Culture – Page 6 – Pat the Expat

Mexican Riviera

This tourist zone encompasses a series of similar tourist resorts that stretch along the Mexican Pacific coast, from the end of the Baja peninsula down to the Huatulco in Oaxaca. It’s perhaps unfair to call these places similar, since they are in fact different. However, the chief difference is that they are at different stages of development in the same life-cycle: tourist hot-spots.

The oldest of these, and arguably the most famous, is Acalpulco, which became a getaway for the Hollywood rich and famous back in the 1940s. Now it is well past its prime, attracting fewer foreign visitors and having a vaguely seedy reputation. Puerto Vallarta, or PV among expats, is the reigning champion. It has a modern cruise ship terminal and a well-developed tourism infrastructure to host visitors and expats. Probably next in line after PV are the various resort towns at the end of the Baja peninsula, namely Los Cabos (Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo). We visited Huatulco, PV, and Cabo San Lucas.

What you’ll find at all these sites are plenty of the usual tourist development (yes, Señor Frog is everywhere) but even more amazing ocean/beach activities. World-class sport-fishing? Check. Ditto for surfing. Endless beaches with bars, seafood restaurants and palapas? Yup. Whale-watching? Swimming with Dolphins? Of course. Ocean kayaking, paddle-boarding, snorkeling, yes. Para-sailing: yeah. Back on land, there are tours of small Mexican towns, visits to haciendas, tequila and mezcal tasting, and eco-visits to jungles and deserts. There is quite literally something for everybody along this coast.

Not being beach people or adventure-seekers, we visited small towns in Oaxaca and Baja California Sur. We can certify that the cruise tours provided what they promoted: very authentic sites where locals produced textiles, mezcal, or other crafts, and small towns still mostly as they are, not carefully crafted tourist recreations. The rug-weavers we saw came from the same small town in central Oaxaca we visited back in July. The mezcal producer used the same techniques we saw in Tequila.

We did sneak in some adventure. I finagled Judy’s agreement to go whale watching while in Puerto Vallarta, as December is the beginning of the humpback whale annual visit to the bay. I imagine she envisioned changing out the cruise ship for a large boat and watching for whales from a distance. I didn’t bother to explain we’d be in zodiacs, basically large inflatable rafts (with a hard interior) and an over-powered pair of marine engines. While Banderas Bay is generally calm, there is nothing calming about screaming across the small waves at 30+ knots in a zodiac, chasing whales. Judy survived the experience, so I’m still here to blog about it!

Happy Judy, when the zodiac is going slow

Whales!

Our ship looming over the cruise dock in Puerto Vallarta

New development built to fit in, in *Todos Santos*

Local tour guide claimed this was the inspiration, but it isn’t

Not everything can be authentic!

Antigua, Guatemala

Sunday found us docked at Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, so we availed ourselves of an “on your own” bus to Antigua, one of the ancient capitals (yes, plural) of Guatemala. It’s a well-maintained historical site with excellent views of local, active volcanoes. Which is why it’s no longer the capital.

Seems when the Spaniards arrived, they established their first capital on the site of the indigenous palace. Which was subsequently destroyed by a volcano. So they moved to another valley, where the second capital was safely away from a volcano, or so they thought. But there was a nearby mountain with a lake on top. You guessed it, there was an earthquake which unleashed the lake and destroyed the town. So the Spaniards built a third capital in 1541 in another valley, safe from most volcanoes and most earthquakes. Of course, mother nature has a way of making man look foolish, and in 1776 there was a tremendous earthquake which destroyed the third capital, resulting in the final site at Guatemala City (which still stands as of the time of this post).

Iconic archway between two convents, framing another volcano

But the people in the third capital didn’t want to give up, so they slowly rebuilt, calling the town Antigua Guatemala (as in the old capital). And there it sits today, a mix of preserved ruins and rebuilt colonial houses, without the business or industry a modern capital city would normally have. It’s as if the old city was preserved in amber from a date long ago.

It being Sunday, we had scoped out a Catholic mass in what remains of the old cathedral. Mostly magnificent ruins, locals refurbished one small wing of the cathedral as a small parish. During mass, we heard loud cheers and groans coming from the town plaza immediately outside. There was another religious event of sorts: the World Cup Final. The priest even made a parting joke at the end of mass about seeing everyone outside.

Cathedral interior in ruins, still magnificent

Defending champion France was playing Argentina that morning, and the local government had erected a giant screen in the plaza for all to come and watch. Normally weekends bring a rush of local tourists from Guatemala City to spend a day in Antigua, but this Sunday the crowd was all locals, and most of the town was bunched into a corner of the plaza, glued to the screen.

We heard Argentina was leading 2-0 as mass began, then we heard more screaming during the liturgy. We were surprised to learn France had tied the game up, so we grabbed a coffee (a local specialty) and enjoyed extra time and a penalty kick shoot-out. The crowd, which was rooting for Messi & Argentina, grew silent until the result was in. I mentioned to Judy how strange it was to know the whole world (less the US) was watching the same event at the same time, all holding their breath. It was something like the moonwalk, and special to enjoy among passionate fans.

The moment when . . .

Puerto Genérico

Don’t look for it on a map. It’s less of a place than a state of mind. You’ve been there if you did an ocean cruise in the Caribbean, Central America, heck even Alaska. It exists where a large cruise ship arrives at a small port in an underdeveloped region or country. And it’s always the same.

When Judy & I were hard-working professionals in Washington DC (“working hard or hardly working?”, yes I know the joke!), we tried to get away every winter for a week, usually to cruise the Carrib Sea from Miami (Pro-tip: you pronounce it “car-RIB-ee-an” not “care-i-BEE-an”). We soon learned there was no reason to off-board at the ports, because they were all the same. You walked off the ship and were accosted by a steel drum band. Locals started offering to (1) braid your hair, (2) sell you Ganja (marijuana), or (3) give you a henna tattoo. As we were uninterested in all three, well, why disembark? There were the usual set of excursions, but these too predictably fell into beach-time, water-time, and local customs. We tried some of the latter, but found them more generic than legitimate. I recall visiting a market near Cozumel and buying a “Mayan sun disc calendar” which turned out to be Aztec. Whatever.

If you head north to Alaska, they’re selling sweatshirts, salmon, and First Nations handicrafts. In Central America, its tropical drinks, Mayan art and indigenous clothing. Notice that few things have “made in” labels, because you don’t really want to know from where it came. I don’t mean to disparage the hard work or the opportunity. If you’re on your once-in-a-lifetime trip, enjoy the experience, don’t over-analyze it. And the vendors are trying hard to make a living, souvenirs being souvenirs the world ’round.

We landed in Puntarenas (sandy point), Costa Rica. We were greeted by a xylophone band, a market full of t-shirts and carved wooden tchotchkes, and some restaurants featuring (in English) “Costa Rican food.” We sauntered past in the tropical heat and found our way to the local church. After we tried the locked doors, a handyman came over and opened it up to we could visit. The cafes and shops were barely open, although there was a line outside the government medical clinic. This could have been any pueblo anywhere in Latin America.

We’ll be spared the experience in Nicaragua. The Captain explained that the Nicaraguan government is closing its ports due to Covid. Funny thing, the Nicaraguan government website has no mention of it. More likely, the Sandinista government is engaging in another round of repression, so Norwegian Cruise Lines decided not to send day-trippers merrily traipsing across the countryside lest than run into a protest, a riot, or an insurrection. But we will be in Acajutla, El Salvador, soon thereafter, and I bet it will be eerily familiar.

Panama: The Big Ditch

The Panama Canal is, to my mind, an afterthought today. The last great controversy involving it was when President Carter decided (1977) to deed it back to Panama on January 1st, 2000, which resulted in none of the catastrophic consequences imagined at the time. Yes, it connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and greatly facilitates trade, but really it seems to be just a piece of infrastructure, and a really old one at that. Which is precisely why it is a marvel.

The first canal between those oceans was attempted by the French in 1881. They had completed the Suez canal, a sea-level enterprise which cut the sailing time from Europe to the Far East to ten days. Suez was said to be impossible, but Ferdinand de Lesseps and his French engineers pulled it off, and it was the marvel of its age (1869). Then they decided to do the same in the Colombian province of Panama. To understand the difference in terms of difficulty, imagine that immediately following the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon, NASA announced that Apollo 12 was going to Mars. Yes, there was French arrogance involved, but they had already done the impossible, were the best at what they did, and their plans were sound, with two exceptions. First, they shrugged off the disease implications of the Panamanian jungle (mainly Malaria and Yellow Fever), and second, they insisted on another sea-level canal. Sea-level canals are much easier endeavors than lock canals: any child who has dug two pools in the beach sand, then connected them with a scooped line between has basically mastered the design of a sea-level canal.

De Lesseps was a force of nature (he was called “Le Grand Français” or The Great Frenchman), and his renown as the conqueror of Suez made his opinion unassailable. Despite his talent and expertise, despite the quality of the engineers the French sent and the money they spent, the effort failed. Too much graft and corruption, too little respect for the size of the task and the challenge of the jungle, spelled defeat.

The Americans literally rough-rode in to pick up the pieces. President Teddy Roosevelt settled on completing the task as a declaration of America’s rise as a world power. Instead of negotiating with the Colombian government (a notably difficult proposition), he fomented rebellion in Panama, recognized the rebels, and signed an incredibly advantageous treaty for a US-built and operated canal. All of which just left the canal-building to be done.

The American effort very nearly failed. The fact of mosquito-borne illness had just been established, yet the canal leadership thought it just “a theory” and very nearly suffered the same catastrophic losses the French had endured. The American engineers finally came around to the impossibility of building a sea-level canal that had to cross a mountain range (!) and ran parallel to a raging tropical river (the Chagres) which flooded up to 33 feet during the rainy season. Eventually the Americans settled on damming the Chagres, creating a giant lake in the middle of the isthmus, then building locks on either side to connect to the oceans. The final canal greatly dwarfed the original estimates by orders of magnitude in terms of how much digging, blasting, and construction was required, yet it was completed ahead of schedule and under budget.

From Wikipedia; the Gatun lake was once all swampy jungle

The Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC) went through several organizational structures and leadership teams before falling under the (eventually) legendary George Washington Goethals, a West Point-trained Army engineer who turned the entire operation into a model of efficiency. Some called the canal zone administration a “socialist paradise” as it was so well-run and so accommodating to its work force. There were stark inequalities between the black Caribbean islanders who did the manual labor and the white Americans who oversaw the work or did the skilled jobs, yet all experienced better pay, free medical care and food, paid leave and other benefits unheard of back home. The administration was not strictly a government: it was more of a giant company-town, where every body and every thing was focused on a single task: digging the canal.

The ICC needed healthy workers, so mosquitoes were practically eradicated from the canal zone, despite it being carved out of the jungle. Skilled doctors and engineers weren’t going to come alone to Panama for years on end, so homes and schools and community centers were built. The losers in all this were the Panamanians themselves, who anticipated a windfall in sales and services but instead found themselves shut out of the manual and skilled labor, and competing with a massive organization designed to bring the comforts of home to the tropical jungles.

The grassy areas are the large earthen dam, completed with the small traditional concrete structure

The canal construction redefined social, technological and material limits. It created the largest dig, the largest earthen dam (at Gatun, above), which resulted in the biggest man-made lake, using the largest heavy equipment (95 ton steam shovels) and largest steel products (gates). Electric motors, just coming into their own, became a chief power source, and the canal used hydroelectric power to be largely self-sufficient. A fledgling American company named General Electric designed a control system whereby engineers could sit in a single room and see a scale-model with a series of live-controls that managed the whole system. The controls were connected in a way it was impossible to “skip a step” or open the wrong lock/dam/gate (aka “idiot-proof”). The final cost was $500 million USD (at the time), the largest single expenditure in US history, and more than five times the cost of all land acquisitions (Louisiana Purchase, Alaska, etc) of the US government till that point.

Container ship in the lock ahead of our cruise ship; notice the elevation gain

Close-up of a “mule,” a small locomotive which pulls a ship through the locks

It opened in August, 1914, but to little fanfare, as the impending Great War in Europe quickly blotted out what had been an object of intense international attention. Still, the canal functions to this day–108 years on– much as it was originally designed and built. Additional, larger locks permit larger New PanaMax vessels to cross, but the locks, the dams, the mules (trains which pull the ships through the locks) are either the originals or rebuilds to original specifications. It is hard to imagine another working infrastructure project which has held up nearly as well: perhaps the Roman roads/aqueducts?

The Culebra cut, where the mountain repeatedly slid back into the canal excavation, requiring constant re-digging

The value of any infrastructure project is simple: does it work? The marvel of this one is not that it works, but that it was ever completed. The beauty of it (if one can call infrastructure beautiful) is how well it works, so long after it was done.

Surprising Panamá

Preparing for our Panamá Canal Cruise from Colón (Panamá) to San Diego.

We took a Copa (Panamanian national airline) red-eye flight out of Guadalajara to Tocumen International Airport (PTY) outside of Panamá City. Even the name is a reminder of American influences: it’s not Cuidad de Panamá, but just Panamá City. Most of the passengers on our flight were connecting to onward travel in South America; PTY is a common transfer point for such flights. First surprise? Watching the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean . . . in the Western Hemisphere? I looked once, admiring how beautiful it was. Then I looked again and thought, “wait, that’s the Gulf of Panama, which is part of the Pacific Ocean, but the Sun is rising, so that is . . . east?” For the geographically challenged, Panamá is an isthmus shaped like the letter “S” lying on its side. Panamá City lies along the bend, so it looks to the southeast across its bay, where the Sun rises (near the equator).

Arriving at 6:oo am meant a speedy taxi ride of a mere twenty-five minutes to the heart of the business district. Pro-tip for frequent tourists: hotels in a city’s financial or business district tend to be nicer: they cater to a wealthier business crowd which expects better service and amenities, often with fares to match. However, they are more likely to be full during the week, so they often have reduced rates on weekends. Sure, sometimes the business district isn’t the most “happening” place to be, but it’s worth it in my opinion.

Our first impression is how tropical (expected) and vertical (unexpected) the city is. It hit 80° F by the time we entered the hotel lobby, with that sticky, hard-to-breathe sensation common to the tropics. Everything was air-conditioned, and running on high, so walking around meant a constant reversal of dripping sweat and freezing cold. As I said, that was expected. But Panamá City has some serious chops when it comes to skyscrapers.They are dense, frequent, and frequently beautiful.

Panamá uses the Balboa for currency, but the Balboa only exists as coins for change. Good old-fashioned greenbacks trade at 1:1 with the Balboa, and dollars are what you get from ATMs. Prices are what you’d expect in a medium-sized America city: not a bargain, but not sticker-shock, either.

We came here with few (if any) must-see’s or -do’s. Mostly we were looking for an easy transfer and a quiet chance to settle in, time- and climate-wise, before our cruise. Our third surprise was language. Yes, it’s Spanish, but due to the long American control of the Canal Zone, plenty of people speak English. But the Panamanians speak Spanish more slowly and with more distinct pronunciation than we’ve heard in Puerto Rico, Mexico, or even Spain. Our Gringo accent was no problem here, and we were able to understand virtually everybody, even the Priest’s Homily!

Of course we made it to Sunday Mass at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which also had a tribute to Our Lady of Guadalupe next to the altar. I mentioned to Judy that we will have spent the five Sundays in Advent this year in a different country for each Sunday (Italy, Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, the United States). Phew!

Our final surprise was mildly distasteful (literally). Since we had so little trouble communicating, we easily told our waiters “todos sin cilantro” since Judy and I both have the gene which leave cilantro tasting like soap and smelling like dirty socks (really). I kept getting dishes with that distinct and disgusting flavor; what gives? The food was clearly cooked with the spice, not just sprinkled on, as the flavor was baked in, so to speak. Judy figured out this was not cilantro but culantro, a cousin with even stronger flavor that is often used for cooking, not just garnishing. Guess we’ll have to add that to our list!

We barely touched the surface of Panamá city, let alone the rest of Panamá. Our tour driver, Marvin, told me the government does a lousy job of publicizing tourism, which is a shame, because there are miles of beaches, dense jungles, a big city, a canal, plenty of English, and an interesting mix of cultures/cuisines (Afro-Caribbean and Colombian). We didn’t make it to the old city or the market, nor the seaside promenade. We did visit the only tropical rain forest within a city limits, as well as the remains of Fort San Lorenzo, where the Spanish galleons laden with gold made a run past pirates.

Much to see and do here, and if you love tropical heat and humidity, this may be just the place for you!

Herculaneum

It was a typical, beautiful day in the shadow of the mountain. Fall in Campania is spectacular, and life was good in the seaside village of Herculaneum. It was especially good for Marcus Nonius Dama, as he was a freedman, made so by his former master Marcus Nonius Balbus, one of the town’s leading men. Dama’s family had been brought to Rome as slaves from Syria (Dama, as from Damascus). Roman slavery took many forms, often more like indentured servitude for a period rather than chattel slavery. Dama had grown up serving in the rich man’s spacious villa. Some seventeen years earlier, when Dama was a teenager, there had been a terrible earthquake which damaged much of the town. Dama had led his master’s wife and children to safety in the arched porticos which protected boats along the beach. Marcus Nonius Balbus never forgot that act, and he was a gracious man in addition to being rich. He gave Dama more and more responsibility, and eventually his freedom.

Dama had made a trade in repairing the town for the past two decades, and although much of his work was done, his reputation was still growing. Now Dama’s wife was eight months pregnant with their first child, and he felt practically on top of the world. Around noon, he stopped at the thermopolium, where Romans grabbed some fast food for the lunch meal. Herculaneum stood along a beach a short distance from Neapolis, the Roman port city. It was both a small fishing village and a rich man’s retreat, lying between the large mountain called Vesuvio and the Tyrrhenian Sea. As Dama was eating, he heard a large “crack,” like the loudest thunder he ever heard. But this thunder was followed by a long, low roar. “It sounds like the earth itself is giving birth,” he thought. People were milling about in the street, so he walked out and looked up at Vesuvio.

Where the mountain stood, there now was a towering blackness, like a giant dark tree reaching up into the sky. The darkness was rising and spreading, south with the wind and reaching down to the ground. It was both beautiful and terrible, frightening but seemingly far away.

The Vesuvio caldron today, once again calm

What Dama did not know, what no one in Herculaneum knew, was that Vesuvio was no mountain, but rather a volcano. It had not erupted in the recorded memory of Rome, so the danger posed by the sleeping giant was completely unrealized by the people living alongside it. What Dama watched was the vaporization of millions of tons of rock, turned into a mix of ash and fire, and blown high into the sky. That deadly mix was cooling and condensing and falling toward the larger town of Pompeii, due south, where it would collapse like a giant concrete blanket. And this was only the beginning.

Dama hurried home and told is wife to head over to Marcus Nonius Balbus’ place, to warn them to head to the beach again, lest another earthquake hit. He decided to stop by the shrine to Augustus, the former Caesar and still god; perhaps a little prayer was in order. While he was lighting some incense, he heard another loud explosion above the rumbling roar. Looking up at Vesuvio, he could see another cloud, red and black and roiling, working its way down the mountainside. Dama did not need to know this was a pyroclastic flow: superheated gas and rock moving at more than fifty miles per hour. All he needed to know was what he immediately felt: mortal fear.

Dama began running down the street toward the beach and the porticos. When he reached the beach front, he could see his wife and some of his former master’s family huddled under one of the aches. Other people were also taking shelter there, although the boats were all gone, having departed with a load of people fleeing earlier. Dama walked out into the shallow water to get a better view toward the mountain. The dark red line was sweeping down toward the village at an incredible speed, and there was nowhere to go. He ran toward the portico where his wife was, but he never made it.

The pyroclastic flow hit the town like a firey tidal wave, searing any organic material and killing everyone and everything instantly. Behind it was a wall of hot mud, actually liquid rock, which buried the town under meters of solid stone as it cooled. Vesuvio erased Roman Herculaneum so completely that no one knew where it had been for almost two millenia, when a local farmer digging a well uncovered some gold jewelry.

While Pompeii was smothered by ash, collapsing most structures and leaving the ghostly body-casts of victims, Herculaneum was flash-fried, then dipped in a protective coating of stone. The buildings still stand, two or three stories tall. Wooden objects (screens, doors, lintels, beds) were found charred but intact, giving an invaluable look at Roman life. The same goes for pottery, glass, and even papyri, Roman legal documents which also survived. Herculaneum provided actual skeletons, revealing diets, diseases, heights, weights, lifestyles and even DNA.

House shrine, note the metal roof support

Most people visit Pompeii: it’s larger, more famous, and it’s where cruise and other tours want to take you. And it’s certainly worth a visit. But it is larger, and can be a little intimidating, if not overwhelming. I suggest considering Herculaneum, which is just as well preserved, smaller, and very walkable.

This shows one portico at what was the beach/shore. The “wall” in the background is an unexcavated area, showing how deep the town was buried. The house is part of Marcus Nonius Balbus’ seaside villa

Napoli (Italia, not Florida)

If I did a word association and said “Italy” I bet many would say “pizza.” It’s natural to any American: the food we love best is actually an import. And many Americans know that pizza originated in Napoli (Naples) in the 19th Century, when a local restaurateur developed the classic thin crust, fresh mozzarella, tomato sauce and basil (yes, it mirrors the Italian flag) for Queen Margherita, and a legend was born. But note the date: 1889. Like Italy, pizza is not an ancient dish, and therein lies a story of the nation, and the city of Napoli.

Wait, what are we doing in Italy? Well, our family decided to do the traditional American Thanksgiving, all gathering on the appropriate Turkey Thursday, but we decided to gather at our daughter’s house in Vicenza, Italy. Nothing says Thanksgiving like Turkey, pasta, Italian wine and gelato! Afterwards, my dear wife and I decided to head south for a side trip to Naples on the way home to Mexico.

Now if I did a second word association with “Naples” you might respond with “pizza,” “crime,” or “camorra” (the local version of the mafia). The city has a bad rap,some of which is deserved, but let me make a case for it anyway. To begin with, Naples is really old: as in Greek! It was founded by the Greeks (Neapolis, or New City) over 2500 years ago as a trading station because it has a great harbor and an ideal location on the the Italian “boot” peninsula. Milan was the great city-state in northern Italy (after Venice declined) and Napoli was the great one in the south. Napoli became the seat of a large Spanish kingdom that included Sicily and other Hapsburg lands. It remained cultured, rich, and important, while “Italy” remained only a geographic concept until unification in 1861 (yes, the nation we call Italy is younger than the USA; same goes for Germany!). The rivalry between the more industrial (read German), richer north and the more corrupt, pastoral south ended in a compromise with the Italian Capitol in Roma. Naples went from a proud, distinct seat of power to a provincial backwater, starting a long slide into insignificance.

But Naples is what we see in our minds when we think “Italian.” Napoletanos were the largest bloc of Italian immigrants to America (there being little opportunity back home), and from them we get pizza, spaghetti, tenements with laundry hanging down, and “Santa Lucia.”

Because Napoli had an independent history, it had long come to terms with accommodating foreign rulers while imposing its own rules. To this day Napoli barely tolerates Roman rule, and even the organized crime system there is a version of “how things really get done” as opposed to “what they tell us to do.” After World War II, Naples continued to ignore and be ignored by the central government, exacerbating its decline. By the 1970s, petty crime, graffiti, and general lawlessness reigned, giving many tourists the impression it was too dangerous to visit. The graffiti remains, as does some crime in a city of more than one million people. But Naples had greatly recovered, and deserves a visit. Capiche?

First off, there is the unique culture, which reminds me of New York in many ways. Locals are extremely proud and like-able, just don’t get in their way (especially the scooters which run riot across the small roads). The food is authentic, the neighborhoods a sight to behold. Locals call it basa living, and its an urban but not urbane, gritty life where people refuse to move out of the block, let alone the neighborhood. Jobs are scarce, people just get by, and that’s good enough. They are very Catholic, and claim to have more churches per capita than any other city. I didn’t count them, but we did see an amazing Gothic church across the street from another amazing Baroque one. Napoletanos have their many superstitions, many friends, and Gli Azzurri, the soccer club known as “the blues.”

As to food, how can you go wrong with the place that invented pizza? Yes, they’ll fry anything, including pasta which didn’t sell earlier in the day, and cones full of fried seafood (cuopo) as Napoli is a port after all. There are amazing pastries like s’fogliatella (go ahead, try and pronounce it, I dare you) and baba, another soaked in rum.

You want culture? Well Napoli is the home of National Museum of Archeology, which just happens to have all the original treasures which were discovered in Pompeii and Herculaneum (yes, the originals are preserved in the museum; on-site you’ll see very well done re-creations. So if you plan on visiting any of the scavi (excavations) buried by Mount Versuvio, you need to schedule a stop in Napoli.

Was there a lot of graffiti? Yes. Some seedy areas? That too. A somewhat rushed city atmosphere? Yup. But no moreso that many other cities, and well worth it to try the food and see the culture. And we only visited long enough for a literal taste: we skipped the castles, the modern art scene, plaza del plebicito and other “must-do” sites, not to mention the Amalfi coast, which is not our cup of tea, but is selfie heaven.

We did go to the scavi, but that’s a post for another day! Bottom line? Don’t avoid Naples, it’s safe, fun, and delicious.

Domestic changes

One of the surprising aspects of expat life is the reality of having a maid, gardener, or both. North of the Border (NOB), such attendants are part of the Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous. Some others may have an occasional cleaning service, or somebody who mows the yard or cleans the pool. But full-time domestic service? No, that’s out of most people’s reach.

Down here, it’s as common as huevos con gusto. There have always been domestic services available here, as the movie Roma (2018) highlighted. Like so much else in Mexico, there was a huge, unregulated market in such work (I used the past tense purposefully there, as it’s changing, slowly). Why so many maids and gardeners? Labor is cheap in Mexico; the Mexican federal minimum wage* this year was 173 pesos per day. Yes, that’s less than $9.00 US dollars a day. Which means it is very affordable to pay someone to clean your house or tend your garden. And most expats can afford to pay much more than that minimum wage, making domestic work very lucrative for people who’s other work opportunities may be quite limited. Which in turn affects the local economy: there are maids (mainly women) who make more money than their bread-winning husbands. And gardeners (mostly men) who make as much as professional employees.

The work varies greatly. I know expats who have workers visiting two (or more) times a week, cleaning, cooking meals, doing laundry and ironing. Others simply have basic cleaning chores done. Some have live-in help, which also extends to home care for older/infirm expats (care which is much more humane and affordable than NOB). Gardeners’ work varies between seasonal plantings and topiary sculpting down to just cutting back the vines and pulling the weeds.

The relationship between the expats and their domestic workers also varies. I know of expats who become more like abuelos (grandparents) to their workers, giving them gifts and integrating into their families. I know of others who don’t make inflation adjustments or skip some mandatory payments because they know there isn’t an enforcement system. There can be trouble brewing both ways: treating employees like family or not even as fellow human beings. It’s a delicate balance and one which most expats have never faced before.

While there are management services which can do all the work of hiring and coordinating workers for expats who so desire, most manage the workers themselves. Until recently, this sector was totally neglected by the government, but now laws are pending which make it a recognized economic component and require certain workers’ rights and owners’ obligations. Such as? Workers are guaranteed vacation time/pay, a Christmas bonus, pregnancy leave of twelve weeks with full pay, and separation payment reflecting years of service. The law will require a signed contract specifying the nature, hours, and type of work, and the worker/employer will need to register with the government. The owner will submit payments to the Institute Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) to cover eventual social security for the worker.

All of this new regulation is part of Mexico’s continuing effort to become a civil society of laws which are actually followed. Some of the rules I cited have been technically on the books, but unenforced, leaving workers no option but the largesse of their bosses. One reason why so many Mexicans work “off the books” or run small, unlicensed tiendas (shops) is that they cannot afford to pay taxes and social security and health insurance on such meager income. Of course, that also leaves the worker/owner very vulnerable to market changes, illness, old age, or even quarantine. And the Mexican government idea of a social safety net is called “la familia.”

Even if the pending changes take root and are enforced, many expats will still have maids and gardeners. They may continue to work off books, or go with those intermediate managing services which take care of all the bureaucracy. The latter will cost more, if only to keep wages the same while paying for social security and management. I would call it a classic “First World Problem,” except we’re in a developing economy. I think it’s all for the best, for the workers, for the expats, and for Mexico.

*The Mexican federal minimum wage changes annually, and there is a slightly higher wage rate for those Mexican states adjacent to the US.

The Expat as a Minority

One unique aspect of being an expat, regardless of where you come from or go to, is you’ll be reclassifying yourself as a minority. I recently read a Washington Post article about African-Americans who have moved back to ancestral lands in Africa, to feel included and not judged anymore. I wish them luck, although I fear they will learn that even if you look like “us,” you may still be “them.”

I’m a white, Irish-German (maybe Polish, too) American man. Apparently I benefited from much privilege as a result of being white and male and American. I never noticed it, but that (they tell me) is the clue it existed. I also came from blue-collar Catholic stock, and I almost never noticed the victimhood that provided me, so it too must have been real. I do recall a family car trip (our only one) through the South in the 1960s, and when I insisted we just stop on Sunday and ask where the Catholic church was, my Dad told me that was not possible. It was decades before I figured that one out.

I grew up in a Catholic enclave, next to a Catholic school, and all my friends (save one) were Catholic. I first noticed everybody wasn’t Catholic at my public high schools. Of course then I went to West Point, where all races and creeds were treated equally poorly: as “bean-heads,” “crots” and several other vulgarities (see the Ronald Lee Ermey soliloquy in Full Metal Jacket). So I never distinctly felt like a minority . . . until I became an expat.

As a fellow of pasty heritage, I’ll never be mistaken for a Latino in general or a Mexican in particular. A proud moment in my life was when a Spaniard told me I spoke Spanish like a Mexican, but that’s as good as it is going to get. I’m too tall, too white, too bossy-acting to ever fit in. So that makes me a minority. Even lakeside, where occasionally (like what you know as Winter) there are as many expats as locals in and around Ajijic (my village), expats are a minority. One only need drive five kilometers east (to the town of Chapala) or west (to the town of San Juan Cosalá) to realize you’re not in Kansas anymore.

I have lots of company. Watching expats, especially Americans, deal with being a minority is interesting. Some never catch on. I hear expats saying things about Mexican culture or politics within earshot of locals and not realizing everything they say is being understood and translated for the people at the next table. Middle class (back home) expats can live like the rich here, and sometimes they adopt rich people’s views that “money makes all the difference.” This is true everywhere, and nowhere more so than in Mexico. Here there is a sliding scale for justice and rule-of-law. Rich expats, like rich Mexicans, can find ways to get whatever they want. Need a driver’s license? You can pay someone to take the driver’s test for you. Need a quick visa? A “fixer” can find the right official to move your paperwork through the system immediately, at a price. The same applies to wealthy Mexicans, who have been known to ignore rules they don’t like. But even wealthy expats should never confuse the ease they have of negotiating life in Mexico with being anything other than an accepted minority.

Expats have been around here for decades, sometimes being people fleeing some aspect of life NOB (north of the border) which they just couldn’t endure. People can live a decent life in Mexico on income that would make them poor in the States or Canada. Some expats fit in better, learning the language, eating at the local stands, buying the Mexican products at the corner tienda. Sometimes they try too hard to be more Mexican than the Mexicans. You’ll see this variety on social media, posting in Spanish about how awful “the Gringos” are. The dead give-away is when they reference NOB politics or culture; few Mexicans care a whit about the politics in el Norte, and they don’t relish social media drama.

Being in a minority status can challenge your established views. NOB conservatives who decried immigrants there who didn’t speak any English are known to scream at locals in English for not understanding them here. Progressives NOB who insisted all must welcome immigrants there and embrace their diversity of culture, food and customs tell expats here they must adopt the local culture and fit in. Goose & gander, what?

Expats sometimes overestimate their influence and importance here in Mexico, mostly as a result of Jalisco having the largest concentration of NOB expats in the world. You may hear some expat say “what if we all left?” or “they need to address our concerns since we bring such economic vitality to the area.” Granted, expats do bring advantages to the region, but they also pose challenges. Expats expect responsive government in a way most Mexicans never would. They demand efficiency and punctuality, two traits distant from local culture. If all the expats left tomorrow, the homes would be filled with Tapatios and Chilangos looking to live the Mexican dream. The hours on the restaurants would change, the translation services would dry up, and little else would change.

All that being said, Mexico has an incredibly welcoming culture. The pluses and minuses of expats for Mexico are generally embraced by the people, just as they embrace whatever situation in which they find themselves. As expats and a minority, my wife and I try to speak some Spanish, try to adjust our eating schedule, try to engage with local culture. The repetition there is intentional, as the key phrase is “try to.” We have happily taken on board a more relaxed attitude to timeliness, been more accepting of inefficiency, and enjoying the pleasures of the moment, whether it’s a good tequila, a beautiful sunset, or a friendly conversación. I’ll never be a Mexican, but there is something about being an American who appreciates Mexico that is special to Mexicans, too.

Being a minority is first about recognizing where you stand in a hierarchy. Then it is all about how you respond to the fact of that standing, which is all up to you, dontcha know?

Everything You Know is Wrong (X): Cristóbal Colón

Or Christopher Columbus, if you prefer. Either way, it is hard to think of an historical figure about whom more wrong things have been said. And not just wrong, but truly perfidious, bordering on calumny. Or in more modern ways, he’s been dissed.

So as we come upon another celebration of Columbus Day–or Indigenous People’s Day if you prefer–let’s set the record straight.

Starting with the silly complaints, no, Columbus did not discover North America. He landed in the Caribbean and eventually on the South American coast, but never the North America mainland. And various others had come from Europe to the Western Hemisphere before him: none of them documented the travel in a verifiable way, nor left an explanation which could permit their trail to be followed. All of which makes this complaint entirely irrelevant. Before Columbus, explorers were unsure what lay west of Europe; after, they knew what was there, and how to get there and back. That was a tremendous achievement. Look, we knew what the moon was, where it was, and what we would find there long before Apollo 11 landed, but no one thought that “one small step for (a) man” was anything other than a “giant leap for mankind.”

Next, there is the question of motivation. Modern revisionist historians claim Columbus went west for money and glory. This is partly true. Constantinople had fallen just forty years earlier, so all trade with what Europe called the Orient had to pass though Muslim lands. Columbus believed he could detour by going west, and bring the riches home free of interference. But why? He wished to (1) spread the Catholic faith (he was third order Franciscan), and (2) he wanted to fund a crusade to recover Jerusalem. He already had a comfortable existence as a sea captain, but he did crave more fame, and he wanted to do something he thought would merit him Heaven. This is hard for moderns to believe, as I have pointed out before. He left money in his will for such a crusade.

Which leads us to his behavior. Columbus was a sea captain, with the power of life and death. He was not used to being a land Governor, but that was the deal he made with the Spanish Crown. He expected to be conducting trade negotiations with the Indians or Chinese, not supervising naked natives or suppressing human sacrifices. But that was what he had to do. He was alternately too lax and too cruel, and this was a real failing on his part. Many of the abuses cited against him happened under his watch, but not under his direct supervision, as he sailed around the Carib Sea or back and forth four times to Spain. He did direct an atrocity when one tribe revolted (and eliminated a Spanish garrison), killing many and enslaving the rest, but this was the standard of his time. The losing side in any battle or war was taken in slavery.

The idea Columbus went west looking for slaves to get rich is utterly ridiculous. There were tens of thousands of slaves available for sale in Africa. Anyone seeking to make a fortune in slave trading need only follow the well-worn sea lanes south to the African slave ports, where African tribes were quite ready to sell other (defeated) tribes into slavery. Remember, Columbus thought he was discovering a shortcut to China, so slavery was not his motivation. He did say that the native Taino people were easy to control and would “make great servants/slaves” (Note that you’ll only see that last quote rendered as “slaves” by many, but it translates correctly either way). Why were the Taino that way? The Taino Columbus met were pacific, and were preyed upon by the neighboring Carib tribes, who practiced cannibalism and kept the Taino as a food source! The Taino were eager to ingratiate themselves with the Spaniards, who were brutal but not looking for a Taino entree.

Many of the harshest accusations revisionist historians raise stem directly from the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Bobadilla. The former was a Spanish priest who documented many of the worst acts committed by Spanish leaders in the New World. Yet on Columbus, he wrote “The admiral should have taken pains to bring love and peace and to avoid scandalous incidents, for not to perturb the innocent is a precept of the evangelical law who’s messenger he was. Instead, he inspired fear and displayed power, declared war and violated a jurisdiction that was not his but the Indians…” and also “Truely (sic), I would not dare blame the admiral’s intentions, for I knew him well and I know his intentions were good. But…the road he paved and the things he did of his own free will, as well as sometimes under constraint, stemmed from his ignorance of the law (editor’s note: i.e., the Gospel).” De las Casas presents no strong case against Columbus.

As to de Bobadilla, he authored an investigation that is the basis for most of the revisionist historian charges against Columbus. But he was scheming to replace Columbus from early on, and his account of charges must be viewed in that light. He succeeded in having Columbus recalled to Spain, but there Columbus was ultimately freed, although he lost his titles and lands in the New World (to de Bobadilla, among others). The Spanish Crown was more displeased at the disorder in its new colonies than in the inhumane (by current standards) behavior of its Governors.

What of the charge of genocide? Genocide is the intentional elimination of a nation or group. Columbus may have been violent by modern standards (although hardly by the standards of his time), he may have been unfair, but he never imagined his encounter with the natives peoples of the Americas would result in their demise. Diseases were misunderstood at the time, and he had no way of knowing or understanding the locals’ inability to deal with the endemic diseases his crew carried. He did nothing to prevent or further the spread, as he didn’t know how. If Columbus had bowed down to the native Gods, dropped off his armor and renounced Spain to become a Taino, nothing would have changed. All (over 95%) of the natives would have died in the next ten years. This is not genocide, as no one intended it.

Does Columbus deserve a national holiday and statues in parks? What we celebrate speaks to what we respect and honor. If we demand perfection in our heroes, we’d have only statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. But do his acknowledged faults disqualify him? Every historical figure must be judged against his or her times, and by their specific accomplishments. Woodrow Wilson brought freedom and self-determination to millions in Europe, but he was an avowed racist and supported eugenic policies. FDR was one of our greatest Presidents, a superb wartime political leader, who ordered both the round-up of Japanese Americans and denied the entry of Jewish refugees. Nelson Mandela proved stronger than the chains of apartheid, but he was once a member of the Communist Party and planned terrorist attacks. And so it goes.

What Columbus did would have been accomplished by someone, eventually. Yet he was the first, and many failed before he succeeded. His failures were real, too, but within the standards for his time. On balance, he merits his due.