My students urged me to go to Mexico and visit their families. In 1983, I took them up on it. My destinations included Mexico City, Oaxaca, Guadalajara, and a ranch in rural Jalisco. Museum of Anthropology, Diego Rivera murals, staying with the Sansininea family in Nezahualcoyotl, and the Xochimilco Gardens were some of my experiences in the capital. I was travelling with a woman named Harriet. We never made it to the Tenochtitlan Pyramids.
I drank pulque with borrachos in a cantina where the urinal troughs were in the same room with the main bar. I picked up a prostitute one night near the Zona Rosa. At her place I was surprised when what I thought was a toilet squirted water up to wash my privates. I had never seen a bidet before and I’ve never seen one since. A few days later I got lucky at a huge bordello in Guadalajara. How lucky? The door prize was a trip upstairs with one of the girls.
I had never known anything about Oaxaca. I couldn’t even pronounce it. What a revelation! The population is overwhelmingly indigenous. In the central valley where I was visiting the Casas family, most of the people are Zapotec. The dialect has been fading among the younger generations. But you cannot miss the dominance of a distinct culture, especially as people from surrounding mountain villages come down to the mercados of Oaxaca and Tlacolula.
A guide took us to Monte Alban, Mitla, and the zócalo of Oaxaca. He brought us to the artisan towns. At Teotitlan Del Valle, a weaver showed us each step in the making of a woolen tapete. He showed how that deep purple is extracted from the cochineal bugs that live on cactus nopals. At San Bartolo Coyoacan, we saw Doña Elpidia spinning that town’s distinctive black pottery.
The mercados were a maze of color and crackling with life. Little did I realize then that I may have passed right by the stall where my future mother-in-law, Doña Epifania, was bartering and bargaining. On Sundays, she and my sister-in-law, Agripina, set up a display of imported plates and saucers which come untaxed overland from Guatemala. Locals jokingly call the import side of the market, “Tokyo Lula”.
It was in another mercado – La Lagunilla in Mexico City — that I had a bit of a tourist problem. I was snapping photos and had one shot left on my roll. I saw a cop leaning in to talk to a motorist. So I took a picture. His partner saw me and they headed straight for me. I tried to play it off by smiling and gesturing that they should stop and pose again.
They went straight for the camera. I wouldn’t give it up so they threw me into the patrol car and took me to a nearby police department. It was a gigantic fortaleza with more police cars than I had even seen in one place before. Fortunately Harriet had jumped into the back seat with both halves of my glasses.
The thin cop said, “Guerrito, hicistes mal. (You did a bad thing, white boy)”. Still I wouldn’t give up the camera. Then the big one smashed me upside the head. At that moment, terror took over my body. I was a gringo in the dark heart of a foreign country. I wondered what was that warm feeling in my lap. I was so scared that I pissed in my pants! I left an unintended revenge for these cops in their front seat.
By the time the boss came out, I had given up the film. He said, “If you come to Mexico and want to take pictures of policemen, come and see me. I will line them up in formation for you. But don’t ever take their pictures out on the street.” I later learned that the Mexico City police were at that time very, very corrupt. Back in Chicago, I read the Mexican best seller about the police chief, Lo Negro del Negro Durazo. Then cops paid for their jobs, bought their own uniforms, and paid for the gas in their squad cars. They woke up every morning trying to figure out where to get the next bribe.