Chinga la Chota!

Like any skilled predator they snuck up silently, in a pack, under cover of darkness. 3 Monterrey city policia, armed with guns, badges, 2 bicycles, up to 6 months of training, and junior high school educations. I´d knocked on Joel and Paloma`s door, Tuesday evening 8:45-ish. No one home, bueno, I´ll go to the taquerilla myself. Turned around and La Chota were waiting for me. I silently cursed them and the pinche locksmith who charged 40 pesos to make a non-working copy of Joel´s key. All 3 appeared my age or younger, between 5´6 and 5´9, morenos, 2 clean-shaven and flacos, one more muscular with a mustache, none of them gordos. About as nondescript as Mexicans get, verdad? Their questions and actions blurred together in my mind throughout the encounter.

¨Put your hands up!¨ Sure thing, pendej... I mean, sure thing, amigos... Perhaps that was my first mistake. If you don´t speak their language as good and as fast as they do, maybe it´s better to pretend not to speak it at all. Each time I asked them to speak slower so I could understand, the power dynamic tilted further in their favor. ¨Show me your ID!¨ They looked over my passport copy and handed it back. I had no copy of my tourist visa, but that didn´t matter. Having no passport copy wouldn´t have mattered. The only hing that might´ve made a difference would be if I´d asked to call my friends at that point. Maybe make the cops feel they´re being watched, even the playing field a bit

¨Are you selling drugs!?¨No señor. ¨Where are the drugs?!¨ I don´t use drugs. But they did succeed in making me think that the real reason they´d stopped me was to look for drugs. Aren´t I a naive one?... Not necessarily. I knew the basic nationwide story. The Mexican state at war with the Narcos, over 3000 people killed so far this year. While Monterrey had been ¨spared most of the carnage,¨ in the English words of my local friend Victor, it was still the biggest city in the north, just 200 km from both the Reynosa/McAllen and Nuevo Laredo/Laredo (AKA Narco Laredo) border crossings. And the previous week in the city, as the police chased a drug suspect, gunmen simultaneously fired automatic weapons in the air at 5 different locations in the city, causing panic and helping the suspect to escape. I knew about these stories, and even if I hadn´t, I had no difficulty believing they could plant drugs on a lone gringo on a dark street. I was in the Barrio Antigua after all, where the bars and discos are, so I must´ve looked like walking money.

¨Empty your pockets!¨ Here you go. 340 pesos, two-year-old Sony Walkman phone, Ipod shuffle, a pen and a notepad. ¨Blow your breath in my face!¨ If I was a braver man I´d include some saliva free of charge. ¨Put your thumb out so I can smell it!¨ Lord, at a time like this, why must I be from a culture that uses toilet paper? ¨Take off your shoes!¨ ¨Open your bag!¨ ¨Where are you coming from?¨ the Gabriel Figueroa retrospective at the museum in your city´s awesome Parque Fundidora, via the Paseo Santa Lucia artificial river-walk, which as you know, has an exit 2 blocks up on this street. ¨Where are you staying?¨ At that house whose door I was just knocking on. With Joel and Paloma, been there 10 days. ¨What are you doing in Mexico?!¨ Tourismo. Came to Monterrey´cause I was camping and got a ride, still here ´cause I met una Regia medical student named Jedi and we´ve been...

¨Come with us!¨ What for? ¨You´re drunk!¨ My pupils looked dilated when they shined their flashlights in my eye. My eyes weren´t following their fingers back and forth without my head moving. Etc. They showed me their handcuffs. One spoke into his walkie-talkie, saying he´d picked up an intoxicated person on Gomez Farias y Matamoros. They escorted me to the end of the block, then left on Allende. Una cuadra, dos cuadras, tres cuadras, past restaurants and pedestrians, past the history museum. The cuffs, the radio, the walking in custody, these were smart moves on their part, well-thought little details to keep me unsure and afraid. It´s as if I wasn´t the first allegedly drunk gringo they´ve picked up on their beat.

I don´t remember the exact point at which I proposed una mordida, the little bite, as the bribe is called. I do remember mentioning it before they did, and feeling some fear while asking, on the odd chance that they weren´t after money and I was now actually doing something illegal. No worries on that front, although it might have taken them awhile to understand me. That´s because the word for ¨to fix¨is actually ¨arreglar¨, not the non-existent word ¨fixar¨that I was using. Although they probably got the point from my repeated use of pagarte. Eventually one of them cut to the chase, and used the only English phrase of the entire encounter: ¨Five Hundred Dollars.¨ Lo siento, I replied, I can´t give you that much because, unfortunately for you, I was smart enough not to have my bank card, so you can´t force me to go to the cajero to withdraw. His figure made sense, as the daily limit is 5000 pesos, which would be $500 were the peso trading at 10 to 1, as it historically has. That day the peso was more like 13.5 to the dollar. My 340 pocket pesos had dropped in value from $34 to $25.

They took turns talking to me 1-on-1. Another of them made it clear that they´d settle for my Ipod and my phone. I kept from laughing. I was still scared of being taken in to a station, which, of course, is what I should´ve actually insisted they do. But if they wanted anything more than cash from me, they should´ve beat my ass in front of Joel´s house and not wasted our time with the walking. We kept going, the street becoming an underpass beneath a plaza. That was when they saw the pareja. A guy and a girl, lying on top of a flat base of a monument, across from a government building. Students, books open. Kissing, a little bit of what Mexicanos call faje, making out. Busted.

Three chota and three sospechosos now. I was escorted by one of them to the the other side of the monument, out of visual range of the rest of the group. He punched in numbers on his cell phone and threatened to call his boss. ¨You don´t want me to call mí jefe, do you?¨ In my ignorance I told him I didn´t. I should´ve realized their whole plan was to scare me into to giving them my money They couldn´t directly steal it, I guess they were worried about consequences if they took it directly. I´m not sure they´d have been so delicate with a Mexican national, but I´m also not sure they´d have stopped me in the first place had I looked Mexican. Either way, as my friends told me later, there was no police station anywhere in the direction we were walking.

My cop saved the best for last. Upon hearing my request not to call headquarters, he was ready to collect. But instead of sticking out his hand, the chingon stuck out his bike helmet. Innocent in his mind to the end. He told me to put the money in, walk to the next street and turn left. I was so shocked that I forgot to accidentally leave one of the hundred-peso notes in my pocket. Sad to say, I gave the whole amount and walked away without looking back at what was happening to the couple. Still shook, I walked a couple blocks and called Joel, now getting off work. He met me and we walked back to his house together.

Three hundred fourty pesos divided three ways. Not a bad haul for half an hour of work. If i had to guess, I´d say they nearly doubled their official salaries for the night, off me alone. Three hundred fourty pesos can buy three platos of carne asada and two cervezas each. Or a good bottle of tequila añejo in a tienda. The prostitutas often charge 200 each. Or maybe it just went to pay bills, in households (wives and kids, all of them, I´ll bet the whole 340 on it) where the marido might earn less in a month (legally, at least) than I make in a day. Ha. I´m sure they made good use of mi dinero somehow. Whatever they did with it, to quote Cube, Ren and Eazy... Or rather, to mas o menos quote todos de mis amigos de Monterrey in upon hearing the story: ¨Chinga la Chota!¨

Prostitutes outside Mexico City bike shops at 11am on a Thursday

There are whole blocks full of bicycle shops on Calle San Pablo, about 15 minutes walk from my hostal in the Zocalo, Mexico City Centro. I went to see if any of these shops could rent me a bike, because there´s a weekly 25-mile night ride I want to go on, and I might need a bike for that. No luck with the renting, but I did see a bunch of women on the street outside and between just about every one of the stores, dressed like sex workers. I never heard any of them advertise their services. Nor for that matter, did I hear any of them advertise the services of the bike shops where they loitered. So I wasn´t sure if they actually were or weren´t ladies of the night, or of the, uh, mid-to-late morning in this case.

And as I thought about it more, my self-centered reptilian brain became concerned with their not pursuing me and my wallet, and what that might mean. Did I actually pass for Mexicano? True, my Spanish is less rusty than I´d feared, especially in this situation, since I wasn´t talking. I wasn´t wearing typical backpackers clothing, except for the shoes and perhaps my $2 trucker hat that says ´´The Wu Tang Manual: The RZA´´. And, yeah, let´s break out the stereotype, I´m about 5 foot 6. But the beard, with the Jewish scraggle and my mom´s red hair, screams gringo pretty unequivically...

The point isn´t that they might think I´m not an extranjero, it´s that they might think I´m not rich. Which of course I am and I´m not, depending on whose standards we´re using. Since we´re using Mexico City hooker standards, and more specifically 11am Mexico City hooker standards, then yeah, I´d like to think I look prosperous enough to be propositioned. I guarantee I didn´t have a look on my face or body language saying ¨¨soy bien, gracias, no necisito mas sexo, ya tengo demasiado´´.

Later on, speaking to a Chilango local, he said these chicass were indeed prostitutas, among the cheaper in the city (for the record, they also have the reputacion of being actual women, unlike the travestidos you might unwittingly buy in other areas). He posited that they didn´t advertise because they didn´t need to. That´s true in the sense that any passerby can guess their occupation by their fashion sense. But it also speaks to a lack of belief in their own persuasiveness, which might serve them well, as pre-lunch sex on a weekday strikes me as something of an impulse purchase. Or it might just speak to them not being interested in me, because they think I´m not rich. Or because I clearly have a healthy, fulfilling sex life, and would never need to resort to coger-ing them.

Carnaval in Chillanes, Provincia Bolivar, Ecuador

Straight agiardiente tastes really bad.

It´s too cold to be throwing all that shit in each other´s faces. It´s Carnaval, not Songkran

The people only play one song, which gets annoying after the first 200 times.

When it´s foggy, there´s not much of a view from the flatbed of the pickup truck. The rain is still wet though.

If this is breakfast/lunch/dinner, then we must be eating chicken soup and meat with rice.

I took some photos that I like...

sugarcane juice maker

this is from a park in Quito

I wish I could introduce this guy...

to dude who plays the accordian outside Wrigley Field every game day, with the Underdog hat and an Underdog sticker in his case (which he uses as the change receptacle, no cup). I always assumed that guy was Polish or Russian, but I talked to him once and he had a British accent. I never got the chance to talk to his Quiteño doppelganger.

quito independence day reveler

not to be mistaken for tú mama

Eve, Eve, Eve, yo te xoxo

Eve,

When I walked in to the Escuela de Español, that Monday afternoon to start my 1-on-1 lecciones, I had no idea who my teacher would be. When I saw you, I knew it was gonna be a good week. You were the first Ecuadorian I got to know well. Tiene 19 años and you´re wise beyond your years, university student in linguistics, fan of Chomsky, with 3 months of English thus far, also fluent in, I don´t know what to call it, Ecuadorian secratorial shorthand? Hoping perhaps eventually to get an English teaching job, con un bueno salario, maybe once dolares por la hora. You´ll be taking 4 years of English, so I´m sure you´ll be able to read this pretty soon...

Eve, You´ve been una buena professora, able to correct my mistakes without making me feel discouraged. You´re also easy on the eyes, quick to smile, and me gusta mucho a las short skirts that you sometimes wore. I´ll admit that when you had to stand on a chair to write some ejemplos on the board, that it was a bit difficult for me to keep my mind on my tiempos and conjugaciones, but I managed overall. When you mentioned that you compete in lucha libre, and you had an upcoming tournament, and you liked to practice against guys... I guess that was my chance right there. But I didn´t ask, and from then on I resigned myself to the impossibility of anything happening. Other than the hugs and the cheek-kisses hello and goodbye, which so far is my favorite costumbre de Latinoamerica.

I liked how you threw some Ecuadorian historia into the classes, things that had personal relevance to you, like talking about Eugenio Esposo and supe salir up from poverty, or Eloy Alfaro fighting for los derechos de las mujeres. As a feminist, you playfully called me out on a few things, but you just laughed when I told you that many of us here in the U.S. don´t have boyfriends or girlfriends per se, just amigos con beneficios. It´s different for you though, being a virgen, with an older sister who got pregnant and had to marry her boyfriend. But you two, your mom and your sobrina all seem to be getting along ok living together, although there´s not all that much espacia in your casa, and your mom was quick to tell me that you´re her favorite.

I also really enjoyed out daily pausas, where we´d walk and vamos a comer. Being vegan in Ecuador, now that´s difficult, no leche, no queso, no huevos even. But you´ve been doing it for over 3 years now, living, I guess, off pan de integral and choclo, mote and whatever other kinds of corn you can find at the mercado. But you still suggested I try some comida tipica, like yahuarlocro, cow tripe soup garnished with a plate of onions, avocados, and congealed cow´s blood. And Yapingachos, potatoes with sausages, a fried egg, and some salad. Both became favorites which I´ve now had multiple times. I also just had fritada for the first time, for the año nuevo.

On Friday, I asked if we could have lessons on the weekend. You made the siñal universal for "shush", then wrote, in English, that it would better if we did it under the table, so I could pay you directly, instead of the escuela paying you a percentage of the tuition that can reasonably be described as criminal. Saturday we went to the vegan restaurant nearby, and Sunday I rode the Trollebus to El Recreo, the last parada, where you met me to take the other bus out to your barrio. We studied a bit more in your house, I ate some of your mom´s food, you and your sister taught me some malas palabres (I´ve since learned many, many others), we took some fotos, then I was gone, off to Baños the next morning. I took another week of lessons there, with a professora who was good but not tanto chevere como tu. I´m now in Puyo. But I will make sure to keep in touch, and I´ll call when I return to Quito, hopefully we can hang out again.

Adios, con mucho gusto.
Ari