A Wetback in Reverse

by Frederick Martin-Del-Campo

  But, no! They insisted she had charged half a million Pesos to the family account and then, out of sheer paranoia, suggested that I, a mysterious presence who’d just shown up out of nowhere, might be her accomplice! Could a sane and rational observer objectively believe this? Of course I had no idea this was going to happen, but it was obvious that their personal hostilities had been simmering for a long time. I think I did receive an email from one of them a couple of months ago, and I asked him/her if I could bring anything to ingratiate myself with their mother. The response was positive and gracious. All I did bring in tribute was a bottle of Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) Sherry, a favorite wine of Micaela’s. Thus, I asked myself, why were they squawking about poor little old me?

  “One man’s family,” I tells ya’!

  But no, I do this out of the goodness of my heart, and I think they even said that they had been informed that I was coming to inquire about “certain information.” Unfortunately, because they over-looked any specifications they automatically assumed that it had something to do with their inheritance. Damn! First the Martins, and now the Riveras. Was it that family only meant inheritance to them? Then the boy, Rodrigo Jr., suggested we might do business by charging his expenses to the account over which he assumed I had control. He promised to pay me, that we’d be partners in lucrative deals, et cetera and what have you. It was just so outrageous I wanted to laugh in his face. The evil and hate were indeed written all over his face. The daughter, Celsa, was even more hostile and avoided me altogether. Poor Micaela, I thought. What a bunch a vipers she had to live with. She later wept on my shoulders, bereaving the fact her children took her for a swindler of sorts. Well, I had arrived here in peace and with the best intentions (I said to myself) Pero no, ahora me traen como ladron’ (but no, now they took me for a thief). They also threatened to call the police on me!

  Hence, her children insisted on examining the account online. I accommodated them by offering the use of my lap-top. They saw for themselves that it was all on the up and up, but their family relationship had just deteriorated before my eyes. They screamed at their mother, she screamed at them, called them pinches mantenidos (leeching bums), and all of them oblivious to my presence.

  Between all that was happening with the Martins and the Gutierrez, and this latest altercation amongst the Riveras, this was a season of hate and evil, and I was squat in the middle. And now, after all the bullshit I had endured with these people, now I was regarded as a thief? This was fucking unbelievable! I was left so, so angry, distraught, I didn’t know what I would do. It wasn’t enough they were helping a great deal to ruin my life. Out of patience and a sense of benevolence, I had allowed them to ruin it. Still I had no options, except to get the hell out or die starving in the streets, or allow the Federales to take me. These petty squabbles were draining me like the bites of a thousand mosquitoes, and I had no way of controlling the anguish. In retrospect, I could have gone on pretending nothing had happened. As I reflected on the events, I was boiling over with an undue anger, and was suffering another case of tachycardia. Nothing calmed me down, and I was really getting sick over this.

  The meeting ended in a draw, so to speak. I bade my aunt to take good care of herself, she wished me the same and expressed her dismay over the demeaning display and accusations of her offspring. She was clearly very hurt and sorry about the whole matter and invited me to return under happier circumstances. I prayed things did calm down eventually with her and the family.

  Yes, things were very bad within the respective families. They were, for the most part, not speaking to each-other (I certainly wouldn’t be after all the things I had witnessed; if I did get involved it might lead to something terrible for me, so it was better that I kept my big mouth shut). I had thought to call Consuelo or Abigail and inquire about how things were going with them, but this last experience only left me with the desire to crawl under some rock for a spell. Actually, I had really nothing to worry about, I was not directly involved in any of their bellicosity, and they were more disposed to deal with me than with each-other, on both sides of the family coin.

  All this was a god-damned dementia that was growing in most of them, a consequence of in-breeding I thought. I was now, with this accusation between the Riveras, bereft of family ties. The rancor endured left the situation just hopeless between them. There could not be a real reconciliation. Either they could live in a truce, or things would undoubtedly get worse, and I would be hopping on a plane or bus or whatever to get the fuck out regardless of what happened to them. But, since I was wallowing in self-pity, my only concern was what could happen to me after all I had sacrificed, all I had endured, all I did to realize my fondest hope of discovering my roots. I had nothing to fall back on. Sticking around for another round would spell disaster for me. All that they could think of was their supercilious accusations, unrequited bitterness, living through the worst periods of their life, and family genealogy just did not matter a rat’s ass to them. I really made terrible mistakes in allowing them to affect me in such a way, and especially in depending on them for family trivia.

  All I got from all this journey was a nascent hatred for the country of my ancestors, and they were opening wider this gate of hatred with their petty calumnies and viciousness. I had better stop this fulsome ruminating. I was just writing out of vituperative anger, but I feared the anger would never subside. It had been growing and festering for many years now between members of my immediate family, and the last 2 had been the most intense ~ Now that I had met many of the members of the extended clan, it was obvious that these conflicts were endemic to the family nature. In time I would respond with a powerful indictment of my own, but for the meantime I had to endure and make the best of things. As for my cousins, it was a lost cause. I couldn’t know what would come of all this, and I certainly did not want to participate in some fight in which I was at a disadvantage. The accusation by Rodrigo and Celsa was the last straw. They were helping, or conspiring, to ruin my life without my suspecting it till it was too late.

  When I had a clear opportunity, I would call and try to put them in their rightful place, make them see all this objectively, and make them realize how wrong they’d been. I was sorry about what the hate was doing to gentle souls like Aunt Micaela and cousins Consuelo and Abigail. I prayed that the calm of their individual circumstances would eventually be restored. I would never know, however, if their disagreements and grudges were reconciled.

  I would simply participate in the rites of state for the rest of my journey, seek to enjoy myself, and fit the last pieces of the puzzle together before I went completely insane!

  RED-LIGHT LIVELIHOODS

  September 16th celebrations were inspiring and elegant in Dolores-Hidalgo. I had a great supper of Pozole soup and Sopes in a restaurant across the park from the cathedral. After fireworks celebrations, I determined to head for Leon’ City and take in some of the nightlife. I mixed in with a few rake-hells from the large Argentinian immigrant community in the city because the local Mexicans weren’t all that friendly. The city’s Optibus bus rapid transit colloquially known as “La Oruga” (The Caterpillar) took me all over the place so I saved a lot of money on taxis. I ended up wasting a lot of time at the La Plaza Mayor, one of the largest malls in Leon’ and the sixth in all Mexico. I have to say that in spite of the commercial districts, which were ugly in my opinion, the heart of the old city is beautiful with its own colonial Churrigueresque charms such as the cathedral, the Expiatorio, the historic Teatro Doblado, the Casa Municipal, Portal of the Millennium, Arch of the Heroes’ Pathway, and old Madero Street and its particular attractions. At the Teatro Doblado I did get to see ex-president Vicente Fox in person; he was there to give a talk about corruption in Mexico. Big surprise!

  On Calandria Street, not far from the “Lechugueros” basketball stadium, I had quite an experience, or should I say dalliance, with the local solicitors. Calandria, one of Leon’s most notorious red-light districts, go-go gi
rls, or “ficheras” (literally “ticket-girls”), count their livelihood by the number of sex tourists they entertain. “Three inches, three minutes, 3,000 Pesos ($230 USD),” laughed Griselda, a 25-year-old bar-girl who insinuated herself to me not five minutes after I’d entered the crummy night-club. She was pushy and gregarious, telling me that last summer she and her fellow pole dancers at the Castillo de Leones bar-club entertained scores of men every night ~ first in the bar, where they scrounge for a monthly salary, then at the “patron’s” hotel, where they wrangle over their own rates or base prices.

  But as cash-strapped patrons have lost interest in Mexico - tourism officials say “night-life” revenues would plunge 35% this year due to the epidemic, bad weather and narco-terrorism - the ranks of horn-doggers cruising Calandria have fallen off considerably. On a recent Saturday night foray, just three horn-doggers watched a visibly disgruntled Griselda wiggle her lovely fundament around her pole. Getting to her wasn’t so easy, nonetheless, but I managed to get around to asking her a few questions about the state of the economy. She whined that, “My base salary was 8,000 Pesos ($615) a month, but now they are giving me 6,000 Pesos ($462).”

  Yes, things were pretty bad for the sex industry as well, and if sex falls off in Mexico, that could prove to be a truly horrendous calamity! “I haven’t had a customer in five nights,” Griselda cried, “and I’m to consider myself fortunate if someone buys me a drink.”

  Then, I watched her warily as she slithered back to her pole, sliding down and, having kicked the clothes off her coppery form and laying prone, her nates were silvered by the Mexican moonlight to the likeness of a meringue or a caramel-frosted cake.

  As the recession continued to bite, sex workers from Leon’ to Tijuana to Cancun’ shared Griselda’s frustration. One of the drunken horn-doggers sitting there, privileged to get a front seat to Griselda’s esoteric gyrating, managed to murmur, “People just don’t spend that freely anymore. I heard visitor numbers have dropped up to 20% since the crisis began. Customers who used to come two or three times a week now limit themselves to once a week, including me.”

  Obviously, the fellow was well-versed with the statistics!

  In any case, that newfound restraint had already forced some brothels to shut their doors. In the more sedate states, where many men admit to having slept with a prostitute, up to half of all sex establishments outside of the big cities have closed in the past year.

  This situation has actually caused more problems for prostitution-outreach groups than helped to solve them. Others had forcibly reduced their labor pool, so to speak. Based on other information I gathered, one was led to conclude that in villages where there used to be 10 girls, there were now two working to fulfill copulatory needs. In Mexico City, the biggest market for such things, working girls have suffered too. The Rancho de Rameras, one of the biggest of the slut corrals, recently laid off one in three of its staff after its highest-spending clients started staying away, and the pig flu had a lot to do with frosting their weenies as well.

  The world’s oldest profession wasn’t about to take the recession lying down (no pun intended). Brothels and bathhouses had recently launched promotions (don’t ask me how I know) - including free shuttle transports, old-folks discounts and matinee passes - in a bid to excite interest among wary satyrs. Annabel, one of Griselda’s co-workers, told me, “Now we have to offer better incentives these days and individually suited packages. Our revenues have fallen 30% since the recession hit Mexico, Chinga la madre!”

  Therefore, as part of a new deal she described to me, customers there would pay $150 to dance as much horizontal mambo as they want (or can) for one hour. At Castillo de Leones, recent loss-leader sales, so to speak, permitted horn-doggers to have jiggery-pokery for free on the Day of the Dead (November 1-2) and on Carnaval (mid-February) if they brought consumable goodies for their working pussy-kats or wore a costume on either occasion. And, Acapulco’s Pussy Club charged guests a $100 flat rate for six hours to make the beast with two backs, access to a sauna and solarium and an all-you-can-eat buffet (the last incentive really fired the temptation in me).

  Not everyone needed a tactical maneuver to arouse what needed arousing. In Jalisco, locals have remarked the recession hadn’t affected brothels because the locals target the “common man”; horn-doggers pay as little as $40 for an hour with a hooker. And, while many former customers have left, individuals who would customarily go to the expensive clubs were looking to save some money, so it all evened out. Elsewhere, the weakening Peso had actually created opportunities for the sex trade. Mexico’s currency lost 24% of its value against the Dollar and Euro since the onset of the crisis, a change that would further enhance the country’s teetering tourism sector and thereby the number of satyrs willing to open their wallets for a thrill. A disapproving matron waiting at the same bus stop complained to me, “The country is becoming a paradise for sexual pervertourism before our eyes.”

  Upon returning to my hotel room, I read that police experts fore-casted that the industry would more than double its income this year, generating $1.5 billion. Deepening joblessness would assuredly increase the exploitation of desperate women. Indeed, there were plenty of maidens without employment, and foreigners with cash who wanted companions who were fast and loose with their panties.

  Back in Leon, the relative dependability of foreign currencies wasn’t helping local trade. The cost of traveling to Mexico from far-flung places like Europe or even New York offsets any gains from the exchange rate. Paulina, a lovely mestizo who happened to be the supervisor of Calandria’s Malinche Sauna, Bed and Breakfast, knew that all too well as her business relied on dollars to stay afloat. Described as “the most opulent and relaxing sauna ever seen in Mexico” by online gay guide Pink Banana World, Malinche attended an average of 800 visitors per day before the financial crisis struck. That number now hovered around 500. She confided to me that, “The entrance charge is already low, so cutting it further wouldn’t make a difference.”

  So, what’s a sauna supervisor to do?

  “Pray for us,” is all she could say.

  As I weighed the pros and cons of getting involved with a ramera (whore) I noticed many of them offered “family rates.” Naturally, this situation made many observers laugh. The rameras were actually popular with so-called family get-togethers, like Christmas and birthdays. For such a gathering I honestly hoped to be invited. With respect to Mexico’s attitude towards members of the oldest profession, it is all due to our upbringing. We are made to accept misery in all of its forms. Many Mexicans would admit that we are a bunch of barbarians. They see someone in the streets starving or begging for help, and they’ll just step on him, figuratively speaking. WE, as Mexicans of all types and backgrounds, are boorish, insensitive, uncaring, extremely selfish, self-indulgent, self-righteous, obscurantist, narrow-minded ... and these are our good points! They would be the first ones to argue, however, that their despair of and for life has imposed this sense of futility on their collective conscience, thus they step over people reminding themselves that we are creatures of causes we or our ancestors have made. There is nothing to be done, nothing to be ameliorated, and the wretched are left to their individual misery, “stepped upon” if you will, ignored.

  The attitude that has most consistently greeted me in this country is, “oh too bad ... well good luck.” ~ and that is it. I asked a clerk at the Ayuntamiento (city hall) of Guadalajara a couple of months back if she could help me, and this lovely maiden was supposed to be, according to the locals, representative of all that is fine in Mexico, but all that she replied to me was, “well, if you are in such need, why don’t you get a job?”

  Well, well, now why didn’t I think of that? Why didn’t I act on the suggestion, especially since I am an illegal in Mexico, and I even explained to her that I wasn’t a citizen! She may as well have said, “Let them eat cake!”

  I tell you, I was so pissed off, I should have spat in her face.

 
; No, I have to say that we, my fellow Mexicans and I, are a tribe of gorillas delighting in throwing feces at each-other. It has nothing at all to do with hunger or despair. We all inherited this damned attitude from our parents, and they from their parents and so forth down the line. Provincials, not surprisingly, are the champion Christian-hypocrites who give lots of lip service to charity and piety, but delight in hearing of the misfortune of others. Our Mexican mothers, actually, are not so uncouth, but they have their cruel and merciless side. In fact, many local mothers think they are living representatives of the Virgin Mary for having given us birth in this hell-hole, so how does one argue with that attitude?

  Despite my complaints about Mexico, there are other causes for cynicism. Politicians are really the most universally despised figures in all of Mexican society ~ their rapacity, their cynical opportunism, their hypocrisy, conceit. The threats of violence from their supporters do not make for a happy democracy. Before arriving in Guanajuato, I came really close to a bunch of malcontents who were splashing the head-quarters and trucks of some political rival who’d won the latest election with gasoline and proceeded to light them afire, and damned be the consequences. With things as they are, there are no places of refuge for the average commoner except the dulling confines of intransigence ~ a particularly restful sanctuary for the ever-wretched Mexicans. The minute the natives lose that most peculiar sense of futility, the death knell for peace will sound throughout the land, and they could lose their independence of action as well as nationality. The wolves among them will find the audacity to boss the common herd around, or would have, if they get a chance, a reason to suspend all liberties and proclaim imminent domain on the whole country. It is so close to happening already that I could taste it in the air.