The Other Mexico

This is how the other half lives.  

I eat cornmeal encrusted salmon with wasabi-jalapeno dipping sauce; I gaze down at the lap pool from Nancy’s balcony;  I’m invited to a embassy-brat fiesta with a buffet table laden with American packaged foods, those flat pretzels  with hummus and flabby shrimp cocktail. And everyone’s so friendly and healthy and happy and they speak English and the toilets flush.

Makes me realize just how isolated I’ve been in Green River, just like the people in the communities, emulating them by accident, or out of necessity, to protect myself from the allure of the ‘otro lado’, the other Mexico, the other side of the peso, the VIP cinemas and saki bars and museum cafes….It’s all here in Polanco.  

Love and money and green spaces and recycling and rock-n-roll – no banda or ranchero in this pueblo. Lacoste shirts are in again, the gator on the breast bigger than ever; no mistakin’ who’s got dinero here. And boat shoes, please, those again? Bottles of Red Label whiskey in the middle of the table and a little serving cart with sodas and a silver bucket of ice with tongs.  

Nancy’s got a marble-floor apartment with granite countertops and wraparound balcony, maid brigade service that changes the towels and sheets daily, and I think about all that water, a special walkie-talkie phone to the embassy for earthquake or narco emergencies, concierge service, a gym, breakfast room, internet.  All this for 70,000 pesos per month?!  Granted, it's a temporary assignment, and Nancy didn't choose it - but when I compare this to Diaz Rincon 1-bedroom in the Rioverde Centro - 1500 pesos monthly - it's mind-boggling.  It's 50X more!

Do I miss all this? Book store cafes where no one is buying books?  Trendy cafes where a Corona cost three times what Rita charges at El Fenix and the waiter says:  you pay for this pointing to the lovely square and lovely square people occupying it.  Encrusted salmon entree, 300 pesos, but I sure can’t get that in Rioverde. So I pay.  And it’s worth every pesito.

Do I miss all that?

Yes, and no.  What I do really miss is this:  the ideas, connection, collaboration, camaraderie in this colossal effort.  

Sitting around the conference table with Nancy’s embassy colleagues on Monday, there was passion and energy for my ‘cause.’ Viva Viveros certainly wasn’t part of the USDA’s mission here; they are in Mexico to promote American products. Their website is www.buyamerican.com. But they want to help anyway.  They know people from Coke and Walmart and Bimbo at the Chamber of Commerce – big businesses that have a commitment to go green and socially responsible.  Laura from Monterrey is going to connect me to them – and invite our vivero groups to participate in the Green Fair in Monterrey in August.  And Elenita at the Ben Franklin Library wants me to come back and do to do a broadcast webchat about the women of Zamachihue. That’s the most press they’ve ever gotten.

So I reach across to the other side, almost guiltily, like dipping into the cookie jar.  But I know this much:  nothing it this world that’s worth doing can be done solo. And I thank Nancy for giving me a taste of the good life, a better life than either of us ever had in WDC, USA.

And I say this knowing in my bones Mexico’s deepest problem is this inequity – one day I can be in the campo with my Zama women, pissing in a hole in the ground, electricity strung by orange extension across dirt roads…and the very next day, three Auto Naves bus connections and 8 hours later, I’m in DeEffe eating cornmeal encrusted wild sockeye salmon from the Pacific Northwest.