A Little Local Flavor In Araro
MEXICO | Sunday, 1 June 2008 | Views [1135]
Let’s put it this way – it’s taken me the entire week to fully recover from last weekend. I am on antibiotics for a throat infection and I am recovering from this also, but I’m actually referring to our trip to Araro last Saturday. Saul’s friend, Luis, came down from Los Angeles last week, spent a night in the City with his brother then went to visit his family who live in the state of Michoacán and invited us to come over on the weekend. So we did. We took the bus from Mexico City’s Observatorio station (all buses heading west depart from here) and even though the journey was a bit long at nearly 4 hours, we were “entertained” by the not-so-well-known Christmas tale, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” When we arrived in Acambaro, Luis was there waiting for us. From Acambaro, Araro was some 20 minutes away so Luis’ cousin had kindly offered to pick us up. I don’t know why I try to apply Canadian laws to every – as I perceive it - illegal situation here but I’ve got to put a stop to that. As I stared at the small cab of the cousin’s white pick-up truck trying to figure out the logistics of fitting four into a three-person space, Luis grabbed three over-sized bottles of beer from the back and Saul pulled me onto his lap and we were off. Country life is something else here. Just as Mexican hippies are not comparable to Canadian hippies (instead they hark back to their Aztec roots and incorporate this into their “look”), Mexican rednecks are not quite like our redneck neighbors to the north. I’ll show you what I mean. It’s a touchy topic and I don’t to appear classist or ignorant, I’ll just tell it as it is. Mexican rednecks aren’t really rednecks. The closest word that there is to “redneck” is “naco” which basically translates into “uneducated or tacky.” Better yet, a combination of the two. Because of the booming, and apparently legal, piracy industry here, nacos can generally afford to buy rip-offs of almost anything which is why I say that they don’t resemble stereotypical toothless, overall-wearing rednecks as we imagine them to be. They, along with millions of other Mexicans in all walks of life, tend to use excessive amounts of gel, men and women alike, and sport dress shoes along with jeans and a collared t-shirt of some generic pattern. So in fact, your standard naco doesn’t stick out based on his appearance – he sticks out based on his behaviour and this is especially true when it comes to the men. Catcalls, whistling, sometimes touching, muttering sweet nothings under his breath as he passes you, other times making outrageously sexist comments outloud. Even though I consider the naco to be classless (in terms of lower, middle, and upper classes) most of the nacos that you’ll run into belong to the middle to lower classes of society here and have not had the opportunity to be educated at school, nor in the home. I just want to make it clear that the term “naco” is not used to describe only people of lower classes. If you behave in a disrespecting way, you are a “naco,” and trust me, nacos exist in the multitudes in both middle and upper classes too, you’d be surprised to know how “naco” a man in a suit can be. I remember having a chat with one of my students in November of last year because that morning I had experienced my first “violation” on the metro and I decided to share my frustration with Francisco about not being able to do anything about it. As I was walking up the stairs on my way out of the metro, I felt this nasty skinny finger quickly creeping up between my legs. I was severely grossed out but couldn’t think of much more to say at that time with my limited Spanish than “Ewwww!” and I flashed a disgusted look at my violator, a young 20-something guy who seemed to be in no rush to get out of my sight after what he’d just done. Had I been better equipped language wise, I would’ve given him my two cents and a loud warning to all of the other women moving between the throngs of men to cover their asses. Understandably, docile Francisco was perturbed by my experience and tried to explain to me how some men think in this country and why by recounting an experience he’d had at work. Once he had been asked to conduct an informative meeting at one of the Proctor & Gamble factories, specifically the one in Naucalpan which is a neighborhood littered with factories and close to the border between the Federal District and the State of Mexico. With all of the almost entirely male staff collected in the auditorium, the meeting commenced. The first guest speaker was a woman who was dressed in a knee-length skirt, heels, and a modest blouse. As soon as she made way down the central aisle for the front of the room, the entire auditorium erupted into whistles and dirty comments. Francisco was appalled and made a statement before the group that before there would be any meeting there would be manners and education about how to receive women and not just professional women. Obviously I could get stuck on this theme alone…back to Araro. Well, it was a shocker to me to find myself seatbelt-less (even after a year of living here) and more so, seatbelt-less and drinking Leon beer, driver included. But they were long, bare countryside roads and in under half an hour we were at Luis’ doorstep safe and sound. Araro had a population of 15000 in the winter and just 5000 in the summer so you might imagine how small this town, stradled between a hill and a lake, is. Luis’ house was just 2 blocks from the “center” (a church and kiosk). Were I anywhere else I would be thinking, “Wow, prime location. Must’ve cost a bundle.” but when the town sprawl is only about 8 blocks long and 4 blocks wide, almost everyone lives conveniently close to the zocalo. We unloaded our things and entered the house. From the outside, it was a blank canvas – an ivory white wall shared with both neighbors and with two barred eyes and a metal door. But once inside we entered an outdoor living room with couches, a TV, pictures of the kids, and even their degrees were hung on the walls. Both of Luis’ brothers were there with their pregnant wives, two other couple-friends of Luis’ from Mexico City, and of course his parents. His dad was up a ladder picking limes and oranges out of the lush trees in their courtyard garden and his mom was cooking up a storm in the kitchen. With oversized beer bottles (and a tequila + Squirt) in hand, we all sat at a large wooden table in the garden underneath a tree and feasted on mole, pork, rice, tortillas…a fantastic traditional meal. We drank and talked and drank and talked and drank and talked, then drank and danced. And then there 6. Saul went to bed early which wasn’t much of a problem especially since it evened out partners for dancing. Federico, one half of one of the couples, showed me how to dance salsa and then it was time to eat again. Luis’ mom started up the stove again and had us eating pork, cheese, and mole again. We decided to let the house have a rest and walked the two blocks to the center where we all sat at benches around the kiosk and talked until Luis decided it was time to dance again. And then there were 4. As we wandered the dark, empty streets a few blocks to the north of the zocalo we realized that we’d lost a couple (Mauricio and his girl) on this massive journey but followed the music anyway. Araro is not the kind of place that would be host to a bar or club of any sort – it’s just not big enough and half of the population are older farmer types or families who have a tradition of living there, while some of the younger types do their business in drug-trafficking. It’s a strange place in terms of demographics and in economics but it’s still standing on its feet. Anyhow, I would say that this place was kind of like a dance hall, but it was “naco,” very tacky. Essentially, it was a warehouse that had a small bar set up in one corner near the door, which was a large piece of cloth used to cover the gaping hole that was the warehouse entrance, and a DJ had set himself up on top of boxes at the back of the long building. We passed a group of sketchy individuals hanging out in the back of a pick-up truck parked infront of the dance hall and as is the case with any small town since there are picking are slim, there was a crowd of men hanging out on the street checking out anything with long hair. I latched myself onto Luis and we pulled back the curtain door to enter. The music was booming and all around the perimeters of this end of the warehouse men leaned on the curved metal walls of the hall in their cowboy hats and collared shirts either waiting for their chance to dance or enjoying the spectacle and watching with desire. Some were like hawks, just waiting for some lone girl to walk through that curtain so that they might sink their hungry claws into the small of her back and have a dance, twirling and hopping to the beat of norteño music. I call it clown music. After an hour we were all sweaty and drunk and Federico and I were tired so we left Luis to dance with his girlfriend while we did some yoga and wall-flowered through the rest of the song. It was nothing more than a hop, skip and a jump back to Luis’ and just a blink of the eyes before we were awake again. When I woke up, Saul wasn’t lying next to me in our huge communal bedroom. When I left the room, I discovered him lying on the couch outside. Federico’s sleeping had kept him up so he moved himself outside for the night. Curiously the snoring didn’t seem to bother anyone else. I wouldn’t say I was KO’ed but I didn’t hear a thing. Luis’ dad had picked some oranges for us and our hangovers sucked them dry then threw the peel away. Meanwhile his mom was busy in the kitchen again and presented us with tamales, leftover pork, mole, chicken, and freshly squeezed papaya-orange juice. Broaching 9am, we decided that we best get going again so that we would have enough time to get back to the city. So the guys went and collected more beer to quench their hangovers with and loaded an ice bucket into the back of Mauricio’s car. All seven of us squeezed into the car and drove 10 minutes to the nearby lake where cattle and wild horses ran amuck. The lake itself was nothing particularly stunning, but its stillness was beautiful – wish I could say the same for the water, however, on my way between a boat near the shore that we boarded and the sandy land I spotted a dead fish floating its way towards my feet. Starting to feel the burn of the sun sans contamination, we retreated to the car which was parked in the middle of cowland for that beer we’d brought and just had a chat out of the boot of the car. On the way back, we stopped at the railway tracks to take a picture of us all head to toe across the tracks. Mauricio had volunteered to take the pictures since he’s camera shy but when he started looking over his shoulder we got a bit nervous and craned our necks around his body to see what he was looking at. There in the distance was the brightly burning headlight of a train. There was some mild panic because everyone wanted a picture taken with their individual cameras but also wanted get off those tracks ASAP. So we don’t look incredibly relaxed in the photo but who would be when a cargo train is just 500m away. But from the sidelines, we screamed with excitement and gushed like 5-year-old boys about how thrilling it was that a train was whizzing right by us. Luis had put 5 pesos on the tracks but we couldn’t locate the flattened version after the fact so we jumped into the car and raced to another part of the track in order for him to try this stunt again. Luckily for us, the train had slowed down and was now chugging its way towards us. With the coins in place we waited patiently for the train to round the corner, anticipating its coin-crushing ability, and when it finally appeared it was moving at a snail’s pace and stopped altogether about 10m from the coins. Luis was convinced the conductors were just being jerks and kept whipping his head around to check if they were moving again the whole way back to the house. I think it was something mechanical. We decided to make one last trip into town to collect some cheese and elote and when we reached the plaza, we saw horses everywhere. Within the church gates but outside of the church itself, men were parading around on their dancing horses holding tall flags bearing saints on them. We didn’t quite figure out what was going on but it was something different and definitely local. Pictures were taken, horses were watched, elote was eaten, and cheese was bought, but the most interesting part of the whole ceremony was probably when the men began loading their horses into the back of their pick-up trucks. They simply opened up the back so that it was leaning on the raised sidewalk next to a corner store and lead the horses up some steps (usually for pedestrians) and past the store then into the truck. I guess I’m a simple person with simple pleasures but I enjoyed the innovation of the horse owners. Forget buying all of that expensive equipment and machinery, we’ll just find a raised sidewalk and walk the horses into the truck. Why not? We bid our goodbyes to Luis and his family as they lit a gas balloon up that floated into the sky marking the end of another good weekend. We caught a ride with the other Mexico City two couples but this time I got a seatbelt. It was Mauricio’s girlfriend who didn’t. It was long drive back along the straight and narrow highway from Morelia and more so, it’s difficult to sleep when you’ve got a stranger on one side and glass on the other so I just didn’t. And I’ve spent the entire week trying to pay back my sleep debt! Oh well, onto the next adventure sleepy-eyed but happy.
