Just Another Day

Got up this morning and whipped up some bacon and fresh eggs for breakfast. I was in no rush, so I used the leftover bacon grease in the frying pan to brown up some diced onions and toast some bread, because you can’t let bacon grease go to waste: it’s just the liquid essence of bacon deliciousness.

The dog was running out of his custom, expensive dog food ($2000 MXP per 16 kg bag); he offered to share my meal, but instead I made a run into town and picked up another bag of his food at the local veterinary office.

Traffic was bad on the carretera (main street) in Ajijic. It probably took me ten minutes to get across town.

Headed north on the main road from Chapala to Guadalajara. As an expat at lakeside, you’ll undoubtedly travel this route all the time. It is one of the two main ways to get to “Guad,” and it passes by Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla international airport (or GDL). Visitors arriving, family returning, traveling most anywhere other than within Mexico usually starts with a visit to GDL. There is really only one road to use to get there, and it is poorly maintained south of the airport, as the Tapatios (Guadalajarans) coming south only need to go so far.

Sometimes the ejidos, local indigenous peoples, protest at the airport. They contend the Mexican government took some of their land (for airport expansion) and did not pay the agreed price, so the ejidos blockade the airport. Sometimes they stop all cars from approaching the terminal area , making you walk (which is bad), and sometimes they take control of the parking garage and make it gratis for the day (which is good). The ejidos did protest today, so free parking for everybody!

Picked up my lovely wife from the airport and had an uneventful thirty minute drive home. We did also pick up a quart of milk (for me) and a bag of chicharrónes (for the dog) at the local super, La Huerta.

By now you’re wondering what the point of all this is. This past year, Mexico set a record for violent homicides with over 30,000 murders, and this year is on pace to exceed that number. If you want to hear about the latest violence in Mexico, almost any NOB news source will regularly feed it to you, and there are websites which specialize in it. The stories are sensational, as the drug cartels which promulgate almost all the violence are purposefully theatrical (i.e., sending a message).

These numbers are real, but like any numbers they tell only part of the story. One would think life in Mexico is like life, say, in Syria or Afghanistan, with constant gun fights and bodies strewn all over. But it is not.  You’ll note in my coverage of this day’s events, there were no gun shots, no headless corpses, nothing out of the ordinary. Yet I traveled through a “plaza” (the nickname for a drug territory) which is actively being contested by two of the most violent Mexican cartels.  Hmmmm.

I once lived and worked in the Washington, DC area. At times, my office was on a military post in South East DC, the poorest and most crime-ridden part of town. Inside the gates, things were serene, but outside was another story. I drove in and out of those gates at all different times of day, going to many different locations. Even when DC was briefly the “murder Capital of the US,” I didn’t really fear driving through it. Why? I knew that most of the violence was drug-fueled, or opportunistic, happening at the wee hours of the morning outside bars and pool halls or clubs. I didn’t do drugs, didn’t hang out at clubs in the middle of the night, didn’t flash a wad of cash at the 7-11 or the gas station. Sometimes bad things did happen to someone just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but like being hit by lightning, the odds were pretty much in your favor.

The same holds true for Mexico. If you don’t do drugs, flash cash, or get drunk and hang out super late, the odds are pretty much in your favor.

Last year, Mexico set a record for visit by  tourists (almost 40 million, mostly Americans), and those numbers are up again this year. There are more American expats in Mexico than in any other country. Those are real numbers too. They all have stories to tell. Unlike the stories on the news, these stories are boring, like the one about my trip to the airport. But they are just as real. And they don’t make it to the news.