A night with the Virgin

Aside from being Columbus Day, October 12 is also one of the most important days on Guadalajara’s calendar. On this day La Generala (the little General), also known as Our Lady of Expectation or the Virgin of Zapopan makes her annual pilgrimage from the cathedral in the heart of Guadalajara to her own basilica out in Zapopan (a city long swallowed by the sprawl of Guadalajara, and one of the wealthiest in Mexico).

Millions of people attend the procession every year, shutting the city down and suffocating the streets. This particular virgin is one of the most beloved in Mexico, with a swathe of miraculous interventions attributed to her. Festivities commence on the night of the 11th and continue right throughout the following day (although longtime Guadalajara residents murmur that the event is not as elaborate or as well attended as it once was).

I banded together with other couchsurfers and we brewed thick Oaxacan coffee and wrapped ourselves in layers, steeling ourselves for the long night ahead. A jolt of caffeine and some long sleeves weren’t going to be nearly enough though. The serious revellers, most from the outlying barrios of Guadalajara, had swarmed into the city centre taking over the parks and plazas and patios, turning the city into an enormous slumber party. This was how you prepared for the procession; by staking your place, laying out the blankets, and sleeping through the cold hours of the mid-night, until the virgin finally stepped forth from the cathedral, beginning her journey home.

Even aside from the thousands of inert forms packed under the arcades and around the monuments and into the flowerbeds, this was a very strange celebration. When the coffee proved ineffectual we bundled into one of the street cafes, switching to beer. We were virtually the only people drinking. Beer generally requires no pretext, but here was the biggest pretext on the Guadalajara calendar, and yet… the diminutive virgin must be truly loved, or feared, or both. Under the stern, benevolent gaze of their lady the revellers were proving that you don’t need alcohol to have fun; you can have just as much fun with multiple stages playing hokey Christian rock.

As the hours until the emergence of the virgin slunk by, more and more traditional groups converged on the cathedral. They had danced for hours and they would dance for hours more, waiting for their lady to emerge so they can shepherd her and be shepherded by her as they pilgrimaged the streets.

These dance groups were a mash of cultures. Headdressed injuns with bison on their shields stomped down the main streets. Ranks of cowled and masked men clamoured before the cathedral in their demented beat-iron tap shoes. Aztecs beat furious drums and dervished around each other. Solitary whip-crackers prowled between the groups and looked certain to put someone’s eye out with those things. Every groups had their protector ghouls, garbed in vampire-inquisitor robes and sporting the most obscenely fantastic face masks. They kept no time as they stomped among the dancers, but kept the crowd in order and posed for photos.

A steady torrent of people surged through the cathedral to pay their respects to their lady. Whole dance groups crashed through, still playing their music and drowning out the robed men at the front who were trying to raise a hymn. I have no idea how the dancers kept it up. As the caffeine exhausted itself the virgin still looked firmly ensconced in her church; she would not be moving for hours. Rather than join the slumber party we retired to rather more discreet beds and abodes. People were still trickling into the centre as they left. They were all sobre. She really is just that powerful.

What to do with the bastard Columbus?

Would the history of the Americas have been different if it hadn’t been Columbus that discovered them? Hard to say, but probably not; Columbus was just one of the many opportunists floating about Europe and the world at the time. If it hadn’t been him it would have been someone very like him.

One thing is certain though, Columbus was a real bastard. From the moment he arrived in the new world, still thinking – due to his vast under-estimation of the circumference of the world – that it was east Asia, Columbus was thinking only of how he could make use of the indigenous populations. They seemed obedient, quick to learn and poorly defended; they would, he observed, make great slaves.

A part of the old bastard’s arrangement with the crown of Spain was that he would be governor of all new lands he discovered. During his years of exploration and colonisation, Columbus comported himself like a true bastard, demanding great tributes of gold from the indigenous people that had at times welcomed him. He tortured or mutilated those that could not pay tribute (which was practically everyone given the Caribbean possessed almost no gold) and enslaved many more, shipping them (and probably also syphilis) to Europe. The Taino people were scattered over the Caribbean and probably numbered several hundred thousand when Columbus first arrived. A few years later their numbers had halved; fifty years later they were on the brink of extinction.

All this bastardry was brought to the attention of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, and as a consequence of numerous testimonies (he was an unpopular bastard), and also of the overly-generous initial arrangement extended to him which the monarchs quickly came to regret, Columbus was put into chains, and like his victims shipped across the Atlantic. Unlike his victims though, Columbus was released and the bastard died prosperous and old (for the time).

In most countries that care, October 12 is Columbus Day, but how should this day be celebrated? What to do with the bastard Columbus? Columbus’s discovery – although it would be fairer to say he claimed, rather than discovered the New World – set the Americas onto a very different path. It begun the mestizo-isation of the hemisphere, the mixing and clashing and dissolving of cultures which has made the Americas what they are today. Such a shame it all started with a bastard, and that so many more bastards followed his lead.

Columbus’s name has been omitted from the celebrations in Mexico. Instead October 12 has been entitled ‘Dia de la Raza’, Day of the Race, which is intended to encapsulate the rich heritage and many peoples of Latin America, without overt reference to all that initial bastardry. Columbus isn’t going to be forgotten – the Spanish empire couldn’t get rid of him and neither can we – but at least by focusing on what came after him, and not on what the old bastard actually did, we can perhaps get on with overturning the unfinished centuries of exploitation that he initiated, and perhaps we can dare to imagine a hemisphere free of such bastards.

Everything you always wanted to know about Mexican girls

The title of this post should probably be expanded to ‘Everything you (a white dude sometimes considered creepy but really just out for a good time) always wanted to know about Mexican girls’.

1. First things first, rest assured that as a foreigner, Mexican girls like you. You’re less likely to be poor, brown, macho, or still living under the apron of your mother. They will like you even more if you’re not from the US, or at least can act like you’re not from the US. Half of Mexico speaks with a yanqui accent. Scottish, Australian and Kiwi accents are highly valued (even if no one has any idea what you’re saying). Just keep talking. Talk marsupials, flightless birds, fens and vales, or anything else that Mexico doesn’t have in abundance. Even haggis is sort of exotic.

2. It may be better not to mention that you are a vegetarian, or have other weird dietary restrictions or habits. It’s cool that you’re not macho, but no one likes a eunuch either. And besides, what’s your Mexican girl going to feed you if you won’t touch tortas ahogadas, or whatever her signature dish is?

3. Every girl in every country in the world knows that visiting white boys are just after a very very meaningless fling to tell their buddies back home about. That doesn’t mean girls all over the world don’t forget this in the heat of the moment (sometimes deliberately), but it does mean that if you’re in a nightclub by yourself – and especially if you’re standing on the dance floor making very keen eye contact but not dancing – that the girls you are trying to rub up against will know EXACTLY what you’re about. And they probably won’t go for it. Probably.

4. You will not be the first gringo that this girl has spoken to. Partly this is because Mexico is crawling with gringos, partly it’s because gringos all seem intent on sleazing on Mexican girls. Either way, this girl has heard it all before; she’s probably heard it several times already on the day that you finally go up to her. So you might want to have a creative first line/opening gimmick on hand (something more than just being foreign). Don’t show her that you can juggle or mime or breathe fire; there’s a guy at every intersection in the country doing one of these. You might as well offer to clean her windshield (no that’s not some kind of double entendre – shame on you).

5. She speaks better English (and probably French or Germen) than you do Spanish. So you can be the gentleman that fumbles for words and makes her laugh with his incorrect conjugations and risks boring the lady, or you can talk in your thickest accent to try to bring her back down a few rungs (if you’re Scottish I guess you’re already doing this) thus reclaiming the linguistic upper hand, or you can ply her with compliments and ask where she learned to speak English (but see the above point about finding an ORIGINAL first line), or you can pedantically correct the few errors she does make, thus undermining her confidence, but bear in mind that she probably understands English grammar a lot better than you do.

Happy creeping…

(There is more to learn! Read part two!)

Man vs. Cow vs. Horse

Just because the rodeo was taking place on the fringes of Guadalajara, far away from the hip locales, didn’t mean this was going to be some kind of hick, bring-yer-own-cousin affair. The cars ranking up outside were as big and shiny as the hummers and SUVs that rank up every morning outside my very fresa school. The people filling the bleachers were groomed and preened to their sunday best. They were shoveled into tight jeans and they photographed one another on their iphones. Some of them wore big, leather boots.

You have to have money to have horses and cattle, and traditional,hand-stitched cowboy garb, and a big hat, and boots worthy of being buried in, and a big truck to transport all this prestigious stuff. Cowboys have a long and proud history in Mexico, but I wonder whether the kids who twist lassos and ride horses bareback on weekends get bullied by all the kids of computer programmers and bankers on schooldays. I wonder if it’s still cool to dress like this.

I can laugh at the swagger and the chaps and the displays of spinning round on horseback, but when proceedings really got under way, with the cowboys lassoing the legs out from under charging horses and wrangling cows to the ground by their tails, I had to admit that this was all pretty impressive.

Riding moderately bucking cows and horses, jumping from the back of one cantering horse to the other, jumping through your own spinning lasso; all the kinds of skills that may never have a practical purpose in modern day, tech-savy Guadalajara, but none the less the kind of tricks that make you sit up and pay attention and wish you had your own wide-brimmed hat and hand-stitched shirt and pony.

Probably not so much fun for the critters though. The cows charged out of the gates, and were grappled with by cowboys who wound their legs around bovine tails, dragging the confused beasties to the ground. They righted themselves, shook their heads, and were herded back into the corral, ready to be pushed out of the gates and yanked to the ground again. Every time a cowboy succeeded he ended up with a handful of tail-hair. The cows lamented their denuded tails and the cruelty of a sport that allowed them no opportunities for revenge.

One of the horses steadfastly refused to be lassoed, breaking out of the cordons of riders, breathing hard, and retreating to the far side of the arena to look wistfully out into the bleachers, hoping to spy his retreating dignity. All he found though were the disapproving faces of the crowd, gorging on hot dogs and cucumber-with-hot-sauce and eagerly awaiting another successful roping.

The animals all survived the day though (a few cowboys may have lost their reputations) and were herded out into waiting trucks which I assume were headed to friendly pastures where nerves could be calmed and few lassos snaked underfoot.

And then? There’s only so many times a horse can be roped or a cow floored. And then? The leather for the boots, the meat for the hot dogs have to come from somewhere. Best not to get too attached to your critters.

Weekend in Manzanillo

The moment we were out of Guadalajara the land became steeper and greener. Was Guadalajara intentionally founded in an unspectacular pan of land, or has it just buried all the prettiness beneath car parks and cine centres? Who cares; all the prettiness you could need is scattered just beyond the city limits. All you need is a car…

My first weekend out of Guadalajara, dashing off after school, stuffing a pack with things I wouldn’t need, and volvoing off into the lush coconut groves that separate the city from the beaches.

We the mandatory, token English teachers among the many international students and multilingual Mexicans. A pristine house of many rooms and terraces had been rented on the peninsula that interjects between Manzanillo’s two long arcs of beach. Manzanillo, the country’s busiest port and a prominent notch in the belt of expat-retiree-friendly destinations that wraps around Mexico. The downtown streets swell with American franchises. Close to the water piles of green coconuts await consumption, their husks scatter throughout the city. The jungle and the green encroaches everywhere upon the city, reclaiming unwanted shells of hotels and gas stations.

On the first night lightning splintered the sky sending us scampering from the pool. The weekenders washed up at the house in waves, and when the house overflowed we surged on to occupy a dingy hotel and a spectacular apartment-owned-by-someone’s-parents.

There were too many people, we couldn’t stay cohesive. We took our respective beers or someone else’s and dispersed along the beaches. The Pacific coast is where the surf is at in Mexico; the Caribbean is for flat, immaculate beaches. The Manzanillo beaches roiled up waves that broke right onto the sand, spitting out limp bodysufers.

We took a boat to the rocky outcrops where austere pelicans watch over the mouth of the bay. They sat alone, their long beaks in their chests, one eye half-ignoring us, the heaps of guano attesting to the long centuries of their vigils.

We snorkelled among the same fish we snorkel among in Australia, and I was surprised to see them here.

On the beach below the spectacular apartment the stones were scuttling and cracking because every second one of them was a hermit crab. More crabs had climbed the stairs to, for some reason, live in the swimming pool. At night the lawns rippled with fireflies and it seemed unfair that all this pretty animalness was confined to the deluxe condo part of the city. But everywhere in the city there were lizards and the silhouettes of sea birds, and scorpions too, as it turns out.

The kind of weekend at the end of which you realise you have not even had time to change your underwear of take a shower. There was only time to fall asleep on the beach or on the terrace, or to bolt from the car to pick up more Doritos and beer and Gatorade. There was no time for food. The kind of weekend in which it takes hours to get out of the pool and seconds to get dressed because you’d only be disrobing again anyway. The kind of weekend in which you lay on the bed in the early morning feeling individual beads of sweat lacing their way down your skin until you realise you could be in the pool but wait longer anyway because the sweat is actually quite enjoyable. The kind of unfair weekend that spits you back up among the weekdays mere minutes after you left them behind to go Manzanillo.