drug war

No pretty pictures on this one. The drug war in Mexico is a colosal failure. I have unfortunately seen this before in Colombia with different twists and turns but the reults look similar.
The practical on the ground problems are not what a well intentioned and ill studied foreigner might anticipate.
 If you give immense power to a poorly paid village policeman he will settle every score. If you give immense power to a military consisting of young uneducated men they will do what they are told.  I have talked to these young guys in fatigues as I encounter them in villages I have have had the good fortune to visit and these young soldiers know not what they do. They are currently kicking in the doors of poor farmers and small business people under orders. That these victims may own land that belongs to their Ejido that does not want Monsanto in or will not sell to the local official is simply swept aside as the local official is fighting a drug war. The rubric of the drug war allows for much score settling. Small villages that support the the left are called drug strongholds. Doors are kicked in as pigs squeal from the dirt floor to the freedom that has now vanished for the human inhabitants of this squalor.
The people are living in fear as any neighbour can call any politico, call you a drug dealer and after your arrest your property is up for grabs.  That your property consists of twelve corn plants and half a hectare makes it a good enough score.
Rural Mexico exists as it has for centuries. Small town politics run horribly awry when the little shit kid you grew up with just got a handsome "reward" for turning in all the "drug dealers" in his town. The norm would be to deal with the problem locally but when a foreign government disasociated from local mores comes into play the community will often just give in. The heroic notion of a community conquering all obstacles is a distant possibility to many communities that have suffered foriegn (Spanish) control for many generations.  Statistics speak volumes to those who from a foreign land (USA) create budgets that support this wretched conniving.  They need to make arrests to justify expense. Easily accomplished on the ground, round up the usual suspects and collect on both ends.
That the usual suspects are union organizers and womens coalitions seems hardly to register as a curious anomoly.
There are some very bad people involved in the drug business but this governments aim is not true.

Drug business. Drugs are bad. Business is worse. I am not the first to say, take the business out of drugs and at least we have a start. The vast amount of money spent on the drug war could be put to much better use. Sadly I know this is naive. I so miss my naivite.  No one ever got a Haliburton contract to open a free clinic.
The tear gas currently being used in Egypt comes from... You all know this.

To live and drive and, Ole'!

Welcome

Driving in Mexico is different. Here are some thoughts and observations.

People will say that the most important thing about driving in Mexico is, never do it. It can be a confusing challenge but it has it's rewards.

A long row to hoe

Passing signals. The truck or car ahead of you is driving slowly and you want to pass. He turns on his left turn signal and you think, ah good he's going turn up here. No, this common understanding does not apply here.  In Mexico he is signaling that in his opinion it is now safe to pass. He is probably trying to be courteous and help you to arrive at your destination sooner, but he could be in a homicidal mood or simply have poor driving skills or be drunk. There is also a small but real possibility that he could be  turning left.  This "rule" does not apply in cities.

Do not drive at night. Really, don't. Aside from all the normal hazards, add stray animals, unmarked construction sites, roads that drop or rise a foot or two for no reason you can see in the dark and bandits. Yes, bandits or more romantically "highwaymen". They are active in many areas but Sinaloa province is especially bad. They may have official looking roadblocks and may be in uniform, borrowed, stolen or just putting in an extra shift. All in all it is not worth it to drive at night.

San Cristobal herb market at closing

Road or rollover. Most Mexican roads do not have shoulders. Avoid the urge to turn onto the shoulder if you have a flat tire or some other malfunction. You will end up in the ditch or worse. The road edge ends abruptly and the off road topography is the same 1 foot or one hundred feet from the road.

Topes. These are speed bumps Mexican style. They range from a normal speed bump you may have encountered in any city north of the border to something so vertiginous that you will certainly bottom out at more than stop and proceed speed. The "tope" marks the entrance and exit to every place attempting to imitate a town. The "tope" is hard to see. They are built by locals and are arbitrary in their placement except for the fact that they are usually built in the shade. If you were spending the day building a tope you would want to work in the shade as well. Unfortunately on a scalding sun drenched highway the tope is perfectly camoflaged by the cooling shade that the long departed workers once enjoyed. Of advantage to the community a tope forces a near stop of traffic and therefore it is a good place to sell your fruit, hammock, tacos, whatever. You will  find a tire and rim repair shop on either side of the tope.

Despite these issues with a modicum of local knowledge (check with locals re mountain passes etc.)

you will have the pure enjoyment of visiting small places where the bus won't stop and you will drive through some incredible scenery. The road over the pass from San Cristobal to Palenque passes through a valley that throws at you a colour of green that shouldn't exist. It is carved with waterfalls, rivers and villages from another time. John D. MacDonald said something like "Mexicana Airlines doesn't fly airplanes it flies time machines. "

San Cristobal morning

any small town

Palenque

Now this is where it gets interesting

I have spent the last while in the mountains of Chiapas. In 1995 the Zapatistas held a revolution here. They managed to take over Ocosingo and to a lesser extent San Cristobal.  They are still very powerful in the region and they run cooperatives and schools and yes tourist shops. In fact in Chiapas they refer to the phenomena of western visitors to the region as "Zapatourismo".  The Zapatistas are very media savvy and have done well to keep the innocents out of harms way.  

Mexican history Zapatista episode. In 1995 when the Zapatistas blocked the road to Palenque (A famous  ruin) a swiss passenger on a bus tour got very upset and started berating these balaclava wearing machine gun toting guerilla fighters saying that he had paid a lot of money and had come a long way to see the ruin at Palenque and must get through.  According to the story an armed insurgent went up to the man and in perfect English said "we understand your concerns but ...this is a revolution". 

Mexico in Hiding

click on photos to enlarge

San Cristobal Chiapas

Toto goes to work

San Blas sunrise

Mercado Zihuatenejo

Zapatista cooperative Chiapas

vagabond picnic

I found a shell on the beach

                                               

I'd been hearing about this plane on a beach for a while. I couldn't find anyone who had actually seen it. I was in Zipolite and most people there found the trip from the sleeping bag to the bong to be an adequate days adventure. So I went looking and found it in another small village 10 k away. Then I discovered why not many people had been to the site. It was easy to find, it was just a long hot walk on a deserted beach. I saw one campesino on the trip. He was walking with the two things every campasino always takes along. A machete and a skinny dog. The stories on the plane were the usual. Spy plane,drug plane, cia plane, cia drug spy plane. As usual in these matters there is a truth commonly held, an official truth and the things we will never know for sure. Kinda like the Queen of the north.

(You can click on the photos to enlarge.)

Toto the clown in his room

1. Toto the clown was staying in the rooms behind my campsite in Puerto Escondido. He is studying in Mexico City and works the streets as Toto to pay tuition. He is in his early twenties and acts like he has seen a lot in the time that his age allows. I think he will do well.

2. 

   I suspect this to be a small representation of the victims of Puerto Escondido surf

Puerto Escondido. Best described as a place where something always seems to be going on in the background. You can't quite figure it out but things seem to be not as they seem.  I am trying to figure this out but I only ever get the surface of things here. I don't know that this is not a good place to stop.

I met the most boring man in the world the other day. We were camped in the same place. I said a polite hello and was treated to a long story about doing his taxes. I waited for the interesting part but there was none. No witty element or tragedy, just filing taxes. The next day he approached me and started to tell me about loading a pickup with gravel. The gravel loading story was equally bereft of drama or entertainment. I thought, I've been polite enough and just walked away. Yes he was a Canadian.

I think the beach version of this trip is about to end. It is nice and all but I'm off to Oaxaco city soon.
I'm in Mazunte at the moment. It is the slightly more sane neighbour of Zipolite. Zipolite is tired. It is an old hippy hang out currently occupied (and that is the right word) by heavily tattooed European street vendors. If I needed a dreamcatcher I would have stayed on Gabriola. Mazunte also offers a beach that you can actually swim at. The beach at Zipolite is treacherous. Huge waves and rip tides.

Canadian building project in Zipolite. Could someone call worksafe?

Campsite and eurovan

It is great to see these little traveling circuses still working. They bring in a good crowd.

I was thinking about how it came to be that Mexico came to push Colombia out of top spot in the drug trade. Looking at the history of both countries, aside from the ready market, they both share a history of extreme violence that is both  recent and I suspect unfinished. Colombia endured a period simply known as "LA Violencia". This was a bloody civil war that lasted from the 30s into the late fifties. Mexico had a bloody revolution. It was marked by extreme cruelty and a breakdown of social order that has never really recovered. Various governors have built replicas of the Parthenon and country homes sporting horse racing tracks and exact copies of Studio 54 from that era. That is the obvious stuff. The simple trappings of corruption. But the corruption moves down the line and soon the corner store guy is kidnapped for a ransom of $75.00. You better have that $75.00 or Daddy is gone. In the 80s in Colombia the kidnapping got so bad that a radio station was founded to deal with kidnap issues and send messages to the kidnapped. If you have land or a business in Colombia that the bad guys want they say "quiere plata o quiere plomo." Would you like silver or lead. In Mexico it is much the same. Everything has a price, even if the price is death.

The trip so far. I left Vancouver 3 days ago. I should be in Mexico by now. Instead I am in a car repair shop in suburban LA.

I drove hard and fast the first day and night. I spent the first night in the Eurovan at a highway rest stop in Northern California. There are some very nice people who frequent these places.  I saw a woman there who very much resembled an overloaded donair spit with an oddly shaped head. Another man was trying to dry a festering wound on his leg. Actually the donair girl was doing the drying. She waved a soggy t shirt at the weeping wound as the injured party moaned his gratitude.

Back at the repair shop. It is December 19th and there are xmas carols being played on a television that has been adjusted to maximum colour saturation. Green people singing green and red songs on a deep grey day. Merry xmas. The car shop guys tell me I need a VW dealer. They don't charge me and let me use the phone. An hour later I am on the LA freeway...parked at a callbox as speeding trucks shake the VW with their wake. Of course it is pouring rain.

It ain't all bikinis and Coronas.

Meeting lots of new friends in LA. Many of them drive tow trucks or work in auto repair shops. I believe I may have accidentally become the best xmas present a mechanic could ask for. They sure seem to enjoy my company and do whatever they can to keep me hanging around.

I wake in my edge of town motel to a bit of a commotion. I step from my room into the parking lot and count 8 police cars, all parked at weird angles. Why do cops always park like this. It looks like the worlds worst assistant director set the background for the worlds most boring crime. I return to the relative peace of my basic motel room.

Another day another repair shop. They assure me I will be back on the road I can no longer afford, by late afternoon. My plan, if it can be called that, is to press on.

Indeed they get me on the road just in time for LA rush hour,which of course is any hour at all but in this instance it is just getting dark. I crawl out of town with the automotive horde and drive through another rain filled night to the edge of Tucson. Happy to be out of LA.

Mexico. I am in Celestino for xmas eve. There are 4 RV parks here and three are completely empty and the cheap one has 6 rigs. I guess most people are heeding the warnings about Mexico. They tell me 2 years ago if you didn't have a reservation you were out of luck. Today I have my choice of waterfront spots for $8.00. I feel sorry for the Mexicans who set these places up.  I suspect it will be a while before the tourist economy recovers. I spent the 80s in Colombia working on a dive boat. After the cartel blew up the Hilton it took more than ten years to recover. The drug business did not stop. It was not won in a "drug war". They simply became a proper business and the cowboys were cut out. I'll spend some more time on this topic later but for now...

Mazatlan xmas. I took a bus into the old city today and was reminded why I love Mexico. It was xmas day and the bus was filled with people dressed as elegantly as their social position allowed. Men in nice suits and women with 2 hours makeup and all as happy as people ever get. Of course this scene was interrupted by a one armed drunk behind me who decided to remove an offending hair from my neck. Even he seemed happy. It was just a pleasant way to see xmas.




San Blas. I found a spot on the beach for the Eurovan for $4.00 a night. I need a break after LA. Swimming, boogie boarding, a jog on the beach that closely resembles a pregnant duck waddle.





I read a bit of telling Mexican history today. A Mexican President General named Santa Anna was overthrown in 1844. Before this he had a leg hacked off in battle. He sent men to retrieve the lifeless appendage from the battlefield. Later he held a full state funeral for the leg. He then built a mausaleum to house the leftover limb. When he was overthrown the people dug up the leg and used it for sport. Soccer I presume. Whether it was used as striker or ball was not clear.


Malaque Mexico Dec.30/2010

This place is interesting. There a lot of Canadians here. It seems a good place for the 50 plus canuck to get through the winter. I am as always in the Eurovan. There are 3 places to stay in the caravan here. Two are somewhat expensive and a little too civilized for my liking. The third is a weird hobo village
on "ejido" land.  The ejido system is basically communally held land to be used as the community sees fit. Often it is distributed amongst families and farmed. The concept of private land was a hard sell to native Mexicans. It still is. Many Gringoes buy land here that they will never own. They can go years without understanding this but if the day arrives that their beach getaway serves a higher, or stranger purpose that deed is just firestarter.  The hobo village is filled with Quebecois, BC folk and Mexicans. No spots reserved, no electricity, no rules beyond common courtesy. Seems to work pretty well.






For todays Mexican history lesson.
 This one might sting a bit. In an essay by John Mraz titled "Mexican History in Photographs" he tells the background story of the famous Photograph known as "Adelita". You've all seen it, the brave woman looking up the track from aboard the train as it leaves the station. Turns out that image is quite severely cropped. The whole image shows the young woman amongst a group of presumed "working girls". The actual Soladaderas usually(always) rode atop the train. The woman in the photograph was there with the others to entertain the troops. This probably tells more about photography than Mexican history. I found this essay in a book called "The Mexican Reader". Look it up.

Family picnic at the Ejido campground

Zihuatenejo.

Olibando,the last beach photographer in Zihuatenejo

1. Zihuatenejo has changed over the years. Not in a bad way. It's just grown as we all have. As always it is a good place to recharge. The city market is great (photos soon) and the downtown is still gratefully lacking in "Senor Frog".

Teresa on the beach

I saw Teresa on the beach. She told me she has been coming here for twenty years. She said "you should have taken my picture then". I told her she was looked great now.