Last Blogpost from Mexico (for now)

Well, this is it. My little romp in Mexico is over. It was a great trip, I learned a lot, and my appetite for more has stimulated.

Yesterday after dealing with Profeco and having a nice lunch I don't remember what I did. I think I just hung out in my neighborhood. After 5, I went to pick up my laundry and passed this place that I have passed several times that offers facials, massages, pedicures, etc. In the mood for a little more pampering before I left, and feeling like my skin has really taken a beating with the sun, smog, smoke, etc., I went in just to find out about a facial. Before I knew it I was on a table having a chocolate mask applied.

Well, actually, it was more than a chocolate mask. It was a whole series of cleansings, scrubbings, lotions, heatings, coolings, and then finally the chocolate mask, which smelled a lot like mole Poblano. When I said that, the girl didn't really get my sense of humor and just said they both have chocolate. I was wondering if I could lick some off of my face.

Afterwards, my face felt really clean and fresh and smooth. I think women who have all of these beauty treatments done really have the right idea. Not only is it good for you, it feels good and it is a total opportunity to be pampered. Today on the news they had a story about "metrosexuals", which apparently 30% of the men in Mexico City are. They didn't mention anything about the nose jobs, but they did talk about the way they dress and how they take care of their faces and hair. So, maybe the taboos against men having clean skin and nice hair are becoming less, even here.

Today, I had another nice breakfast in my hotel except that the waiter kept coughing and wasn't covering his mouth. He only seemed to cough when he was near the food, which kind of irritated me. I dind't say anything though. I just avoided the food he was near when he coughed.

I figured out that I could take the metro only two stops to get near the anthropology museum. Since it is not a holiday and Reforma is not closed to traffic, it would not be a pleasant walk, so I hopped on the subway, paid my 2 pesos (that is just incredible) and got to experience a little entertainment in my short trip. At the first stop, a guy got on and in a voice that was so loud I thought it was coming from the conductor through the speaker system, he proceeded to tell us about this book that he had which seemed to be something religious. I couldn't tell if when he was saying padre if he meant just father, parent, or the big padre up in the sky.

I got off the train and left the station to find that I was at the foot of Chapultepec Castle. It was so easy to get there! I walked a little closer to the castle but decided not to visit because I would have to pay and it was probably lots of boring historical stuff about people like Benito Juarez, Maximiliano and all of those revolutionary heroes. Not really my cup of tea.

Instead I headed to the zoo. It's been a long time since I have been to a zoo, and I could tell it was not going to be crowded, because most of the vendors that were set up the last time I walked that way were not there. The zoo was nice, though the animals seemed lethargic for the most part, except for some of the birds.

The only irritation was that they did not let me exit the same way I entered, so I had to walk all the way around the zoo to get back to where I would have been if I had just left the way I came in. From there I headed to the Anthropology Museum again, because I wanted to check out the section on Puebla and see if they had anything on any of the places I visited.

I immediately went up to the 2nd floor exhibits which were nearly empty and enjoyed once again seeing all of the information about modern day indigenous groups in Mexico, and their way of life, beliefs, dress, festivals, etc. It is fascinating how diverse Mexico is, even to this day.

When I got the Puebla Sierra section, there was no light. The guard told me he did not know why. So, I continued around and checked out the Oaxaca section, and the section on the Maya again before heading down to the restaurant for lunch.

I had the same lunch I had before of ceviche and tortilla soup, but even though it was less crowded, the service was really slow.

I went back up to the Puebla section to find that the lights were now on, but it turned out that I did not travel far enough north in Puebla to see the cultures that were represented in the museum. I guess next time, I am going to have to plan to travel further north.

I left the museum, walked back through Chapultepec Woods to the metro, and as I boarded the train, a woman with a baby on her back, carrying a guitar and a flute type thing got on with me. She began immediately to play the flute, and then the guitar, and then started to sing, a little off key, while her son moved about slightly, but pretty much slept soundly, his bottle hanging limply from his hand.

After cold front number 18 passed through (they number their cold fronts here), it has gotten quite warm again. Supposedly another cold front is heading this way, but I should be gone before it gets here. Riding that hot train with this woman singing off key with a baby on her back and a guitar that was fitted with this flute sort of thing, I was thinking about how hard life can be here, but that for the most part, what I have witnessed has been people trying to find a way to survive. Whether it is the women and their kids sitting on the cold ground holding out plastic piggy banks begging, or the guys with the rags who usher people into parking spaces and clean their cars while they are parked, hoping for a small tip when they leave, or the thousands of people who set up carts, stalls, blankets on the streets, selling everything from handicrafts to fried pigskin, what I witnessed was people trying their best to survive, to make enough just to get by.

Unfortunately, for them, things are going to get tougher as a new phase of NAFTA has just been passed making US corn even cheaper. According to this new agreement, US grown corn, which is subsidized by our tax dollars, can now flow freely into Mexico without any tax, making it cheaper than locally grown corn. Corn, which is almost sacred here, if it is not absolutely sacred, is also a very important way of life for many people in the countryside who depend on it to make a very meager living. It struck me as kind of ironic reading about this in the newspaper today that the very people who benefit from this subsidized, untaxed free trade, are the same people who are so anti-immigration. Do they even realize that their benefitting by being able to sell their corn cheaply in Mexico is going to mean that more and more people are going to be pushed into unbearable poverty, which will result in them trying to find a way to cross the border so that their children will not die of starvation? It is really a sad and bitter irony.

Mexico is an amazing place, full of history, culture, diversity, and most of all a love of life and an insatiable desire to survive. As rich as we are in the US, I think we have nothing that even comes close to the cultural richness of Mexico. I only hope that our wealth and power will not be one more challenge to the survival of the beauty that is Mexico.