulty I had to deal with was to extract the historical truth from the multifaceted layers of legend and myth.

Friedrich Katz

If we can arrive at authenticity by means of lies, an excess of sincerity can bring us to refined forms of lying.

Octavio Paz

To the kitchen or to the bed, come when you are bid.

Laura Esquivel

Amidst the noise and fumes of Mexico City, there is a quiet square where… a plaque carries these simple but moving words: "On August 13, 1521, heroically defended by Cuauhtémoc, Tlatelolco fell into the hands of Hernán Cortés. It was neither a triumph nor a defeat: it was the painful birth of the mestizo nation that is Mexico today.

Alan Riding

Contents

San Miguel de Allende

Mexican Truth

Mexico is our Tomorrow

Mexican Corruption

Why Mexicans Do Not Assimilate

Curandismo

Sancho’s Child & Who Is On Top?

Oaxaca

Why Mexicans Come North

Mother of Mexicans

México Indio

México Negro

Heroic Port & Gay Carnival

Blue Blood & Blue Eyes

Guanajuato

The Saint Who Never Was

We are Poor & It is Their Fault

Smuggling

Border Bandits

Marijuana

Drug War

Independence 1810

Texas 1836

War 1848

The French Twice

Socialist Revolution 1910

Pancho Villa

Zapata

Anarchist

Mexican Painters

Mexican Musicians

Mexican Horsemanship

Revolution Part Two

Dr. Urrutia

Soldaderas

Eagle of Sonora

Pulque, Tequila, & Mescal

Chiapas

Culture in a Curse

San Miguel de Allende

Jacaranda petals fell like soft lilac rain.

Miss Tillie’s hair and shoulders were lightly dusted with small flower petals. Flower petals fell on her breakfast… decorated the white tablecloth.

Miss Tillie was never more beautiful. A backdrop of tile roofs and church towers enhanced the image.

Take the woman you love to San Miguel during jacaranda blossom time. Reserve Room II in the main building of the Casa Sierra Nevada. Breakfast on the balcony. Your love will never be more beautiful.

Ghosts of prior lovers will share your joy.

Miss Tillie loved San Miguel. Every year we could, we went to San Miguel for her birthday. Miss Tillie loved Room II at the Sierra Nevada.

I loved Miss Tillie.

The first time we went, we took a train from Nuevo Laredo on the border. We reserved two compartments. The porter opened the wall between compartments.

We had a mini-suite.

Freight trains rushing north to deliver goods to the United States had right-of-way on the single track. Our passenger train spent extra hours on sidings waiting for freight trains to pass.

We did not care.

We were many hours late. I woke to sunlight through the windows. The train was stopped at a siding beside a tiny, faded desert station platform. A small crowd of Indians stood on the platform staring into our windows. In her sleep, Miss Tillie had pulled off her covers. Her bare white skin was pressed full-length against the window.

Indians stood mesmerized.

I pulled down the shade.

We arrived in San Miguel—thirty hours late—about three in the morning. The station was dark. No one met the train. We stood on the platform beside the train in total darkness. I saw vehicle lights at the other end of the train. I ran to catch the vehicle—whatever it was—before it could leave.

The vehicle was the mail truck.

The driver and his helper threw our luggage into the enclosed back of the truck half filled with mailbags. Miss Tillie and I climbed in. The driver slammed the door. Miss Tillie and I were enclosed in total darkness. The trip to the Sierra Nevada was several kilometers. The road was rough. We bounced along on mailbags in inky darkness.

The truck stopped. The driver opened the door. Miss Tillie and I climbed out into a narrow rough-cobbled street between high, aged walls. There was no light except light from the truck headlights.

I said, ¿Sierra Nevada?

The driver said, Sierra Nevada. He pointed at a heavy unpainted gate with a door cut into it.

The truck drove away.

I banged on the gate.

Silence.

I banged on the gate.

Silence.

I banged on the gate.

A tiny Indian woman in maid’s uniform opened the door. She knew our names. She had been assigned to wait up for our arrival. Casa Sierra Nevada has always been that kind of hotel.

For several years, Casa Sierra Nevada was owned by Peter Wirth, scion of the family who own the Hassler Hotel on the Spanish Steps in Rome. Peter grew up in the Hassler. Peter—film-star handsome and supremely elegant—sold the Sierra Nevada to become General Manager of Waldorf Towers in New York.

Miss Tillie and I gave Peter and his wife, Maria, lunch under a famous tree at the Four Seasons when they came through San Antonio.

Some years we went to San Miguel by train. Some years we flew to Mexico City and took a bus to San Miguel. Today, you can conveniently fly to nearby Leon.

When we went out in the evening—because San Miguel cobbles are so rough—Miss Tillie wore sneakers to the restaurant. She put on her heels at the door. A chic bag hid the sneakers.

Today, women wear San Miguel Combat Shoes in the evening, chic heels designed for San Miguel cobblestones.

One year we drove.

Miss Tillie was adamant she would not drive in Mexico. That lasted until my perceived incompetence was too much to bear. Miss Tillie took the wheel. I rode the rest of the way—there and back—in numb terror.

It did not occur to me to challenge Miss Tillie for the wheel.

Miss Tillie out-bluffed oncoming Mexican truckers. She threatened with her tiny fist. She sat on the tinny Nissan horn. She missed collisions by the thickness of paint. Miss Tillie was not intimidated by macho Mexican truckers. It was insanity, but she was Miss Tillie. She got away with it.

Near Matehuala, a semi overturned with a load of white paint. Wheels of passing vehicles became paint rollers.

The highway was white for miles.

At Matehuala we stopped at a roadside restaurant. A black Mercedes there was liberally sprayed with white paint. By the time we came through, the paint on the highway was thin enough and dry enough that the little Nissan escaped paint damage.

San Miguel is a good compromise for Americans who want real Mexico without danger or inconvenience. San Miguel retains Mexican authenticity, but a thriving expatriate community smoothes Mexican bumps.

San Miguel has a comfortable range of hotels.

San Miguel has good restaurants.

San Miguel has fine shopping. Shop clerks speak English.

San Miguel has a native market.

San Miguel is photogenic.

San Miguel weather is good.

San Miguel has a proper bus station.

The first few times Miss Tillie and I went by bus to San Miguel from Mexico City, San Miguel passengers waited for the bus under a rusted corrugated iron lean-to. An Indian woman sold tickets from a shack. Her main business was warm sodas.

To get to San Miguel, fly to Leon and take a bus. Mexican buses are fine. You will ride a clean modern bus with clean bathroom at 54 miles per hour. You driver will have ten loving children he wants to get home to.

Mexico today has the finest, most comprehensive bus system in the world. There is no ambiguity in that statement.

The University of Guanajuato operates a respected language school in San Miguel. You can take Spanish lessons for a week or a month. Live with a family. Experience Mexican Mexico.

San Miguel has art schools of modest reputation.

One year, we went by train with several couples. We stayed in the converted mansion of the iconic Mexican comedian, Cantinflas. The setting was lovely.

One friend—Chet, my machine gun buddy—always has at least two guns on his person. Miss Tillie—who could curse like a longshoreman with the aplomb of a dowager duchess—told Chet in precise English she would turn him in herself if he took a gun to Mexico.

In San Miguel, every other day is a saint’s day. Saints’ days in San Miguel are celebrated by early morning firing of crude rockets that shoot into the sky and explode with heavy thuds one or two hundred feet about the town. The first morning we were in the hotel the rocket barrage began at dawn.

Chet rushed into the patio dressed in red & white striped boxer shorts and pointy-toed cowboy boots with a huge folding knife in his hand… ready to stop the Revolution right there in the patio.

An ancient gardener and a parrot were the only revolutionaries there.

Before Americans built bigger houses, the house of the chief Inquisitor was the finest house in San Miguel.

San Miguel is an enduring monument to the memory of Miss Tillie.

As one friend said, "San Miguel is so Miss Tillie… ."

Mexican Truth

We [Mexicans] tell lies for the mere pleasure of it, like all imaginative peoples, but we also tell lies to hide ourselves and to protect ourselves from intruders. Lying plays a decisive role in our daily lives, our politics, our love-affairs and our friendships, and since we attempt to deceive ourselves as well as others, our lies are brilliant and fertile, not like the gross inventions of other peoples.

Octavio Paz

When a Mexican deliberately tells you something untrue, he does not lie.

Your truth is inelastic… inflexible… uncreative… unimaginative… rigid. Your truth is limited to facts. To you non-truth is deliberate deceit.

A Mexican’s truth is more creative… more user-friendly… more polite… always more self-serving.

A Mexican’s truth is what he would like truth to be… or what he thinks you want to hear… or what he needs for you to believe… or any one of one thousand other things… unshackled from inconvenient facts.

A good lie is Mexican truth.

As South Texans say, the Mexican believes his own bullshit.

If we can arrive at authenticity by means of lies, an excess of sincerity can bring us to refined forms of lying.

Octavio Paz

The problem is… sometimes a Mexican needs the facts. Mexicans have elaborate interrogation systems for these situations.

A Mexican customer came into one of my San Antonio auto insurance offices with a question about his coverage. I answered the question. He repeated the question, slightly altered. I answered. With perhaps a dozen questions—all polite—the Mexican circled the issue, returning finally to the original wording.

Satisfied he knew the facts, the Mexican renewed his policy.

A Mexican cannot say he does not know.

Miss Tillie and I went by taxi to an advertised classical music concert in Mexico City. Hall doors were open. Lights were on. Perhaps a half-dozen other Americans sat scattered about the hall. Concert time came and passed. No Mexican appeared. The concert had evidently been cancelled.

Leaving, Miss Tillie and I turned left as we exited. After walking some distance, we found a well-dressed man to ask where we could find a cabstand. On the corner, two blocks that way, he assured us.

This scene was repeated several times over half an hour until we found ourselves—still cab-less—back in front of the now closed and dark concert hall… one block from the busy Reforma Avenue where cabs passed in large numbers.

The PAN political party—primarily from the North—sends honorable representatives to the Mexican Congress. Corrupt, business-as-usual, Fascist/Leftist representatives of the old-style PRI and the several smaller, pinker Leftist parties cordially loath pro-Free-Trade, pro-NAFTA, pro-business PAN representatives.

In congressional debate in July of 2008, a PRI representative yelled at a PAN representative, There is no such thing as absolute truth!

You have—in one sentence—Mexico.

In Mexico, there may be no absolute truth. As this book unfolds, you will see what the PRI representative meant.

Over coffee in San Antonio, a Mexican businessman told me, "All Mexicans are liars. You can’t believe anything a