continued to allow the Devil to punish them. One night, despite his uncle’s warning, he decides to take matters into his own hands. Young Rivera sneaks outside, exactly at midnight, and tries to confront the Devil himself.
Unsure what to call him, he tries all the names he knows: “Devil! Lucifer! Satan!” But he receives no reply. Next, he thinks it might be better to curse the Devil. He uses every cuss word he has ever heard—he even curses the Devil’s mother, but still nothing happens. It is just him, all alone, in the peaceful, silvery night. Emboldened by this apparent victory, he declares that there is no Devil. But if there is no Devil, then neither is there a—but he doesn’t dare finish the sentence.
In Rivera’s stories, the youth are portrayed as heroes who transcend the ignorance and superstitions of their elders. Reading that story reminded me of my discussion with Memo that night. The Devil isn’t smart because he’s old, I thought. The Devil doesn’t even exist. I liked Memo, but he was just wrong about the ruins. I’d take ancient pyramids over getting laid any day.
The weekend came, and Memo still had not talked me out of going to the ruins. Convinced that trying to change my mind was a lost cause, he instead focused on making sure I knew exactly where to go and what to say to the people I encountered on my journey. He volunteered to give me a ride to the bus stop, mostly I think, so he could quiz me. “What is the name of the subway stop that will take you to your second bus?”
“We’ve already gone over this, Memo. Indio Verde.”
“Perhaps if you would stop smoking all of those goddamned marijuana cigarettes you could remember something for once in your pitiful life. It’s Indios Verdes. Plural. They still teach plural in those godforsaken American schools of yours, no?”
I looked at him in disbelief. “Yes, mi’jo,” he said. “I know all about your little stash of marijuana. You can’t bring any with you to the pyramids, by the way. So, if you have some with you, you need to give it to me now.”
Fortuitously, the very first person I met when I arrived at Mexico City’s airport was a drug dealer named Freddy. When Freddy picked me up in his car to sell me pot, he asked me how much I wanted. “I don’t know,” I said. “How much will forty bucks get me?”
It turns out that forty dollars gets you a lot—certainly more than I wanted or needed, and enough, were I to get caught carrying it, to land me in a Mexican prison for a very long time. My roommates and I spent the first two days rolling enough joints to last us the whole summer. Our hands got tired after number one hundred and seventy-seven, so we decided that would have to last us for a while. The rest we divided up into smaller bags and sold to other students to pay for our excursions and nights out on the town.
“But Memo, I always wanted to get high on top of a pyramid,” I protested.
“And I always wanted to fuck four women at the same time. You can’t always get what you want. That’s The Rolling Stones. You should know this.”
“I hate the Rolling Stones.”
“Goddamned Americans,” he retorted. “Screw up the entire planet and don’t even appreciate the few things you actually contribute to the world.” “The Rolling Stones are British, genius.” It wasn’t very
often that I was able to prove Memo wrong, so I relished every opportunity.
He quietly cursed me in Spanish.
When we arrived at the bus station, I reluctantly handed Memo the joint I had stashed in my bag. I got out of the car and asked him to take my picture. “Me la sacas, Memo?” Several bystanders turned their heads and gave me dirty looks.
Memo frowned. “God help us,” he muttered.
In Spanish, if you forget to say one word it can completely change the meaning of the entire sentence. I later learned that instead of saying, “Will you take my picture?” I said something closer to, “Will you pull it out for me?”
As I started toward the bus station, Memo called me back to the car. “Listen, boy,” he whispered. “This is not like the Estados Unidos where you can just go anywhere and do anything you like. The police are corrupt and they will try to get you into trouble if they can. If you have any problems, do not argue with them. Just give them this and they will leave you alone.” He slipped a $20 bill in my hand and closed the car door. As I tried to protest he pointed to his temple with a boyish grin and said, “Más sabe el Diablo, Ryan.” He turned the key, revved the engine, and drove away.
By the time I arrived at the ruins I was gushing with excitement. I read in one of my books during the bus ride that the base of the Pyramid of the Sun was larger than the Great Pyramid in Egypt. This is going to be an epic adventure, I thought. However, when I got off the bus my enthusiasm quickly deflated. On both sides of the quarter-mile-long road that led to the ruins’ entrance were at least one hundred vendors selling the same, cheaply-constructed NAFTA-era souvenirs you find on street corners in every part of Mexico. Some of the booths were occupied by children no older than nine or ten. These vendors clearly lived in the vast slum that surrounded the ruins, and were likely being exploited by some Mexico-City-based manufacturer. I wondered if somewhere in those slums was a boy, not unlike Rivera, who someday would sneak out under the twilight and boldly curse the Devil.
The complex at Teotihuacán is indescribable. A brochure I picked up on my walk toward the ruins claimed that the site covered more than 80 square kilometers and that at its height, around 450 A.D., the city was home to nearly 200,000 inhabitants. Since the majority of the historically-relevant monuments were located along the Avenue of the Dead, I decided to go there first and check out the huge pyramids at either end of the road.
In ancient times they called Teotihuacán, “the place where men go to become gods.” I found out very quickly that today it is nothing more than a bustling tourist trap where vendors and tourists alike come to be exploited.
“Excuse me, sir,” a teenage local said to me in impeccable English. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Manuel Angél Gutierrez de la Rosa. I am a citizen of Teotihuacán, and I would be honored if you would allow me to be your tour guide today and show you all of the magnificent splendors of this archeological treasure.” “Thank you, Manuel, but I need not services of guiding
temples this same day,” I responded in my infantile Spanish. His look was one of confusion that faded into disappointment. “But the most good of luck for you,” I added. “It appears as though there are many sweaty people here who would love to pay you for showing them how to make love to these old rocks.” He walked away without a word.
Months later, after my Spanish had improved tremendously, I often used this tactic to ward-off pesky vendors. Two of my favorite phrases were: “My explosive diarrhea is angry at your face,” and “The benevolent herpes monster that lives inside the castle in my pants would like to cross your moat.”
I walked through the crowd, trying my best to admire the architecture of the ruins, but with all of the tourists around, distractions were inescapable. Perhaps the loudest of these disturbances was a small American child, no older than nine, who was throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of the main plaza. “But mommy, I WANT that baby doll NOW! Pleeeeeeease, mommy! I’ll be good—please just buy me the baby!”
“Now, sweetheart, we’ve already gone over this,” her mother rationalized. “If you’re a good girl we might consider buying you the baby later, ok, angel? You know, when you scream like that it hurts mommy’s feelings. You don’t want to hurt your mommy’s feelings, do you?”
“I hate you, mommy! You’re the worst mommy in the whole world! I hope you fall down the pyramid and die! Waaaaaaaaah!”
“Well, mommy loves you anyway, my little angel.”
This was not at all what I had anticipated, so I decided to climb to the top of the main pyramid, thinking its heights might provide me some refuge from screaming toddlers. Before I reached the base of the pyramid, a man handed me a flier. Apparently Walmart had purchased land directly adjacent to the ancient city, and was planning on building a giant superstore to “se
rve” the surrounding population. The flier stated that the building site contained precious artifacts, and since Teotihuacán was a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it was illegal to build upon it. I stuffed the piece of paper into my pocket and shook my head. Memo was right about everything. I began my ascent.
The Pyramid of the Sun has exactly three hundred and sixtyfive steps, one for each day of the year. Most of the steps have had their edges worn down by the footsteps of millions of visitors over thousands of years, making their navigation a bit tricky. Once on top, I sat down on the sacrificial alter and admired the view. To my right was the Pyramid of the Moon, and behind it, the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range stretched out into the distance.
The summit of the pyramid was surprisingly high, and the people walking around down below looked like busy ants at work. I was thankful that I couldn’t hear any of them or their screaming children. For a moment I resented Memo for taking my joint, because this was the perfect place to get high, but then I thought back to his reaction when I told him of my intentions to come here.
He had been right about this place. The obnoxious tourists, the screaming children, the exploitation of the vendors—it was all too much. And now the multinationals were coming with their bulldozers.
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