Wed., Nov. 24, 2010 at 5:49 p.m.
Well, that´s where I was today. Wandering between the towns of San Angel and Coyoacan and back again. These are two beautiful towns that are now suburbs of Mexico City due to urban sprawl. If you close your eyes and ignore the traffic you might even get a sense of the kind of ambience that must have persisted in these places over the last four centuries or so. But don´t close them for too long, otherwise you might never open them again! This place is full of quaint colonial buildings sequestered behind high walls festooned with bougainvillea, and cobblestones. By the way the cobblestones are on the street. There are art galleries, cafes, restaurants, bookstores, churches, cobblestoned streets, flowers, mainly bougainvillea and orchid trees, and I saw maybe two tourists altogether, a couple of Japanese girls photographing each other in front of a church. I really love the bougainvillea. The colours of magenta and red are so outrageously loud and strident and I can´t look at them long enough. I stopped in two differrent cafes, one that I used to visit during my first stay here last year. It is called La Mucca. It is small with metal wire chairs and round tables. The wooden seats of the chairs and the table tops are all original paintings, some feature cows, some are abstract, some are just outrageous. Afterward I walked in los Viveros, which is a huge park with trees and a nursery with lots of walking trails crisscrossing the place. Then I returned to the Zocolo or main square of Coyoacan where I sat in an Italian cafe for an americano. I was the only customer present. The place is huge with lots of comfy seats and armchairs. I chatted afterward in Spanish with the waiter who seemed a bit concerned about the reputation Mexico has for violence. I replied that as far as I know, the only homicides involving Canadians all were accompanied by some very stupid behaviour by the victims, staying out late in places they didn't know well, drinking in excess, often using illegal drugs. But the fact of the matter is, I told him, that a lot of tourists seem to leave their brains in their suitcases, in which case they should not even bother to pack them. They should stay home. In the bookstore nearby I made quite an ironical purchase. I bought a Spanish translation of ¨Voltaire´s Bastards¨, a book originally written in English by Canadian author and thinker, John Ralston Saul. Well, it´s been on my list for some time and now I get to read it in Spanish. I later looked in a bookstore in San Angel, and nearly bought a very slim and overpriced volume of some stories by Carlos Fuentes, but the wait at the cashier was way too long, so I left the book and bailed. Also I easily get put off by the strong security presence in some of these stores, such as this one, and the guard in this store seemed like a particularly disagreeable goon, so no thanks. Less than a block away I came across a street vender with a really nice selection of books. His prices seen pretty good and he looks like he could use the support, so maybe on Friday when I hope to return there I ´ll buy something from him.
The presence of poverty is pretty obvious. The organ grinders, and musicians are present and desperate. There were three of them, two with snare drums and one with a trumpet playing outside the cafe in Coyoacan. They were quite good but I had already exhausted my budget for giving alms. Then when I was on my way back to the bed and breakfast there they were again on the same block. Again I came across families of indigenous people begging or busking for alms. You really see the impact of poverty and chronic malnutrition in them as well. They tend to be short, gaunt, and very crushed looking. I was able to give a little, and it´s hard not to feel badly that more isn´t or can´t be done. As if we don´t have enough of these problems in Canada.
But we do have things pretty good here compared to a lot of other parts of the world. Still, I always cringe whenever I hear anyone using this as a rationalization for accepting and dismissing our increasing problems with poverty and homelessness. It isn´t that we don´t have a lot to be grateful for. We do. But we should also be aware that we are already slowly starting to lose these things that we tend to take for granted, and do everything we can to see that the wealth of our country is evenly and justly distributed so that poverty and homelessness can become a nightmare of the past. This is what I felt like saying to a nice, older Vancouver couple also staying in this bed and breakfast right now. Like so many comfortably off Canadians they just don´t have a clue of the desperation at their doorstep, and outside of a couple of vague remarks I had to take care not to lecture them about it. Anyway, they seem like nice people, even if they did love the Olympics. But why diss them for it, since I was about the only Vancouverite, save for one or two, who didn't get seduced by our government´s bread and circuses spin. Also we were drinking wine at the time. I´m already combative enough without the influence of alcohol so I cut myself off after one and a half glasses and went up to bed early. Well, here I am back in front of the computer and nursing yet another glass of red. I just had a chat with a lady from California who works in health insurance. She thinks the US should have a public health system like Canada. I replied that Canada should have a system like Cuba´s. No, I am not a communist, I am a nonviolent anarchist, but really, if more North Americans got over their irrational fears about socialism we would likely be living in a much more just and egalitarian society. This wine is rather good!
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