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.
No comments:
Post a Comment