Mexico City, Mexico 12-2-02

“What is the appropriate religious tchachke to buy for a nun?”

This is a question that comes up less often than one might think. Yet there I was, in one of my favorite cities in front of one my favorite sights, the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City staring this quandary squarely in the eyes. The Basilica is on the sight where, the story goes, Juan Diego, an indigenous Indian recently converted to Catholicism, saw the Virgin Mary on December 9, 1531. It is one of the largest, most important, and most visited Catholic sights in the world. Guadalupe is Patron Saint of the Americas, and in 2002 Juan Diego became the first native American to be named a saint. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Guadalupe to the 22 million people of Mexico City. There are alters and shrines to the “dark virgin” everywhere from parks to parking garages. Before taking the oath of office, Mexican President Vincente Fox crawled into the Basilica on his knees.

Any place in Mexico City that attracts crowds – which is most of Mexico City – also attracts venders, purveyors of stuff. The Basilica draws a lot of crowds, so it draws a lot of people trying to sell things to them. On the plaza in front of the Basilica one can have (as I did) one’s picture taken next to a statue of a donkey and in front of life sized images of Juan Diego, Guadalupe, and the Pope. It’s the mother of all Forrest Gump moments. Outside of the Basilica’s compound, endless venders sell an endless stock of what can only be called Guadalupe tchochkes. There are glow in the dark statues of the Virgin and pictures of the Virgin decapaged into walnut shell key chains. There are clear plastic cubes with dioramas of the miracle inside. There are clocks, refrigerator magnets, pens, and t-shirts. I bought a sort of shadow box with a picture of Guadalupe sprinkled with glitter and with a red Christmas light in front of it. Most of what is sold in the stalls on the streets is also sold at official gift shops inside. The line between the sacred and the profane is very fuzzy in Mexico City.

All of which brings me to the problem of the gift for the nun.

I work with a Sister of Mercy, Sister Janice. I had to buy her something. One cannot work with a nun, visit such a big deal Catholic place, and not bring back a gift.

At one end were the large, beautiful, and pricey hand carved sculptures. This just isn’t my style. And besides, don’t nuns already have all that stuff they can handle? On the other end were the glow in the dark Christs on the cross and the posters that changed from Jesus to the Virgin and back depending on one’s angle of approach. These seemed somehow over the top.

As a cop-out, I considered saying I lit a candle for her, but that would be a lie, and regardless of one’s faith, lying to a nun seems somehow worse than lying to regular people.

I settled on a theme votive, a small candle wrapped in foil on which is printed an image of Guadalupe (and the phone number of the company that makes them, in case you want to order more). It was small, easy to pack, captures the feel of the place, and can be explained without saying, “really, compared to the stuff I could have brought, this isn’t cheesy at all…”

Huatulco, Mexico 11-29-02

Huatulco, Mexico, is an imitation of a different order. There is no real here. No native crafts, no old women selling rugs or old men playing guitar and peddling their home burned CDs.

Huatulco is a new, planned, beach development on the Pacific coast in Southern Mexico. Before the big hotels, tour operators, and real estate developers, there was only a small fishing community. According to a guidebook to Mexico provided by the hotel, this area of bays was a favorite of pirates and almost no one else. The book, an impressive hard bound tome that comes in at nearly 500 pages, says “some 15 years ago Huatulco was an isolated wilderness with no electricity, phone lines or cement structures, accessible only via a rugged dirt path. The 1,000 or so people that lived on this coast made their lives from fishing and small scale agriculture.”

South of the more famous Puerto Escondito, Huatulco’s Mexico is Cancun. According to the guidebook, “No more than 30 years ago…[Cancun] was merely a peculiar geographical formation – called a sandbar – clinging to Mexico’s Caribbean coast.” Cancun is the product of, “keen eyed developers.” Huatulco is imitating a resort.

There is, of course, a place here. I really am in a hotel, and that really is the Pacific Ocean, and it really is stunning. The grasshopper on my patio refusing my entreaties to leap to its death on the sidewalk below, is here. Also here, on the deck below mine, is a big, mean looking bug. It’s the size of a small grapefruit and has the demeanor of a drug runner. It looks to be the sort of bug that would bring a gun to a knife fight. Nothing says “place” like predators.

This development wasn’t initially universally popular, creating this historical vacuum came at a cost. The aforementioned guidebook notes an airport has been built to service the hotels. The authors write, “while the airfield caused some controversy when reports surfaced that the landing strip was build on an ancient Zapotec archeological site, the palm-fringed ‘palapas’ were approved all around for blending nicely with the tropical surroundings.”

This Mexico also has real Mexican entrepreneurs. In Mexico, one is never far from a hustler (the same is true for the United States, but we prefer our hustlers safely off the streets and in the board rooms). They walk the small stretch of beach in front of the palapas selling tours, fishing trips, and jewelry. The value and authenticity of the jewelry was announced as one as “cheaper than WalMart.” Americans come to Mexico to get low cost great stuff, so we can go home and brag about how little we paid poor people for beautiful things.

At the hotel bar the drink of choice for Americans is, of course, the margarita. The margarita was invented for gringos who needed a palatable way to drink tequila. Tequila itself is more European than Mexican. According to a reputable looking book I picked up in a tourist bookstore in Oaxaca, before the Spanish arrived the locals drank only pulque, a milky white substance that ferments in the maguay plant. Pulque has a low alcohol content and public drunkenness was punishable by death. The Spanish brought not only guns and small pox, but also distilleries. They looked for something to brew and found the maguay. From this they developed mescal, which in the northern state of Tequila became mescal de tequila, or tequila for short. As an American, coincidentally with a Spanish heritage, I prefer my tequila otherwise adulterated, with mineral water and lime. The Mexicans seem to drink mostly Coke and beer.

Oaxaca, Mexico 11-28-02

I came to Oaxaca not to see Mexico, but rather to see that which appears to be Mexican. I came to see old men in cowboy hats and serapes and old women in colorful scarves selling handmade tortillas on the streets. I am not disappointed.

This Mexico has appeared to prove its authenticity and the genuineness of the other. In so doing it has reaffirmed my own authenticity. If they are different, then so must I be. This is comforting in an era whose main purpose seems to be the acceleration and diffusion of identity. I inhabit a space in which I can whisk myself to the edge of the continent and not miss an episode of “Six Feet Under.” I watch CNN and check my email on America Online. From my hotel room I dial a cell-phone with a Virginia area code attached to a friend living in Washington and visiting family in Florida. I pay for the call with a credit card from a bank whose location I don’t know – toll free numbers and web pages are place enough. When I spend pesos or dollars with the card I get frequent flier miles so that I can leave again on an airline appropriately named “United.”

My fellow travelers and I are from Diamler Chrystler in Detroit and Germany, forest preservationists from Switzerland and Colorado, a British ex-pat living in Marina Del Ray California, traveling with her English mother while her Indian father stays at home with her beagle, and a couple from Mexico City here to see their country, others reaffirming a self lost in the Zona Rosa. We shell out $250 pesos or $25 American dollars (the tour guide accepts either, post-modern musings break down where capital and easy conversion rates are concerned) and pile into a van.

Over dirt roads and through barren land we bounce and climb our way to petrified waterfalls, actually calcium deposits built up over centuries by underground springs. Proof of age as proof of real. In this small town, and others like it across the country, there are only women, children, and old men. The young men are in the United States, legally or otherwise, following crops and poultry. They live five or ten to a room, sending all the cash they can home. Our real Mexico, the traditional country of the tour, is flat broke. There is little water and less work. The corn is dead or dying and there are no factories. Between money made selling lunches of quesadillas and Coca Cola to tourists and that sent home by those cleaning our houses and tending our gardens while we’re away, there is enough to buy shoes for the boys, shoes that will be worn on the long trip north to Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago.

Back in the van. Authenticity is on the clock.

Next, an actual, traditional, rug factory. A demonstration of combing and spinning wool. My cohorts and I watch as an old woman picks a white lady bug larvae off a cactus and rubs it on her arm, and shows us it’s now red. We ooh and aah. Next, her assistant, an old man, takes a glass of water, adds a few crushed and dried lady bugs, and voila, the water’s red. Next he shows us an ordinary lime, nothing up his sleeve, squeezes the juice and taa daa, the water’s orange! Some natural baking soda and presto back to red. With flourishes that would make David Copperfield proud he shows off his trick, the magic of PH balances, an effect straight from Mr. Wizard via the Zapotec.

Our guide, Raul, produces a book, “Out of the Volcano” which, he tells us, “is from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC” about real native crafts from Mexico. This family, this workshop, this old woman, are featured. This is real authenticity, documented and certified by the official keeper of the real authentic, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. I have traveled several thousand miles to see a real culture as verified by an organization around the corner from my apartment. Mexican credentials established we are offered a selection of handmade rugs to purchase. The family gives prices in pesos and Raul translates them as dollars. We get a discount for paying by personal check.

Back in the van. It’s past mid-day and there is more proof of identity to see and buy before dark.