Good Kids

Many of San Pancho’s teenagers attend the closest public high school in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, a village 10 miles away. No school bus picks them up; they wait along the highway for the same “Pacifico” buses everyone uses. I taught English for a few years at their school, CETMAR #6 (Centro de Estudios Tecnologicos del Mar). So when I spot kids in uniform, I feel as though I know them and offer them a lift.

My students were good kids. “Hasta nobles/almost noble,” said one of my co-workers about some of them. They had their issues, of course, but in my experience, disciplining themselves in the classroom was rarely a problem. A few reasons for this come to mind.

First, they knew each other really well. Coming from neighboring small towns around the Bay, they chose a major, e.g. marine mechanics, industrial fishing, accounting, were organized into co-ed groups of about 40, and were given a space to call their own (teachers were the rovers, moving from room to room). The group then stayed together for all their classes throughout the three years of high school.

(Shameless book plug alert!) As I described in Remember the Sweet Things, “the affection they felt for each other was palpable; the help they gave one another on assignments impressive. No one was ostracized; loners self-selected to remain aloof. In my three years at CETMAR, I never witnessed a deliberate unkind act in my classroom---these kids bore with or laughed off the loudmouth, the mentally challenged, the too-cool-for-school, the deaf-mute, the prima donna with the only cell phone who had permission to be excused every twenty minutes ‘to take a very important call.’ “

Second reason for strong classroom discipline: The group elected a leader every year and gave the position teeth. This was not a popularity contest---the group expected its leader to motivate performance and maintain order. So did the school administration. Usually a top student served as group leader. If teachers had a problem with a student, they could ask for help from the group leader who might also provide a more complete picture of what was happening in that kid’s life. Appropriate, I think, in this Mexican relationship-centered world, where who you are counts for as much as what you do.

Third reason: It cost something to stay in school, and you value what you pay for. CETMAR students paid for transportation, lunch, classroom supplies (jugs of water, chalk, enamel board markers, erasers). They even paid for their handouts and tests(50 centavos per sheet). So to fool around and waste this opportunity for an education was to also waste someone’s hard-won money. My students, predominantly working class kids, seemed wise enough to appreciate and act on this fact of their life.

Doors of San Pancho

As I walk around San Pancho, I notice details I wouldn’t see if I drove the same route. The doors of houses especially catch my eye. A patchwork of designs, colors, styles and materials, they give a glimpse of the town’s past, its social strata and its distinctive character.

Scattered throughout San Pancho are homes the federal government built in the 1970s to replace the village’s palm frond huts, and all have the same door: sheet metal on the bottom, frosted glass covered by bars on the top. Near these modest places are recently built, architect-designed homes. Casa Palmera, for example, has a handsome colonial-style door made of wood and embellished with fancy architectural hardware. A little eye-level door-within-the-door allows the owner to peek out and see who is knocking.

On San Pancho’s main street is what I call the “Picasso door”: an abstract design of a brown cat on a background of electric blue. Cunning pink door knobs form the cat’s mouth. I speculate that one of the town’s many artists lives in that house.

Outside the village proper the doors, like the houses, tend to be more uniformly upscale. My favorite is at Casa Cielito. Made of aged wood weathered to bluish-gray, this door looks like it came from an old hacienda. Its rustic quality makes a perfect contrast to the clean, modern lines of the entry surrounding it.

The prize for ambitious building design goes to what is known locally as the “Taj Mahal,” a villa with adjoining rental units. Domes, finials, pointed arches, balconies and balustrades—the building does indeed resemble the Taj Mahal. Except for the doors. They are like the sheet metal ones used in San Pancho’s earliest houses. Maybe the builder ran out of money.

Morelia Supermarket

Brightly colored flags criss-cross the parking lot snapping in the breezy sunlight. A huge canvas sign stretches across the front of the new store, just blocks from our Evanston, Il, home, "Bienvenidos a Morelia Supermarket, Welcome to Morelia Supermarket." Specal offers are plastered across the large front windows; chicken breast, rice, tomatoes, cheese. I can hear the ranchera music blaring from inside before I get to the front door.

Mothers with babies and toddlers in tow speak in Spanish to each other and to the clerk at the customer service desk where we hand over our reusable bags and recieve a raffle ticket in exchange. They include me with smiles, in their greetings.

Where should I start? I can't pass up the bakery! It's right there at the entrance with the familiar stacks of trays and tongs, bins with fresh bolillos, sheets of pan dulce and my favorite cookies with the sprinkles on top. (What makes those cookies so irresistible?) I fill a tray even though I only need to buy few things. I can come again, I have to remind myself, but I don't put anything back.

I'm tempted by everything; the towering pyramids of fruits and vegetables, chayotes, jicamas, key limes; a dairy case full of panela and cotija cheeses; bag after bag of dried chiles---pasilla, ancho, guajillo, and cascabel; fresh fish and meat, arrachera, pollo, camarones.

I follow the aroma of food cooking to the back of the store. A small crowd has gathered here and I can see why. Its only 8:00 a.m., but what better time for crisp chicharrones, carne asada and spicy salsa? From the men behind the counter, there comes a rapid stream of Spanish as they fill orders from the steaming pans of tamales and rice. They ladle spicy pork stew onto Styrofoam plates, pass heaping cloth-covered baskets of warm tortillas into waiting hands.

Browsing idly through the aisles my shopping list forgotten, my schedule suspended, I am immersed in the sounds I've missed all summer. I feel the familiar tug of my Mexican home where time seems endless, where even grocery shopping takes the whole day and that's just fine.

My colorful Mexican shopping bags are retrieved and filled as I tell the young woman how happy I am that this wonderful store has opened. She smiles and shows me the writing on the market's plastic rocery bags, "Autenticamente Mexico, Authentically Mexico," it says. And it is.

"...but is it safe?"

At our annual condominium association cocktail party I meet a lot of people for the first time, and I have the same conversation with each of them. When I say I live in Mexico during the winter, the response is, “How interesting! We go to Florida. You said ‘Mexico,’ right?
Not New Mexico? Is it safe?”

I am asked that question often, and I know what my new acquaintances are thinking: swine flu, kidnappings and drug cartel shootouts. Mexico’s image is tarnished. I resist the urge to give a speech defending my second homeland, and respond with my short answer: “I feel safe. I avoid border towns right now because of drug-related violence. Last spring the swine flu risk was exaggerated. And I don’t drive at night in Mexico—livestock roam the road and drunk driving is not unusual. I stay out of harm’s way.”

If the person is interested, I say more about the safety question. “When I walk down the street in San Pancho, I recognize almost everyone. I never worry about purse snatchings or wayward bullets from teenage gunplay. I don’t need to avoid dangerous neighborhoods, because there are none. San Pancho feels safer to me than the city of New Haven.”

Yes, San Pancho is growing and changing, but the way the Mexicans describe it still applies: “Tranquilo.” Calm.

Laughs at the Dentist's Office

Many Bay of Banderas gringos go to a dentist in Vallarta who runs a sophisticated practice. Gleaming treatment rooms, state-of-the-art gear, a slew of hygienists in matching white lab coats---it’s what we know and feel comfortable with. But still, after one visit there, I returned to my long-time Bucerias dentist, Adrian, and his one-room, one-dental chair office.

Adrian charges less, does a decent job, and most important, gives me terrific material for stories around the dinner table. Like the time he cleaned my teeth (he can’t afford a hygienist) while simultaneously eating a “torta Cubana” that his latest assistant had rushed in to him. He was forced to schedule back-to-back appointments with no time for lunch, he explained, now that his divorce had left him broke. “Sali de Guatemala y entre a Guatepeor/ I went from bad to worse,” he said, and we all laughed.

Or the time another patient, a Canadian who is also a personal friend of Adrian’s, pulled up a chair a few feet away from me while Adrian worked on one of my molars. He smoked a couple of cigarettes and told us all about the nine-foot sailfish he’d caught and released the day before.

Adrian’s assistants are good story material, too. They come and go, each one prettier and younger than the last. No lab coats hide the curves of these beauties; low-cut clinging tops and tight jeans are the uniform here. They banter with Adrian and gossip about the patients; he bosses them around affectionately, calling them “dearest,” “my love,” and “heart of my heart.”

In my favorite story, Adrian was preparing to bond one of my top front teeth. The light in the office was too dim to do a good color match, so he suggested we step outside into the sunlight. Passers-by walked around us on the narrow sidewalk as I positioned a hand mirror in front of my open mouth, Adrian held up color strips next to my teeth, and we decided on the best shade.

For the record, two years later, my persnickety dentist in California commented on the nice bonding job. “And the color is perfect,” he said.

Revolution!

Revolution!

President Porfirio Diaz acknowledges the crowd, an imperious wave, his white-gloved hand tickles the air. His consort clutches the crook of his arm, eyes shy behind a pleated fan. Handsome in a shiny black suit, this Diaz is a picture of dignity. All three feet of him. The presidential couple leads the parade, steps proudly to music revved high for the occasion.

Pancho Villa, dressed in homespun and sombrero, a cartridge belt crisscrossing his pint-sized chest, scampers forward. Another Pancho Villa follows suit, and another and another. A half-dozen Emiliano Zapatas, mustachios painted across upper lips, join the moving tableau. Rifles, bayonets, other cardboard weaponry cut the air.

Tiny senoritas, colorful petticoats aswirl, pirouette in place, two-steps forward, two-steps back, repeat. Dainty braids laced with ribbons, cheeks and lips rosy with mama’s makeup. Some wear woven rebozos, baby dolls tucked inside.

Gymnasts form pyramids, elicit crowd approval; older women, royal crowns atop graying heads, kiss the air from their pick-up truck plastic chair perches; a color guard from San Pancho’s secondary school reflects the honor of the occasion.

Everywhere flags. Gripped in pudgy fists, draped from balconies, pasted in windows. Cars, trucks, their antennas aflutter in the red, white, and green, inch forward behind this grand procession.

Revolution Day! Tercer Mundo, San Pancho’s main street from the highway to the beach, packed with people. Tourists, expats charmed with local color; Mexican parents, proud, watchful eyes on young sons and daughters. Weeks of practice, preparation come to fruition. It’s November 20, the day Mexico celebrates the 1911 uprising against its longtime dictator, Porfirio Diaz. Two million lives lost during the country’s famous revolt against authority, but constitutional rights gained. Villa and Zapata proclaimed folk heroes. Diaz banished, any good he accomplished during his 35-year rule forgotten.

Except today. November 20 in San Pancho, Nayarait, and throughout Mexico, Diaz is resurrected, dusted off, given some due along with other larger-than-life characters who march down Main Street.

Finding a cocucha

Skip and I are on the hunt for a cocucha, a clay pot handmade only in the remote village of Cocucho, Michoacán. We are driving down a country road toward Cocucho, closing in, when a fallen electrical pole blocks the route. “Another way to Cocucho?” we ask a group of school boys. They point toward a dirt track through a cornfield. “Feo,” they tell us. Ugly, nasty, awful. “No turning back now,” we agree. “Let’s do it.” After 15 minutes of bouncing through the muddy field, not a house in sight, we wonder, “Is this dangerous? Are we crazy?”

We arrive in Cocucho unscathed and take a break on a bench in the town plaza. A small indigenous woman, barefoot, approaches, introduces herself as Lupe, and asks if we are looking for cocuchas. She can guide us to Juana’s home, where we will find many pots.

Juana Alonzo Hernandez lives in a one-room house, so unfinished that in the U.S. we would call it a hut: a dirt floor, walls of raw wood, no furniture except for a table, two chairs and a bed. Juana is wrinkly, toothless, five feet tall at most, with long gray hair wound around her head. Like Lupe, she is barefoot and wears a voluminous, brightly colored skirt, an embroidered blouse, and a shawl. Juana and Lupe talk with each other in Purépecha, the language of the indigenous people in that area, but they speak Spanish with us. We explain that we are from the U.S, and that we live in Nayarit during the winter. We are looking for a cocucha about four-feet tall to fill a big empty space at the bottom of our stairwell.

Before we get down to business, Juana wants to talk about the U.S. Are we familiar with Seattle? Her son moved there three years ago for a landscaping job. She shows us a photo of a smiling young man. “He used to send money,” Juana says, “but I haven’t heard from him in a long time. Do you know how much an airline ticket costs? Do you think I could get a passport?” We admire the photo and respond as best we can.

Juana shows us the pots in her yard and explains how she forms them by hand from Cocucho clay. She uses no wheels or molds in the pot-building process. The pots are fired in a charcoal blaze on the ground, not in a kiln. We select a tall, tapered cocucha with fire marks on its mottled surface. It will be perfect in our empty space and it costs less than $100. Despite our protests, Juana and Lupe insist on carrying the giant cocucha to our car in slings improvised from their shawls. They pack it securely in the hatch. We drive back to San Pancho cautiously, protecting our prize from speed bumps and sudden stops.