Compañeros,
It's been awhile since I've sat at this little glowing box and attempted to hammer out a 'status update' of sorts, just to keep you apprised of the goings-on here, in my new home to the south. It's 26 degrees here today, though our mornings are cool, and I'm sitting in the sun hammering out a scope document for some revisions that we've made to an app that may, or very well may not, make my superiors deliriously rich and, at the same time, allow me to finally buy the giant, jewel-encrusted sombrero that I've coveted since my arrival. The thing is huge, about two metres in diameter, and is covered in precious stones. If Mexico had princes and princesses, this thing would have been used as one of their cribs.
But the country lacks such distinction, and, as such, the thing is destined to hang on my dining room wall, above a massive circular dining room table, and a new wooden sign I will erect this weekend announcing: "The Nights of the Round Table".
That is, IF I can get this scope finished, which is looking decidedly unlikely for today.
I feel like writing something a little more fun at the moment, and I figured I'd benefit from a little recreational word-smithing.
Mexico, yet again, finds itself in international headlines, this time because some poor fool struck a match to light a gas stove, and, to his great surprise, also managed to ignite a massive volume of unseen methane or natural gases, which emanated from nearby swamps, sewers or a natural gas line leak, depending on which official theory you happen to subscribe to. The end result, however, cannot be disputed. The sheer force of the blast blew the floor of the lobby of the Riviera Princess Hotel through the goddamn ceiling, killing 7 people, including 5 Canadian tourists, and 2 hotel employees.
A friend of mine was already on the horn with me a day later, asking that I inquire into the official report of the blast, so that they might determine if their hotel, on the other side of the complex, was in jeopardy.
"Under what circumstances, exactly, do you think that the hotel's manager is going to respond to that question with 'yes'?" I asked, perplexed.
But he was desperate. They'd paid for the holiday, made all the required arrangements, and were now staring down the very real possibility that they'd either have to cancel, or change locations at the last minute, something travel agents aren't always so willing to have you do. However, when one's every waking moment while on vacation is consumed by the fear that your poolside, mid-afternoon margarita session might at any moment be interrupted by huge chunks of concrete raining down from the sky...well, to hell with someone else's inconvenience eh?
"You should get out of there Davey", he said. "Nothing good's happening in Mexico."
And when all you read is the international headlines, he's not far off the mark, but at least this latest saga didn't include people being hung from a tree and then dismembered, or 18 people being buried in a mass grave, or an Ottawa-based businessman being stuffed into the trunk of his car outside of Acapulco before the vehicle was torched on the side of the road, or 15 people being gunned down while washing their cars at a carwash on a Saturday afternoon as a retaliation for the government having arrested 134 cartel members the week before.
"Besides", I told him, "this is Mexico City. They don't fuck around here."
To be sure, this is at least partially true. The convoys of military soldiers and fully-equipped riot cops that are the rule rather than the exception on the streets here seem to keep whatever malignant influence the cartels enjoy in the Federal District firmly buried, in the underground, and decidedly quiet. Gang violence is rare, but when it does crop up, the orders from President Calderon are for the perpetrators to be dealt with swiftly, and harshly. The country cannot afford headlines pasted across the globe, pigeonholing its world-class, convention-heavy metropolis as a den of thieves, rapists, and cocaine-fueled massacre, where an unsuspecting tourist may be dragged off the street at midday to be held in a shanty on the outskirts of town until the required ransom is paid or your time runs out.
The implications of that brand of reporting would be dire for all sorts of industries based here, not to mention conventions and tourism, which has already taken massive hits due to the cartel-related violence on the Pacific Coast.
Instead, our capital city sits at an almost constant state of 'red alert', with its police force in full view of the general populace on an almost constant basis, traveling in pairs, on bikes, motorcycles, on foot and in patrol cars, whose lights are perpetually flashing.
I was hunkered down in a local pub several weeks ago, indulging in litre-mugs of beer, when I struck up a conversation with one of the bartenders, who seemed preoccupied by the large amount of police cruisers driving by the bar, lights flashing.
"In Canada", I said, "they only flash their lights when there's trouble."
"Here too.", he said. "Which is all the time."
This kind of over-dramatic response is typical of a great deal of the residents here, who mostly grew tired of the constant debate and rhetoric being put forth by national and international news organizations who consistently argued whether Mexico should be allowed to celebrate its bicentennial anniversary, or whether the festivities should have been canceled across the country, as they were in Ciudad Juarez, to avoid potential terrorist acts, and the price tag that came along with assuring that we didn't.
$100 million, after all, is a fair amount of money to spend on a party, and a lot of people thought that the funds would have been better spent on things like infrastructure, schools, water preservation, rural development or the country's promotion to the world, rather than blowing the whole wad in a 72 hour orgy of tequila, music, dancing, fireworks and 30 000 riot cops.
The other side stood firm, Calderon included, and stated emphatically that Mexico would host a party to end all celebrations, and would do so without a single drop of blood shed. For the most part, he was right. Many arrests were made that night, and I was very nearly one of them, when I was shaken down near Constitution Square for drinking from an open liquor container (it is, after all, rather difficult to drink from a closed one). After demanding 1200 pesos per violation or threatening 36 hours in prison, my girlfriend and I revealed that we had 50 pesos between the two of us, and if they'd like that, they were welcome to it. The cops, obviously furious at the 15 wasted minutes they'd spent trying to strike the fear of God into us with little result, sped away without a further word, but not before they poured our beer into the street, leaving us to a 10 km walk home without any sort of refreshment or mind-bending diversion.
Instead, we took turns taking pictures of each other modeling with the dozens of stone statues that mark Paseo de la Reforma.
That night is long gone now, a distant spec in the rear-view mirror, and while a great many of the locals here participated no more than watching the festivities unfold from the comfort of their living rooms, there is a general consensus that the ability for the country to hold simultaneous love-ins in all of its major cities and strategic focal points celebrating its independence without having to actually kill anyone this time in order to do it had to count as a win for the forces of Law and Order.
But the prevailing, intuitive sense of 'the long road ahead' that most self-aware citizens felt before we all shook our moneymakers in the streets on September 15th is something that no amount of booze or cliché-laden speeches could purge from the national conscience. No matter how many times someone yells 'Viva México' or dances to an indigenous rhythm, or shows up at a large public event, there will always be, for the time being, a sense that no matter the resolve of the general population, the well-armed cartels will eventually wear out the governing forces and plunge the country into a state of servitude not seen since the ghettos of eastern Europe.
And maybe they're right. There is, after all, the great possibility that our elected leaders lose their appetite for seeing their neighbours gunned down in the streets in order to stop the trafficking of illicit drugs to a very economically willing American populace. No one wants to send their children to school, only to have them return in body bags, all because some geek who lives in a fortified compound, paid for by the populace's income taxes has decided that even though his war on drugs has cost over 28 000 lives on his very own soil, he must trudge forward at all costs, and his loyal subjects must do the same.
But in a little over a year from now, Mexico will be forced to elect a new leader, as Calderon's 6 year term expires. Some will do so happily, anxious to reverse a course that many have viewed as flawed from the very beginning. But as Obama found out early on in his stint as US President, pulling out isn't as easy as it sounds. You cannot, after all, dive head-first into a wasp nest and then retreat, with bows and apologies, without some serious fucking consequences.
We are in this for the long haul, for better or for worse, until one side caves into the other's pressure, and I can't help but theorize that the lucrative nature of the cartels' business model will always attract a fair amount of pimps, hacks, punks and losers to their ranks, offering a constant replenishment of footsoldiers with which to combat the publicly sanctioned forces.
There are at least 28 000 people who've learned a very valuable lesson that public servants would do well to heed, and whose graduations are printed in bold font-type on newsprint that inevitably makes its way to the same final resting place as all of the unknown and undiscovered victims of this ill-advised conflict. The landfill site.
As Reagan and Bush and Clinton and Bush II and Obama have already determined, it is very difficult to win a war. What Calderon and the Mexican populace will likely need to come to terms with is that it is almost fucking impossible to win one that you're fighting in your backyard, against invisible forces.
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