Sacred and Profane

I started this post to describe some of the contradictions between the religious and secular in Mexico. Then a friend asked about Holy week customs in Mexico and I found this link which describes the most significant observance in Mexico:
Semana Santa in Iztapalapa
Clearly this takes things to an extreme, but similar, less real, less bloody observances are found all over Mexico.

My original article continues below.

Holy Week is a time of fasting, prayer and charity according to a banner in the church where we attended a secular chamber music concert today. Zacatecas schedules it's Cultural Festival at this time every year. It's a great showcase for local, national and international talent which attracts visitors from all over Mexico and around the world partly because kids are out of school and parents are on holiday from work. There's everything from heavy metal to ballet and beyond including a street fair with music and dancing surrounded by endless lines of booths selling trinkets and every class of edible goodies imaginable.

There's a sharp contrast between Mexico today and Spain of the 1960s where you awoke to somber music blaring from loudspeakers at dawn, all secular events were prohibited and nightly processions of penitents blocked the streets carrying heavy religious figures on their backs and shoulders. In cities like Seville and Jerez, Spain, several cofradias hold processions from their parishes each night during Holy Week. In Mexico, for the most part, the processions are limited to Holy Thursday.

I'm wondering if this dichotomy doesn't have its roots in Benito Juarez' nationalizing Church property and turning churches, convents and monasteries into museums, hotels and theaters to eliminate the Church's participation in government.

The Catholic Church enjoys complete religious freedom and other religions are not discriminated against in any way. Even though there are lots of Catholic symbols in public everywhere and all Catholic holidays are national holidays, non Catholics don't seem to be offended. Perhaps this is what the framers of the US Constitution had in mind. No national church, no politicization of religion, religious freedom for all.

In cities and beaches all over Mexico, people are partying. In the South, there are areas that look more like Mardi Gras or Carnaval than Holy Week.

Something more on Bus Travel in Mexico

Between Dec 18 and Dec 29, 2009 we took busses in Mexico between:
Zacatecas and Mexico City
Mexico City and Oaxaca
Oaxaca and Huatulco
Huatulco and Mexico City
Mexico City and Zacatecas

Overall, travel was comfortable (we were able to sleep when we wanted,) but even though all buses were described as First Class, we encountered 3 different categories of service.

One, used a bus with only 24 seats and included a "lunch/snack" plus soft drink and you could ask for Nescafe packets to make your own coffee from the hot and cold drinking water aboard. Tea bags (lemon) and sugar were available.

Another, used 32 passenger busses and only provided a soft drink. There was hot and cold drinking water and tea bags.

The last, used 44 passenger busses (only 3 less than Greyhound) and there was no drinking water on board.

Legroom and in one case seat width varied from ample too slightly better than Greyhound. All were considerably more comfortable than Greyhound. On time performance is better than the airlines and bus travel is a good first choice if your not in so much of a hurry you have to fly.

I have read where it is not really necessary to buy tickets in advance. That's true with significant exceptions. If you need to be in a certain city on a certain day and are travelling during peak periods, it's best to buy tickets at the time you make hotel reservations. The hotel can probably guide you to the websites for the bus companies that can take you all the way from the US border to your destination. Unfortunately, there is not one stop shopping site for all bus lines.

Credit Cards Come to the Convenience Store

Oxxo is about the largest chain of convenience stores in Mexico. It's large by any standard, there seems to be one in every block, in every neighborhood.

This week, I noticed that they started accepting Visa and Mastercard.

The thing is, if you make lots of purchases of less than 100 pesos, you end up with a pocketful of change 4 or 5 times the weight of US coins. There's so much, it's hard to get rid of.

Being able to use a credit card will protect my pockets from wearing out too soon.

Holy Posoly, runner-up Soapies

In my 11 months in Zacatecas, I've come to enjoy two dishes more than any others.

Number 1 is Pork and Hominy Stew with Red Chiles (Pozole Rojo) pronounced po-so'-lay row-cho with the ch like in the German ach. Sample recipe at http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Pork-and-Hominy-Stew-with-Red-Chiles-Pozole-Rojo-101285.

The thing that makes it for me is the chewiness of the hominy and pork (shredded here in Mexico), the crispiness of the onions, lettuce and radishes seasoned with the tanginess of the lemon juice.

Number 2 is Sopes pronounced so'-pays or little round masa patties with a ridge around the edge. They're a lot thicker than tortillas and only semi rigid. My favorite taqueria serves them with Picadillo (a ground meat, potato and onion mix) topped with lettuce, tomato, onions, cream (not sour) and cheese (never yellow in Mexico). http://mexicanfood.about.com/od/fiestaappetizers/r/SavorySopes.htm

Both pozole and sopes can be found in an almost endless number of variations and are all good as long as fresh ingredients are used. I've never been disappointed.

Enjoy!

Electrical Wiring

This is the fuse box in my little place.Two, count them two, 30 amp fuses. But that's not all, they appear to be wired in series.

Shortly after I moved in, one blew and everything in the house went out. So, they brought a new fuse, replaced it, and NOTHING. Apparently the fuse wasn't making contact. Pulled the other fuse and what did they find? There was a copper coin under the fuse. OK, so they put a coin under the other one. No trouble since.

On top of that there are only two electric outlets in my living/dining room.That's where I have:

2 computers

2 external hard drives

1 monitor

1 printer

computer speakers

cable modem

cable box

plasma tv

paper shredder

fan

heater

all plugged into two daisy-chained 8 socket voltage regulators.

I wonder how many amps I'm drawing in just this room.

In the kitchen, I have refrigerator, toaster oven, coffemaker, blender, juicer, coffee grinder all plugged into one socket with a surge protector. Well, I don't use them all at once.

Smoke detector? What's a smoke detector?

Well, there's nothing flammable in the structure of the building only a bit of furniture. Worst case, I'm only 5 ft. from the balcony and can let myself down from the second floor without breaking a leg.

South Park in Mexico

This is a First Communion invitation. First Communions and the parties afterwards are major events in childrens' lives and printed invitations are pretty much a requirement.

The personage here is St. Jude, but doesn't he look an awful lot like the Jesus character in South Park?

Comic or religious invitations are also used for baptisms and 15th birthdays (for girls.)

I ran out of fruit last night and also wanted to get some chorizo to go in an omelette with some Mennonite cheese I bought yesterday. (Mennonite cheese comes from a colony in Chihuahua that was founded in the mid 1800s when they were invited by Benito Juarez to escape persecution in the US.) It has a consistency like mozzerella but has a definite flavor. Absolute great on pizza and quesadillas, naturally.

At 9AM there was almost nobody on the streets until I got within a block of the market. Then it was still mostly vendors setting up or already open.

It was nice doing my shopping without having to climb over a bunch of pushing and shoving housewives to make my purchases. At any rate, six apples, six bananas, a pineapple and a half pound of chorizo was 60 pesos ($4.50), a good deal, I think.

The downside is that, unlike years ago, they use plastic bags now and if you are going to carry 10lbs. of stuff home, best bring a heavy duty sack or backpack. I've seen people carrying canvas sacks, but haven't seen them on sale anywhere. I guess I better ask.

IM - Instant Messaging

My friend is Mexican with a Spanish keyboard. I only have English. Yeah, you can configure Windows for both, but what about the keytops or memorizing the new layout. Hell, I never learned to touch-type.

We IM almost constantly. We wander back and forth between English and Spanish. That’s no problem with a Spanish keyboard, all the letters, numbers. accents, punctuations, and special characters except @ = ALT+064 for both languages are on it. Anyone who has been to an Internet café in Hispano America learns that right off.

What to do? What to do?

The only real sticky one is ñ. Without it, year (año) becomes anus (ano). You can get around it by typing anio which would be pronounced almost like año. So, I hunted through MS Word’s symbol table and found that ALT-0241 makes ñ.

Leaving all the other accents off may look uneducated but nowhere near as silly as Have a Happy New Anus.

One clumsy character per language is a fair trade, I guess.

There’s a more pernicious side effect. The more I IM, the more cigarettes I light, sometimes having two going at once. The doc gave me some new pills to help quit. After two weeks, not a dent! I guess that shows that the Smoking Nazis and their pet shrinks don’t know what they’re talking about. The addiction is more habit than chemical dependence.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, smokes are less than twenty bucks a carton for Marlboros, less than ten for a couple of similar Mexican brands.

Where’s the will power?

Internet Idiosyncrasy #1

When I first got down here, I was initially surprised that all the major web pages – MSN, Yahoo, Google were in Spanish!!!! Wait a minute! I’m in Mexico. The “Internet” knows I’m in Mexico. No, it’s not big brother watching me. It’s those funny numbers like 123.456.789.012 that do it. Every computer connected to the Internet has at least one of those strings of numbers that identify it. It just so happens that the first part of the number identifies the country the computer is in and a lot of the programmers who build websites use it to decide which language to use. There are ways to find the English language page that you were used to and making it a favorite or bookmark so you can always get English. Usually there’s a link at the bottom of the Spanish page that will to English. Most of you probably know that stuff; I thought I’d mention it just in case. BTW, this website comes up in Spanish till I log in. Once I do, it’s in English because my account specifies I use English.

Time, Place, Travel

Life is good. At certain points in my life, I had my doubts. Retired now, there’s enough money to live where I want, enjoy what I want, go where I want. Rich might have been better, but. . . Looking back, I see I made some choices between goals and the price that had to be paid for them. I ended up OK. FWIW for all you younger people out there, think hard about your life decisions, weigh the costs in time, effort, money against your goals for your retirement. Try to set goals that you can reach while you still have the time to enjoy life along the way. That is, don’t just live for tomorrow, but don’t just forget about it either. Tomorrow comes a hell of a lot sooner than you might believe. Sermon over!

Beggars

Yeah, there are more than I saw at first. The worst are the ones that use their small children as shills. If they’re begging, they are not going to school, so don’t encourage it by giving. They wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t good business. On the other hand, there the old people who may not have any other means of support. To those you give.

Some people, not content to accept the status of beggar, are the entrepreneurs who buy crates of fruit, bag up 3 or 4 assorted pieces and sell on the corners or in the street. Gotta hand it to them!

Junk Mail

Every once in a while, a flyer gets pushed through the crack in the door. These are distributed by individuals hired by the companies, NOT the Post Office. Is there an idea there? Today, the flyer is about carpet-upholstery-car cleaning on one side, general help around the house or business on the other. Including distribution of advertising.

Business Hours

I leisurely extract myself from bed between 7:30 and 8:30 AM.

I may wander out for breakfast as early as 9AM, at which time about the only things open are the corner grocery store “hole-in-the-wall” and the public market. It’s not until 10 that the other eateries that serve the breakfast crowd open. Remember, Zacatecas is no major metropolis.

With some exceptions, businesses don’t open till 11AM making 10-10:30 the right time to grab some breakfast before work. Then, they close at between 1 and 3 PM for a big lunch plus siesta, opening again from around 5 till somewhere between 8 and 9.

9PM is when the restaurants’ supper business picks up. I use the term restaurant loosely. It could be anything from a lady on the corner with a basket of tamales or a pot of corn on the cob to the fanciest place in town.

I have to admit I’m still not certain who is open when, but it is clear that there are few, if any, worms for the early bird to catch.

Change, money or coins, that is

Nobody ever has any. Banks like to hand out big bills. Small businesses can’t afford to keep enough change on hand to break large bills. Typically, if you present a 100 peso bill at the wrong moment, someone will have to run out to a larger business and get change. The flip side is that they do have change but it’s all in 1 to 5 peso coins. The weight ends up wearing a whole in your pocket. You get a restaurant check for 65 pesos (tip s/b 6 or 7 pesos.) You don’t have any small change and give the waitress a 100 peso note. She comes back with 3 – 10 peso coins and 1 – 5 peso coin. The service was no more than acceptable. You have a choice, leave 5 pesos or 10 pesos. I’ll leave the decision to you.

But what happened:
- She did it on purpose hoping you’d leave 10.
- The restaurant didn’t have any 1 peso coins.
- She wasn’t thinking about her tip.

In the US, I’d have guessed the first.
In Mexico, especially here in the Provinces, any of the 3 is an equal possibility.

Small Business

Excoriate evil greedy capitalism as much a you like, struggling to start and run a small business is the entry to the middle class for many Mexicans. It’s a way of life handed down from generation to generation. These business owners are no where near as affluent as most of the US middle class, but they do own somewhat nicer houses, cars, maybe a maid to come in from 1 to 3 days a week. These people exploit the poor? They make jobs that would not have existed otherwise.

Identification

For a Mexican adult, a driver’s license is of only secondary importance for ID. It’s the voter’s credential which is the primary proof of identity and age. Hmmm. . . ., there was a big flap over photo ID’s for voting and how it would discriminate against the disadvantaged to make them have to go get ID’s. Well, in Mexico where a far greater percentage of the population is poor, the people don’t think it’s a burden to prove they have the right to vote. The credentials are issued at no cost and are good for 8 years if you don’t move. Oh, you live way out in the boondocks or it would be a hassle to go downtown? No worry, mobile units canvas the whole area during sign up season. It seems clear that the Democrats’ refusal to approve this type of voter registration had nothing to do with fairness and justice.