Whose World?

It is has long been the game of historians, geographers and politicians, among others, to divide the world up into pieces. They put up borders through Maya lands, break up rivers and seas, and generally try to fit things nicely into their categories. One of these classifications is between the First World and the Third. Mexico, it is generally considered, is part of the Third. But there are some, like neoliberal American military strategist Thomas Barnett, who argue that it is now part of the First. As I traveled through Mexico over the last week I wondered if you can really classify a country as one or the other, or even if you can classify it at all.

Originally the terms of First through Third Worlds came from the Cold War days, but now they are mainly used to label levels of development. Development is a very intangible thing, probably coined by the West and "First" World, so I will create my own definition. Development, and the First World, can be seen in Mexico City at the bus stations where ADO First Class buses come in always on time. It can be seen at the markets where the stalls are scrubbed in hygienic detergents and your food comes in plastic bags. It is in the restoration project of Coyoacan, in all the things that make an American comfortable living in a foreign country. It is part of that globalized city, with its own unique cultural flare but standard in its sense of orderliness that makes any foreigner feel at home. 

But don't start drawing dichotomies just yet. This "First World" aspect of Mexico does not mean that the "Third World" parts are irregular, dissorderly or generally backwards, although they may seem to be so at first glance. One thing is for certain though, the farther we got into the countryside of Veracruz and away from Mexico City, the more things changed. Here, my fast-paced, globalized world choked with a different sort of logic, one where we would arrive in towns where the single bus south leaves only once a day. A trip that takes 6 hours turns into a journey of two days in this world, but no one cared because we took the one bus east instead. And somehow, a trip that would have been logistical hell for someone expecting a globalized experience, was actually one of the most relaxing. It was a good thing we were late, too, because our friend who had access to the beach house, our final destination, was also a few days behind schedule.

Looking back on my  trip, I keep trying to explain the difference between my travels with Avicena, Igmar, Javier and Edgar from any traveling I had ever done before and planned myself. At the heart of this is discovering what was so Mexican about it. While parts of the First World are reaching a general standardized culture that makes traveling within it effortless and traveling without it quite frustrating, part of the local Mexican culture involves learning what its logic is. Certainly it can be characterized by scarcity: we bought the only grocery store in town out of all its bread and potatoes. But somehow this didn't seem to be a big deal; we survive just as the inhabitants survive. 

Maybe I can't quite explain what life is like in Third World Mexico. Sometimes things move more slowly but always they get done. Or sometimes they don't. It is not disorganized here, but it's a logic that an outsider can't immediately understand. And for the global citizen, it's certainly a way of life that takes some getting used to.

Quetzalcoatl's Children

I don't think it is really socially acceptable for a Mexican lady to travel unaccompanied with male classmates for Spring Break. But I was not born a Mexican and early on in my exchange program I stopped trying to become one. The realization that I would never perfectly pronounce my r's or live at home until I was thirty liberated me in a lot of ways. So while my California compañeras enjoyed Semana Santa in Oaxaca or the city, I decided to set out on my own adventure with three friends from the Facultad de economía. The fact that they were all male was coincidental, but has its certain advantage in avoiding harassment from the general population.

The fact that I am white is also an interesting component. Seeing me with my friend Avicena, raised all his life in Mexico City, taxi drivers would start speaking to the both of us in English, figuring we were a foreign couple. A French girl at a bus station guessed that we were from Spain. Although the best way to some up the conversation came from my friend Igmar:

-Cortés arrived here around five hundred years ago, right?

-Yeah

-Then why do they still look at you as if they've never seen a white person before? Seriously, people stop what they're doing and stare.

While Mexico has its share of fair skinned natives, I am certainly no where close to blending in. But I think I'm OK with that.

Xalapa

In Xalapa we introduced Igmar to our version of urban camping, setting up our tent in a public park that had a lake, a jogging path and a carnival. Again we slept peacefully and undisturbed, packing up around 9am to explore the city before my 3pm bus ride to the D.F. Leaving our stuff at another supermarket bag check, we bought donuts and chocolate soy milk for breakfast and found a beautiful park on our way the university museum. Amongst its lush gardens and meandering streams, built in an ancient style, we ate our breakfast and contemplated the luck of our lifestyle. All this for less than $10 a day. 

The museum was yet another wonder, and we were captivated by a quote engraved in the wall:

"¡Mexicano detente: Esta es la raíz de tu historia, tu cuna y tu altar. Oirás la voz silenciosa de la cultura más antigua de tal vez, la civilización madre de nuestro continente. Los olmecas convirtieron la lluvia en cosechas, el sol en calendario, la piedra en escultura, el algodón en telas, las peregrinaciones en comercio, los montículos en tronos, los jaguares en religión y los hombres en dioses!" -Agustín Acosta Lagunes, 30-X-1986.

Mexicans halt: These are the roots of your history, your birthplace and your altar. You'll hear the silent voice of perhaps the most ancient culture, the mother civilization of our continent. The olmecas changed the rain into harvests, the sun into a calendar, rock into sculpture, cotton into fabric, pilgrimages into commerce, mounds into thrones, jaguars into religion and men into gods! -Agustín Acosta Lagunes, October 30, 1986.

When it was time for me to board my bus I was sad to go.

Living on a Commune

The next few days at the beach were spent much as the first. We napped now in the shade to avoid sunburn, and in the afternoons or mornings indulged ourselves with a few marvelous runs on the beach. Of the original travelers only Avicena (my original travel buddy), Igmar (the friend of the owner of the house) and I remained.

Although the weather, scenery, and shelter were perfect, we were low on money and the house lacked running water. Under these conditions we slowly became a sort of commune: the boys would pull up water by hand from the well in the front yard so we could wash the dishes, and we bathed each other outside in the grass. Our food we shared together, having bought out the entire stock of potatoes in the area's one store and making use of the tamale lady who walked from house to house selling her goods. Opening up one tamale at a time, we would all dig in with our hands. Somehow eating six together seemed like eating more than two by yourself. At night we all slept up in the one loft bedroom with its three twin beds and in the morning we ran on the beach and swam in the hotel pools to cool off. When the afternoon wind came up nap in the yard. 

Finally on Friday afternoon, after three lovely days at the beach, we purchased our bus tickets to Xalapa, a college town three hours to the south. I needed to start my trip back the city and Avicena had convinced Igmar to ditch classes for another week and explore the country. Either way, this time was much easier getting out than getting in: we found a bus hub down the street at a restaurant and climbed aboard at 5pm.

¡La playa!

It is an interesting task to get food poisoning miles away from any running water or a roll of toilet paper. And there I was, at four in the morning, squatting under a palm tree and a full moon on a deserted beach in northern Veracruz. But there is a first for everything, and for all firsts there must also be a last: I no longer plan on eating cheap fish from street restaurants in the Caribbean.

By the time the sun rose (and trust me, with numerous early-morning trips outside I had seen its advance), a few chewable mint-flavored imodiums had cured me and I was ready for the days adventures. 

And our days were full of adventures. Mostly though, we lay on cots in the sun, taking in our luck at having arrived in such a beautiful place. When we got too hot (or too sunburned), we dived in the ocean, letting the current pull us toward the lagoon. The joke, of course, was that two of the guys I had come with had to return to the city. After all that travel one of them left in the morning. The other, however, missed his bus, and it would take him two days to get out of town. It was just as well--much better to be stuck at the beach that have Spring Break '09 in Tuxpan.

¡Vamos a la playa!: Day Two

We got off the bus in Papantla, the town near the El Tajin ruins, at 1am. I think we were expecting to alight at the base of the pyramids, so we were a bit stuck on a place to camp when we realized we were in the middle of a small (modern day) city. Off in the distance, perhaps like a beacon of hope, was the Iglesia. We we wandered towards it through the maze of streets, and climbing the hill we reached the main plaza at its gates. Compermiso señor, my friend asked a passerby, do you know of a place we could camp? He replied that we mights as well set up in plaza, so we got to work pitching our tent on a patch of grass in the square's garden. It was certainly a comical picture. We slept soundly that night beneath the gaze of town drunks, and were awoken by the gardeners around 8am.

We packed up, snooped around the market for some breakfast, and were soon on our way to the ruins. It was a beautiful site. We spent most of the day there, watching the Danza de los voladores, exploring the pyramids, and napping in the shade. The most famous building of all is one with 365 niches, one for each day of the year. 

Around 3pm we headed back into town to catch our bus to Nautla and the beach house. Well, the bus didn't exactly go to Nautla, but it went somewhere near there, and then you can transfer. By now I was used to this kind of route. 

We ended up getting off at another windy, cold beach town. I ate a cheap fish plate while my friend scouted out the beach. After about a half an hour, as the sun neared the horizon, I was ready to get on our way again. Of course, the bus to Nautla didn't pass through here, so we had to retrace our route back to a town we had passed through earlier, and wait again at a miserable little bus station. At last, around 6pm, the Nautla bus arrived and we jumped on, afraid it would leave the station without us. I am pretty sure this is were I lost my camera, so sorry, no personal pics.

We arrived in Nautla as the sun set, and it seemed that tomorrow might be a little warmer. At least that's what we told ourselves. We waited for the friend of a friend whose friend owned the beach house--the beach house owner himself had yet to arrive--and watched the bus station children, who waited in the empty seats of the small terminal for new buses to arrive, selling their wares to the passengers. 

After 20 minutes our friend arrived, and I soon understood the logic of our two-day detour throughout the region. Even if we had arrived as planned, our friend hadn't gotten into town until this morning--we would have been stuck anyway without a house. I was slowly easing in to the Mexican way of doing things. It wasn't even until the end of our trip that we would find out the real owner of the house would never arrive. But nevertheless, our new friend had a key--or at least new the neighbors who had one--and so we headed on our way. To get there we had to take yet another bus (despite the remote location of the town of Nautla the beach was even farther--not located in a town but by a lagoon off the highway). 

By nightfall, however, we had finally arrived in La vigueta. The house lay on a bed of sand and weeds with palm trees, and making our way across the unkept yard we were on a sandy beach. After a night time swim we laid out a blanket and the five of us gazed up at the full moon. Tomorrow was totally free, and we were sure there would be sun.

¡Vamos a la playa!: Day One

We left Mexico City at six in the afternoon on Sunday. Well, the plan was to leave that morning, but the bus tickets were for that afternoon. The plan was to meet at the TAPO station but it turns out we needed to leave from Terminal Norte. And the plan was to go to the beach, but the bus didn't go directly there. 

Once the four of us--myself, a friend from the facultad, and two of his buddies--finally united, we had but minutes to board the bus out of Mexico. Our intended trajectory was this: catch a bus to Poza Rica, Veracruz, a small oil city that would serve as our transportation hub into the east. From there, we would awake early the next morning and head to Nautla, a beach town where a friend had a house. I was promised lagoons, beautiful beaches, rivers with rapids and ancient ruins at the water's edge. None of us had explored much of the state of Veracruz except for my brief trip to the capitol for Carnival, and we were excited.

We arrived in Poza Rica around 11pm. Tent in hand, we descended into the muggy night ready for adventure. But the city was ugly and the hour was late. Buses for Nautla left at 5am and noon. A text came in from our Oaxaca-bound friends saying that they had not been able to catch a ride and were stuck miles from the beach in Puebla, where even fewer buses pass. We quickly scanned the list of destinations at the ADO terminal. There were various destinations, but one for Tuxpan left at 1am. What's in Tuxpan? I asked. My friend responded that it was a beach with a lagoon. Well, it fit our desires and after brief debate we bought student tickets at the discounted spring break price. 

We had two hours to spare, and after wandering the streets of Poza Rica we settled at some taco stands near the terminal. We talked about music, about how hot out it would be tomorrow, and about the beach we were all dreaming of. By 1am we were bumping along the road, sound asleep in our Tuxpan-bound bus. 

By 2am we stumbled out of the Tuxpan terminal, accosted suddenly by a loud salsa band that was performing live to a few drunken onlookers. What I thought was the shore of the beach was actually the jetty of the river--12 km away from the ocean. Realizing that for tonight the beach was not for us, we started to look for a place to set up camp. I don't think it was until this moment that I realized our true sleeping situation: we would not be pitching a tent at an ocean-side campground, we were in the middle of a jungle city. 

Like a troop of hobos, we wandered the streets for a few blocks until we came to a freeway overpass that spanned the river. Under the full moon we climbed up and across, serenaded the whole time by the salsa band. Reaching the other side we found ourselves on the south bank of the river, dotted by some garbage and a few houses but with grass and dirt instead of city streets. Vetoing the idea of sleeping under the bridge, we settled down by the trees on the riverbank and pitched our tent. 

Our tent, though quite roomy and over six feet tall, had no rain protection and nothing but a screen flap for a door. Around 4 in the morning the wind began to howl and clouds moved in, and we curled up even tighter--some of us in sleeping bags and me just with the blankets I had stolen from my host family's house. 

Luckily for us it did not rain, and despite the circumstances we managed to sleep until past eleven in the morning. We chuckled at our rag-tag ways and folded up our stuff, struggling a little to fold up our giant tent amongst all the wind. The day had started out cold and didn't improve much as we made our way back across the bridge. Our situation grew even more desperate once we learned that the only bus for the day to Nautla had already left, at ten in the morning. 

For a while we wandered the city, a small little affair with one main street and a few stoplights. We had bought tickets for tomorrow's but to Nautla but were quickly regretting another night in Tuxpan. Over breakfast (consisting of bread and canned beans from the supermarket), we decided we would have to go somewhere else--and today.

We decided, finally, on going to El Tajin, the site of ancient Veracruz culture.