The Mexican Onion and the Man on the Bench

Start peeling the Mexican onion and the first layer you find is what we call Brochure Mexico: fantasy pictures of quiet beaches, quasi-naked sun gods and goddesses disporting on empty white sand beaches. And, with the exception of weekends, few Mexicans. Puerto Vallarta’s beaches, for the most part, are Gringoland Fantasy Island.

Dos Americanos in Puerto Vallarta

The reality, in such a place, beautiful as it is, seems to be that the Mexican/ Gringo relationship is one of caretaking i.e. the Mexicans take care of the gringos – clean the houses, wait the tables, drive the taxis, massage the bellies and backs. Meanwhile the Americanos and Canadianos roast like chickens in the sun, eat and drink, swim, surf and fish and otherwise keep to themselves. The Mexicans do the same. No need for Spanish here. Practically everyone can speak English.

Take off another layer in, say a city like San Miguel De Allende, you may find a similar hierarchy - though there are fewer English speakers among the natives. This layer requires at least a 20 or 30-word Spanglish vocabulary and some interaction with the locals to navigate to bathrooms, order stuff from menus, hail a taxi to a Pueblo Magico. Possibly, here, there is some cultural exchange: friendships, charities and other good works that are maintained by both populations. Still, it’s the gringos more or less on top, more or less cloistered in ex-pat barrios.

 

Christmas Mass in Guanajuato

One more layer down you might begin to feel like a stranger if you cling to English only. The working cities like Oaxaca or Guanajuato, or San Cristobal seem to have fewer ex-pats, more interaction with the locals. It helps to have minimal fluency. For those who can manage the Spanish, there are lots of opportunities for integration. You can blend in and just be a dude or dudette. You can hop a collectivo out to a small village, chat with other passengers, get a bit of inside info on places to go and things to see, comfortably explore the scene. Here you can crack a joke and get a laugh from a native and, in general, really begin to practice the cultural fluency that is essential to Mexico: when to use the formal tense, when it’s OK to hug, what you can talk about and what you should avoid talking about.

Tzintzuntzan cemetery after Dios de los Muertos

Then you come to the tender skin: the small villages, some of the pueblos magicos like Tzintzuntzan, Cuetzalan or Pátzcuaro, and communities that are tucked deep into mountains and jungles where even Spanish might be the second language.

Masked dancer from Tocuaro

Here, you can feel like you are standing on the moon. Here you can meet a man who fights the devil every night outside his village (after a few shots of mezcal). Here you trek to a secret waterfall in the jungle passing still buried ruins of ancient cities. Here you see the brujo for illness and realignment with the universe. Here is the place of smiles, nods, open palms, birds, jaguars, monkeys and mosquito nets. There is not much else, but it can feel like everything.

Eric employs the "wedge"

To negotiate all of these places, we’ve tried to put together a “wedge” over the last few years - some way in. For Gringoland, the first layer, there’s not much we feel we can do. The patterns of interaction seem fairly well set. It’s fine. No judgment here. it’s what some people want and that’s completely cool with us.  So long as the conduct is respectful, there’s not a thing wrong with a margarita under a palapa, a few steps away from a coral reef that you can snorkel to.

But to lift those first layers, to get a little further in, we employ our wedge on cab drivers, street vendors, and what we call the Wise Old Men. By now, both of us have developed a patter by which we can move, carefully, a little closer. After a few formalities, we ask about family – always family- and listen carefully to what they say. Invariably, the pictures come out. The stories begin, the hopes and fears find expression. We exchange. It’s a manipulation, for sure, but one we think is well intentioned. We really want to know and we just can’t figure out any other way to start the fire.

$1000 MX - $55 US hired Adrian & his taxi for a full day tour & conversation about the Patzcuaro pueblos 

Now and then we get lucky and spot a congregation of Wise Old Men. In a city like, say, Puebla or Merida, we migrate to the zocalo – the main square. Usually, if we are there at the right time of day, we’ll see them: tables shoved together, a cloud of cigar smoke, laughter, maybe five or six or ten caballeros all talking at once. Slyly, we pull up a chair at table nearby and wait, like predators, for our chance. Sometimes all it takes is a smile and a nod and, Boom, we’re in. Or, failing that, Lynn might whip out her trusty camera and ask permission for a photo (she plays the white-haired tourist so well, saying "guapo!" to charm the men). One way or another, we buzz them like flies until they invite us in or swat us away. No telling what will transpire, but it’s usually served up with laughter. One guy once asked Lynn to help him contact an old girlfriend somewhere in Oregon (she tried but no luck), or another time several WOM conferred with Eric over local cures for UTIs (corn silk was voted most likely to succeed). Most often these folks are fire hoses of information that we can only dip into.

Rogelio, Emilio, and Eric in Morelia

And then, once in an azul moon, you find the Man on the Bench, as we did this time in Guanajuato (GTO). He was Rogelio, a trade and customs lawyer, fluent in English, familiar with Oregon, hilarious story teller, who just happened to be sitting on a bench in Plaza Maxiamora – near our casita – when we attacked. Before long, we were making plans for a dinner with his 15-year old son Emilio. Within a week, we had met several times and, over drinks, one night, Rogelio suggested an outing to a museum near Morelia, a town a few hours from Guanajuato. He mentioned there was some art by Picasso and Goya, which sounded great to us. We had no idea what we were about to experience…

On a hill, just outside Morelia, stands a museum, Museo Centro Cultural Tres Marias, devoted to one

Original Picasso

subject only: bullfighting. At the entrance, there is a 20-ft tall sculpture of a mounted picador, to his side is a perfectly rendered bronze fighting bull. Inside the entrance, there is a long, brilliantly colored mural that depicts in abstract forms the stages of the bullfight. Already we were feeling awestruck. The museum appeared to be closed, but instead, we discovered that a private tour had been arranged for us conducted by the museum curator, Moises, and his assistant. We were, along with Rogelio, the invited guests of Don Salvator Ferrer, the patron and founder of the museum. We had sensed some tentativeness from Rogelio when he extended the invitation and now we understood why. Bullfighting is a controversial, but nevertheless, fundamental component of Mexican art and folklore (the opera Carmen, for example). To Rogelio, who is an aficionado, this place is holy ground. And, not surprisingly, rather low key since bullfighting has been banned in much of Latin America. Even when it is open to the public, there are not huge crowds waiting to get in and, it seems, Don Salvator, would prefer to keep it that way – a place for those who want to understand how this ritual contest between man and animal is, and has always been, an art form that has evolved through the centuries and has ignited the passions of Picasso, Goya, Dali, and a host of other painters, sculptors, and performers.

We were first ushered into an enormous (23,000 volume) research library that contained books dating back centuries. These volumes traced the evolution of bullfighting, bull breeding and lineage and even included books and articles on medical techniques for saving the lives and limbs of gored toreadors – and luckless spectators.

Bronze horse brought to Tres Marias from Bilbao in Spain

From there, we were taken into the various galleries of the museum, which is enormous. There are capes, swords, and muletas, from famous bullfighters like Manolete and Dominguin. There are one of a kind Aztec renderings of the first bullfights – which were much more like gladiatorial games. In other galleries are stuffed bulls and their breeding history, decorated like fallen heroes, with the killing blow of the recibiendo, still visible on their backs. And then hall after hall of Spanish and Mexican painters and their renderings of all the different aspects of the art form, including flamenco dance depictions- and of course Carmen, once again.

But then, as if this overwhelming argument for the validity of the art form wasn’t enough, we came to the Goyas and the Picassos. These were not prints or reproductions. These were the originals. There were 28 Goyas, arranged in the sequence of a bullfight from the first third (tercero), where the torero sizes up the bull using a cape and covered wooden stick, to the second third, where the bull is stimulated, but not injured, with banderillas, to the final third (muerte) where the torero and the bull fight to the death. It is a stunning display – one which would be sufficient to draw crowds to any museum in the world.

And then, Picasso. A room the size of a small single story house given over to his paintings, ceramics, sketches devoted to bullfighting.  There is even a traje de luces (suit of lights) that Picasso stitched and embroidered, entirely by hand, for the bull fighter, Dominguin. To see this much of such a master’s work was overwhelming. One could spend days in this room alone. We doubt there is anything like it in the world.

Before we knew it, the day was over. Moises, had one last surprise for us: a gorgeous book that contained the story of the museum’s creation and a number of reprinted paintings and posters and a Skype session with Don Salvator who thanked us for the visit. We could not, in our craziest dreams, imagined a more perfect day.

As our days in Guanajuato wound down, we saw both Rogelio (now Roy, to us) and Emilio for drinks, chess games and, as a last beautiful gesture, and invitation to their home for drinks and dinner. This, above all, was the most intimate time we had ever spent in Mexico passing the time with both of these new friends and their sweet dog Laika.

A paddler in the cemetery?

Beautiful masks in Pátzcuaro

But, alas, we had further to fly. By the next day, after long goodbyes and promises to stay connected, we left Guanajuato for Pátzcuaro, a small village by a lake and our adventures took yet another amazing turn.