Copyright © 2008 By Linton Robinson
Print Edition 2008 by Bauu Press
Smashwords Edition Published
2011 by:
Chapter One
The reason why Marxism fails so often and so utterly, while the apparently similar PRI and Catholic Church have succeeded for so long, probably has to do with its tendency to motivate people through common interest and fear, rather than self interest and love, which are the forces responsible for world's biggest victories, most stable creations, and most appalling mistakes.
"Of Burros, Sticks, and Carrots" by Mundo Carrasco
Nexus, September 1999
I had seen the whole bola before and hadn't liked their looks. I liked them even less huddled up in the healing halls of Sagrada Familia in their muddy plastic sandals, grimy "Señor Frogs"T-shirts, and cheap polyester pants. Especially the two big, rough-looking bricklayers who wore imitation Stetson sombreros instead of filthy baseball hats. They didn't seem to like my looks much, either.
I didn't know them as individuals, but I'd known the herd since childhood. They were The Poor. Not the superpobres picking scraps out of garbage dumps, just the typical working poor of Mazatlán. And not the sort of crowd usually allowed in the marble arches of "La Familia". I had seen this very bunch during the campaign, filling the crowds when my boss--El Candidato back then--dragged us out to speeches in the lower class barrios. They were his wife's shock troops: Blanquita's bodyodor politic. To me, they represented something I'd left behind a long time ago. To El Candidato himself, they were a huge voting block delivered to him by marriage like a scabby dowry. To her, they were a flock of birds to be fed, a mass of grubby children to be nurtured and loved, a doting family to be embraced and protected. They belonged to her--and therefore to Us and His Campaign--simply because they worshipped her.
Which I could understand completely: I would tell you straight off that I only took the damn job because of Mijares. It wasn't reciprocal enough, to be called love, but "worship" will cover it. It had been like a religious experience to shrug myself awake and see her standing right there by my bed.
The moon was behind a thick bank of fog, but the beacon lights on the antennas up the hill were washing her body with a slow red pulse. I had to fight off the impulse to reach out for her, knowing it would look pathetic. Then I didn't care if was pathetic or not, but she'd moved to look out at my dirt-cheap loft's million dollar view. Of course, she looks just as devastating from the rear. She leaned over the railing, looking down at the Oldtown and bay. I got up and stripped off my shorts, started plowing around in the pre-morning dark, looking for pants, coat, notebook, light switch, anything. She turned again, and sized me up.
I was pleased that my dreams--and her provocative bendover at the rail, I suppose--had left me somewhat swollen and lengthened, but not stabbing out enough to look ridiculous. She gave a glance and smiled, "Always nice to see old friends."
I stepped to the rail and looked out over the city, sensibly slumbering at four in the morning--though Chema's gamecocks would change that soon. I glanced down at the street and sure enough, Coyota, my neighbor's German Shepherd bitch, was sitting in the middle of the street looking straight up into my face. She's a peculiar dog. I said what I say every morning, "Coyota, go kill those damned roosters."
I looked at Mija standing beside me, sniffed her scent. I said, "Hey, look..."
She said, "I did look. But I'm not going to touch. Get your ass in gear, hero. This is a major chingadera."
I pulled on a shirt and said, "How bad?"
She said, "About as bad as it gets." Which showed she wasn't as omniscient as she thought.
"Did he get caught screwing some councilman's little girl?" I found some pants draped over my printer and pulled them on. "Or little boy?"
"No, he's become more of a homebody since he was elected. Supposedly beat the hell out of his wife."
Hardly news in machista Sinaloa. I looked up at her for the rest while tying my shoes. "She's reportedly in the hospital, badly injured. Police have responded."
"Not just city cops, huh?" Or she wouldn't be here.
"No such luck. They did the normal response to the kids' call, ambulance and everything. But the PGR heard the kids report the bag of cocaine and pills on the table. That was what they were fighting about."
"Federales. Great. Well, sounds like time to earn our pay."
"Yours. I did my job coming over here to get your lazy ass out of bed. Why didn't you answer the phone?
"I couldn't hear it."
She looked around my little penthouse. Corrugated cement roof covering half of the four-meter square slab, a cement railing, nothing else but night sky. Nowhere to hide. She whipped out her cellular like an Old West gunslinger and punched a button. She listened a second, then gave me a look.
"Well, okay, now I can hear it: I'm awake."
She followed the muted beeps, which wasn't very hard to do. She looked down into the toilet and shook her head.
"Thinking of quitting, are we?"
"I have quit. But nobody else knows about it yet."
"We'll keep it our secret for now." She started to stride out of the bath stall, but stopped and gave it a look. Not much to look at, just two brick walls, shoulder high, with a shower head and toilet seat. She said, "There's no curtain. No door, nothing. What do you do when you use the bath?"
"Same as anybody else, I'd guess."
"Can't your neighbors see you over here showering and shitting?" She waved her hand at the open space that surrounds my aerie. Sure enough, if anybody from the surrounding mansions wanted to watch me pee, nothing would stop them. I never really thought of if before.
"They're all politicians and drug lords. They probably have funner things to watch than some indio take a dump."
"Ay, Mundo. No te aguantes." She was back up to speed by then, with a last shake of her head before getting back to the problem at hand, "Let's get moving." She was out the door as she said it, tripping smoothly down the steep dark stairs.
Three flights down, out the gate, she handed me another cellular She had three in her bag. I headed down the steep sidewalk towards the steps leading down to the Military Hospital. She was in her car with the motor on before she stuck her head out and called me back. "Just got another call, mi chavo. You'd better take your so-called car because it's a long walk to Sagrada Familia."
I paused a minute on the way over to my battered Safari. "Where's His Honor?"
"Down the toilet," she said, smiling. "But don't worry, we'll get it back for him."
He'd be in a drunken, coke-stoked dither at that moment, tearing around in his fleet of Suburbans jabbering to his bodyguards and cuates. But we'd be working on his image. I shrugged and went out to face the vanguard of pissed-off poverty.
But even my sympathetic comprehension of these poor urban peasants throwing themselves into the political machine out of sheer desperation and adoration didn't make me any happier to see them standing between me and my pretty urgent conversation with The Mayor's sainted wife. No surprise that it was the two big abañiles who stepped out to block my way.
And no surprise the way they cut me off at the perfect spot for their cronies to flow around and flank me, moving in like highly experienced brawlers. Two ugly customers with big, brick-coarsened hands and absolutely no use for my line of goods. I gave them my old ballplayer grin, buffed up by six months of working in politics.
"¿Qué onda, compa? Is this where they brought Señora Varedas?"
The one with the blue shirt spit about an inch from my shoes. I assume he didn't miss on purpose. "¿Y ‘aste', quien es?" he growled, "Compa."
Saying ‘aste' for "you"instead of usted was like a nametag: "Hi, I'm a Hillbilly." And sneering the "Buddy"on the end of it probably meant he wasn't going to ask me to autograph some old scorecard. But you have to go through the motions.
"I'm Raymundo Carrasco, deputy of the Mayor's office…"Ay, already they didn't like it: maybe I shouldn't have promoted myself up from Press Relations. "I'm supposed to see if Sra. Varedas is all right, if she needs anything."
"She's gotten enough from the Mayor tonight, wey," he stepped right up in front of my face to say it, as big as I am and a lot rougher around the edges. "Why don't you run back and tell your culero boss to come down here and talk to me himself? See if I'm as easy to beat up as a delicate flower of a woman." They couldn't even talk about her like she was a common noun. And I'm here representing the guy alleged to have choked her half to death and banged her head on the floor. Wonderful.
"Look, amigo, " I tried, "I'm just a working stiff like you. I've never even met Varedas. I have no idea what happened. They told me to come over here, so I have to, you know? Anything I can do to take care of her, help her out, that's what they told me."
He seemed to take the notion that I'd just told him a pack of damned lies, which in fact, I had. I had a very good idea what had happened to Mrs. Mayor--Mijares had spelled it out on the phone while I drove, then put me through to the hospital. I'd also lied about why they jerked me out of bed and sent me over there. The main priority wasn't exactly fluffing her pillows: it was to assess her mood and even, if miraculously possible, shut her up. She had a soft spot for me for some reason.
The bricklayer said, "I see your work. I see your nice clothes, your rich dad, your expensive barrio. You think you own us, can push us around. Me, I doubt it."
"My dad was a peon for the railroad, wey." I didn't mention that he rose to track crew boss and union rep. "And I grew up in Ferrocarril, which if you've ever been out of a bar long enough to notice, is not exactly the barrio de luxo." I established my working class origins; they established their working class muscle by crowding in on me, starting to push me back and forth. The big mason stayed right in front of me, his partner just behind my right shoulder. Didn't know I'm a switch-hitter, apparently. But not much of a fighter. It always seemed pointless to me. One of my college coaches said I lack the "God-given killer instinct." So I smiled and tried to talk sense. But the big masons had the perfect argument against that sort of notion.
The guy behind me hit first, a very hard punch that numbed my right shoulder. I swung around to defend myself and the leader of the bola kicked me in the small of the back, punching me right into his partner, who used my momentum to put a spectacular bruise on my forehead. I wouldn't have gone down, but the rest were crowding and tripping me. I fell on my hands, but they were kicked out from under me and a lot of feet started kicking my face and stomping my ribs. I did a sudden roll to my left, sweeping into a forest of feet and knocking a few of them down over the top of me. I did a power pushup, jerked my feet under me, and saw an opening. I plunged through it, a sort of staggering controlled fall, and broke through the pack. There were two nuns at the top of the stairs, looking appalled but not entirely sympathetic. The Church is also fond of Blanquita, especially her work with hospitals and hospices.
But they were enough to stop the Army of the Poor from running up and kicking me down the steps or just gobbling me up. I looked back at them from the top of the steps, twenty very angry men practically in rags. I couldn't really hold anything against them. I said, "No hard feelings, muchachos. Tell Sra. Varedas if she needs anything at all, not to hesitate to call room service."
The biggest albañil stared at me for a moment then started laughing. His sidekick joined in and immediately the whole bunch was laughing in the high spirits of victors condescending towards a loser who's a good sport about it. Nobody could ever say I'm not a good fucking sport. I turned around with what shreds of dignity you muster when you're bleeding and rumpled and have just been kicked around like a dog. And defended by nuns. They were still laughing when I stepped out the front door.
I got to my car just as two black Suburbans with opaqued windows blasted into the parking lot and burned off an inch of tires just stopping. His Honor's bodyguards finally figured out where she was. Good job, you clowns. There were about four guys in each vehicle, stereotypical beef wearing Ray-Bans at night and starched guayaberas hanging over their ornate pistols. Half of them also had UZI's and M16's. I grabbed a towel out of the back seat and mopped up a little, thinking, "Good luck, Mr. Mayor, Sir. I'm bruised and dissed just for working for you, let's see how you come out."
In fact, I decided it would be fun to see exactly that, and walked back to watch through the big glass front doors. The phalanx of guardespaldas was confronting the rabble. My bodyguards can lick your bodyguards…family spat by proxy. I had a press box view of what happened. The Poor had taken the top end of a double-header and were up for the closer. The Mayor's Men had guns, but had apparently been ordered not to use them. Even a bungling moron like Hizzoner Frederico Varedas could figure out that shooting up poor constituents in the Sacred Family Hospital would not play very well in the theater of public imagination.
This time there was no clever blow from the rear, and the nuns had sought retreat elsewhere. The bola of working wounded just piled into the big mercenaries and started flailing away. Some threw bottles. I even saw a chair fly into a bodyguard's head. They pushed the forces of Order back to the steps, then tumbled them down and threw them out the doors. Then they kicked them into their Suburbans and battered the Suburbans as they drove off. I was back in my Safari by then, with the engine running. I flashed the winners a two-fingered victory salute and they laughed and waved at me as I left the parking lot--just as a car with a press sticker from Adelante drove in. Silvio Rodriquez arriving a minute too late, as usual. With the Press already buzzing around the smell, I was glad to be out of there. Those poor are no joke in a fight, but the press is really a pain in the ass. My former colleagues might smell better, but they fight dirtier. I realized it was my first combat on the side of The Establishment.
Because I have to be honest here. My obsession with Mija was overpowering, but there was more to my career shift than just that. I wanted to be part of the Power Show I used to just write about. I wanted to get up in the engine and drive, or at least shovel the coal. I wanted to belong to it all. Which is another way of saying I wanted it all to belong to me. And, of course my desire to belong to Mija had the same overall goal. I still can't believe that I didn't realize it would be like trying to ride two crazy horses at the same time. The job was essentially The Establishment; meaning the establishing of structure. And Mijares was essentially Anarchy; meaning the reduction of any structure to the most minimal, indistinguishable components. Working for the new mayor's party to be close to a neo-Marxist rebel. It's not all as crazy as it might sound here in Mexico, which was ruled for eight decades by something called the Institutional Revolutionary Party. But crazy enough.
Chapter Two
Mexicans get confused when people criticize nepotism. Who would be better to have working for you than family? It's especially non-applicable in a system dominated by the PRI, which may be a machine in the political sense but is organically a family, or at least a clan.
"Chariots of the Godfathers"by Raymundo Carrasco
Los Angeles New Times, March 29, 2000
Three very cute chiquitas work in the Public Information office at City Hall, all three fluttery but efficient. They help compensate for the general air of battered decay. The whole Palacio is shabby and dirty even by the standards of a Mexican city. The building itself is arrogantly ugly: squat and shabby with the flaking cement painted a drab off-color Mijares once called "Diaper Contents Yellow". The opening to the courtyard is cluttered with noisy families waiting for paperwork, tables selling schoolbooks from the State press, and even booths hawking appliances, raffles, and cellular phones.
The courtyard is open and bare, with a pathetic cement fountain shaped like a bicycle horn where pigeons peck at cigarette butts in the stagnant water. The paint is peeling, tiles are missing. Heaps of chairs and musty cardboard boxes full of files are stacked up under the balcony, sometimes blocking doorways. A "Civic Information"booth lies on its side below the split stairway leading up to the balcony running around the second floor. It's a porqueria, the best translation I can come up with for "piece of crap". On the other hand, it might not be a good idea to have public buildings look much nicer and more luxurious than what the voters have to live in.
The Public Information office goes well with the general air of neglect and underfunding. Compared to publicity offices at the University of Arizona, for instance, it's a dirty broom closet that could use a hose-down and exterminator. They've got us on the second floor, rear corner, diagonal across from the Mayor's office. I take comfort from being as far as I can from the scene of inaction. Two rooms, aging computers, press clippings, morgues, the three info-cuties and one mean old hag who files everything. Mijares, as Director of Public Information, gets one room, which she paid to have painted an interesting shade of rose. I get a special Press Relations desk, army-colored metal with only one drawer left.
None of the cute info-chicas got too interested in nursing my bleeding face and ripped suit when I dragged in at eight. Neither did three or four people who don't work there, but seemed to be helping the info-chicas stand around avoiding eye contact and hiding smirks. As soon as I walked over to my desk, where I could hear what was going on in Mijares office, I saw why. Daddy had dropped by for a little anti-social visit. And was chewing her butt off.
You can expect family political spats when the patriarch is Donaldo Gortari y Guzmán, secretary of the local PRI machine, and his daughter goes rad-chic to work for the scruffy PT organization--barely what you'd call a Labor Party. But he'd brought it down to City Hall for all to enjoy. And since the info-chicas are terrified, awed and despised by Mijares, they would be enjoying it the most and suffer for it later.
I went over to the door where I could hear everything said, unapologetically eavesdropping on my boss/desire object. I never made any secret of being totally absorbed by anything and everything to do with Mijares. I could focus my entire perception and intellect on whether her eyebrow actually grows in such a graceful curve, or whether she has skillfully sketched it like she did back when she shaved her head.
Now she flaunts a glossy black mane that most women would probably want to throttle her for shaving off. Or just for being too perfect and letting them know she knows it. What she's done with the rest of her various hairs I don't know--and even thinking about it leads to sweats, flameouts of fancy and throbable cause.
Her papi was laying into her about her stealth campaign to reverse the decision to widen Avenida Sabalo through the tourist zone. One of those infrastructure things that are so stupid they are almost inevitable, and so profitable for the power structure nobody even thinks about bucking them.
He must have found out what she was planning when some of his captive editors at the Sol del Pacífico got a look at the preliminary papers she'd been circulating to more sympathetic press members. And she'd probably been working up support from powerful Councilmen, who would of course be his friends and sycophants. And would have told him what she was up to.
"It's necessary for healthy growth," he was saying. Raised Mijares for twenty-five years and still thinks you can argue with her logically. "The hotel zone is so choked nothing can move. Tourism is a major industry here, and you can't keep an industry running without modernizing the physical plant."
"By tearing out all those little sidewalk shops and restaurants that help make your cement Disneyland out there attractive to tourists? Who don't drive cars, by the way. Oh, but I forgot: all the big hotels and restaurants are set back far enough they won't lose their facades or seating area, will they? And there'd be no profit to be made for people with construction companies and city contracts, would there?"
"Growth is inevitable, you have to plan ahead."
"It's not inevitable. Acapulco isn't growing much anymore, is it? They drove their tourists away. You have to control traffic, not bow down to it. If you go to six lanes, they'll fill up in a year. Then what? Eight lanes? Twelve? Get rid of the sidewalks, have a car-only embarrassment like Brasilia?"
"What do you know about Brasilia?"
That would piss her off. Know-it-alls just hate running up against people who know more. She may think Internacionale but she's never been that far from home. He saw her smolder and pressed in.
"And what do you know about business? Or government for that matter?"
"As a matter of fact, I work for a government. At this very moment--didn't you see the signs on your way in?"
"A government that works for me, my friends, the people you sneer at. So what are you doing?"
"I couldn't explain it to you in a thousand years."
"Oh, I doubt you could explain it to yourself. But what I don't want is you explaining it to Don Filiberto or anybody on his committee. I want you to keep your nose, and your overly available little ass, out of this thing."
"This office..."
"NO! This office has nothing to do with construction or lobbying. If I hear of you trying to personally influence this thing one more time, you're going to regret it."
"Well, the convent and the boarding school and the stress camp didn't work. What else do you think I might regret?"
"How about having to get by on what this so-called job pays you?"
Ooo, that would have hurt. Lefty rebels hate to be reminded they are living on daddy's ill-gotten capitalist gains. Her dad had a good sense of when to make an exit, too. He left her fuming on that one and surged out, almost bumping into me.
He looked like he was going to roar like the cinema lion, then smiled and greeted me warmly. With his broad tiger's face, his tailored one-button suits everyone thinks of as "Armanis"and in his case probably are. He called me "Raymundo." He can switch from chewing ass like a pit bull to slathering on hearty regard without touching the clutch. He's secretary of the semi-omnipotent Partido Revolucionario Institucional, so he's used to it. Even more so now that the PRI lost their eight-decade monopoly on Mexican government and actually have to win votes instead of just rigging everything up. But it still left me with a heightened sense of self-esteem I hoped to hold on to while facing the slavering jowls of the working press over lunch.
At her desk, Mijares was seething; nostrils widened, face flushed, nails digging into her elbows as she leaned against her desk and hugged herself like she might explode into flames and fragments. One look at her and I felt like my crotch might do more or less the same thing. I swear her ears were laid back like a dog's. I wanted to push her right back on the desk and pitch into her on the spot--after applying a gag, restraints, elbow pads and the other safety equipment you'd need for taming a wild beast in the process of psychic implosion. So instead of taking appropriate action, I just said, "Press in at two?" Mijares likes to deal with them in the early afternoon, when they're mellow and sluggish from the free lunch and cheap booze at Lo Peor. The last thing we need on our hands is a hungry, peevish, sober press corps.
She gave me a hot, slightly crazed look then a full-body shiver as she banked the rage inside and morphed back to a mere gorgeous human female. She focused me in, noting my wounds and abrasions, but also refraining from nursing or fluttering. She gave me her smile. Which is like saying the sun gave you some light. Her acceptance and beauty washed through me like the dancing radiation of life. Getting Mijares' approval is not like pleasing other people, who are often basically nice. Mijares' is not nice and her genuine smile is hard to win. Which by itself would make it worth going after, even if it wasn't such a gorgeous explosion of everything the human eye and heart have been created to applaud. She said, "Great job with the First Martyr, Mundo. I'm impressed."
That was her usual nickname for the Mayor's wife, but aside from that I no idea what she was talking about. I grunted ambiguously, looked stern and deserving.
"As soon as Blanquita called that talk show bitch at Radio Mujer every other reporter in town had it: there just isn't much they can do it about it right away," she went on. "So her cronies over at Hora probably won't even get a scoop, poor dears. But it's wonderful, however you did it. Not only denying rumors that hadn't even started yet, but blaming them on propaganda from political enemies. I couldn't have scripted it better myself. You're too much."
This was all news to me, though nothing's supposed to be news when you're in the news business. Later I found out that the First Batteree's denial of the beating had been broadcast on "Woman Radio" at about the time I was driving back in from Sagrada Familia. Drivetime newsbreak. I shrugged manfully and said, "Her loyalty to her husband and his political position takes priority over her personal difficulties."
She nodded, "Good line. Just so we don't let anybody get too specific about what those difficulties are." She'd bounced back from her early embarrassment with no more residuals than a cat recovering from a fall. Back in the more accustomed huntress role.
She took another look at my face and said, "Looks like you had to go through the Army of the Unwashed to get to her?"
"Under that grime, odor, and combativeness, they're as human as you or I."
"Well, thanks for the above-and-beyond, Mundo. I appreciate a man who'll bleed for me." She fixed me with one of her searching glances, which I would have turned into a strip search with the slightest encouragement, and asked if I'd had my ear to the keyhole while her father was in. I gave the kind of shrug that admits no guilt but defends against no charges.
She said, "And he hasn't even heard about Our Man punching out Blanquita. Yet. I can't wait for him to come rub in what a low class thug I'm working for."
"Populist thug," I said, "Alleged punching. As yet unconfirmed, officially denied, and probably mere oppositional propaganda."
"Keep saying that," she muttered, "You're going to need it. Have a nice lunch."
Chapter Three
The word hogar is not completely equivalent to the English "home". We don't speak of a "home office"or "home town". Mexicans can say, "Voy a casa," but not "I'm going home," when returning to their native country. Hogar is a hearth, a family. A single man can have a casa, even a mansión or hacienda, but not an hogar.
"Home for the Holidays" by Raymundo Carrasco,
"MazSpeak"Column Mazatlán's Pacific Pearl , December, 1998
Well, lunch would come soon enough and the prospect wasn't appetizing. Since I was bleeding, disheveled, and having One Of Those Mornings, I decided it would wait until I'd readjusted un poco. Go home, shower, change clothes, do a little first aid (I'd given up on any flutter/coo therapy) and ditch my car. I'd much rather walk than drive, especially in the downtown, and one thing I like about the Palacio job is that I can walk to work. If I need to go somewhere out of the downtown I do it the third world way: by taxi. Or the Mazatlán way, in one of the fiberglass, open-air, rolling jukeboxes we call pulmonías, because they're a good way for tourists to catch pneumonia. It's a bad idea for a lower hierarch like myself to leave a car at city hall anyway, since there is no parking lot and the reserved spots on the streets are jealously guarded. In fact, as I got in to my old Volks Safari I noticed a city pickup full of M16-toting cops with that frustrated, looking-for-parking look focusing the tow-the-sucker stare on my battered Safari with all the lame paint jobs.
The first time Mijares saw my Safari she called it "El Vehiculo Ridiculo"but it suits me. These old Safaris are getting hard to find, probably because they have lousy steering and vulnerable body structure--you might remember the similar model "Vocho" sold in the United States under the name, "The Thing". An early owner gave it a coat of camouflage paint, accentuating its boxy resemblance to a Nazi staff car. Then another previous owner accepted money from "Boots"cigarettes to paint their logo on both doors and the sloping front snout. So it's sort of conspicuous, and has proudly earned the name everybody but Mijares calls it: "Das Boots".
I wound it up the slope of Cerro Neveria ("Icebox Hill"to gringos for some reason), the rackety motor complaining on the steep stretch of Calle Pedregoso. I went through my mooring ritual: banking the wheels to the curb, wedging a rock under a rear tire. More than one car has gone down this hill without the stabilizing counsel of a driver. I glanced up at my building, two stacks of studios fronted with arched porches and divided by a gigantic, sprawling rubber tree, and waved to my gringo neighbor Grady Clevell, strumming guitar on his balcony. People used to call it "The Tree House", but lately I've been hearing it referred to as "Twin Towers". I unlocked the gate and zigzagged up three flights of stairs through the tree. Getting home is an uphill chore.
I first moved in on the ground floor, then up into the place where Grady lives now, then on up to my current aerie when I worked out a deal with my landlord, Pablo, to convert the roof into living quarters. I keep moving into higher and smaller quarters. I'll probably end up in a nest in the tree.
I stepped onto the roof where I live, slammed the balky iron door, and felt the usual relaxation and exhilaration hit me. No windows, no walls: just me and the sky and the sea. The water puts everything into a different perspective. Which might make a good motto for Mazatlán. Like I do every time I come home, I stepped over to the railing and spread my arms out wide to embrace my view of my town.
Watching the water and sky from my roof can completely change how I feel about the day. It doesn't look so much like Northern Mexico from up here, more like a poster of the French Riviera: Olas Altas cove churning with trapped and funneled surf, the fishing boats and bathers on the beach, the domed mansions of Cerro Viggia tumbling down to the curve of seawall, and behind them the hunchbacked sugarloaf of Cerro Crestón topped by the Second Highest Lighthouse In The World. Or The Hemisphere, or something. What matters is the semi-superlative. Sometimes a few of the Largest Tuna Fleet In Mexico putt past the little string of decorator islands. All embroidered by wheeling gulls, hovering frigate birds, stuka-cruising pelicans and even a dolphin or two.
It's a mood-altering outlook at any time, and sometimes most beautiful under "bad"conditions. Storms whip the surf into a foamy filigree, like a green and white Arab carpet. The big waves blast into the point, showering spray as high as the top floors of Colegio El Pacífico on the cliffs above. Clouds look better than clear blue when the sun starts tipping off the edge, painting them garish Mexican colors and swirling patterns of light across the sky. I drank in the muted impact of the view and the rolling rhythm of the waves then took off my scuffed clothes and stepped into the shower.
When I say stepped "into"the shower, it's misleading, sort of like talking about "inside"my apartment. Can you be "inside"something with no walls? My landlord put up a corrugated cement ceiling and walled the space off from the stairwell: I ran a waist-high banister around the edge and added what are technically a kitchen and bath. The kitchen is one of those square cement scullery sinks Grady calls "Mexican Maytags", a little refrigerator, and a propane tank powering a two burner stove that regularly tries to kill me. The "bath"is an open stall with a toilet and showerhead. Since I am at the same level as the cisterns that give any semblance of water pressure, I can only shower by turning on the pump that fills the cistern. I get a slightly pulsing shower, and only when the electricity is functioning. The bed is a concrete platform with a mattress on it and the table and chairs are white plastic with Pacifico beer logos ("Toma Pacífico, Nada Mas!") The closet is a rod between the bath stall and the rear wall. I keep my clothes in an old ice chest, and books piled up on the refrigerator. Mi casa es su casa.
It's very cheap. It's also the greatest place I ever lived and I hope I never leave. Everybody raves about the view, but there's more to it than that. The breeze comes through and cools it off during the brutal heat of summer and fall, the light just swarms in all over the place and the night sky is right there to touch. There's a sort of audio "view"as well. I am never out of the sound of the waves, hearing their changing moods. It does something good to me in my sleep. At night I hear the bark of seals on the islands. The treetops around me are full of birds and during the day I hear a constant concert of calls, helped out a little by the baying of dogs and Chema's damned gamecocks. I would never have a stereo up here, much less a television. Much, much less. Fortunately Grady, downstairs, and the old Guatemalan widow on the ground floor, feel the same way. Though Grady will sometimes play guitar and croak Grateful Dead songs on his porch all night if the mood--or a hit of sinsemilla--should strike him. It's my roost, up here. My home in the sky. In Spanish, el cielo means both "sky"and "heaven".
I went to the railing and stood there naked, air-drying and examining my face wounds in the mirror taped to a beam. Not so bad, after all. I could stop the bleeding, not much chance of infection (especially after I splashed them full of Arricife after-shave) but they'd be impossible to cover up or hide. Kind of like my famously protruding ears. Something to be ignored and moved past. I looked good enough for government work. Mijares once told me I look like I was designed to be beautiful, but somebody slipped up in manufacture. Lumps and dents and the ears. I just shrugged and said, "Hecho en México. " It's what we say when something breaks or falls apart in our hands--"Made in Mexico." It's part of the national self-denigration that doesn't quite balance out our rabid patriotism.
The bruises all over my body were darkening and stiffening, but I could conceal them. I put on a clean suit, brushed my hair, and touched up the hurried shaving job I'd done in the wee hours. And felt a lot better. After all, I had gotten to watch the Mayor's asshole bodyguards get shoved around, Mijares had been impressed--however undeservedly--by my handling of the wife situation, and she had stood right here in my bedroom, touched me in my sleep. Amid the erotic punctuations I was putting on that, I suddenly wondered how she'd found me...and how she'd gotten in.
I was heading out when something caught the corner of my eye. I looked around a minute before I spotted it, up on the top floor of the abandoned Freeman Hotel, a slabby piece of fifties ugliness that sticks up out of the historic bayfront like a bad tooth. Huge letters, bright red paint: "MicroBio". Damn that little shit! God knows how he managed to get up in the Freeman with his spray can, but that's what he's all about. And now I'll have to look at his name every day, like he'd managed to tag the inside of my house. This graffiti plague is a bad enough blight on the town--an ugly, demeaning infection from the drug gang culture of the United States--but now it's starting to move in on historic buildings and dance right in front of my eyes.
And this punk MicroBio is the worst yet, trying to deface more area than the legendary Poema, whose scrawled name can be seen all over the municipio, but is currently unable to defend his status because he had his hands smashed by a shovel in the hands of an angry building owner who stayed up all night for a week to catch him tagging a new repainted wall. "Staining"the wall, we call it.
I was furious. I started to retrieve the phone then stalled out, wondering who I would call. The Freeman? The editor at El Debate? Mazatlán Vice? I looked out at the bay and didn't feel so great any more, as though his paint had stained not just my view, but my life. What was I doing working for this town when I couldn't even keep it from being marked up like a latrine wall? Then I remembered Mijares was up to her luscious ass in alligators, and I might get another chance to bleed for her, so I headed for the door.
"This isn't over yet, Germ," I snarled at MicroBio as I slammed the iron door and skittered down the stairs. I was trying for a Batman villain effect, but probably sounded like a disinfectant commercial.
Chapter Four
One of the main reasons for business failure in Mexico is what I would call Cantinitis. If a man plans to open a business he first brags about it to his friends in the local cantina, and ends up committing himself to something bigger and grander than he originally might have planned, or that makes any sense. Once he has stated his plans to have the biggest dance floor in the state or a motel with mirrors on every ceiling or a fleet of a hundred trucks, he can't reduce the scale, cut the price, or trim the frills without losing face in front of the only people whose opinions really matter--his drinking buddies. It is not economic pressure that creates failures here, but peer pressure.
"Why Mexico Isn't Japan...Yet" by Mundo Carrasco
Mexico Business Report, August 1996
The first time my father asked me what I actually did over at the Palacio to justify my paycheck I told him, "Mostly just have lunch." He nodded solemnly and said, "Sounds a lot like the union." But it's a major part of my job, possibly what I was actually hired for, other than to hang my fading athletic stardom on the party banner like a brass badge. My job title is Press Relations and those relations take place mostly in the confines of a shabby downtown bar called Lo Peor, meaning "The Worst", which is pretty close to the truth. Closer than we denizens usually get, since so many of us are journalists, politicians and lawyers. They will even serve gringos. It's an invaluable no-man's-land for city government, a place where elements ranging from powerful to downright criminal can come together. It's where a lot of the governing, at least as much as people are aware of, actually takes place, not to mention the formation of opinion and what we might call the Truth. Not a place you'd want to be caught dead.
I take a two hour lunch there every working day, and I always walk through the cool, dim bar to sit in the Salón Elizabeth Taylor, a glassed-off area with extra fans that was named shortly after the owner put up a huge hand-tinted photograph of La Taylor at about age twenty five. The other photographs in the Salón and the rest of Lo Peor are a sort of museum of Mazatlán political history, with a few of the region's artistes, like Lola Beltran, Pedro Infante, and Los Tigres del Norte, thrown in for good measure. The Salón is connected to the rest of the establishment by a glass door that only "regulars"have the nerve to enter during the lunch hour, and a window that passes through from behind the bar so Chuy can serve us directly without sending his waitresses into peril. When not mixing drinks or setting up beers, he lounges at the window, participating in the conversations of the elect, if not always elected.
Moving from the working press--if it should really be called such in a country where nothing like that really works--over to the City Hall crowd didn't alter my status within the group all that much. The first reporter to stroll into my first official press conference greeted me in the usual friendly/profane manner, then realized I was running the thing instead of sitting there trying to sabotage it. He gaped and said, "You're bullshitting me!" I replied, "Not until everybody else gets here," which went the rounds. I might not be welcome in the newsrooms anymore, but I'm still part of the bola at Lo Peor, where the news really gets written anyway.
Not that I didn't know they were going to pounce on me as soon as I got my drink. They started licking their lips as soon as they saw me through the dirty glass. Wolves smiling over crippled meat. Well, sometimes the sheep just have to kick wolf ass. And that, as I've mentioned, was what I got paid for. I went through the usual handshakes, flesh-poundings and insults while I waited for Chuy to hand a bottle of Dos Equis through the window. It's an unwritten rule here that you don't attack anybody until they have their drink. They may need it. If only to throw at you.
Eusebio Andrados, every bit the rising young legal star in his Dockers and rep tie, did a double-take on my face, "Wow, Mundo. Where'd you get the decorations?"
I solemnly intoned, "In the struggle against poverty."
"Well, you'd make a lovely first lady."
Half-hearted chuckles, then Beto Aznar, a typical Sol de Pacífico hack/drunk, stepped up. "I suppose this means they'll recall all those PT stickers." Damn, I'd forgotten them, all those yellow banners with the red star and big red stop sign: STOP the Violence, Corruption, and Impunity! One out of three isn't bad. Hell, it's over .333.
I gave Beto a pitying look. "I should have assumed you'd try to reduce ungrounded rumors about a man's domestic difficulties to a political issue, Beto. Working for an opposition party like you do." That would derail him a little. The national Sol chain is wholly owned by the PRI, one of the more blatant examples of their casual approach to running the country outright. They aren't pro-PRI papers; they are actually full-bore propaganda sheets. But their employees hate reminders of the fact.
"Don't start knocking the Sol again," Beto growled. He's known to get nasty, obscene, and violent when he's had a few drinks. His propensity for going off on people whenever his blood/tequila ratio destabilizes has led to suggestions that he just might be an alcoholic, which he denies vehemently. Says he's just a social drinker.
"You don't mean the ‘Sol-d Out', do you?" put in Major Tom, one of two gringos present in the Salón. A tall, white-haired stringer for UPI, Tom is the envy of all dirty old gringo men because he shacks up with a tight young aerobics instructor. He's also an ex-paratrooper and gym rat at sixty-two, not intimidated by Beto's potential tantrums.
Lorenzo, smug in his linen quayabera, Vuarnets and city hall sinecure, snickered, "How could they sell out? They're already owned, branded, and impregnated."
Raging, Beto swung back on me. "Ridiculous. Who could be more owned, more of a ridiculous puppet, than your fat little cocodrilo mayor?"
I think of him as "chubby" actually. But it's hard to deny the accusation of him being not a crocodile, but a cocaina fancier. In fact, a fanatic of any intoxicant that should come his way.
I just said, "Well, of course he's a servant of the people."
"Servant of the narcos, you mean!" Beto was getting worked up. Might have had a toot or two earlier himself. "Who are you claiming spent all that money on his election? The parties, the rallies, the subsidies..."
"Actually, I heard it was Borrego and his little clique," Eusebio chimed in, "Rich hotel owners, old families...wait a minute, aren't they all PRI people?"
"That has nothing to do with that little idiot!" He turned back to me, "How can you defend such a disgrace to the office, Mundo? To the city itself? He doesn't even have a public school education." Harsh judgment from Beto, crammed in liceos, collegios, and private universities.
"Hey, he got through a year at Secundaria Hidalgo," Lorenzo protested. His old junior high, too, but he shouldn't have mentioned it.
Beto gave him a sneer and said, "Like I said. No education."
Major Tom rolled a tortilla around a wad of ceviche, then licked the edge like he was rolling a cigarette instead of a taco. He said, "He could have been stupider. Slugged her before the elections."
"And saved the city from puppet rule by a drug-dazed, drunken fool." Beto gave me a wide-eyed, challenging stare, "What kind of government is run by a talk show host, anyway?"
Before I could open my mouth, Tom spoke laconically around his ceviche taco, "A shockjockracy?"
Eusebio loved it. "A mediacracy, perhaps?"
"It's pronounced ‘mediocrity', isn't it?" Lorenzo said, then flaunted his in-house connection to the topic. "It hardly matters. He never shows up at the office anyway."
Tom spread his hands, "Then how much damage can he do?"
"Ask his wife's surgeon," Beto snapped.
"You can't cover this one up, Mundo," Carlos Estrada, my old beat-mate from Noroeste, said in a sad way. "The talk shows are all over it, even La Poderosa and Radio Ranchito have cut the music to chat about it. Maybe you should try to spin it, make up a new motto: The family that abuses together confuses together."
"Cover up?" I asked, wounded to the core, "This is the New Government here, Carlito. The post-PRI approach. No corruption, no impunity: everything transparent."
"Transparent" is the new watchword in Mexican politics, meaning things get done in the open, not in secret. Santa Claus is catching on down here, too. Chuy popped through the window like a jack-in-the-box to set down fresh drinks. He said, "I can see right through that transparency shit." He paused a beat, then added, "And impunity can't touch me either," then popped back out of sight.
"But..."Eusebio went on, trailing it out in one of his slick lawyer techniques. Taking the floor. "But, aren't we getting off the general topic here? Did Varedas or did he not sock his old lady? Also maybe pound her head on the floor? Put her in the Military Hospital last night?"
"That's exactly what I heard," Carlito blurted, disgruntled to get upstaged by information from somebody who was not even a journalist. "Isn't that sort of what the press conference is about, Mundo?"
"It might come up. But didn't you hear that Sra. Varedas denied those rumors?"
"Oh, well, that's truly surprising. Do you think she might answer a few questions about that?"
"Cut the crap, Carrasco," Beto snarled, "We're all going in there in an hour. What are you going to say about your boss turning his sainted vieja into a punching-bag?"
Showtime, folks. I took the Fourth Deepest Breath In Mexico and swung away. "Okay. Number one: so far we're dealing with rumors and hearsay. We don't yet know what happened."
"Oh, you're going to be like that?"
"How are you going to be? Run with rumors, then find out you were misinformed in contradicting Blanquita in her tearful defense of her husband?" That kept them quiet long enough for me to proceed to:
"Sr. Varedas is an easy enough target, all right. But he's just started in this job. Coming up from The People to a complicated position of honor. You might consider giving this guy a break, or at least a sporting chance. He thought he was big-time because he started hanging out with big-timers."
"Big time narcos," Beto muttered.
"Big time PRIistas," I said, like a teacher making a correction. "High rollers. But now he's ‘it' and it's blowing his mind."
"Not to mention his nose," Eusebio snickered.
"And who do you buy your stuff from, Sebi? Beach vendors? He's been attacked, made mistakes, had a tough time. He's adjusting. You shouldn't take his peccadilloes as proof of guilt on something like this."
"Mundo?" Uh-oh, it was Carlos' calm, solemn voice. I nodded at him.
"Have you ever met this guy? Ever spoken with him?"
The truth was, no I hadn't. He'd met with very few City Hall people, actually. Preferred to spend his time partying with big shots and zipping around in his fleet of Suburbans coking out with his bodyguards and cuates from the old days. Like he was doing right at the moment when I could have used a little help cutting him down off the cross, the fucker.
"I work for him, Carlito. I'm trying to cut him some slack. All I ask you to do is look at what I'm saying here, ask yourselves if it makes sense." And it did, too. That was my credibility with them. I didn't feed them official bullshitburgers here at Lo Peor, I only put my case in terms that were mutually acceptable and beneficial. Down at the bottom of things the new media in Mexico are aware that their relationship with government is symbiotic. In other countries, I couldn't say. It would have been easier dealing with these guys in the old days--meaning prior to 2000--when the parties just paid them off for good reviews. But then my job wouldn't have existed, would it? Oh, and one more thing: "Look, kick him when he's down, you have to live with him for three years."
I don't know what they would have said to that, because that's when Chuy stuck his head in the bar window and said, "Oye, cabrones. Escucha La Ley." Then he turned up the radio he listens to under the background rumble of banda music out in the main bar. "Listen to The Law" would sound almost biblical if La Ley weren't 86 AM, the most obnoxious radio station in town; once home to Varedas' old talk show, in fact. I suspected I wouldn't enjoy it much today. Sure enough, out came the spoiled tenor bleat of my boss telling Gaspar de Hacha and his siesta hour listeners all about how it wasn't precisely his fault that he'd beat the bejesus out of his wife. He sounded completely shit-faced. Of course we Mexicans don't use crude gringo expressions like "shit-faced". We would call the condition bien pedo, meaning "really fart".
I was extremely gratified by the glances my former colleagues threw at me as he sniveled and blustered through a complete confession. When he tacked on the baroque embellishment that like all men, he socked up his esposa when necessary but he didn't do it every day, Chuy stuck his head through the window again, looked at me and cracked up. Well, they can't blame us for screwing up when the Mayor confesses to domestic violence on the airwaves. Not that somebody won't get around to trying. But I was stunned. I don't think I'd ever heard of the guy admitting the truth before. I could feel my neck pulling in and dick shrinking. Christ, they sent me to shut her up?
All eyes were on me when Chuy turned the radio back down. I stood up and said, "I think I just heard the Call of Duty."
Beto smirked, "That's a shame, because I think the toilet is already occupied."
It was the second time that day I'd retreated from a bunch of people laughing at me. I missed the nuns.
Chapter Five
You hear a lot recently about the concept (never really tested in this country) that political freedom can only function when accompanied by freedom of the press. What you don't hear as much, though it may be more important, is that democracy also requires a press that is intelligent, professional, and open. Governments don't have to work very hard to censor a press incapable of uncovering facts or presenting them properly.
"The New, Improved Corruption" by Mundo Carrasco
Proceso, May 1999
I was standing right there, watching the whole conference, but it was somehow less real that what I later saw on television. I'd never seen Mijares on camera before and it was impressive. I don't see any point in trying to describe Mijares for you. She is incomparably beautiful, so what would I compare her to? Should I list the perfect lips, gorgeous nostrils, precious toenails? It's easy to describe ugly people or pretty people with a few substandard features. It's easiest with people with one big flaw. I could mention ears, for instance. But there is a quality of beauty that makes it seem not only easy but inevitable for everything to be beautiful and hard to imagine anything being less than a perfect pleasure. Maybe that's why beauty makes us feel good. Unless there's something wrong with us.
But on camera she was something else entirely. She shimmered with media cool, like a slab of dry ice on a hot sidewalk. Every color of her outfit--apparently stored in her desk or car with "Break Out In Case Of Emergency" stenciled on it--was perfect for pickup, as if dyed to match TV phosphors. Her makeup was a little too much for live viewing, but on camera turned her into the Goddess of Truth and Innocence. I even noticed a dark streak between her already pronounced breasts, giving them an even more emphatic enunciation. Dangling, stripy earrings framed her eyes in a parenthesis of moiré buzz. She sizzled like a blank white screen, was as bottomless as dark glass. She had their number, but good.
We'd only had about twenty minutes to brainstorm a strategy to cope with our boss tossing us to the wolves, then we had to open the gates and invite them in for wolf chow. It took Mijares about two to decide that she would handle the questions instead of me. No argument from my side. For one thing, if Mijares thought it would be a good idea for me to sing them torch songs in drag, I'd probably have done it. Also, she would probably be better at this than I would: a woman, more formal distance from the reporters, and a nastier disposition. Besides, fielding questions on this one was the last thing I wanted to do. Mijares seemed to be looking forward to it. Her other change was that we would not appear in the room until the press was there and getting restless. Then we'd make an entrance. Again, right up her alley. She had them eating out of her cleavage until Rocío decided it was time to make her move.